Walter Allen Franz was born on July 22, 1919. He served in the Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion as a Sergeant during World War II. Sgt Franz was Killed in Action on December 17, 1944 at the age of 25 and is now buried in the Ashland Cemetery, Ashland, Boyd County, Kentucky, USA. He was one of the victims of Malmedy massacre when German SS soldiers of the 1st Panzer Division captured over 100 American soldiers at Baugnez Crossroads outside Malmedy, Belgium, on 17 December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge and, under orders to take no prisoners, placed them in an open field and then machine gunned them. When the machine guns stopped, the SS went through the field where some victims were still alive and systematically finished them off with pistols at short range leaving 84 soldiers dead when they had finished. Fortunately, when the machine guns first started shooting, a number of soldiers ran and some managed to escape and tell the story of how the Germans had treated the others who had not survived.