Private in the Texas Army

Sulphur Springs native Frank Webster Pearce was a soldier in Texas' own 36th Infantry Division and the 111th Engineer Combat Battalion. The Division's story has been told before, but never from start to finish by acombat engineer, whose footprints stirred the sands of three invasion beaches, wallowedthrough the mud, and trudged in the snow of every battle. From training in the UnitedStates to the war's end in Austria, Pearce chronicled it all.. With the combination of diary, numerous letters home, and official division reports, this is the most complete look everproduced on the 111th Engineers and their war against Hitler's Germany. This is a primary account written daily as the events unfolded. It was the war years. Here you find out how to properly bury a man in the water soaked Italian soil, a fool proof way to smuggleliquor from the US to the soldiers overseas, the foul stench of death reeking across thebattlefield, and the beauty of exploding artillery shells in the night sky.These are his thoughts and letters as he wrote them-raw and unfiltered.