“Knowing that just a few hundred yards more in a different direction it could very well have been me that would have been hit, and of course the fact that someone who was your best friend did receive an injury like that…it brought the war home very sharply to us.” (Audio Interview, 26:27)

Walter B. Stevens

War: World War, 1939-1945 Branch: Army Unit: 77th Field Artillery Regiment; 634th Field Artillery Battalion (4/1944) Service Location: Fort Snelling, Minnesota; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Camp Bowie, Texas; North Africa; Sicily; South Italy; Anzio; France; Austria; Germany Rank: Captain Place of Birth: NE

Walter Stevens spent 33 months in combat in Europe, much of it in the Italian Campaign. He experienced the invasion of Sicily and Anzio and would enter Rome as part of the liberating army on June 2, 1944. Stevens’s intense experiences, including nearly losing his best friend at Anzio, lend weight to his critical assessment of tactical decisions made at Anzio. His artillery unit would be stalled on the same piece of land for four months, providing an easy target for the Germans and their artillery.