History of the 362nd Infantry Regiment
Origins: The "Wild West" Division
The 362nd Infantry was one of three infantry regiments of the 91st Infantry Division, serving alongside the 361st and 363rd. First raised in 1917—the regiment had earned battle honors at Meuse-Argonne and Ypres in the First World War—it was reactivated on 15 August 1942 at Camp White, Oregon, with a cadre drawn from the 1st Cavalry Division. The 91st took the nickname "the Wild West Division" for the western states that filled its ranks, and wore a green fir tree as its shoulder insignia. The 362nd's own watchword was "Get It Done."
After twenty-two months of training, the regiment shipped overseas, staging first at Oran, Algeria, for a month before landing in Italy in June 1944 to join Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark's U.S. Fifth Army. It was commanded through nearly the whole campaign by Colonel John W. Cotton, a thirty-one-year veteran who had been decorated in the First World War and who kept his command post up at the front lines.
Baptism of Fire: The Drive to the Arno (July 1944)
The regiment first went into battle on the night of 11 July 1944, attacking from near Montecatini toward the Arno River against German rearguards fighting a skilled delaying action. In its opening engagement near Chianni and Terricciola, the 362nd ran headlong into the enemy's methods: blown bridges, extensive minefields, snipers, and the mobile self-propelled 88mm guns that would cause most of its casualties throughout the war. The first day cost the regiment seventy casualties, and the fighting that followed was, as the history put it, "more a lesson of seasoning for troops."
"A major attack near Casaglia on 12 July 1944 was the regiment's baptism of fire in this war… They became seasoned infantrymen in a hurry." —Stars and Stripes
Over the following days the regiment fought through Selvatella, San Pietro, and Forcoli, taking and holding high ground under heavy artillery fire, repelling counterattacks, and pressing on with strong support from the 346th Field Artillery, its own Cannon Company, attached tank destroyers, and the 316th Engineers who worked through the nights clearing mines and bridging blown crossings. In thirty-five days of combat from Casaglia to the Arno, the regiment earned a Distinguished Service Cross, 26 Silver Stars, and 42 Bronze Stars—and proved itself an effective spearhead in Clark's thrust to the river.
Breaching the Gothic Line: Futa Pass (September 1944)
After a rest at Cusona, the regiment moved up Highway 65 in early September for the campaign that would define it: the assault on the Gothic Line, the German fortified belt that the enemy had spent months building across the Apennine mountains, anchored on the passes that guarded the Po Valley beyond. Establishing its command post in an ancient Medici castle at Trebbio—whose tower gave artillery observers their best vantage point in all of Italy—the 362nd crossed the Sieve River on 10 September and began a two-week climb that one soldier called "a lifetime of mud, rain, sweat, strain, fear, courage and prayers."
The fighting was brutal and uphill in every sense. On 14 September the 2nd Battalion took Mount Calvi, a rock-rimmed barrier honeycombed with tunnels and gun emplacements carved fifty feet underground, beating back repeated counterattacks. Bangalore torpedoes were used to blow gaps in the wire; mule trains hauled rations and ammunition where no road could go. The men fought through Hills 840 and 841 in fog and rain, past an eight-thousand-yard anti-tank ditch dug by forced labor, and onto Mount Gazzaro, 1,125 meters high, from which they first looked down on their objective.
"Futa Pass… was captured at dawn, 22 September, with the 362nd's Third Battalion… among the first Fifth Army troops to stand atop Futa Pass. They had swept across the Gothic defensive zone's deepest network of prepared fortifications, a feat that won them a division citation." —Stars and Stripes
Defenses the Germans had called impassable—comparable to those at Cassino—had been pierced. The cost was severe: a casualty rate of roughly 42 percent for the operation. The regiment captured some 400 prisoners in eleven days. Colonel Cotton was awarded the Legion of Merit by General Clark for the breaching of the pass.
The Long Grind Down Highway 65 (October–November 1944)
There was no breakthrough into open country. The enemy, reluctant to give up Highway 65, fought for every town as autumn rains turned the roads to "rivers of mud the consistency of wet concrete." Through late September and October the regiment took Monghidoro (discovered to be the straw-hat center of Italy), Loiano, Mount Bastia, and the cruelly contested ridges around Livergnano, where on 23 October a reported 1,400 rounds fell on the regimental sector—shelling that supporting artillerymen compared to Cassino. Attached to the 88th Division and then to the British, the 362nd held its ground as the swollen Silaro River flooded suddenly one night, sweeping away two Bailey bridges and a number of trucks and reducing the regiment's combat efficiency for days.
In mid-November the regiment was pulled back for its first real rest, at a former Italian barracks near Pistoia that was named Camp French in honor of Captain Hugh S. French, the first officer of the 362nd killed in action. There were showers, hot meals, movies, passes to Florence, and formal award ceremonies: among those decorated were Staff Sergeant Welton C. Westfall and Private First Class Jack Green, both presented the Distinguished Service Cross. The regiment celebrated Thanksgiving in the traditional manner before the warning order came to return to the line.
Winter on the Line (December 1944–February 1945)
The winter of 1944–45 settled into a static, grinding war of patrols along Highway 65. Relieving the 133rd Infantry near La Guarda in early December, the regiment fought a nightly contest of reconnaissance, ambush, and raid in the dark and fog. It developed a "decoy system"—one combat patrol drawing the enemy's attention so a reconnaissance patrol could slip through unseen—which the history likened to a decoy play in football. On 7 December the 362nd marked its hundredth day of combat. There were sharp local fights, like the house-to-house struggle for the fortified village of Tianello, and a steady toll from harassing artillery.
Through January and February the regiment, shifting between the 91st and 34th Divisions, built elaborate "Intermediate" and "Switch" defense lines—miles of wire, foxholes, and minefields — as deep snow blanketed the valleys. Morale, the history records, was "especially high": the men devised ingenious stoves from shell cases and oil drums, with stovepipe made from flattened beer cans, and enjoyed Red Cross coffee and doughnuts, USO troupes, and movies behind the line. It was the lull before the storm.
The Po Valley Breakout and Task Force George (April 1945)
The "long awaited spring offensive" opened for the 91st Division before dawn on 16 April 1945. After months confined to Highway 65, the regiment attacked north toward Bologna, taking Mount Frati and the strong point of Tarterossa and reaching the high ground over the Reno River. On 21 April, Company G under Lieutenant William G. Kloeb marched into the outskirts of Bologna—the objective the regiment had been denied since the previous October—as troops of the 34th Division entered from the south.
Then the pursuit became a race. With the German army in Italy collapsing, the regiment mounted its infantry on tanks and trucks and drove hard for the Po. The 2nd Battalion, reinforced with tanks, tank destroyers, engineers, and artillery, was formed into a mobile task force under Major McAdams and sent slashing behind enemy lines through the night of 22–23 April, fighting a running series of actions at road junctions and overrunning columns of retreating Germans. On 23 April the regiment took a record 1,048 prisoners in a single day. The regiment crossed the Po River by assault boat on the night of 24 April against slight resistance, the far bank littered with the abandoned guns, vehicles, and loose artillery horses of an army in full flight.
"From this time on the desire… to capture large numbers of prisoners was subordinated to the accomplishment of the mission… to penetrate behind the enemy lines and cut their routes of withdrawal." —Regimental History, April 1945
After crossing the Adige, a second mobile column—Task Force George, built around the 3rd Battalion and commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George W. Richardson—drove twenty-nine miles to seize Vicenza on 28 April, then pushed on to force a crossing of the Brenta River at Fontaniva the next day, taking nearly a thousand prisoners over the two phases of its dash. Help from the Italian partisans, the history noted with gratitude, was invaluable throughout—they took thousands of prisoners and saved countless roads and bridges from demolition.
Victory and After
By the end of April the regiment had crossed four rivers, taken industrial cities of the Po Valley, and helped pierce the Venice Line—the last German defensive line in Italy. Its own losses in the final offensive had been "extremely light"; the losses it helped inflict on the enemy were overwhelming. German forces in Italy surrendered on 2 May 1945. "There was a general feeling," the adjutant wrote as the month closed, "that the war was rapidly coming to a successful finish."
The 362nd Infantry Regiment was returned to the United States and deactivated at 2400 on 29 November 1945, at Camp Rucker, Alabama.
Read the Records
This summary only sketches the regiment's path. The real history is in the daily records of the men who lived it—their morning reports, orders, and the letters and photographs their families still hold.