At 0940 on the morning of June 10th, 1944, Staff Sergeant Walter Aers stood on a muddy mound 13 kilometers in land from Omaha Beach, surrounded on three sides by German fire. The 4.3 kg M1 Garand in his hands held eight rounds. Behind him, 12 men from Company L crouched in the hedgeros, waiting for orders to withdraw.

In front of him, three MG42 machine guns poured 1,200 rounds per minute into the boage. The Germans had zeroed mortars on the squad’s position. The next salvo would land in 40 seconds. Walter had been shot once already that morning. The bullet had passed through a bar of soap, a photograph of his mother, and his entrenching tool before entering and exiting his back.

He could feel blood soaking through his uniform, but the squad needed covering fire or none of them would leave this hedro alive. Walter began firing in a semicircle, pulling the trigger as fast as he could work it, not aiming to kill, but to draw attention. The MG42 swung toward him, all of them. The mathematics were simple.

One man with a rifle against three machine gun nests. Walter Aers was a Kansas farmer who had learned to shoot jack rabbits on the run. The Germans were trained infantry who had fortified Normandy for 4 years. If you want to see how a rabbit hunting trick from the American planes defeated German defensive doctrine, this is that story. Walter Aers learned to shoot the same way most farm boys in Kansas learned, out of necessity.

The farm his family worked outside Manhattan, Kansas, produced wheat and raised cattle. But during the depression, extra protein came from whatever moved fast enough to be worth chasing. Jack rabbits mostly, some squirrels. Walter hunted with his older brother, Roland, using their father’s rifle, a bolt action that kicked hard enough to leave bruises.

The rabbits did not sit still. They ran in zigzag patterns across open fields, changing direction every three or four bounds. Walter learned to lead the target, not shoot where the rabbit was, but where it would be when the bullet arrived. A jack rabbit at 30 yards running perpendicular required aiming 2 ft ahead. Wait too long to decide and the rabbit disappeared.

Hesitate on the trigger and you went home with an empty game bag. The skill was not marksmanship in the traditional sense. It was reaction speed. Process the movement, calculate the lead, fire before your conscious mind caught up. By the time Walter was 16, he could hit running rabbits more often than he missed. By 18, he had stopped counting.

Roland enlisted in the army in 1940. Walter followed 6 months later. They went through basic training together at Fort Riley, Kansas, then shipped to North Africa as part of the first infantry division. Walter and Roland fought at Oran in November 1942, Sicily in July 1943. They survived both campaigns without serious wounds.

Before D-Day, the army separated them. New policy to prevent multiple family casualties in the same unit. Roland stayed in company K. Walter transferred to company L. Both companies belong to the third battalion 18th infantry regiment, but they would land on different sectors of Omaha Beach. Walter did not protest. Orders were orders.

Walter carried standard infantry loadout for the D-Day assault. M1 Garand rifle chambered in 3006 Springfield. The Garand weighed 4.3 kg unloaded and fired semi-automatically from an 8 round block clip. Muzzle velocity was 853 m/s. Effective range against point targets was 400 m. Walter also carried 10 additional clips in his M1923 cartridge belt, two bandeliers across his chest, four fragmentation grenades, a bayonet, a canteen, a first aid pouch, Krations for 2 days, and a havac containing extra socks, a shelter half, a wool blanket,

personal items. Total weight was approximately 30 kg. In his havsack, Walter kept a bar of soap, a photograph of his mother, and his entrenching tool. These items were positioned in that exact order. He did not know this arrangement would matter later. Company Landed on Omaha Beach on June 6th at approximately 07:30.

Walter waded through chest deep water under machine gun fire, made it across the beach, climbed the bluffs. He did not see Roland that day. Company K landed on a different sector. By nightfall on June 6th, the first infantry division held a towh hold 3 km deep. Casualties were severe, but the beach head held.

On June 9th, company L advanced through the Bage toward Goville. The Bage was Norman Hedro country, agricultural fields divided by earthn mounds 1 to 2 m high. topped with dense brush and trees. Each field was a square, roughly 40 meters per side. Visibility was limited to one field at a time. The Germans had fortified the hedge with machine gun nests positioned to create overlapping fields of fire.

Advancing through bokage meant crossing open ground under observation, while a defender remained concealed behind thick vegetation and compacted earth. The 352 infantry division had held this sector since 1942. They knew every field, every line of sight, every killing zone. Morning of June 9th was overcast with low clouds.

The ground was muddy from rain during the night. Company L moved in column with Walter’s squad at the front. Walter led the squad as acting squad leader, 12 men total. The mission was to advance hedge by hedge and clear German positions. Intelligence reported scattered resistance, infantry elements, and some heavy weapons.

No specific locations. Walter crossed into the first field at 10:00. The field was empty. He signaled the squad forward. They crossed without contact. The second field was also empty. At the third field, Walter encountered four German soldiers at a range of less than 10 m. They appeared as Walter pushed through a gap in the hedger.

All five men saw each other simultaneously. The Germans had rifles, but not raised. Walter’s garand was already in his shoulder. There was no negotiation, no hesitation. Just four trigger pulls in two seconds. Four Germans fell. Walter reloaded and kept moving. At 12:30, the squad reached a hedge row adjacent to a German strong point.

Walter low crawled to the hedge and looked through the vegetation. He could see a machine gun position 60 m ahead in the far corner of the field. MG42 based on the sound when it fired in short bursts to suppress an American patrol that had gotten too close. Behind the MG42 position, Walter spotted two GRW34 mortars.

The mortars were protected by crossfire from a second MG42 positioned in a different hedge row. Tactical problem. Any squad that advanced across the open field would be cut down by converging fire from two machine guns. Any squad that tried to suppress one position would be hit by the mortars. The German position was welldesigned. Walter did not wait for orders.

He told his squad to provide covering fire on his signal. Then he started crawling forward. The Germans saw movement and opened fire. The MG42 closest to Walter fired a sustained burst that tore up the ground to his left. Mud and grass exploded in a line. Walter kept crawling. The MG42 tracked toward him, but the gunner was firing at where Walter had been, not where he was.

The beltfed gun was fast, but heavy, difficult to adjust aim smoothly at short range. Walter covered 40 m in 5 minutes, while his squad fired semi- aimed shots to keep the Germans suppressed. When Walter was almost on top of the gun position, he stood up and ran the final 10 m in a zigzag pattern. Left, two steps, right, three steps, forward, four steps, left again.

The MG42 gunner swung the weapon toward him, but the barrel lagged behind. Walter fired three rounds into the position at point blank range, and both gunners went down. The second MG42 immediately shifted fire toward Walter’s position. He dropped behind the earthn mound and crawled along the base of the hedger toward the mortar position.

The Germans manning the mortars tried to traverse the tubes toward the attacking Americans, but Walter reached them first. He killed three men with three shots, then signaled his squad to advance. The squad crossed the field under covering fire from other elements of the platoon. Once the squad reached Walter’s position, they assaulted the second MG42 together. Walter led.

He used the same zigzag movement pattern, exploiting the fact that the MG42 gunner had to predict his movement and could not adjust fire fast enough at close range. When Walter was almost on top of the second gun, he leaped over the hedge row and neutralized the position single-handed. Two machine gun nests destroyed, two mortars destroyed.

Estimated German casualties, seven dead confirmed. The squad continued advancing. By the end of June 9th, company L had moved 2 kilometers in land. Walter’s squad had cleared four separate German positions and suffered zero casualties. June 10th began differently. Company L advanced deep into German held territory during the early morning and by 0800 they realized they had pushed too far forward.

German forces counterattack from three sides. Mortar fire increased. Machine gun fire came from the north, east, and south. The company commander ordered withdrawal. The platoon began pulling back by squads, one covering while the other moved. Walter’s squad was designated as rear guard. Their job was to cover the platoon’s withdrawal, then withdraw themselves.

By 0930, the platoon had successfully pulled back 200 m, but Walter’s squad was still in the original position. When Walter received the order to withdraw, there was nobody left to cover his squad. He made the decision without consulting anyone. He told his men to pull back while he and the bar man, a rifleman carrying a Browning automatic rifle, moved to the mound for better fields of fire.

The mound was an exposed position, roughly 2 m higher than the surrounding ground. It offered visibility, but no cover. Walter and the bar man climbed up and began firing. Walter did not try to kill specific targets. He fired in a semicircle pattern, shooting at multiple points in the hedge rows to simulate a larger force and draw fire toward himself.

The tactic worked. German machine guns concentrated on the mound. Mortars began landing nearby. The bar man provided sustained automatic fire while Walter used semi-automatic fire from the Garand to engage any Germans who exposed themselves. Walter’s squad withdrew successfully. All 12 men made it to the fallback position.

Walter and the BAR man stayed on the mound for another 3 minutes to ensure the squad had enough time. Then the BAR man was hit. A rifle round struck him in the leg and he went down. Walter grabbed him and dragged him off the mound toward cover. As he did, Walter felt an impact in his back. Something punched through his havsack and through his body.

The round had traveled through the bar of soap first, which slowed it slightly, then through the photograph of his mother, then through the steel entrenching tool, which deflected it at an angle, then through Walter’s back, missing his spine and lung by centimeters, and exited out the other side. Walter did not stop moving.

He carried the BAR man to the hedgero where the squad had taken cover, then went back out into the open field to retrieve the bar itself. The weapon was valuable, and Walter was not going to leave it for the Germans. He crawled 40 m under German fire, grabbed the BAR, crawled back. By the time he reached the squad, his uniform was soaked with blood.

The squad medic treated the wound with sulfur powder and a pressure dressing. The medic wanted to evacuate Walter immediately. Walter refused. The citation for his Medal of Honor would later state that he refused evacuation and returned to lead his squad. That was accurate. Walter considered the wound a problem to manage, not a reason to stop working.

One month later, July 14th, Walter asked soldiers from company K about his brother. He had not seen Roland since before D-Day and assumed Roland was somewhere in Normandy with the rest of K Company. The soldiers told him Roland had died on Omaha Beach on June 6th. A German mortar round hit the ramp of his landing craft as it dropped.

Roland died instantly before he set foot on French soil. Walter was told the time of death was approximately 0645 during the initial assault wave. While Roland was dying on Omaha Beach, Walter was 3 km away fighting through the bluffs. While Walter was killing Germans on June 9th and 10th, Roland had been dead for 4 days.

The army had been correct to separate them. It did not make a difference. Walter did not speak about Roland to anyone. He continued leading his squad until the unit rotated out of combat in late July. In December 1944, Walter received the Medal of Honor in a ceremony in Paris. Lieutenant General John CH Lee presented the medal.

The citation described the actions of June 9th and 10th in precise language. Conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Walter accepted the medal without comment. The citation listed specific details. Four enemy soldiers killed on route to the first objective. Machine gun crew eliminated after crawling under fire.

Three men killed at the mortar position. Second machine gun neutralized. The following day, wounded while covering his squad’s withdrawal, but refusing evacuation. Total German casualties attributed to Walter’s actions over 2 days, estimated at 40 or more killed. The number was never confirmed precisely. It was based on observed kills plus suppression fire during the withdrawal.

The important number was different. 12 men in Walter’s squad. Zero killed during the engagements of June 9th and 10th. Walter Aers’s actions became a case study in fire and maneuver tactics at squad level. The principle was not new. Fire and maneuver had been doctrine since World War I. One element provides suppressive fire while another element moves to a position of advantage.

What Walter demonstrated was execution under pressure. The German positions on June 9th were wellsighted and welldefended. Standard doctrine would have called for artillery support or armor support or at minimum coordinated platoon level assault. Walter used 12 men and executed the maneuver with a hunting technique learned on a Kansas farm.

The zigzag movement was not a formal tactic. It was adaptation. Walter understood that the MG42 gunners had to lead a moving target the same way he had to lead a running rabbit. If he moved unpredictably, their fire would always lag slightly behind. At ranges under 50 m, that lag was enough.

The technique was incorporated into infantry training after action reports from Normandy were analyzed. Field manual 7-10, which covered rifle squad tactics, already contained the principles. What the manual did not contain was how to execute against fortified positions with minimal casualties. Walter showed that one aggressive squad leader with a garand and the confidence to close distance could destroy a prepared defense if supported by effective squad-based fire.

The lesson was not about superhuman courage. It was about understanding the limitations of the enemy’s weapons and exploiting them. Walter Aless continued serving through VE Day. He returned to Kansas after the war. He worked the farm for several years, then moved to California. He married and raised a family.

He rarely spoke about the war. When asked about the Medal of Honor, he usually said he was doing his job and that other men had done more. He died on February 20th, 2014 at the age of 92. The M1 Garand he carried on June 9th and 10th was never recovered. Its serial number was not recorded in his personnel file. Thousands of garnans were issued during the war and most were returned to armories and eventually destroyed or sold as surplus.

Walter’s rifle was one of them. The only physical evidence of what happened in the hedge near Goville is the Medal of Honor citation and the afteraction reports filed by Company L. Both documents describe the same thing. A squad leader who moved faster than German machine gunners could track. A squad leader who killed four Germans at point blank range without hesitation.

A squad leader who assaulted three fortified positions in one day and lived. A squad leader who was shot through the back and refused to leave his men. The story is not about heroism in the abstract. It is about mechanics. Walter had a specific set of skills developed over years of hunting jack rabbits. He applied those skills to a tactical problem.

The Germans had superior defensive positions and more firepower. Walter had speed and unpredictability. The MG42 fired 1,200 rounds per minute, but the gunner had to aim it manually. The gun weighed 11.5 kg on its bipod. Swinging it quickly meant fighting inertia and vibration. A man running in a zigzag pattern at 30 m was a difficult target, even with 20 bullets per second.

Walter understood this instinctively because he had spent years calculating leads on moving animals. He knew that the gunner would aim where Walter was, then try to track him. He knew that if he changed direction every few steps, the gunner would always be behind. This was not courage. This was math. Walter’s edge was not physical toughness or tactical genius. It was processing speed.

He made decisions in milliseconds because he had trained himself to make those decisions on the farm. When the four Germans appeared at 10 m, Walter did not freeze. He fired four times before his conscious mind registered fear. When the MG42 opened fire, Walter did not die for cover and weight. He crawled forward because he understood that the longer he waited, the more organized the German defense would become.

When his squad needed covering fire, Walter did not calculate odds or request backup. He climbed the mound and started shooting because that was the only option that kept his men alive. 40 Germans dead, 12 Americans alive. That was the only math that mattered. Walter’s zigzag trick was not a trick. It was applied knowledge.

The same principle he used to kill jack rabbits on a Kansas farm worked to kill German machine gunners in a Norman hedge. The difference was that the Germans shot back. Walter adjusted. He moved faster. He stayed low. He closed distance before they could react. The technique was not replicable by everyone.

It required speed, reflexes, and the ability to suppress fear long enough to execute, but it worked. The hedge near Goville were cleared on June 9th and 10th, 1944, not by overwhelming firepower or superior tactics, but by one man who understood how to move faster than his enemy could aim. That man was a Kansas farmer who learned to shoot rabbits.

The Germans called him something else. They called him a problem they could not solve.