The 8-inch howitzer had a maximum range of 18 miles, was pulled by an M4 prime mover, used the same carriage as a 155mm Long Tom, and fired a 225-pound projectile. Its power charges included night flash-less charge increments 1 to 5 and a daytime smokeless charge of 5 with increments of 6 to 7. It required a crew of 11 to 18 men to operate, and a battalion consisted of three firing batteries, A, B, and C, of four guns each, with service and headquarters battery, totaling about 600 men. Frank Matula, a member of the 465th Field Artillery Battalion from 1950 to November 1952, said that as far as he knew there were two battalions of 8-inch howitzers in World War Two, one in Europe and one in the Pacific, and that the Pacific unit was the 465th Field Artillery Battalion. It fought in New Guinea, Mindanao, and Luzon at Lingayen Gulf, landing on the first day fighting as infantry before its howitzers arrived three or four days later on an L.S.T. and the group reassembled as artillery. Later, C Battery was one of the units that knocked down the wall around Intramuros, a Spanish city built about 500 years before with a wall around it 30 feet thick, so the 32nd Infantry Division could liberate the city; Joe Matula added that Sergeant Martin Duero was one of those to enter. George Miller of Saginaw and St. Charles, a member of C Battery of the 465th Field Artillery Battalion in World War Two and later commander of Post 168 of the American Legion, had the howitzer brought from Indianapolis and placed in the Village Park in the 1960s. After World War Two, the 465th Field Artillery Battalion was assigned to the North Dakota Reserve, activated in September 1950 during the Korean War and sent to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, serving as a Basic Training Unit. In January 1952 it was sent to Germany at the height of the Cold War. The 465th Field Artillery Battalion was disbanded in 1956, and the howitzer became surplus, replaced by self-propelled guns. Many veterans from this area served in the 465th at one time or another.