<Begin Segment 36>

TI: Okay, so now from Bruyeres, what happened after that?

VW: Then they went on to Belmont, and then pretty soon they got -- I heard the rumor that something was going on. And it was night, I remember, and I remember we knew that something was happening. We didn't exactly know what was happening, but pretty soon we did get the rumor that the 141st Regimental Combat Team -- not the 442nd but the 141st Regimental Combat Team, one of them, one of the battalions was "lost," surrounded by the Germans. And General Dahlquist was looking for help. And he had sent in one of the other 141st battalions to relieve 'em, they couldn't do it. They had to back out, they had too many casualties and things were going bad. They pulled them out, so he sent the third time, another regiment of theirs in to rescue 'em, couldn't do it. So the 442nd was sitting there, and they were supposed to get relieved because they had just been at Bruyeres and Belmont, and so they were in a rest area, supposedly being, resting for at least a week, but they had rested, I think, for one day, is all. And General Dahlquist said, "We got to have the 442nd." And so he sent for the 442nd, and General Patch walked in with General Dahlquist, and the order was to take the 2nd Battalion of the 442nd and place 'em in the dark and get 'em set ready to go in the morning. And then the 3rd and the 100th were ready to, had to be ready to leave at a moment's notice. That was the order, those were the orders. And when daylight broke, daylight broke, the 2nd Battalion started moving, and of course, that started drawing fire right away from the, the dug-in Germans right up on the hills and in the woods and in the Vosges Mountains. And that's where the slaughter started, too.

And we started firing, of course, the artillery did, and then during the heat of the battle, we had four days of which to rescue the "Lost Battalion." They had been lost already for two days, and so when the, when General Dahlquist called for the 442nd, it was in the heat of the battle. It was about the third, no, it was about the second day that the 442nd was driving in. General Dahlquist called for artillery firing on a certain spot, and Captain Harris said, "Wait a minute, you better check those coordinates carefully." We would have anyway, and we did, and it was right in the middle of the "Lost Battalion." And so if we would have listened to the general, we'd have killed the "Lost Battalion" right away.

TI: Well, more than listened, that was an order from General Dahlquist to fire there.

VW: Yeah, it was.

TI: And you, and you recognized that that would have been fatal to the "Lost Battalion."

VW: Yeah. So the "Lost Battalion," probably unknownst to them, we saved them then, right then they were saved once. And then later on, later on we saved 'em again. But it was a terrible battle. And at the end, then finally the Germans had to, had to abandon. Hitler had sent seven hundred more troops in to fortify that, and he said, "You don't let any of the, any of the Americans break through at all costs," he said. And "all costs" didn't last forever.

TI: You mean "all costs" in terms of, of keeping the "Lost Battalion" trapped?

VW: Right, yeah, then eliminate as you squeeze 'em in. They were just being killed. And they sent a tank in, and then we're firing back at him, you know, the "Lost Battalion" did hold there. They had enough ammunition to fire, but they were running low on ammunition, that was another thing. They were running low on food, on ammunition and on medical supplies. And they needed help, and they needed help fast. And so that's one of the reasons why General Dahlquist... and he knew it, and it was his fault in a way, of pushing them so hard without actually knowing and organizing, planning, a good forward push, and they got trapped. And we saved 211, and we had 800 casualties. That's been studied in the hierarchy, and they said the 442nd should never have been sent in. So it was mistake, they said. But you talk to the people who were saved, they have a different story.

TI: Now, you had the benefit of being in the Fire Direction Center around other officers. When, when you get orders from General Dahlquist to, like, fire at the wrong coordinates, or you understand that perhaps the "Lost Battalion" was advanced too quickly and too far and they were then surrounded, I mean, did you overhear the officers at some point... I'm not sure the right word, questioning or maybe disputing some of the orders that...

VW: Well, some of the 442nd guys really barked back at him. In fact, one of the guys, he yelled at the general, he said, "You can court martial me if you want to, if you want to," he said, "but I'm not gonna just take my platoon and just, you know, go into a suicide pact and be, have 'em all killed." And he said, "You can court martial me if you want to," but he says, "I'm not gonna do it," so the general just kind of walked away. But he was talking to a guy that was decorated with a DSC and some of those, and so he wasn't about to be too demanding of a guy like that. But I know that they were, they were so happy, those guys that were saved, that when, when Governor (Connally) was governor of Texas, he made the Regimental Combat Team, the 442nd, members, honorary members of Texas. And I thought that was pretty good, really, honorary members of Texas, and it was the 442nd. And they still have reunions and things with those guys. And one of the things that was quite nice was that back about four years ago, they found a note and a picture at the, at the memorial of the 442nd in Washington, D.C. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but yes, it's there, 'cause I was there and I saw it. The memorial of the 442nd -- not the World War II one, but 442nd -- and there was a letter there, I didn't see the letter but somebody else did, the letter and a picture. And the letter said, "My father, thank you 442nd for saving my father. And he always said that the only outfit that could do it would be the 442nd." And then there's a picture of him, and he was in the "Lost Battalion." And so then they just recently wrote a letter to, to Senator Boxer of California, and they said something about the 442nd should get the Congressional Gold Medal for their heroic efforts in the battle of Europe. And I don't know whether that'll come to pass or not, it did pass the House almost a hundred percent. But now the Senate is holding it up for some reason or another, I don't know. Got to have so many, so many sponsors in order to get the gold medal complete from the House and the Senate.

<End Segment 36> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.