If you like listening to Warriors in Their Own Words, check out our other show, The Medal of Honor podcast.

The link is in the show description.

I'm Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors in Their Own Words.

In partnership with the Honor Project, we've brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation.

Thank you for listening, and by doing so honoring those who have served.

Today, we'll hear from Private First Class Walter Stitt.

Stitt fought in the invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge as a tang gunner.

When I got into combat, I was 19.

In July of that year, then, I became 20.

I came to France as a replacement,

and the first sergeant in E-company came down to the motor pool, or to the replacement pool,

and got my records and saw I was a tank gunner, which I guess he needed.

And so he came over and interviewed me and said, okay, you're going to be an E-company of the 33rd Armored Regiment.

And so then I followed along behind the Third Armored for a week or so, maybe a little longer.

And then when they needed a replacement, he came and got me.

When I went in a tank, I didn't go in as a gunner immediately.

I went in as a loader.

And so a loader's kind of off at the side of the gun, and he isn't looking outside during combat. He's just

taking orders to put in this kind of ammunition and see that there's ammunition for the machine

gun, that sort of thing.

So I really wasn't looking much at what we were shooting at.

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