Bob Krear generously provided time, source material, and the foreword for 2022 book, Heroes in Good Company: L Company, 86th Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, 1943-1945, available in paperback, hardcover and kindle.
When the 86th Mountain Infantry Regiment went overseas in December 1944, Bob Krear was a tall and powerfully built twenty-two year old from southern Pennsylvania. He heard of the mountain troops while on the ski team at Penn State, but didn’t ask to join them until he suffered a knee injury during training in another unit and was told he would be discharged. His compatriots were certain he was being sent home, and were shocked when the orders arrived for him to go to the ski troops. He joined L Company in July, 1943. He was a strong soldier with a deep voice and a rhythmic way of speaking. He was placed in 3rd Platoon, where his impressive marksmanship almost got him sent to Company M (the heavy weapons company) as a machine-gunner. Krear was eager to avoid such service, and the compromise struck made him BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) man in his squad. Krear was wounded in the calf by mortar shrapnel during a live-fire training maneuver at Camp Hale, but recovered and stayed with L Company.
Sent to Italy in December of 1944, Pfc. Bob Krear first saw action when his patrol was ambushed on a dark and snowy night outside of the village of Pianosinatico. On another night, Germans attacked two of L Company’s outposts, located in farmhouses. Pfc. Krear was part of the support force that launched a counterattack and drove the enemy out of the foxholes in front of one of the farmhouses. The first man from L Company to be killed in the war died that night in the foxhole next to his. During the Mt. Belvedere attack, Bob used his BAR with great effect, knocking out several enemy positions. Promoted to Sergeant, he led his squad of 3rd Platoon with skill during the Spring Offensive. During one action, a piece of shrapnel from an enemy panzer shell dented his steel helmet. He recalled with great fondness the enthusiastic greeting L Company received after their liberation of Verona. As the division pushed northward toward the Alps, Sgt. Krear led a flank attack which captured two of the tunnels along the shore of Lake Garda. His platoon was the only part of L Company that remained outside of town during the 10th Mountain Division’s last battle at Torbole.
After the war, Bob Krear graduated from Penn State with a degree in forestry. He received an MS in Zoology and a Ph.D. in Biology. Bob wrote the following about his life;
“The experiences and inspiration I received from the 10th led in the post-war years to my presence on four arctic and sub-arctic research expeditions. I was a strong environmentalist and wilderness advocate, and one of the creators of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I was an avid admirer and follower of Dave Brower. For 15 years I was a naturalist interpreter at eight major national parks, where I also served on mountain rescue teams. My world has been the out-of-doors. I taught Biology at Michigan Technological University from the late 1960s up to 1984.”
In his spare time, he enjoyed reading and fly-fishing. Dr. Krear retired to Colorado, where he lived out his final decades. His mind remained razor-sharp throughout his life. In 1993, Bob Krear self-published a limited-quantity book he wrote entitled, The Journal of a U.S. Army Mountain Trooper in World War Two. In it he talked about enlistment, training at Camps Hale and Swift, and of deployment to Italy. In his plain and direct way, he provided interesting details, consistently infused with the soldiers’ opinions on things. Here is one brief anecdote from that book:
The Germans knew exactly where we were, and we knew where they were, but a strange sort of winter truce was observed by both sides. We did not fire at them and they did not fire at us, although occasionally to keep us “honest” they dropped an artillery or mortar shell on us…In general, though, the winter front was a quiet front. It was as though neither side wanted to engage in hostilities…besides, we were green troops and the Germans knew it. They assumed they had little to fear from us.
One day, in the house where my third platoon was billeted, John McDermott from Idaho was on guard duty near the door that faced Mt. Belvedere. John was a lanky six foot three or four inch outdoorsman, slow-talking but very intelligent, a man one would think of as the Sergeant York type. I had just descended the stairs from above to talk to him when a German shell landed just outside the door. The concussion blew me down another set of stairs into the cellar, but I was not hit by any shrapnel, which was a miracle. I ran back up the stairs quickly to see what happened to John and found him fingering a rent chest-high in his jacket where a piece of shrapnel had shredded it, but not touched the skin. John was unflappable, and he looked at me with a little smile on his face and said slowly “Gosh! That was close!” Later we were not at all surprised to find that John was to prove an excellent soldier.
The same plain-spoken tone, occasionally bordering on the philosophical, came through in his personal letters, and in several recorded oral histories in the collection at the Denver Public Library’s 10th Mountain Division Resource Center, now available on youtube.
Dr. H. Robert Krear passed away on December 16, 2017.
This is the second part of one of his oral histories, in which he talks a great deal about his wartime service in Italy:
This blog is part of a larger body of research culminating in the publication of the book Heroes in Good Company: L Company, 86th Regiment, 10th Mountain Division 1943-1945 which is available in select bookstores and on amazon. The foreword was generously provided by Sgt. H. Robert Krear, Ph.D. before his passing in 2017. Krear was a veteran of L Company’s 3rd Platoon, and was among many veterans who provided first-hand accounts.
Voices of War – Bob Krear
Bob Krear generously provided time, source material, and the foreword for 2022 book, Heroes in Good Company: L Company, 86th Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, 1943-1945, available in paperback, hardcover and kindle.
Sent to Italy in December of 1944, Pfc. Bob Krear first saw action when his patrol was ambushed on a dark and snowy night outside of the village of Pianosinatico. On another night, Germans attacked two of L Company’s outposts, located in farmhouses. Pfc. Krear was part of the support force that launched a counterattack and drove the enemy out of the foxholes in front of one of the farmhouses. The first man from L Company to be killed in the war died that night in the foxhole next to his. During the Mt. Belvedere attack, Bob used his BAR with great effect, knocking out several enemy positions. Promoted to Sergeant, he led his squad of 3rd Platoon with skill during the Spring Offensive. During one action, a piece of shrapnel from an enemy panzer shell dented his steel helmet. He recalled with great fondness the enthusiastic greeting L Company received after their liberation of Verona. As the division pushed northward toward the Alps, Sgt. Krear led a flank attack which captured two of the tunnels along the shore of Lake Garda. His platoon was the only part of L Company that remained outside of town during the 10th Mountain Division’s last battle at Torbole.
After the war, Bob Krear graduated from Penn State with a degree in forestry. He received an MS in Zoology and a Ph.D. in Biology. Bob wrote the following about his life;
“The experiences and inspiration I received from the 10th led in the post-war years to my presence on four arctic and sub-arctic research expeditions. I was a strong environmentalist and wilderness advocate, and one of the creators of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I was an avid admirer and follower of Dave Brower. For 15 years I was a naturalist interpreter at eight major national parks, where I also served on mountain rescue teams. My world has been the out-of-doors. I taught Biology at Michigan Technological University from the late 1960s up to 1984.”
In his spare time, he enjoyed reading and fly-fishing. Dr. Krear retired to Colorado, where he lived out his final decades. His mind remained razor-sharp throughout his life. In 1993, Bob Krear self-published a limited-quantity book he wrote entitled, The Journal of a U.S. Army Mountain Trooper in World War Two. In it he talked about enlistment, training at Camps Hale and Swift, and of deployment to Italy. In his plain and direct way, he provided interesting details, consistently infused with the soldiers’ opinions on things. Here is one brief anecdote from that book:
The Germans knew exactly where we were, and we knew where they were, but a strange sort of winter truce was observed by both sides. We did not fire at them and they did not fire at us, although occasionally to keep us “honest” they dropped an artillery or mortar shell on us…In general, though, the winter front was a quiet front. It was as though neither side wanted to engage in hostilities…besides, we were green troops and the Germans knew it. They assumed they had little to fear from us.
One day, in the house where my third platoon was billeted, John McDermott from Idaho was on guard duty near the door that faced Mt. Belvedere. John was a lanky six foot three or four inch outdoorsman, slow-talking but very intelligent, a man one would think of as the Sergeant York type. I had just descended the stairs from above to talk to him when a German shell landed just outside the door. The concussion blew me down another set of stairs into the cellar, but I was not hit by any shrapnel, which was a miracle. I ran back up the stairs quickly to see what happened to John and found him fingering a rent chest-high in his jacket where a piece of shrapnel had shredded it, but not touched the skin. John was unflappable, and he looked at me with a little smile on his face and said slowly “Gosh! That was close!” Later we were not at all surprised to find that John was to prove an excellent soldier.
The same plain-spoken tone, occasionally bordering on the philosophical, came through in his personal letters, and in several recorded oral histories in the collection at the Denver Public Library’s 10th Mountain Division Resource Center, now available on youtube.
Dr. H. Robert Krear passed away on December 16, 2017.
This is the second part of one of his oral histories, in which he talks a great deal about his wartime service in Italy:
This blog is part of a larger body of research culminating in the publication of the book Heroes in Good Company: L Company, 86th Regiment, 10th Mountain Division 1943-1945 which is available in select bookstores and on amazon. The foreword was generously provided by Sgt. H. Robert Krear, Ph.D. before his passing in 2017. Krear was a veteran of L Company’s 3rd Platoon, and was among many veterans who provided first-hand accounts.
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