By Tanja Linton, Naco Heritage Alliance

Anderson “Andy” Pollard fought in Italy with the 92nd Infantry Division in World War II and is one of America’s few remaining Buffalo Soldiers.

Upon a casual glance, the centenarian blends in with the dozens of Veterans who regularly visit southern Arizona’s largest military installation. Slowed with the weight of his life experiences, you can still detect the military posture drilled into him as an 18-year old. A closer look reveals Andy to be a unique member of our Greatest Generation. 

Engage Andy in conversation and his kindness, warmth and gentle humor make it easy to understand why Italians liberated from the Nazis called him and his fellow 92nd Infantry Division Soldiers “buon gigante,” good giants.

The National WWII Museum in New Orleans describes the segregated 92nd Infantry Division as being composed primarily of enlisted African American personnel and nicknamed the “Buffalo Soldiers.” Activated for World War I, Oct. 24, 1917 and deactivated February 1919, the division was reactivated for WWII Oct. 15, 1942. 

Elements of the 92nd moved to Fort Huachuca, Arizona for training until it deployed to join the Fifth Army in Italy in September 1944. This was the largest concentration of Black Soldiers during WWII. 

The oath a young private from Bedford, Massachusetts took, launched him on a circuitous journey across the country to train for his WWII overseas deployment. Andy unknowingly initiated an 82-year odyssey that brought him back to his Army home at Fort Huachuca on a monsoon morning in 2026. 

Andy grew up in Bedford and later moved to Chicago where his mother lived. He was inducted into the Army in Chicago. 

He recalls thinking that smart kids went into either the Air Force or the Navy. At the Great Lakes Training Station in Illinois, he encountered a number of Black Soldiers from Camp Robert Smalls, a segregated U.S. Navy training facility. “Don’t get drafted. They’ll put you into the infantry,” he says friends told him. He thought, “Oh yeah, I don’t want to do that.” 

Andy knew that military training could be useful to start professional life once enlistments were done. “They taught you how to wash dishes, how to cook and how to serve officers. Gee, good job for when you get out,” he quipped with a chuckle thinking about the naval option.

Andy did indeed get drafted. He headed off to Fort Sheridan on Lake Michigan in Illinois to begin his Army service. He remembers it being winter time. “They gave me a weapon; a broomstick. Put me on guard duty. I didn’t know how to use the broomstick but I stuck it out,” he said.

“Looking back at my service, it was cyclical – integration, segregation; integration, segregation,” Andy reflects about his time in the Army.

He eventually received orders to report to Fort Benning, Ga. for basic training. He traveled there by rail. 

“Rode it all the way down to the Mason/Dixon Line. Until then, everything was integrated,” he recalls.  “We were enjoying the camaraderie of the white troops as well as ourselves.” As the train crossed the Mason/Dixon Line things changed. “When it was time to eat supper, they put a curtain around me. I said to them, ‘Private dining room. How did I deserve this?’  It was my first experience with segregation,” he said.

He remembers being met by a white officer when he arrived at Columbus, Ga., outside Fort Benning, Ga. Andy can’t forget his name. “My name is Andy and his was Amos. Lt. Amos used to play football for the University of Oklahoma. Big guy. White guy, nice guy.” 

Lt. Amos told Andy to wait in the waiting room. He left to retrieve Andy’s duffle bag so they could proceed to Fort Benning. “So I’m waiting in the waiting room and a White MP came over and said ‘What are you doing here? You gotta get out of here.’ I told him Lt. Amos told me to wait here. He then asked where I was from. I said Bedford and he said he was from Rhode Island. We struck up a conversation. He then asked me to wait at the door with him.” It was Andy’s second experience with segregation. 

Andy was placed in the 4th Bn, 4th Co, 4th Plt, 4th Squad. He along with seven other Black Soldiers enlisted under the Army Specialized Training Program. ASTP was a military training program instituted by the U.S. Army during WWII to meet wartime demands for junior officers and Soldiers with technical skills. Conducted at 227 universities, it offered training in such fields as engineering, foreign languages and medicine. Six of these schools were historically black colleges and universities: Howard University; Meharry Medical College; North Carolina A&T; Prairie View State College; West Virginia State College; and Wilberforce University. The program was implemented in December 1942, and drastically curtailed in February 1944.

The group of eight were in basic training to later be sent to college for additional training as engineers, however the Army had begun phasing out the program. Originally set to go on to Prairie View State College, the oldest public historically Black college or university in Texas, the Soldiers were now needed to meet the Army’s growing requirement for infantrymen. Black Soldiers were assigned to the 92nd Infantry Division. 

The 92nd was on maneuvers so Fort Polk, Louisiana became the next stop on Andy’s Army odyssey. 

Like so many Soldiers before and after him, Andy has distinct memories of the notorious, southern Army post. He recalls arriving on a cold, rainy night and setting up tents in the woods. At sunrise, the Soldiers were ordered to line up their hastily erected tents. 

When the tents finally passed muster, the freshly arrived Soldiers had to report to their new unit. Other 92nd Soldiers told Andy he shouldn’t want to be an infantryman. Upon reporting in, he was asked about his experience. He replied flippantly he was an artilleryman. “They looked at each other and said what is this nut trying to tell us,” he remembers. They quickly decided to assign him to E Co, 371st Infantry Regiment. 

Andy soon learned the Soldiers of E Co, 371st were in the stockade for their poor behavior during training. It’s not clear now what happened. “Next thing I know we’re in Fort Huachuca,” he said. 

He remembers crossing the country by rail in one direction and then heading back to the embarkation point in the other. 

On the way to Fort Huachuca, the train stopped in the Texas panhandle. Andy still remembers segregation rearing its ugly head once again. Soldiers stepped off the train to stretch their legs and get some food at the restaurants which were separated by race. The Black Soldiers had to go to the back door to get their food. 

On the journey to the Hampton Roads point of embarkation at Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia, the Soldiers again faced racial discrimination. They heard the rumor that one of the white cashiers wouldn’t take change from a Black Soldier. Soldiers of the 92nd clashed with White Soldiers from the 17th Airborne. This resulted in the 92nd Soldiers being restricted to their ship to await the rest of the convoy which took 33 days.

Andy’s Army odyssey then took to the high seas. “I had my 19th birthday in the middle of the Atlantic. I remember getting to the Straits of Hercules between Portugal and Africa and watching the porpoises jumping up in front of the ship” he said. He recalls stopping in Oran, Africa and seeing officers disembarking to stretch their legs. Eventually the ship anchored in Sicily. Andy remembers climbing down rope ladders and setting foot in Italy. 

“It was winter and it was cold. They put us on trucks and it was dark” he said. The trucks’ headlights were outfitted with “cateyes,” used on military vehicles to prevent detection by enemy aircraft at night, which made navigating mountainous routes perilous. Andy’s arrival in Italy made a lasting impression. “One (of the trucks) went off the road. My friend Bostick got hurt. We heard the artillery up in front and we arrived at night and disembarked in a town called Serevezza which was at the foothills of the Apennine Mountains. There was a lot of noise going on.”

At daybreak, Andy and his fellow Soldiers were ordered to assemble in parties of three and immediately put to work under enemy fire. Emotions ripple across Andy’s face as he relives his chaotic introduction to the war. He served in Italy from November 1944 until December 1945.

One day his duties required him to take some prisoners from Serevezza to Pietrasanta. On the  highway along the Apennine Mountains he spotted a sign: the enemy can see you. A reminder the hills were full of Germans. 

His sunny demeanor returns remembering the camaraderie with the Soldiers he considers his brothers in E Co, 371st. They were a bit rascally and no strangers to getting in trouble which resulted in them developing a familiarity with KP (kitchen police/patrol) duties. The unit’s casualties were taking a toll on the ranks. He was eventually transferred to L Co 371st, sad to leave his battle buddies at E Co behind.

A smile graces Andy’s face as he remembers the E Co barber General Martin, a comical name for an enlisted Soldier. General was illiterate like so many of the unit’s Soldiers. During mail call, he’d seek out Andy with excitement on his round face, waving a letter in his hand, asking that he read it to him. Andy remembers many Soldiers having to sign with an X on paydays. 

He reported to L Co, 371st. “They threw a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) at me. I said I’d never fired one of these. Well, they said, you’re gonna learn. That stayed with me the rest of the time I was in Italy.”

In early February, Andy was wounded in an attack. His ammunition bearer, Luther Rucker, was seriously wounded. “I was helping him off X or Y or whatever we were on. He was bleeding like the dickens and I was soaked. I didn’t realize that I had been hit too.” The pair made it to an aid station. “They patched me up and I had to get back on the line ‘cause Jerry was really swarming. I didn’t go back to the hospital and it kept getting worse.” Andy’s wounds earned him a stay at the integrated 33rd Hospital in Livorno. 

“The Red Cross came and handed out these blue bags with red drawstrings filled with toilet items. When they didn’t leave one for us (the Black Soldiers), a little Red Cross lady came back and said put this under your pillow. That was ironic because my mother was a secretary for the Red Cross in Los Angeles.” Because of her job she got to see a list of the wounded which was her first notification Andy had been injured.

Andy’s mother kept all the letters he sent. Written on V Mail, a secure, space-saving postal system used during WWII to transport over 1 billion letters between Soldiers abroad and the home front using microfilm technology. “You had to have good eyes to read it because it was so small,” he chuckled. 

Andy remembers his time at the hospital fondly. The big white Red Cross ship would dock in the harbor to take the severely wounded Soldiers home. He was assigned to the 6695th Reconditioning Co to recover from his wounds sufficiently to go back on the line and then the war ended. 

Andy now transitioned from being a Soldier to a student. The University of Florence had a program where he could earn college credits. He enjoyed the amenities of the campus. The university had horseback riding, a swimming pool, sports and co-eds – nurses and WAACs, he remembers with a twinkle in his eye. It was an enjoyable time. But he was also waiting to earn enough points to make the journey home. The points were earned with length of service, medals received and the number of family members Soldiers had. “I didn’t have enough points but that didn’t matter because I was having a good time at that college,” Andy said.

Tours organized for the Soldiers also added to the appeal of campus life in 1945. Some of Andy’s officers were looking out for him because of his time on the frontline and arranged for him to take an R&R tour of Rome. “I said oh good but I ain’t got no money. I went to the supply sergeant and he loaded up a duffle bag full of blankets and coats and stuff,” Andy recalls.This would become a form of currency. On his first day in Rome, Andy took his duffle bag to the black market and got rich. He then had a great time meeting troops from India, Brazil and a whole host of other countries. 

Another fond memory was the trip he took to Switzerland. “We were the first four Black Soldiers into Switzerland. It was great,” he said. He and his friend took the train from Italy traveling through the Gotthard Tunnel arriving in Zurich. He stayed at the Glockenhof and remembers the friendliness of Swiss families at the railroad station who crowded him and his fellow Black Soldiers asking them to come to their homes for dinner. The entire tour cost $35 which included the train and hotel. Eventually the group made their way to Bienne, Switzerland. This stop was memorable because Andy met a Black dancer chaperoned by her mother at a club called Gato Nero. They fell in love and her mother thought Andy would take the daughter to America. “That never happened,” Andy said, quickly moving on to another topic.

This period evokes positive memories for Andy. Days when the shower truck arrived and he could clean up and put on a fresh uniform, the joy of mail call or taking in a USO show even if some of them were lousy.

Andy was a young man in Italy recovering from the trauma of combat, but he had an important decision to make:  should he muster out and stay, or go home?  Some of his comrades in arms chose to stay, having made local love connections. Thoughts of home and a desire to see his grandmother in Massachusetts curtailed thoughts of living abroad and led him to the gangplank of a victory ship for the journey home. Andy’s Army odyssey continued.

Back in Chicago everybody was returning from the war. He was able to return to his pre-war job at the post office. Flush with black market cash, Andy was burning the candle at both ends and the middle. His mother had moved to Los Angeles but the other mother figures in his life expressed their concerns that his working, night clubbing, drinking and hedonistic choices were going to kill him. They advised him to get out of Chicago.

He embraced their counsel and enrolled in Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania to study sociology. After graduate school, Andy went to work in New York and eventually landed in Los Angeles. 

He is appreciative of surviving the war. He misses so many of the guys he served with. Andy has returned to Italy several times and visited the Florence American Cemetery. Framed by the hills of Tuscany, nearly 4,400 are buried there, most died in the brutal campaign against the Nazis in Northern Italy in the final year of the war. The beautiful memorial honors the contributions and sacrifice of American servicemen and women in Italy during WWII.

Although he had returned to the site of his WWII service a few times, this was Andy’s first time visiting Fort Huachuca since his initial Army training. The Southwest Association of Buffalo Soldiers invited him to be the guest speaker for their Day of the Buffalo Soldier dinner in Sierra Vista, Arizona. After 82 years, Andy’s Army odyssey brought him back to the traditional home of the Buffalo Soldier. 

One of his greatest wishes was to attend one of the 92nd’s annual get-togethers. Unfortunately, professional responsibilities and family obligations have caused him to miss them all. The invitation to visit Fort Huachuca finally provided the opportunity to reconnect with a significant chapter of Andy Pollard’s life.

On the morning before our interview at the Fort Huchuca museum, Andy sat on the patio of his accommodations, admiring the mountain view thinking about the similarities between the Apennine Mountain and the Huachucas, which feel like smaller versions of their Italian counterparts. Memories of the battlefield clearly return. “There’s X, Y, Z, Ohio, 1, 2, 3 . . . it looks like Italy all over again but smaller,” he says. 

He loved Italy, especially its people.  “Viareggio, Serevezza …  they find out you’re a Buffalo Soldier and they become the huggingest people in the world. They feel liberated. It’s a wonderful feeling going back and getting your hugs,” he shares. 

A Double V is hugely significant to Andy. The Double V campaign was a WWII movement launched by influential Black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier in 1942 demanding victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism and discrimination at home. 

Despite a victory in Europe, continued discrimination hindered Andy from enjoying the same feeling of victory at home despite the loss of a great number of brave men, many still teenagers. The continued existence of racism makes it feel like their sacrifice was for naught. Andy would like to see the same appreciation for Buffalo Soldiers here as he has experienced from the Italian people. 

The 92nd Infantry Division advanced more than 3,000 square miles and captured more than 20,000 German prisoners. They suffered heavy casualties – with more than a quarter of the unit killed or wounded in action. Overcoming obstacles, the Soldiers of the 92nd earned numerous decorations, including 12 Distinguished Service Crosses, two Legions of Merit, over 1,000 Bronze Stars, and more than 1,800 Purple Hearts, with Andy Pollard being a recipient of one of them. 

Among the division’s heroes are 1st Lt. John R. Fox and Capt. Reuben Horner. Fox was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for sacrificing his own life by calling artillery fire onto his own position to stop a German advance. A multi-domain operations non-kinetic range complex on Fort Huachuca is named to honor him. Horner, of Tucson, Arizona, emerged as one of the most decorated Soldiers of WWII.

In his 82-year Army odyssey, Andy Pollard has been a Soldier, Purple Heart recipient, student, and sociologist, but one of his most enduring memories is of the time he was a good giant.