Norman Neste was born in August 1923 in Hemet, California. His father was a housing contractor and they did well during the Great Depression. Neste worked with his father and enjoyed it. He was with a friend riding in a car when the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came over the radio. He was surprised and listened to the news the whole day. War was expected in Europe, not Asia. Neste was inducted on 1 July 1943. He was in college at the time. Since he was in school, he was not being drafted, but since everyone he knew was, he decided to drop out and enlist. He took some exams that allowed him to take studies at various colleges [Annotator's Note: as part of the Army Specialized Training Program or ASTP]. He went first to Grinnell [Annotator's Note: Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa] and then City College [Annotator’s Note: City of College of New York, New York City, New York], for engineering. He did that for four months when the Army decided they did not need any more engineers and he was assigned to the infantry. He had done basic training with the engineers and ended up in Louisiana and Texas on maneuvers in 1944. Neste saw things he thought did not exist like how people lived in the swamps which was surprising to him. [Annotator's Note: Neste apologizes for losing his train of thought.] He had not been assigned to any unit yet. He returned to Kentucky and went through basic training all over again.

Norman Neste left for Europe in October 1944 after the D-Day invasion [Annotator's Note: the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] had happened. He was on a train headed for Holland when the Germans started pushing them around and his division was sent to the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator’s Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] on Christmas Eve, 1944. He was immediately on the front lines. His trip across the Atlantic to Europe was on a British ship with terrible food. He was in a convoy with military escorts. Neste slept in a hammock he had to put up every night. A lot of people got seasick but Neste did not. He was assigned to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 289th Infantry Regiment, 75th Infantry Division as second scout rifleman. On Christmas Eve, his 11 man squad was asked to go into a forested area to see what they could find. The first scout came upon and captured a German who was relieving himself. His new prisoner then led him to where the others were staying. There were six or seven other Germans there who fortunately surrendered.

Norman Neste had no preconceived ideas of what the German military would be like. Once he had encountered them, he thought they were very well trained. Neither side really knew where each other was. Once they were told to watch their front, and the Germans came in from behind them. Neste thinks it never got above 20 degrees and it was often less. For 30 days, he never removed an article of clothing. They would dig two man foxholes to help keep warm with one keeping watch, the other napping. They never knew what was going to happen. The snow was about eight to ten inches deep. The ground was very hard to dig into, especially with their small shovels. The squad was stretched out. They had come to the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] by trucks. They were equipped well with weapons, but they had no winter clothing. A lot of people got frostbite and had to leave. Neste never got frostbite though. He was sent in on Christmas Eve, 1944, and that night they captured the first Germans they came across. On Christmas Day, his duty was to hold the line where they were so the American military could organize behind them. Neste was called back a ways for an unknown reason. His colleagues were taken out to remove land mines. Three of his squad were killed doing that. It was just plain luck that he was not part of that. He was about 21 years old. He worried about taking a life, but he did so. He thought about it a lot afterwards. He felt that if he had not taken that life, his would have been taken by that person.

Norman Neste was in his first big battle at the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. He was going up a hillside to get to the Germans who were firing all over. Neste stayed flat on the ground. The man next to him started to move back but was having trouble, both his legs had been hit by mortar fire. He was just pulling himself along by his arms. Neste was scared but was there to do a job, and that is what he did. He went from the Bulge to the Colmar Pocket [Annotator's Note: Colmar Pocket, area in Alsace, France]. They took another beating there. The Germans had a good sense of what was happening and had placed their crews well. The Americans had to retreat into the forest and several were killed. Neste was in a basement and could see the Germans getting close. He got out of there right as they peppered it with fire. Again, he was very lucky. The Germans had an SS Division [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel, the German paramilitary organization] there that was very tenacious. He had not slept in 24 hours. They made it back to the heavy weapons and were told to lie down and rest. [Annotator's Note: Neste was a member of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 289th Infantry Regiment, 75th Infantry Division.] When he woke up, his eyes had been frozen shut and it was hard to get them opened. They went back through and cleaned up everything. From there they went to into Holland and slowly worked into Germany. On 8 April 1945, they were moving into an area that was unknown to them. Neste was now running a squad as a Staff Sergeant. He felt something funny in his leg. Shrapnel had hit him. This ended his Army career.

Norman Neste and the 75th Infantry Division [Annotator's Note: Neste was a member of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 289th Infantry Regiment, 75th Infantry Division] were moving at a fast clip through Europe but supplies were getting to them well. One night they left around midnight, riding on the backs of tanks and went into a town on an early Sunday morning. The Germans who were living there were on their way to church, saw the Americans, and put their white flags up. They did not have much of a connection with the civilians during fighting. When the war was over, they got along fine. Neste had been wounded and was put with several other wounded men into an aircraft that had brought in supplies. They were taken to France. Neste ran into a guy from his company who had been injured before him. Neste was transferred to southern England for three weeks. The war ended while he was there, and he toured England on a three-week furlough. He was then sent north to find a new company. It had only seven people so Neste became the staff sergeant and there was one one lieutenant. They had three vehicles which they drove to France. They were assigned to do the business work of handling a few thousand German prisoners. Neste liked the operation. He had a German who acted as a personal orderly. The German taking care of Neste was a former athlete and they got along well. They had fun together. One night, Neste took him to the movies with him. He could speak a little German but Neste did not speak any German.

After he was wounded, Norman Neste spent a few weeks in France. He was in England when the war ended May 1945. He had never seen such celebration and had a good time. The people were just having a great time for at least three days. The war in the Pacific ended in August. Neste had no indication that he was headed there though. He returned home January 1946. He came into New York Harbor and then flew to California. Pulling into New York was quite the experience. There were boats that followed them all the way in and people were singing songs. He had not known whether he would make it back or not. He was the last person to leave from his company of 50 people in Europe. He had started out with 40 men but 39 of them were killed or wounded. He was the last one transferred out of his original unit [Annotator's Note: Company E, 2nd Battalion, 289th Infantry Regiment, 75th Infantry Division]. Once he returned, he was discharged after a couple of days in northern California as a Staff Sergeant. One week later he went back to college on the G.I. Bill, which was great. He had always intended to return to school after the war.

Norman Neste's most memorable combat experience was towards the end because they were moving so quickly. He never knew what was going to happen. His whole regiment [Annotator's Note: Neste was a member of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 289th Infantry Regiment, 75th Infantry Division] was put on inactive duty about a week after he was wounded on 8 April 1945. He was still in Europe when the Japanese surrendered. Everybody was very happy to hear that. The war changed his life. He knew he wanted an education and wanted it quick. He wanted to be involved in things. The other service members did not talk about their service much. They just got busy. Neste never talked to his parents or his children until about three years before this interview [Annotator's Note: this interview was conducted on 6 Deember 2010]. They just started asking him questions and one night they talked for six hours. His war experience prompted him to study hard in college. He also got married and everything went well. The worst thing that happened was that so many friends of his were killed or wounded and that hurts. It has a large impact on a young man. You see them just lying there dead. Once a wounded man was talking while Neste held him and he just suddenly died. It is an experience you do not want. Neste thinks they all hated the Germans at first, but once the war was over they tried to make friends. He thought it was going to be the end of wars altogether but it was not.

Norman Neste feels that The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana is a good institution to have, especially for the younger people. When he first returned home from Europe, his father wanted to see where he was wounded. The wound still gives him fits to this day. When it was originally treated, they did not completely get the blood flow working correctly. Sometimes the blood would flow into his lungs. He spent quite some time dealing with this over a half dozen times. He has been taking medications for it for 40 years. His children asked him why he had not told them about his war experiences before. He took them to Europe and retraced his route through there. They even went into the area where was wounded. The aircraft he went to France on when wounded was set up for that and he was treated very well. He was put to sleep immediately. When he woke up, they brought him food, but he fell face-first into it asleep again.