The 8^th Division was a green outfit when they started fighting in Normandy in Early July. They needed strong leadership in order to push forward in the tough kind of fighting which the hedgerow country provided.

About 7 July, the 8^th was taken from Corps reserve and sent east of La Haye du Puis to the west nose of the Foret de Mont Castre. For two days, Company E of the 121^st Infantry Regiment was pinned down and moving very slowly about 500 yards south of the main road between La Haye Du Puis and Carentan. The 121^st was advancing due south abreast with the 28^th Infantry, with the 121^st on the left. The 28^th seemed to be doing well, but the 121^st was highly disorganized.

Just after his evening meal on 9 July General Walker went down to try and organize the leading elements of the 121^st. He went to Company E, and took a platoon from E company which was pinned down behind a hedgerow and led them forward, assisted by two of his aides, Lt. Stephen S. Fry and Lt. Emmet Fields. In the lead of the platoon, General Walker went through the gap in the hedgerow immediately in front of where the men had been pinned down, and then turned sharply to the left (east) when thirty or forty yards from the hedge. The route of the platoon crossed a sunken road with high banks, continued east fifty yards, and then swung south toward the gap in the next hedgerow. Scattered small arms fire was received throughout the initial stages of the advance, but no mortar or artillery fire was received from the enemy.

After advancing across the next field, General Walker and six men went through a gap in the next east-west hedge and started to go into an orchard in the next field. General Walker’s two aides were about to go through the break in the hedge row when the Germans opened up with machine gun and machine pistol fire. The General and all six men with him were hit; Lt. Fields thinks he was hit on the first shot.

Both Fields and Fry crawled along the hedge to the northwest corner of the field when the general was hit, and took protection behind a high dirt mound. By now the fire was increasing, and both officers planned to go up the sunken road and knock out the machine guns delivering the fire. An Aid man came up and gave them the news that the General had been hit and another aid man had been lost trying to get to him. Fry went back to get aid, while Fields remained in position to hold and cover the spot and guide the aid men when they would return.

There was some difficulty and delay in getting aid up, and only after finding the battalion and regimental commanders was an ambulance finally discovered. The ambulance was driven up the sunken road as far as possible, and then Lt. Fry and three aid men brought General Walker in on a stretcher. Plasma was administered on the way back and at the clearing station, but the bullet had penetrated his right thigh and hip socket, and broke his pelvis, causing great loss of blood. The General was hit just about dusk 2300 hrs., and died about 0130hrs.

On the morning of 10 July, the regimental commanders of the 28tyh and 121^st regiments were relieved after they refused to advance frontally; the division commander (McMahon) was relieved on 12 July. Lt. Walker feels that the relief of Colonel Peyton (121^st) and Colonel Webb (28^th) was “unfortunate,” and that the situation was in part the fault of the division commander, who kept urging a frontal attack.