Close Call in Holland

At that time, I had become the acting platoon sergeant and I had this one platoon, which was over on the left of this attack that was going to go across the open space to a barn that we could see from where we were and we knew that there was enemy in that territory so we, so once the order was given to stand up and move forward, this is what we all did. And just as we got half-way across the opening, a German Spandau opened up fire across our front which meant to say that we would be walking into it and you could see the tracers going across the ground so once that happened the order was given for everybody to spread out and move forward, you see. Well, I was on the left portion of my platoon so what I did, I moved - when I heard them say well, spread out - well, I moved to the left to give them room to spread out but they went the other way which I didn’t know at that time and I kept running towards the hedge that I saw in front of the barn. So when I got to the hedge, I could see a little dark spot in the bottom and the tracers were just starting to skip over in front of me, so what I did, I jumped over the hedge and into the hole that I saw or thought was a hole, which it was. When I hit the bottom, and I had a Sten gun in my hand, when I hit the bottom and stood up there was also a German in the same trench, and I couldn’t get the feeling in my finger to pull the trigger. For some reason I couldn’t pull it and it wasn’t until he got excited and made a grab for his gun that I sort of just squeezed and I killed him there, you see. And then when I heard his voice saying, “Fritz, Fritz,” there was another German coming around the corner there and I just doubled out of that hole and took off across the open space. I didn’t care what was there, bullets or anything where I came across my own unit and they had all been pretty well beat up and they were licking their wounds in this barn. I always remember that one.