<Begin Segment 2>

MN: I know that after Belvedere, you folks moved on. And people often talk about Hill 140. Maybe you can tell us about Hill 140 especially as an artillery man.

KM: Shortly after Belvedere, during the period of July 5th, I remember the 4th of July anyway, that battle of Hill 140 was fought. And this was an extremely critical battle for the 442, because it was, the Germans had been fully entrenched on this hilltop. The battle in Italy, the American forces were always at a disadvantage. The battle in Italy was with the Germans always on a mountain top and the Americans trying to dislodge them from the mountaintop. And when you got through with one mountain, they were on the other side of the other mountain, and it was a battle of yard by yard. And as contrasted to in France, it was all of these pine trees over a forest battle, but in Italy it was always trying to dislodge the Germans from the hilltop defensive positions. And as compared to Germany, it was a completely different style of war so the artillery, we were in experienced three completely different types of fighting. But in Italy it was really rough because the Germans were always in position with higher grounds and we struggled to dislodge them, as we say, yard by yard. And Hill 140 was, as we later learned, it was one of the most fierce battle of the Italian, of our entire campaign.

MN: And you know, when you say that it was one of your more fierce battles and it was a real intense situation as artillery man, how was it for you?

KM: Well, as an example, we never did experience that type of firing, intensive firing the rest of my experience. As an example, in one twenty-four hour period, July 5th and 6th according to our record, in that twenty-four hour period, which was at the height of the Hill 140 battle, we fired, the three batteries fired 4,500 rounds of cannon fire in support of the infantry. And it was at this Hill 140 that the 522 established its reputation as a time-fire expert. This is when our time firing was so fierce that infantrymen would tell you that they felt so pitiful for the Germans because they were near enough to hear the Germans crying out because they had no way of hiding from the fierceness of the time fire. And we established our reputation in the field as experts in time fire.

MN: When you use the term "time fire," what does that mean?

KM: Okay, in the ordinary projectile, you would fire and it hits the ground impacting on the ground and bursting. So you almost have to have a direct hit on a person before... people can get hurt with shrapnels and all that, but by that time, the Germans are all in foxholes. So as long as they're in a foxhole, unless you have a direct hit in the foxhole, there's no casualty by the Germans. But the time fire is a projectile that, as we understood, had a timing fuse on the projector itself, that after the projector leaves the gun, within so many seconds, it would burst in the air. And in the air bursting, all the shrapnel would go down, down to the ground. So there's no protection for the Germans in the foxholes. And I don't think the Germans knew about our proficiency in the time fire up until that point. But it required consistency in setting the fuse on the projector. And we understood that the projector had a timing field, which was the inner working, like the inner working parts of an Elgin watch. And we set the fuse by the number of seconds it would burst in the air after it left the gun, I remember it was something like close to twenty seconds that the average timing was. We would have to set it with a gauge wrench so to speak, they would set it according to the seconds that are on the projector. And unless you are consistent, that we are consistent, the people adjusting the fire could not make it ideally twenty yards above the ground to fire. And so between the fire direction center and the gun crew, both of us had to be consistent in order to adjust the fire. And without the consistency, you would not be effective. Because at some, maybe fifty yards up in the air, that would be just about useless.

WN: So you folks had to use a lot of judgment then.

KM: Not judgment, we had to be consistent so that the fire direction center would work on the consistency of the gun crew. Instead of one setting at nineteen seconds, one setting at eighteen seconds, they have to depend on the nineteen seconds being accurately placed on the projectile itself. And this is where our boys took extra care to make sure that we were being correct, doing things according to what it's supposed to be.

WN: Did Germany have the same technology?

KM: You know I don't know if the Germans had this thing. But you remember the Battle of Bastogne, well, at that battle, a new fuse came into being and this is what's supposed to have saved Americans. This new fuse was what we call a POZIT shell, which had an automatic... we were told radar that the fuse, the projector would leave the gun, and automatically at a given height it would burst. It was like a radar, it would hit the, supposedly the projector had a radar hidden in the ground and at a given distance it would burst. And this is what saved the Americans in Bastogne because to fire, you had to register first. The gun has to register the distance and by the time you fire that, usually takes three rounds to register the proper reading on the gun, the distance, the timing, the height. And by the three rounds, the Germans would be given notice the artillery's coming, and they would scatter or get into safety. But in Bastogne, with this new fuse, the Germans were completely taken by surprise. They were out in the open and the burst shells came and it was time fire in the air without any adjusting, which would warn the Germans that artillery would be coming. But supposedly what we heard at the Bastogne battle, all the fuses went to Bastogne, and we were supposed to have some for ourselves, but we got it much later.

WN: And to what extent during the war were you folks exposed to new technologies, or if any at all? In other words, from the beginning to the end, was it pretty much the same?

KM: I would say the POZIT shell was the single significant new technology that came after the, while we were in the midst of battle after Bastogne, but this is supposed to be one of the most singularly effective weapon that we had.

MN: And when that POZIT shell became available to you, would someone come out and retrain you folks on it?

KM: No, no, it was very simple. All what you had to do was... the projectile of the artillery came in two different pieces. One, the projectile itself and one canister where the powder charges were put in. It was two different pieces and you put them together and then fire it. But with the POZIT shells you didn't have to do any adjusting of the timing mechanism, you just fire the round.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.