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TI: From what I've read, I read the book Fire for Effect, I've talked to other men in the 442, and across the board, people have, have praised the 522, the artillery unit, for what people have called the best artillery unit in the army. Can you talk about, why were you guys so good?

VW: Well, I think we were good because it was our outfit in the first place, the Regimental Combat Team. We were all in one. We had the infantry, and then we had the artillery, and then we had the 232nd Engineers, and we had the supply, we had the medics, we had the cannon company, we had everything. And so we could operate all by ourselves if necessary. We weren't a very big outfit, not like a division by any means. Because a division usually held maybe three or four regiments, and we were the regiment, one of the regiments. For the 34th Division in Italy, we were a regiment in the 36th Division in France under General Patch, who was head of the army, the total army in France. And then we were in the, we also went into Germany under the 45th Division of the 36th Division -- 36th... yeah. We were in the 45th Division under the army of General Patch. We went into Germany.

TI: So going back to why you were so good, one was because you were such tight unit...

VW: Yeah, we were a very tight unit.

TI: Small, but you had the infantry, the artillery.

VW: They're all selected men to do these things, too. That's another thing. The gunners were very good at what they were doing. And perhaps maybe if they hadn't been, they'd have been replaced with somebody that could do the job. They were all very, very active type young people. They would, they had the thought that they had to be right, they had to do things right, and that was instilled in 'em. Otherwise then it might reflect onto our whole, our whole unit if they were wrong or didn't do the job like they should have been doing. And so that made 'em different. We were so good at what we were doing that if they ran, if the supplies in the army would run a little bit low, we would get, we would be favored in the, supply the ammunition supply over other regiments, and I thought that was pretty good.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.