The fallen resistance people in Limburg
pers.Valkenburg 1940-1945

Albert S. Cook

Albert S. Cook, Service Nr 20458289, Staff Sergeant
30th Inf. Div., 117th Inf. Reg., 3th Battalion M-Company
† Grachtstraat, Strucht, Valkenburg-Houthem [1.1]

The following text and the photo are taken from the book Valkenburg 80 jaar bevrijd (Valkenburg 80 Years Liberated) [2]
A beautiful sunny late summer day, that Friday, September 15, 1944.
The L Company of the 119th Regiment had already taken control of the area south of the provincial road such as the Grachtstraat, Engwegen and the Keutenberg. The Germans had dug in behind the railroad on the northern Geul slope in several places and were offering fierce resistance.
Since the company did not have the much-needed heavy weapons, the help of the M Company of the Third Battalion, 117th Regiment was called in. These had mortars and heavy machine guns. They arrived late in the afternoon from Terblijt, via Oud Valkenburg in Strucht.

At the corner of Grachtstraat and Strucht some of the residents struck up a conversation with Albert. No one spoke even a word of English, and attempts were made to communicate by hand and foot.
According to these eyewitnesses this was a cook. Afterwards, however, it turned out that this English word Cook did not refer to a profession (kok in Dutch) but to the name of this soldier. To the shock of the people standing near him, he suddenly grabbed his stomach and fell down dead. The shot came from an orchard across the road where a German sniper had been hiding.

The Report of Burial, prepared for the burial, indeed shows that a shot to the lower abdomen was the cause of death.
The perpetrator did not survive. He was killed by American soldiers who had rushed in. Albert was buried on Sept. 17 at 7:30 p.m. in Fosses-la-Ville Sector E, Row 3 Grave No. 41. After this cemetery was closed in 1948, next of kin could choose between repatriating the remains or reburial in Henri-Chapelle Cemetery.

The U.S. War Department wrote a letter to the widow’s last known address, but she had meanwhile remarried and left for an unknown destination.
Thus, his father had to decide what to do. He chose to have the remains returned to Tennessee.

On September 12, 1948, they were exhumed and on March 29, 1949, they arrived in Lexington from where they were transferred to Cedar Grove, Henderson County, Tennessee, where he was reburied in Pleasant Hill Cemetery, Mount Gilead [1.2], Henderson County Tennessee.
His father, Jesse Cook, died May 16, 1948, so he did not live to see his son’s return.

Footnotes

1. OpenStreetMap
   1. Grachtstraat, Strucht
   2. Pleasant Hill Cemetery, Mount Gilead
2. Valkenburg 80 jaar bevrijd, VIII – We Do Remember, p.136
3. More in our story Resistance in Valkenburg