Pfc. Stuart Abbott was six feet, five inches tall. He grew up on the outskirts of Chicago and had never seen a mountain before joining the 10th Mountain Division. He was an avid boy scout and naturalist who spent his weekends volunteering at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. He enlisted when he was eighteen years old. His interest in nature continued unabated, and he frequently made notes and drawings of flora and fauna he encountered at Camp Hale, Colorado in a notebook his Mother had given him. With a sister, mother and chronically ill father back home, he wrote a steady stream of letters, almost all of them asking for sweets. His blond hair, bright intellect and sunny disposition endeared him to his comrades. Throughout the extreme training the 10^th Mountain Division received in the Colorado Rockies, he developed close friendships with many of the men in his unit. He left 1st Platoon of L Company, 86th Regiment to go into communications, but quickly returned because he missed his friends, or as he put it, “I guess I have been with the boys too long to break away now.”

Stuart’s Mother and the mothers of three other L Company men from Chicago formed what would be dubbed the Chicago Mothers Club. They enjoyed lunches together and in each other found comfort and companionship in all having their boys together in the service.

He went to Camp Swift, Texas with the rest of the Division, where he expressed surprise and disappointment that they were training on flat ground, with large influxes of men with no mountain training arriving daily to fill out the ranks. Rumors spread that the Ski troops were to be turned into just another flat-land division, and these facts seem to corroborate the rumors. But the 10^th Mountain Division came under the command of Gen. George P. Hays and was soon sent overseas.

Stuart’s company arrived in Italy on Christmas Eve, 1944 and were immediately confronted with a war-torn poverty none of them had ever seen before. Within a couple of weeks, they were at the front and manning a section of the line. Stuart went on a nighttime patrol that was ambushed by German forces. They received small-arms, machinegun and mortar fire, but were able to get out of the ambush, inflicting casualties on the enemy but sustaining no loss themselves. Stuart was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge for this action.  He wrote home saying,

I have been up in the front lines, as you must well know from the gap in my mail. I have also earned my Combat Infantryman’s Badge by being under small-arms fire. I don’t wish to sound like I know it all now because I am still almost as green as a combat infantryman can be but life in the front lines isn’t as bad as I expected. It’s not a soft touch, it cannot be, but it isn’t a Hollywood hell of living in foxholes under constant fire etc etc. That is partly due to the more or less stalemated condition we have here…Anyway I got enough to eat and enough sleep to get by, and while there were bad moments they were the exception.

I must admit that I had never really been homesick until I got over here. There are times now when I get so blue it just hurts to think of home. Have found that I think most of home and what I used to do most when I am out on guard at an outpost. I guess the quiet is just naturally conducive to it. I am living for the day when I can curl up in an easy chair with a good book and an entire pan of buttered popcorn for the whole evening.

Abbott celebrated his twentieth birthday in Querciola, Italy, and less than three weeks later found himself in his first heavy fighting. He was in the lead element of an attack along the flank of Monte Belvedere on February 20, 1945. His company advanced much faster than supporting elements, and in their inexperience did not realize how exposed they were. His platoon was soon surrounded on three sides and subjected to heavy enemy machinegun, mortar and artillery fire. His company suffered dozens of casualties in this action. His sergeant led part of his squad into the maelstrom to try to find an attack route to neutralize the enemy positions. Within a matter of seconds, four of them were killed or wounded and the attack faltered. One of the casualties was Stuart Abbott, killed instantly by an artillery shell that also wounded one of his comrades. The rest of his company did fight their way out of the ambush and reached all of their objectives, but of all of the death L Company saw that day, Stuart’s loss was among the most lamented.

The Chicago Mothers Club was stricken by the news of Stuart’s death. Within two months all three other boys would be seriously wounded in action. Stuart Abbott was buried at the American Cemetery in Florence, Italy.

This blog is part of a larger body of research culminating in the publication of the book ‘Heroes in Good Company: L Company, 86^th Regiment, 10^th Mountain Division 1943-1945’ which is available in select bookstores and on amazon.