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Carrol Stephen (Red) Walsh Jr. was born on 18 Feb 1921, in Detroit, Michigan, the first of two sons born to Carrol S. Walsh Sr. (1896 - 1969) and Imelda Maloney Walsh (1898 - 1969). Red had one younger brother, John M. Walsh (24 May 1922 - 11 Nov 1995).
Carrol was nicknamed Red due to the color of his hair. Red grew up and was educated in the Johnstown area graduating from Johnstown High School in 1938. He then enrolled at the University of Notre Dame outside of South Bend, Indiana and then was accepted at St. Lawrence University, located in the village of Canton, St. Lawrence County, New York. After completing his studies at St. Lawrence he was accepted into Albany Law School, Albany, New York. In Oct. 1942 Red also enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves. In March 1943 Red was activated for service while still in law school. Both he, fellow law school buddy who had also been activated, and the law school petitioned the Army for a waiver of activation while they finished law school. The Army granted the waiver through July 1943 which allowed Red and his buddy to gain enough time in law school to take the New York Bar Exam which they both passed.
Red was activated into the Army in July 1943, with the rank of Private and sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training. The success of the German mechanized units at the start of World War II was a major impetus to operations at Fort Knox. A new Armored Force was established in July 1940 with its headquarters at Fort Knox, the 7th Cavalry Brigade becoming the 1st Armored Division. The Armored Force School and the Armored Force Replacement Center were also sited at Fort Knox.
On 5 Feb 1944, while home on leave after graduation from basic training, Red married the former Dorothy N. Doust of Watervliet, N.Y. Red and Dorothy had three children, Terrence Walsh, Sharon Walsh Salluzzo, and Elizabeth Walsh Connolly.
After completion of basic training Pfc. Walsh was transferred to the Replacement Center and was shipped to England to begin the process of joining the war effort as a replacement. Pfc. Walsh was assigned to the Independent 743rd Tank Battalion, Dog Company and arrived in Normandy, France in July 1944. Pfc. Walsh’s first Military Occupational Speciality (MOS) was as a Light Tank Bow Gunner or as Walsh described it, “The lowest form of humanity ever seen”.
The 743rd was now moving through the Hedge Rows after securing Omaha and Utah Beaches during Operation Overlord beach landings as the first wave of the Allied Offensive to drive the German Army out of Western Europe.
While American farms and yards are split by fences, split rail fences in the early days and mostly barbed wire by the World War II years, the farms in Normandy were split by ancient hedgerows. Originally built by the Romans, the hedgerows were mounds of dirt raised in irregular patterns that served as fences between plots of land. Irrigation ditches with raised sides provided water to all the fields and animals. Over the hundreds of years since the dirt mounds were raised, thick, tall growths of plants had turned the ditches into tunnels and raised virtual walls of up to 16 feet on top of the mounds. These wall of vegetation were thick and seemingly impossible to quickly cut through. And the hedgerows were everywhere, an aerial photo of a typical section of the battlefield showed over 3,900 hedged enclosures in less than eight square miles. Each of these enclosures was a virtual fortress, and the Germans had spent months preparing their defenses. They practiced moving through the hedges, selected areas for machine guns and anti-tank weapons, and practiced firing from trees into nearby enclosures. Perhaps most importantly, they had planted stakes near the most likely routes of American troops and had mapped the locations of the stakes by coordinates, allowing defenders to quickly and accurately call fire onto the advancing Allies.
Advancing through an opening in the hedgerows was risky at best. Compounding the problem was the irregular shape of the enclosures. The rows weren’t laid out in a proper grid. Instead, they were roughly rectangular as a whole, but with a variety of sizes even among adjoining fields. And all of these fields were connected primarily by thin wagon trails that wound through the irregular enclosures. All of this combined to form a defender’s paradise and an attacker’s hell. In the first days of the Battle for the Hedgerows, American troops would assault an enclosure at full speed, attempting to use velocity and violence of action to overwhelm the defenders. German machine guns pointed directly at these openings cut them down instead.
The morning of 9 July 1944 saw the fighting in the Hedge Rows become more intense with the German Army doubling down on their defenses against the advancing Allied Army, led by the 743rd.
The 743rd fought on through the Hedge Rows and the farm lands of Northern France, through St. Lo, and on to the Roer River. By late summer of 1944 the 743rd had the Germans on the run and the fighting slowed down enough for the troops to get some well needed rest and badly need work on their equipment. After resting and repair the 743rd rolled on through Holland and into Belgium as they headed toward the Siegfried Line in Germany.
By now Pfc. Walsh had received a new MOS (Military Occupational Specialist) as Tank Driver (a step up from the lowest form of humanity). The second week of Oct 1944 saw some fierce fighting in and around the city of Aachen, Germany. The intention was to close the "Aachen Gap" and seal off German supply or escape. By the next week the city of Aachen fell and the American line became a solid front. At some point Walsh's tank commander was relieved of duty due to "Shell Shock" and sent back to the U.S. for medical discharge. Walsh received a "Battlefield Promotion" to 2nd Lieutenant and was selected to serve as Tank Commander.
The 743rd’s goal now was Berlin to close out the war. The German’s had different ideas and the fighting continued on through November and into December.
On the 16th of December 1944, the German Field Marshal von Rundstedt unloosed a powerful army of the Nazi's best remaining troops in an effort to burst through the mountainous Belgian Ardennes country, sweep on to Liege and Antwerp, and throw the whole Allied offensive out of gear..The 30th Division was ordered to rush down to Belgium to help stem the drive. As a part of the 30th Division, the 743rd Tank Battalion was alerted to move on December 17th. At 25 minutes past noon, Colonel Duncan received notice to alert all his units and be ready to move out within five hours. A quartering party led by General Harrison left Wurselen, Germany, two hours later. Major Benjamin and Lieutenant Paul J. Longheier represented the 743rd Battalion in the Belgium-bound quartering group.
By dawn on the 18th they were in the hills of the Ardennes and by 10 o'clock in the morning were halted at the side of the road leading down into Malmedy. When the Battalion arrived in this position, the tank commanders, that now included 2nd Lieutenant Carrol (Red) Walsh, had no maps, no orders, no knowledge of the position of either the enemy or our own troops. The Battalion commander went down into Malmedy to report to the Regimental Commander of the 117th Infantry there that Verify was available. So began the Battalion's part in the Battle of the Bulge.
The Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge) was one of the fiercest and deadliest of any battle fought to date and some said the turning point in WWII. It lasted until 26 Jan 1945 and resulted in 120,000 casualties and a major loss of military supplies, German forces were dealt an irreparable blow, while Allied forces suffered only 75,000 casualties.
After suffering the defeat in the Ardennes Mountains the German Army was now on the run and the 743rd was chasing after them.
On the morning of 13 April 1945 (Friday the 13th) Major Clarence L. Benjamin came across several Finish soldiers who told him they were accompanying a train, which was abandoned on a siding near the town of Magdeburg, Germany. Major Benjamin went back to Dog Company and ordered Tank Commander, 2nd Lt. Walsh and Tank Commander, Sgt. George Gross to bring their tanks and a few infantrymen from the 119th Regiment and go with him to investigate the story he had heard from the captured Finish soldiers.
A few miles northwest of Magdeburg there was a railroad siding in wooded ravine not far from the Elbe River. Major Clarence L. Benjamin, in a jeep and the two light tanks came upon some 200 shabby looking civilians by the side of the road. There was something immediately apparent about each one of these people, men and women, which arrested the attention. Each one of them was skeleton thin with starvation, a sickness in their faces and the way in which they stood - and there was something else. At the sight of Americans they began laughing in joy-if it could be called laughing. It was an outpouring of pure, near-hysterical relief. The tankers soon found out why. The reason was found at the railroad siding.
There they came upon a long string of grimy, ancient boxcars standing silent on the tracks. In the banks by the tracks, as if to get some pitiful comfort from the thin April sun, a multitude of people of all shades of misery spread themselves in a sorry, despairing tableaux. As the American uniforms were sighted, a great stir went through this strange camp. Many rushed toward the Major’s jeep and the two light tanks.
Bit by bit, as the Major found some who spoke English, the story came out. This had been-and was-a horror train. This train which contained about 2,500 Jews, had a few days previously left the Bergen-Belsen death camp. Men, women and children, were all loaded into a few available railway cars, some passenger and some freight, but mostly the typical antiquated freight cars, termed as “40 and 8” a WWI terminology. This signified that these cars would accommodate 40 men or 8 horses. They were crammed into all available space and the freight cars were packed with about 60 – 70 people, with standing room only for most of them, so that they were packed in like sardines.
As the war was coming to an end, the Nazis made attempts to evacuate concentration camps before Allied troops arrived. Three trains were sent from Bergen-Belsen on April 10, 1945 with the purpose to move eastward from the Camp, to the Elbe River, where they were informed that it would not be advisable to proceed further because of the rapidly advancing Russian Army. The train then reversed direction and proceeded to Farsleben, where they were then told that they were heading into the advancing American Army.
Consequently, the train halted at Farsleben and was awaiting further orders to proceed. The engineers received their orders, to drive the train to, and onto the bridge over the Elbe River, and either blow it up, or just drive it off the end of the damaged bridge, with all of the cars of the train crashing into the river, and killing or drowning all of the occupants. The engineers were having some second thoughts about this action, as they too would be hurtling themselves to death also. It was the point at which they were discovered, by the leading elements of the 743rd Tank Battalion arrivial on the scene.
After securing the train the 743rd received some help from a tank destroyer battalion all going into local village and ordering the residents to stay up all night to prepare food to take back to the train. Once that was done the liberators took those survivors that could travel back to the villages for housing. Sgt Gross’ tank and men stayed with the train until the next day. Major Benjamin and Lt. Walsh returned to their battalion.
Over 2,500 Jewish men, women, and children were rescued during that operation. More information on this, including a listing of all of the people liberated that day, can be found here: https://teachinghistorymatters.com/2017/01/
On 7 May 1945 Germany surrendered and the war in Europe ended.
The 743rd Tank Battalion became an Occupational Government in Germany and began planning their next move which would be the Pacific Front, however on 2 Sept 1945, after being hit by two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered.
2nd Lt. Walsh returned home in Oct of 1945 and was discharged from the army. A couple of days later he discovered his buddy from law school had returned about the same time he did. Then they both made a startling discovery - although they had both passed the New York Bar Exam they were not law school graduates. They each had one more semester to complete before they could graduate and practice law. They both completed that one semester and were legitimate Law School Graduates.
In 1946 he became a private practice attorney in Johnstown until 1968. During that time he also held positions as the Johnstown City Attorney, the Assistant City Court Judge and President of the Fulton County Bar Association.
In 1969 he began a nine-year tenure as Fulton County Court Judge and Surrogate, presiding over criminal trials, reviewing appeals from city, town and village courts and having jurisdiction over cases involving decedents. During that time Judge Walsh often served as acting Supreme Court Justice by Assignment in the counties of Schenectady, Saratoga, Clinton, Warren, Essex, Montgomery and Fulton and as County Judge by Special Assignment of the Appellate Division in the counties of Nassau, Rockland and Franklin. He was also a member of the Criminal Procedure Law Advisory Board to the State Office of Court Administration. From 1978 until his retirement in 1990, he enjoyed a career as a Supreme Court Justice in the Fourth Judicial District of New York State, hearing cases outside the jurisdiction of lower trial courts.
Judge Walsh is a former director of Community Chest, the Johnstown Public Library, the Y.M.C.A. and the State Bank of Albany, and was a coach for Little League, Babe Ruth League and C.Y.O. A lifelong resident of Johnstown, he continues to remain active in numerous fraternal and veterans organizations.
In 2001 Matthew Rozell was a history teacher at Hudson Falls High School. Lt. Walsh’s son-in-law, Tim Connolly, knowing that Rozell had created a WWII history project for his students, told Rozell that his father-in-law was traveling from Florida to spend the summer with them and suggested Rozell might enjoy interviewing him. Rozell said he would love to do that so Connolly set it up.
On the day of the interview Rozell took his camera, note book, and plenty of questions. Walsh, at age 80, was spry and captivating with a wonderful sense of humor during the entire interview. When it appeared to be winding down Walsh’s daughter, Elizabeth, jumped in and said, “Dad, did you tell him about the train?” Walsh replied, “Oh, I forgot about that.” Elizabeth said, “That’s in interesting story, you should tell him about that.”
For the rest of the two hour interview Walsh laid out the story of the detainees and the train. He also told Rozell that he had copies of the pictures that Major Benjamin and Sgt. Gross took that day. Rozell asked if he could have a copy of those pictures. Walsh told him they were back at his home in Florida, but he would have them copied and send them when he got home.
Rozell thought this might be good material for a book (he had already written several books about WWII including several entitled The Things Our Father’s Saw) and started researching what he had been told. A few years later he was contacted by one of the people liberated from that train. This contact led to Rozell organizing a reunion between the liberated and the liberators at Hudson Falls High School in 2009. Rozell finally published his book, A Train Near Magdeburg in 2016.
Carrol Stephen (Red) Walsh Jr., 91, passed away Monday, Dec. 17, 2012, at his home in Sarasota, Fla. From heart failure.
Walsh's family said he will be cremated in Florida and a memorial service will be held at a later date in Johnstown, his Mohawk Valley hometown with full Military Honors.
2nd Lt. Carrol S. Walsh was awarded the following citations:
Five Battle Stars
Army Good Conduct Medal
World War II Victory Medal
American Campaign Medal
Army Presidential Unit Citation
European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign
Standing Up For Truth Honors Those Who Gave All
References:
Ancertry.com
Newspapers.com
Harold Tribune, Sarasota, Florida
The Tribune-Democrat, Johnstown, New York
stbernard.tributes.com
Wikipedia
“Move Out Verity” The Combat Story of the 743rd Tank Battalion
U.S. Censes records
HonorStates.org
For further information on the 743rd Tank Battalion, Please see: https://digicom.bpl.lib.me.us/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=ww_reg_his
For further information on A Train Near Magdeburg see: https://teachinghistorymatters.com/
This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Together We Served. Related to this, is a smart phone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story. We welcome volunteers to help write these stories.
If you see something that needs correcting, have a suggestion or a picture to add, please contact me.
Stories Behind The Stars, Contributing Historian: Steve Booth,
Email: Daisensei@storiesbehindthestars.org
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