| Summary: | Mr. Miller tells about going up to the front line during his stay in Florence, Italy during World War II. (5:42)Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Dan Miller
June 24, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Also present are Mr. Miller’s wife, Winnie Miller and his son, Larry Miller
Clip 6
Dan Miller: I had a cousin that stopped by, he was a combat engineer, and he came by while we was up there and he, when he had time he’d stop at the Army base and eat and first one thing and—he stopped in there at a place to eat and saw me. We were in Florence and he was up in the, he was a dispatcher on a motorcycle and travelled around to all different places delivering messages and stuff and I found out where he was and I wanted to go up there. Didn’t have any business to, go up towards the front line, but I did. Didn’t—I just had a khaki pants and shirt and no hat, nothing for going up to the front line; it doesn’t make sense, but I did it. And we went up there and when I got pretty close up there—I was hitchhiking on trucks—got on a truck, got to smelling food and I got to looking in the truck and they had big pots of soup on the truck and I, I wasn’t looking outside, and looked out and looked over there, soldiers out there on the side, on the hillside, digging foxholes. And I didn’t have a foxhole to get in. Anyway they, about that time our truck came to a MP station over there and I asked them about where this company was, see he was in combat engineer, they laid mines and built bridges and all that kind of stuff there on the front line [unintelligible] get the tanks over and everything. But the MP told me, said, they, they were shelled out the day before, was damaged and they had to go back and regroup. And so they showed me where they were. A jeep come out of there and I was gonna hop on that jeep, told them where I wanted to go and he carried me on over to the camp. And it was sort of, pretty close to the front line, his camp, but they was out away from it. Well, we was on a hillside and there was hills up on the left, you know up sort of pretty hilly, you know, and then a big valley was out there probably a half a mile across and he, he handed me his, my cousin handed me his binoculars, said, “Look across over there.” I looked over there, Germans walking around over on that other side. They was probably looking at us with binoculars and we were looking at them. So we slept in, under an old bridge right close to there that night. I wouldn’t have stayed that night if I knew what was gonna happen. But, we had to sleep under that bridge and the German tanks found out, on this hill over here on the left, tanks are right over the hill and they shoot, they shoot the gun within six inches of the top of, top of the mountain, keep those hills from hitting, shooting at a target. That’s the way they put their tanks and I guess the Germans did the same way. Well, at night they would shoot each other; you could hear those shells coming over us and you could see some of them fall short, explode up on the hill from us, where I was trying to sleep. That wasn’t too, too happy sleeping.
Rhonda Haygood: No.
DM: But anyway, the next morning, ate breakfast and finally we went to the, to the road and my cousin went in and it was about a quarter of a mile over from where we were to the road, due back to Florence. And so we, we was standing there waiting on the transportation and he said, hollered, he hollered at me, said, “Hit the ditch!” And I was, course I was dumb, didn’t realize what he was doing. About that time there was an explosion, just a little bank, well while I was standing there I could see a artillery sh—ah, gun over there camouflaged under the, under the trees where I was standing, we, I could throw rocks at them. And I think they were trying to hit that and it hit right over the bank about ah, two, two or three hundred yards from us, from where we were, they was just, the road just went right around over a bank up there and that, the explosion hit in a, in the mess hall, just blew up that mess hall, tables and everything [unintelligible]. With that explosion there, there it, ah, my, my pants leg just, just shook up and down. It scared me. So, which it didn’t hurt me, my cousin asked me, said, “Are you hurt?” And I said, “No, I’m not hurt.” But I tell you, it kind of scared me. But anyway, the truck came out and went on back in to camp. That is, is about, I reckon is about the only danger I got into. Part of it was my, my problem and I never was hurt while I was in there and I was—is there any questions there that you—that’s about the only thing I reckon I can, I can think of. There wasn’t anything too exciting, only except I was about the safest people that went over there, I guess.
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