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Show Wallace Member of Eng. Division in Italy WITH THE FIFTH ARMY, ITALY Pvt. Nelson A. Wallace, son of Mrs. Waiora B. Wallace, mechanic, is a member of the 175th Engineer General Service Regiment, which recently spanned the Serchio River on the Fifth Army front in Italy with a 270 foot timber pile bent bridge. Among the 70 large bridges the regiment has built since last August Au-gust 1 is a 530-foot Bailey bridge assembled across the Arno River by one company in seven days. By replacing the two end spans with earth fills and linking the 3 piers with Bailey bridge units, the reginrent repaired in record time a blown masonry arch bridge that was built in 1628, on Route 2 north of Bolsena. Six thousand pounds of TNT was used to clear a bridge site on the Arno River where the regiment e-rected e-rected a 400-foot, two lane span, one of the longest semi-permanent bridges in Western Italy. The regiment has had as many as 15 bridges under construction at one time. They opened for heavy traffic Highway 1 from Cecina to Viareg-gio, Viareg-gio, Highway 67 from Leghorn to Florence, Route 12 from Pisa to Lucca and the Autostrada from Lucca to Pistoia. In support of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, they opened Route 64 from Pisoia north to the front. Route 6620 was cleared clear-ed for the British 6th South African Afri-can Division between Prota and the front. The 175th helped put the port of Civitavecchia back in order, went through Poggibonsi, then, late in July, operated the port of Piom-bino. Piom-bino. The outfit is currently maintaining maintain-ing snow stations along routes, where snow ploughs operate from and emergency rations are stored and issued. The 175th recently installed in-stalled and now operates three 400 kilowatt generators, two in Florence Flor-ence and the other at the 24th General Hospital. Another of its recent re-cent activities is winterizing of hospitals. In North Africa, the 175th completed com-pleted six miles of taxiways and hard-standings at Gazes Airfield near Casablanca, a week ahead of schedule; built in the same area two cantonments accomodating 15, : 000 troops each and a base en- gineer depot; cleared thousands of mines and booby traps and expe- dited road building by fashioning road rags and pipe culverts from abandoned oil drums in Tunisia: ; also in Tunisia, rebuilt bombed piers and roads about Sousse har-. har-. bor and helped repair the Bizerte ; naval base. Cpl. Arthur Olson is home on a - furlough for 17 days. He has been . stationed with the Air Corps at . Kansas, and is expecting to go o-verseas o-verseas on his return to his base. |
