<Begin Segment 33>

MA: So we were just starting to talk about the Gothic Line, and can you tell that story again about walking the eight miles?

GM: Okay. That was the day before the attack, just to get into our starting position, to get into position. Then when it, we were told to stay in the houses in this little town, don't show ourselves because the Germans are right above us looking down on us. So everybody stayed inside until the nightfall, and then when it got dark, we started planning to go up this hill. We'd seen this hill, now, during the daylight, and it was a solid, big blank of mountain in front of us, and you're seeing this top up there.

MA: And what were you thinking at that point, I mean, looking up at this mountain there?

GM: Well, the night before was so rough, I said, "I don't know how we're gonna make it up this hill," because it was so rough the night before. But we started out that night, single file, and started going up that hill. Now, which I didn't know, with, L Company was ahead of us, and they went up the hill and then we followed them. And it was so steep you couldn't go right straight up. You had to follow these switchback trails that went from one side to other, and...

MA: How did you know where to go?

GM: Well, there's a trail, and it's pitch black, dark, and we had to go follow the guy in front of you. Dark enough, you know, total darkness is, it's not dark. You could see in the dark. And you followed the person in front of you, and when they, these trails were mined also, so you didn't want to set one of those things off, because then the Germans would hear it. But somebody had put a toilet paper on each one of these mines, so there was a white piece of paper on each mine.

MA: Who, who did that? Was that the first...

GM: [Laughs] I don't know. Somebody up front, or somebody, maybe the Italians did it before that day or something, but there was a white piece of toilet paper on each mine. So we were careful if you don't want... and you want to be careful that you didn't fall off the trail, because now you got maybe twenty, thirty yards of downfall. You'll roll down the hill, so that was another thing. And you didn't hold onto the guy in front of you, but you just, we kept slowly going up the hill. It wasn't very hard because of the fact that the movement was a lot slower than the night before. You know, night before, it was kind of rushed and you were out of wind at times, but this was just constantly going up to the top of the hill until early morning. And it got scary up there at the top, because you looked up and the sky was starting to get light, about three o'clock, and you knew if the Germans were there looking at you, they'll see you. But we somehow managed to get to the top by five o'clock. And the Germans were, we found out, most of them all were sleeping. So the, so instead of hitting them directly in the front, we kind of maneuvered around to the back of them somehow, through a crack, I guess, and they surprised the Germans. That's the way it was with us on our hill.

MA: So that happened within a span of only a day, right?

GM: That morning.

MA: Yeah.

GM: We're going to climb the -- the attack is at five-thirty in the morning.

MA: But you spent all night...

GM: All night...

MA: ...hiking up the mountain.

GM: ...hiking up the mountain without any sleep or rest, just the breaks, you know. But it was probably two of the toughest hikes all of those guys been on.

MA: I'm curious about the role of the Italians, the Italian resistance fighters.

GM: Well, we didn't know they were with us, but I always wondered how we got to the top, 'cause we didn't know the mountain, especially in dark. But there was two, two Italians that was with our company that led the group up. And a lot of the credit goes to them, because otherwise we wouldn't have known how to get there. See, these mountains, they're not livable, and so there'd be nobody up there, there'd be no reason for anybody being up there. And people who live there have hiked up and down those hills a few times and some of those went up there every day because they had to put the reinforcement cements and everything in the foxholes up there for the Germans. They were forced to do that, something like sixteen thousand Italians, and that's why it was so fortified. But you couldn't knock those emplacements out, it was only by surprise that you could beat 'em. There were just too many of 'em. There was something like 2,700 machine gun emplacements in those hills. So we got 'em before they got into 'em, and it's quite a, as far as a military achievement, I think it's one of the greatest in the war. But we made it so easy it never became any big deal. But I, I think it was one of the greatest achievements of the war.

MA: So once you captured back the Gothic Line, what happened after that? Did you just stay up there?

GM: Oh, the war never ends. [Laughs] The Germans go back to another position behind them, not as strong as the Gothic, actual Gothic Line, but they're not running yet. They're, they're retreating a little bit, and you see, war is sort of like real estate. When you get to the top of the mountain, now you got that position, and anybody on that hill got to go down and to a next mountain, and hold the next high spot, see. And it's a matter of getting these high spots and you, you're winning the war. 'Cause it's the high spot that sees everything what's going on and everything, and they, they direct traffic and everything.

MA: I see. So once you got to the top, then they retreated back?

GM: They had to retreat back slowly, or they might counterattack, which they did. If they counterattack, you had to fight 'em off again, and then they'll retreat again.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.