In December 1944 and January 1945, the 30th Infantry Division played a crucial role in the Battle of the Bulge. The crack outfit first helped stop in its tracks the formidable and ruthless Waffen SS force of Kampfgruppe Peiper. Then, once the northern shoulder of the Bulge was shored up, the veteran infantrymen went on the offensive themselves, fighting in blizzard conditions against determined Germans who extracted a heavy price for every yard gained. But by that time, Richard Larock, a PFC from Helena, Montana, had long stopped being part of the division’s 119th Infantry Regiment. On 8 October 1944 he was caught on film, briefly unwinding at the piano in an abandoned German beer hall in Übach, north of Aachen. Two days later, Richard Larock was killed during the fierce fighting at the West Wall on the Dutch-German border. Today, he rests at the American cemetery in Henri-Chapelle, Belgium.
