Robert W. Parker oral history

Discusses quitting college to learn to ski, about learning about the ski troops after Pearl Harbor, and about reporting to duty in June with the 87th Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis. Sent to Camp Hale when it had just opened and had high altitude training as a rifleman. Talks about arriving in Naples and being injured from a shell impact on Belvedere. Discusses Po River and the flat land fighting, then moving north, capturing German troops and the fight at Lake Garda. Talks about the support they had in the field. He talks about finding a German liquor warehouse, about Nazis hiding in resort hotels, and about spending the occupation in Northern Italy, which included going to the Yugoslavia border. He gets Hepatitis and goes home where he eventually works on a ranch in Wyoming, then as a wilderness guide, and then joins the Ski Patrol. Some of his poems are published in the New Yorker and other magazines. Talks about the need for alternatives to military service in light of Viet Nam, and talks about the 10th Mountain Division Memorial and trail.