<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Okay, so now you're in France, and then what happens?

LP: We went up into Belgium and to the front lines. When we got captured we were up about, at the Siegfried Line in Germany, and we were running low on ammunition and we sent our trucks back for ammo and they never came back. That's when the Germans broke through there, Battle of the Bulge. And that's where we were at. They came right through where we were at.

TI: And so they captured your whole unit?

LP: That's right. And one afternoon, I was in the 105 Howitzer Company, short barrel Howitzers, and one afternoon... the road was just like the Sierras, the Ardennes Forest. And the Germans brought everything they had and they come down into Belgium. We had a big gas supply and stuff down there, and I don't know why they made a push over that, but they couldn't go to the other side because the tanks were sitting over there. And anyway, this road came down, those two high ridges and a river running down the middle. The road came down like this, crossed the river, and went up the other side probably a mile and a half. And were just over the mountain, just over the hill from 'em and they didn't know we were there. And we had that road zeroed in with our 105s. Well, when the first tank hit the top over here, we put 750 rounds on 'em. There were a lot of Germans that didn't kill our Americans after that.

TI: Because you had this great position to see all this right there. In some ways they were...

LP: If you were up in the front observing you could see it, but the guys that were firing the gun like myself, you couldn't see it because it was over a little hill. But we kept changing, we'd go up and observe for a while and then set the guns in and go back and work on the guns. And took all afternoon, but boy, we put a lot of tanks and a lot of their artillery and stuff out of business that day.

TI: But then eventually you ran out --

LP: They'd have hung every one of us if they'd have known we did it.

TI: Because what happened was then you ran out of ammunition.

LP: That's right, that's why we got captured.

TI: And so could you literally see them coming?

LP: Yeah, we seen 'em coming down, they cross the river and went up the other side. And as they were going over the top, we had our guns zeroed in on that and these are big 105s. All the way down the road and all the way up the other side, boy, we destroyed that outfit.

TI: But then eventually when you ran out of ammunition, they could then just come --

LP: Well, they were stuck there for several days. They had to move all that equipment off the road. It was a mess, big mess. The Germans would have killed everybody involved if they could have, but they didn't know who did it. So that was the end of our war.

TI: Well, so when you ran out of ammunition, I guess one question, why didn't you just disperse or leave?

LP: Where are you gonna go? We were way up in the mountains up there, and you couldn't go with the trucks because there were still a lot of Germans up there. They were, that whole force was coming down over those mountains. And they just stopped us and we couldn't do anything. They had a lot of guns and a lot of bullets and we didn't have any. And they wouldn't mind killing you either, believe me.

TI: So how many men were with you when you surrendered?

LP: Probably about a hundred.

TI: And while this was happening, what were you thinking? I mean, here you had killed a lot of Germans, took out a lot of tanks and artillery...

LP: Yeah, but the ones that we killed over there weren't the ones that captured us. They didn't know we did it.

TI: Okay, so it was like a, so you surrendered to like a different German unit.

LP: Yeah. Well, we moved out of there the minute we got, ran out of ammunition, and we got in our trucks and we moved out of there into another area and then that's when they came in with machine guns and stuff and we couldn't do anything. We had guns, but no ammunition. So that was the end of that story.

TI: Now, so it seems like kind of a... I guess the term "snafu," the fact that they couldn't get you more ammunition? I mean, to leave you guys there without ammunition, what happened?

LP: We got captured and we went back into Germany and almost starved to death.

TI: But then why didn't the Americans, why couldn't they give you... why didn't they plan better to give you more ammunition? I mean, what happened?

LP: Well, because it was very stormy up there at the time.

TI: So they couldn't air drop it?

LP: And the Americans didn't know the Germans were coming through there. They thought they were gonna go down through the lower area where a lot of our military was over there with tanks and stuff. So they knew that, and they decided to come over the mountains, over the Ardennes Forest. They came through there and the Americans didn't have a clue that they were coming through. And our planes couldn't spot 'em because you couldn't, on account of the clouds and stuff. The clouds were right on the ground up there in the mountains. And so our air force couldn't help to know what was going on.

TI: But then weren't you guys in, like, radio contact with headquarters or something?

LP: Oh, yeah. By then it was too late. They were on their way down with tons of guns and ammunition. In fact, that was the last, that was the biggest major battle in the war and it was the last major battle.

TI: And you were right there.

LP: All you ever got for that was some stars.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.