A Private in the Texas Army

At War in Italy, France, and Germany With the 111th Engineers, 36th Division In World War II

By John A. Pearce and Reviewed by Bearington Curtis

Article published on: April 1, 2025 in the Army History Spring 2025 issue

Read Time: < 4 mins

By John A. Pearce
State House Press, 2021 Pp. x, 311. $39.95

No other conflict grips the American imagination like World War II. As such, there is a vast historiography, yet there is always room for more voices to be heard. The place of this conflict in the public’s minds has encouraged witnesses of the war to publish numerous memoirs and personal wartime accounts. John A. Pearce’s publication of his father Frank Webster Pearce’s war diary and letters home adds valuable insight. It provides the near-daily reflections of a combat engineer who enlisted in the 111th Engineer Regiment of the Texas National Guard before its federalization in 1940. ¹ This microhistory provides what was at the forefront of the average soldier’s mind during the twentieth century’s most turbulent event.

As the anthologizer, John Pearce divided his father’s war experience into sixteen chapters. Each chapter provides a historical summary of the events to which the diary relates, such as the crossing of the Rapido in Italy. The volume lifts the fog of war surrounding the perspective of one enlisted soldier’s fight. Although, this account focuses on a singular soldier, it maintains the value of the many individual soldiers that surrounded Frank Pearce. During John Pearce’s exposition, he provides details to explain where and how each soldier of the 111th Engineers suffered injury and loss of life—exemplifying the human cost of war and the dangerous duty of combat engineers.

The beginning of the book provides details of Frank Pearce’s life. Raised in East Texas, he spent his youth working odd jobs during the Depression. Part of what makes this account unique is that Pearce enlisted as a combat engineer in the Texas National Guard along with several local friends before the war. A month later, Pearce and the soldiers of the 36th Infantry Division were activated for federal service on 25 November 1940 (5). Although the Texas identity of the unit diminished over time with mounting casualties, Frank Pearce’s writing maintains a local allegiance vital to his war experience and provides a tangible link to home even on the front lines.

The diary details are essential in establishing Frank Pearce’s sustaining motivations, soldier comradery, and interactions with other soldiers and local civilians. Private Pearce is not a sardonic or eloquent writer as he details only a few matter-of-fact lines to the day’s events. He is more like a sportswriter in his description of combat: “It was nip and tuck all day, in fact the worst we had . . . a sniper shot at me all evening but was a bum shot” (37). Such accounts of combat show the reader how accustomed men such as Pearce became to their harsh environment.

What sustains troops in the field are familiar to soldiers throughout history. Priorities that Frank Pearce reflects on is food, alcohol, weather, creature comforts, and the affection of loved ones through letters. The volume of their reoccurrence in his diary shows their importance to him. Furthermore, he demonstrates how these things grounded soldiers as they experienced little control over their lives. Pearce reflects on his condition to his family and to those few he considered friends, the core of which seem to be from Texas.

His expression of comradery reveals the hard lessons of losing someone close to you and the nature of the individual replacement system that often failed to fully integrate new soldiers with their units before combat operations. “I make no efforts to cultivate a close friend as it doesn’t pay in that way there is no deep hurt. I merely try to be like and like all the boys to a point where one can depend on each other” (191). This line, penned late in the war, betrays the callous nature of war on the soldier. The same line tells that his priority toward the group and theirs toward him is that they are dependable at their job, increasing his chance of survival.

As Pearce’s outlook toward his fellow soldiers became more hard-boiled, his opinion on the many unfamiliar cultures he encountered reflected an outsider’s judgment. His opinion on Africans, Italians, French, British, and Germans shows the complicated relations between soldiers and civilians. He was disgusted by the condition of North African communities and pitied the Italian civilians. He expresses a sternness toward the Germans whose homes he occupied.

Although some soldiers saw a meteoric rise in rank and responsibility, Frank Pearce remained a private through most of the war. He spent the war as one of the many doers, soldiers who bore the consequences of the strategic and tactical decisions of others. Only after the war does Pearce pen a true refection of his experiences. He felt bitter toward the conduct of his compatriots in the immediate aftermath, wondering for what it was he fought. Pearce did not seek the conflict’s meaning while overseas; he could only wrestle with the meaning of World War II after he returned home. He concludes his diary and literally closes the book on the war, with a note dated November 1945. He concluded that he had found peace and purpose in his war experience through the love of an understanding woman (whom he married) and in religion (256).

This detailed account of Frank Pearce’s experiences should be of interest to those interested in a bottom-up understanding of the troops who fought World War II. The book peels back the layers of mythology that have crept into academia and the national zeitgeist of the war. This excellent microhistory provides scholars with details on soldier motivations, and complex wartime relations between soldiers and civilians. For the general reader, the diary provides a human connection to the war. Frank Pearce is not a poet, a crusader, or a great man of history. Yet he, like so many others, answered their country’s call to arms, and for this reason, this frank account of the conflict deserves a place on bookshelves.

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