Harold S. Madsen, Pleasant Grove, Utah: an interview by Benjamin Bahlmann, September 6, 2002: Saving the Legacy tape nos. 530-532

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HAROLD . MAD E p B R 20 2 and hollered, "Hey there s a heinie here, go the other way. But Ir m mb raft r that having to stand guard duty and I'd have to go and replace somebody that was ... and w were maybe in a little dugout, and I'd have to go through some matted stuff. om tim this matted stuff would sink down like this and I'd just leap up thinking I'd stumble on some body again. So there are those little visceral things that come. BB: Getting involved with the, how did you get assigned to the heavy weapon? The heavy machine gun? HSM: It wasn't heavy, light. BB: Light machine gun, .30 caliber, right. How did you get assigned to that? You just showed up and they said this is you? Or did it take a while? HSM: My recollection is this, my recollection is that when we went there I was just handed a M 1 rifle and we'd learned, of course, in basic training to take that apart in the dark and put it together again, oil it and clean it in the dark. So it was a weapon, we knew it; we knew every part of it. So I was assigned a Ml. Then for some reason very quickly on they had squads that were just rifle squads. They had squads that were bazooka squads and they had squads that were machine gun squads. So very early on I was assigned to a bazooka squad. Oh, one thing that puzzled me, very soon after we got there, we were still in the hills and woods of Belgium and Luxembourg, we hadn't entered into Germany yet. But the Germans were there and they said, "Okay men we're going to have to go out there and clear a way for our tanks." And I thought he was putting me on. I thought, clear a way for the tanks (laughs)? They're our big brother! You don't clear the way for a tank; they clear away for you. He said no, in these woods they have anti-tank weapons that can 35