Maddox, Kenneth G., 1919-1944.

Kenneth G. Maddox was born in Louisville, Kentucky on May 6, 1919. He enlisted in the army in 1941, joining the 138th Field Artillery of the 38th Division. He attended officer training school and graduated as a second lieutenant. He was later assigned to the 28th Division, known as the "Keystone Division," and was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant.

Maddox was posted to England. Following the Normandy invasion, his unit went to the front lines in France (1944). The division participated in the liberation of Paris. By October 1, Maddox was in Germany. Employed on a mission ever day in the campaigns of that fall and winter, Maddox and his troops moved to Luxembourg in November.

Maddox commanded an anti-tank gun crew defending a bridge to Clervaux, Luxembourg on December 17, in the Battle of the Bulge, which had commenced two days earlier. Maddox alone saw an approaching German soldier coming to attack the crew from the rear. Maddox exchanged fire with the German and both men were hit. According to American witnesses, the German fell down a cliff. The American crew was forced to leave Maddox behind and flee the area by scaling the cliff. Maddox was evacuated to a German field hospital in Lazarette, ourside of Clervaux, where he died of his wounds or of complications on December 25, 1944.

He was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart posthumously and an administrative building was named for him at Ft. Knox, KY in 1945. Originally interred in the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg, his body was returned to the U.S. in 1948. He is buried in the Maddox Family section of Evergreen Cemetery in Louisville, KY. His story of heroism is memorialized in Robert Phillips, To Save Bastogne.