<Begin Segment 28>

MA: I'm curious, as you were traveling through Europe, did you see any of the destruction of the war, that the war had caused?

GM: Yeah, but they just look at it as if it was part of the war. I've seen damaged buildings in England and France, but then the one that surprised me was in Cassino, in Italy, because that was leveled right down to the ground. I mean, there was nothing standing there, just a pile of rubble. And the monastery, which was above there, was a religious shrine, was a convent or whatever, that was bombed out, which we should never have bombed. But the city of Cassino was just totally down to bricks and mortar, bricks and whatever. But you don't see that as something bad or anything. It doesn't make you feel bad about things like that, but I think the thing that makes you bad, feel bad, is the people, when people don't have enough food.

MA: You mean seeing the townspeople?

GM: The people that's living there, and they're begging for food, and you get through with what you're eating and scrape it off your dish and put it in the coffee can that they're carrying, and they're going to take home that coffee can with all kinds of garbage in there and they're going to eat it at home. That's, but then again, you look at it as war, and it didn't bother me too much. I mean, I feel sad, but I wouldn't give 'em my last piece of chocolate bar. I'd give 'em maybe a chocolate bar if I got plenty of it, but you... you know, the emotion is different. You get immune to all this thing, and I guess it's like a doctor seeing a patient die, he's not going to cry over a patient dying, he's going to try his best to fix 'em up, but when you go through the war, I think, very numb, once you get used to it. But the war isn't bad, really it isn't. Fact, it's quite adventuresome. [Laughs]

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.