we were al [sic] green men and being the first time under fire, we didn’t know what to do, but any how we took the front line, the G.I. can were falling all along the line of course being my first night and there [sic] were falling about 2 & 300 yds away from where I was. I didn’t pay much attention to the G.I. can, but my God when the G.I. cans begin to burst about 10 and 25 yds from where my Hole was, then I begin to get scared, and started to pray and I ask one of my men if he was afraid of the G.I. cans and he said, no, not much as long as they don’t hit in my hole, so then I didn’t have much chance to tell him I was afraid of the G.I. cans…(The G.I. cans were named because these German artillery shells were made of galvanized iron.)
“of course that was one thing that I was anxious to do, to go over the top. I wanted to know what it look like going over the top. I wanted to know the experience of doing it. Oh. what a poor Green man wants to do. I wanted to hear a Barrage, Oh I wanted to do whole lot of thing that I didn’t know.”When Barrera finally did go over the top and crossed no man’s land, he exclaimed,
I could hear and see the dust of the machine gun bullets hitting all around me and at the same time my comrades falling all around me, and when we reach our objective and we dug our holes and there where [were] only 8 men left of our bunch, we stayed in our holes all surrounded by machine guns and snippers [sic].Ship transport passenger lists indicate that Barrera sailed home from France alive despite his harrowing experience crossing no man’s land and going over the top at least twice.
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