<Begin Segment 34>

TI: Well, let's... we'll get there, but, so anything else in Italy before we go to France?

VW: Well, pretty much after watching Pisa and, down below, and not being able to fight in it, That's when we, that's the Po Valley in general. And so we were pulled out and went down to Naples, and then we shipped out to France. And it was dark, rainy, and cold. And I remember standing there around in Naples there, waiting to get on the ship to go to France and fight some more in France. And France was probably more, probably more demonstrative than it was in Italy. Although Italy was a bad one, but still, I think in France, things were even worse. The Vosges Mountains and with all the trees and everything around and so on, it was hard, and saving the "Lost Battalion."

TI: Well, so as an artillery unit, when you're going through the mountains, heavily forest, how does the artillery do this? I mean, how do you get, find positions to place the guns?

VW: Well, that was up to the S-2 and so on, you know. He had to, he was a good map reader, by the way, actually, he was a lieutenant at the time, Lieutenant Taylor, Billy Taylor, and he was a very good map reader, and he was admired by even the GIs under him. And he knew pretty much the land and so on from reading the maps. And so that was good. And if the map was wrong, then he'd make little notes so they wouldn't forget that it was wrong. And then he'd place, tell where to place the guns and so on. And, of course, the guys were so fast in setting up, too, that made a difference, too. And everybody knew what they had to do. In fact, sometimes they fired so often with the shells that the breach got too hot. They had to throw blankets over and then keep watering the blankets to cool off the breach of the big guns, the 105s.

TI: Now, so lieutenant and later on Captain Taylor would find out where to place the guns. How would they place the Fire Direction Center? Where would that be placed in relation to the guns?

VW: Well, not too far away, but some, yes. Usually we had, that's where the colonel was and then the two majors and some of the captains and so on. And we always had the major behind me, behind us, always hoping that everything was fine, and that's good because that made us always alert, you know. And if you were getting tired and sleepy, we became alert the minute things had to be poppin'. And we'd take off our boots and let 'em dry because they were so wet and muddy and so on. And we had to dry our feet, 'cause if you didn't dry 'em, pretty soon you'd get trench feet, and that's no good.

TI: But, so the Fire Direction Center was really the brain center of artillery.

VW: Yeah.

TI: You had the officers there, you had the computer people, and then, and close enough to the guns so that radio could (speak) quickly to the, to the guns.

VW: Yeah. And then we had the radio transmitter guy transmit to the guns on what to do, when to fire and so on.

TI: So in the, in the, the battle to liberate Bruyeres, what role did artillery play in that battle?

VW: Well, when we went to France and we went into Marseilles, that's where we landed first, we were worried, they were worried a little bit because the Germans were pretty powerful right up, not very far from there. And we weren't ready to fight because when you get off the ship, you got to be able to know where to set up and all that. And if they would have stormed that area, they could have probably wiped us out, for all we knew. But fortunately, some of the other artillery units were firing over there to keep 'em busy so that they were pretty busy, the Germans were trying to protect themselves and so on from the artillery that was dropping in there at the time. And so they didn't try anything as far as we were concerned. Then once we, about two or three days, we were ready, and then we moved on toward, toward Bruyeres and Biffontaine, and Belmont and all those areas.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.