Densho Digital Archive - George Morihiro Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

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MA: At this point you were preparing for the Gothic Line, right?

GM: Gothic Line, yeah.

MA: So they told you it was secret...

GM: Well, if you know the situation on the terrain, there was no possible way, is my feeling, that we could have gone up that hill and fought anybody. We were fighting ourselves just getting there. So, so the whole plan was a secret operation, secret attacks, everything was planned out perfectly. And that wasn't, that wasn't planned by the army, it was planned by our own unit. Because when our officers went over prior to us going there, they looked over the situation and the army asked them, "Well, do you think you could do this job in three weeks," or three months or something, whatever it was, time, quite a long time. And our officers said, "Just give us twenty-four hours."

MA: So, I guess --

GM: So, they couldn't believe it.

MA: So what, explain a little bit about the Gothic Line, I guess, and how it was set up and how it was so difficult to go...

GM: Well, the Gothic Line was a range of mountains that went from the sea up into the Alps. And it was a number of high peaks, from, about a mile from the sea, all the way up to six thousand feet. And the Germans had their enforcement up there, they had nine months to prepare this line for machine gun emplacements and guns and everything. And three American divisions in the previous nine months failed to break this line. In fact, it had never been conquered in two thousand years, and it was only conquered once by the Roman Empire in 25 Before Christ. So it's a, it's quite a line because the defense itself was the mountain. So if you got over the mountain, you have licked 'em. But the Germans were at the top of the mountain, and they're not going to let you get over the mountain, okay? The mountain had trees today, but it was full of brush. There was no trees, it was a bare mountain. And, and the reason was because this mountain was full, it was marble, it's marble country. So you couldn't even dig a hole into this mountain if you wanted to. You could dig a hole where there was dirt between the rocks, or... anyway -- and it was 60 feet, degree incline, which was very steep. [Coughs] Excuse me. And it was high, and the Germans had every inch of it covered with machine guns. But now, this we didn't know, the soldiers. So the night before we marched -- this is the toughest part of my whole war -- we hiked eight miles so we'd be, our company would be in front of where we were going to go. And we couldn't see where we were going, we're single file, and we had to climb this hill eight miles in. And it was kind of forced march because you couldn't stop hardly, and, and you couldn't see. In fact, an eighth of the tail end got lost, and we pulled into this little town of Azano, I think around twelve-thirty at night. And the guys who got lost didn't come in 'til four-thirty in the morning.