Battle

Heroes Remember

Battle

Transcript

We stretched out along the front. We were on one side and there was sort of woods oh a mile or so down lets say. The Germans were supposedly in. Ah, we crawled up to our position along there and took over and were told to hold. One day that, my corporal said that he saw a German through a gap in the trees and at the same time the next day they saw it again. So the third day we had all kinds of people there with binoculars looking to see a real live German and the Corporal said that would be great ya know. We had a infantry regiment right beside us. They could send out a patrol and capture this guy and I thought well that would be great you know, to get this infantry. We had a front row seat there where we could watch. So I left and at the Colonel's meeting and I told him about seeing this German same time every day and how easy I thought it'd be for a patrol to capture him and before I could suggest that the infantry unit beside us would be ideal for the job, he said, "Okay, but be careful we've already had one officer killed." My mouth sort of fell open you know. This isn't what I intended at all, I and before I could extricate myself with honour he was on talking to something else. I talked myself into a real hole. So we left, I went back to the unit. If we have to, we have to and I got a couple of fellas. My idea was that I'd go over and I would try to capture him and the other two fellas would be there, that if anything happened to me I could run like hell and they could lay down a covering fire they got out of there. Basically that was the idea. So we, we got over and I, we set up our little ambush. I was behind the bush waiting for him to come down. My other two troopers were down the road in a place where they could give me good cover and being unaccustomed to that, you've got no fast or how fast your heart will pump, actually just sitting there waiting for something like this to happen. And then I, I saw the German. He's coming down the road and my heart which was pumping fast just went out of control as he came down. I didn't know what to do, but soon he was right beside me. I only had one thing I could possible do and that was to jump out and said halt, hand over. I had my Tommy gun there looking at him and he looked at me didn't do anything I said, "Hand over." He don't do anything then he made a rush for the ditch and I just pulled the trigger, and sprayed him as he went in. He got flying right in the ditch. I went over to look at this hated Hun. He was laying there, his helmet was knocked off. His, he had beautiful blond hair, blue eyes, he looked up at me and an expression of fear and I'll never forget his expression, but suddenly it vanished, blood coming out of his nose and mouth. And by the time my two troopers had raced up, he was dead. I told them to strip him, that way we get the information, what unit he belonged to etc, etc. So they ripped off all the his insignia, everything that was in his pockets, gave it to me and we crawled back to our troop. I went to see our intelligence officer and I showed him all that I had and I looked in his wallet to see how much money he had. As I opened it up, I saw a picture of a, a beautiful girl much about the, the same age as my wife Norma. This broke me up completely. I dropped it, left, walked out. It's how she would cry when she found out he was dead and what sorrow his, his parents would feel to know that he was killed. I didn't have to kill him. I could have left, let him go. I never before had such a deep feeling of remorse about anything in my whole life as I had about this incident.

Description

Mr. Murray talks about the event that resulted in him shooting a young German soldier, and his life-long reaction to it.

Robert Murray

Robert Murray was born in Toronto, Ontario on February 8, 1918. His father was Inspector of Detectives of the Toronto police force. Mr. Murray had six brothers and sisters. He was the second youngest.

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