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Description
Mr. Walsh describes his first night in action, fighting off two German counterattacks. He also describes having to fire a weapon in anger for the first time.
Transcription
Once it got dark we were told to load our rifles, put our safety’s on, tie our canteens down so they didn’t make no noise or the rifles didn’t make no noise and there was ten of us picked out. The sergeant took us up, it was pitch black, dark and we just went up a little dirt road about two or three miles and he stopped us there. It was a hedgerow running up off from the road up into the wheat fields. It was all wheat fields down in that area. And he just told us to stay there for a few minutes and he went up and seen the officer in charge. It was along the hedge line. So they came down and told me to go on the other side of the hedge row, there was fox holes. One fellow was in one, I got in the fox hole with him and we weren’t there, I’d say about ten minutes and the Germans laid on the artillery on us. And as soon as the artillery stopped, the counter attack started. So we fought off two counter attacks that one night. So that was my baptism by fire. When you took the safety off your rifle and you start squeezing that trigger than things all changed. Everything changed in a way, your whole life changed after that. I figured I was a Veteran the next morning.