The Daily Alaska empire., 1945-09-17
ALPINE BATTLE
 FIELD REMINDS
 CAPT. OF HOME
Tom Stewart Back from Italy Fighting Front
 To Travel Alaska

 tender for recognition as Number One local war hero is back in Ju- neau on terminal leave after cam- paigning in Italy with the Tenth Mountain Division as an officer of the original mountain regiment, the Eighty-S Seventh. He expects to be reverted to inactive status on Oc- tpber IS.
 Interviewed this morning in the cffice of his father, Territorial Com missioner of Mines, B. D. Stewart. the Captain was reluctant to elaborate on his combat experiences, but did say that Alps terrain in regions where his campaigning took him is very similar to that of Alaska, so much so that it made him even more anx- ious to get home It's more open and there's no water, but otherwise it's much like here. he declared.
 Capt. Stewart arrived by plane on Sunday, after some delay in getting out of Seattle. Not fed up with travelling, among the first things he wants to do is see more of Alaska. He plans to leave in about a week for the Westward and will drop in to see his oldest brother, B. D. Stew art, Jr., Alaska Road Commission superintendent at Valdez.
 Trained as a ski-trooper, Capt. Stewart did all his fighting in Italy off the boards. He did get in some skiing in Italy, though. In Rome on five day leave, he and some of his ski-trooper companions visited the luxurious mountain resort pro- noted by Mussolini at Mt Termin- ello, in the Aprenines 80 miles east of Rome, There they enjoyed a postman's holiday" He is looking to having a really good time on the slopes about Juneau this winter.
 Capt. Stewart landed back in the United States at the same port from which he embarked, Newport News, on August 2, his tunic em- blazoned with ribbons representing action in the AsiaticPacific, Ameri- can and European African Middle East theatres. He also wears the Silver and Bronze Stars, an emblem of participation in the first ann phibious landing of American troops in this war, at Kiska, the American Defense Medal, and is proud of the Combat Infantry Badge, fostered by the late Ernie Pyle as a distinctive mark for the fighting foot soldiers
 Chee Hermann, another Juneau boy, was also a member of the Tenth Mountain Division. Capt. Stewart stated that their trails cross cd in Italy once, before Chee was wounded in action with the Eighty Fifth Mountain Regiment in battle for one of Italy's Mt. Belvederes.
 A pre-Pearl Harbor volunteer, Capt. Stewart saw his initial action at Kiska. After the Aleutian cam paign, he received additional train ing in the States, then went to Italy During the final two weeks of the war in Europe, his division spear headed the attack across the Pc Valley in north Italy. His battal- ion was the first to cross the em- battled Pc River. Adding to the cost of that Pc crossing, he said, was the fact that the battalion was in ad- vance of it's air support and Nazi troops defending a ferry landing at the point of attack were able to de- press anti-aircraft guns to bear up- on the charging Americans.
 In the final phases of that cam- paign, assistant commander of Capt. Stewards division was the famed Ranger" leader, Col. William o. Darby, who was killed in the drive on Brenner Pass.