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I went to Europe in 1917 with sixty-five lbs. on my back,” he told Hedda Hopper in a May 17, 1960, radio interview. To another interviewer, he quipped, “I learned to run the 100-yard dash in eight seconds flat, carrying a full pack.” He served for nineteen months as a private in the 101st Field Artillery Regiment in France. He never said much about what combat was like, except to confess that he was “severely frightened 500 times.
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Carl Rollyson (A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan (Hollywood Legends))