<Begin Segment 20>

TI: Now, can we move to Italy -- oh, I'm sorry, France.

NA: Okay.

TI: So let's go to France now, and in the same way, tell me some memories of France.

NA: Okay. Now, in France, we landed in Marseilles, and it was, oh, weather was getting kind of rough. So to land in Marseilles, we had to go over the side of the ship on a net, and since the sea was rough, the landing craft would bob up seven feet, and I say seven feet because it was about the height of the edge of the top of the landing craft, that's how deep that, the wall of the landing craft was. So it was bobbing up and down, so that meant that the net was also bobbing up seven feet. And then the landing craft, at the same time, it was going up and down, was slamming against the ship and moving back out, slamming against the ship, and if anybody went in hanging on the net, fell in between the ship and the landing craft, they would have been crushed to death. But, so it was quite a job, quite a chore going over the side with the net into the landing craft. But anyway, by teamwork, we all got in the ship, hundred of us got in the landing craft safely. And we proceeded to go to the shore, and I was right in the front where the doors went down, landing platform went down. And so I was right in the front where the water was coming in and I was all soaking wet. And then on top of that, after we landed, it started raining. Boy, it was raining just cats and dog, and what a muddy mess it was.

And then from there, we were trucked all the way, I don't know how many hundred miles to the front line, and that was right before Bruyeres, and we were committed to battle for the liberation of Bruyeres, and we succeeded in that after heavy casualty. And by that time, it was already raining up there and it was cold and wet, and the forest, the trees were three to four, five feet apart, that's how thick the forest was, and we were fighting from tree to tree. And then after that, we liberated Biffontaine, and after we liberated Biffontaine, this was all in the forest, Vosges forest, we got words to rescue the "Lost Battalion." And the "Lost Battalion," the 141st Regiment of the 36th Division, and the A, B, C and... A, B, C Company were trapped behind the German lines. They just advanced too quickly, and so they got trapped. And we had to go liberate them, it took four days.

TI: And so Nelson, I want to ask, in this case, when the "Rescue of the Lost Battalion," what role did the 522nd play? I mean, where, what did you guys do during the rescue?

NA: During the rescue, we had forward observers up the front line that relayed back the enemy position. And the, therefore, the guns were anywhere from two, three, four miles behind the front line, and the only way we could give artillery protection to the infantry was to lob the shell up high and then go straight down. Because normally, the trajectory would be on about a thirty, forty degree angle. But the trees, but the shells would hit the tree first and explode, and it wouldn't even reach the enemies, so we had to lob it up and make the shell go down without hitting the tree. But we, that's how we gave them artillery support, we had forward observers relaying back to our guns saying, "Machine gun, enemy spotted, enemy machine gun. We need artillery support."

TI: It seems that, you know, one of the difficult things is, especially for the rescue of the Lost Battalion, the lines were pretty close to each other. And so how, how could the 522nd be so accurate? I mean, if they, if they missed, if they were short, they would hit their own people.

NA: Right.

TI: So what, what would they do to be, to keep them safe?

NA: I guess when it was too close, the artillery couldn't help, but we were pretty, pretty accurate, put it that way. So we could fire three hundred, hundred yards would be, I'll bet, I'll be we could fire a hundred yard, which would be one football field length, or ever closer, and still hit the enemy and not hit our own troop.

TI: So you're saying your accuracy was within a hundred yards, you could...

NA: Oh, yes. We would, we were really sure of our accuracy.

TI: Even though you were two, three miles away, you could hit it within a hundred yards?

NA: Oh, yeah.

TI: Now, was that, was that typical of other artillery units, or do you think you guys were better than some of the other units?

NA: Anything closer than a hundred yards, let's see, when I went up there, that machine gun nest had to be a hundred yards, three hundred feet away, and we were in the forest and the Germans were down in the valley. And from our position, we could see them with our naked eye, but better with our binoculars. And so it had to be a hundred yards, but we, we did give 'em support even closer than that in, in other combat areas. But, but artillery really did save a lot of infantry casualties.

TI: Yeah, that's... thank you.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.