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lois nelson performs 'taps' on world war II japanese bugle

Lead Summary
By
glenda mcgaffee

Lois Nelson played  “Taps” on a battered brass bugle at the Memorial Day services in Hills May 25, one of four services she played for over the weekend.
The bugle is an integral part of funeral ceremonies for veterans in the area.  
As the final haunting notes of “Taps” float across the cemetery, the flag is folded and presented to family members.
Lois Nelson is the bugler, usually hidden from sight, who concludes the funeral ceremonies for veterans.
Nelson plays the bugle that her late husband, Ray, found in Japan.
He served in the Pacific during World War II in 1944 on Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. He was part of Battery B, 123rd Field Artillery 33rd Division.
“Most of our bunch had been in service since before Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. Yes, drafted for one year — going on four,” Ray is quoted as saying in an article in the Luverne Star Herald dated May 25, 1995.
“Our assignment during battle (was) to capture, destroy or whatever it took to get to Baguio, summer capital of the Philippines, a beautiful city in the mountains of Luzon.
“I was a member of our forward observer group —usually traveling with an infantry group and bringing in the big guns when needed, laying in fire on enemy targets so the infantry could move ahead — we were in mountainous country.  We were engaged in battle on the Kenon Road, the main blacktop highway from Manila to Baguio.
“On this day, our communication boys were called on to lay wire up front someplace (because) the 33rd was advancing. Communication needed all the help they could get, so I was drafted.
“We were laying wire for telephone communications, walking, sometimes riding in a weapons carrier on a good blacktop road. (We were) gaining altitude — a cloudy day — fog at times.  
“Around a hairpin curve, we came upon a dead soldier in the middle of the road, a burning inferno — Japanese or American, I’ll never know. There were several dead Japanese (soldiers) off to the side of the road in the remains of a Japanese command post. We were looking for souvenirs, even in the heat of battle.
“We had learned in our search for souvenirs to be awfully careful when searching dead soldiers.  
“Oftentimes the Japanese would place hand grenades or explosives.  As a couple of my buddies searched … I discovered a small Japanese bugle hanging in a tree — another sign of probably a fast retreat. Then we were on our way laying wire, with a few souvenirs.
“We came out of that battle tired, hungry and a few hundred yards closer to Baguio, and I was the proud owner of a real, bent and battered Japanese bugle … I carried it through the Philippines Campaign on to Japan and home to Hills.”
When Lois is not playing the bugle, it is displayed in the Herreid Military Museum in Luverne.

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