Pierre Rinfret

In 2001 I started a brief period where I emailed back and forth with Pierre Rinfret. I found him to be intelligent and honest about his experiences. A lot of former Yankee division people are not to crazy about what he wrote in regards to the division during World War II.

Anyone who has ever been in any kind of combat realizes that he is referring to isolated incidents, and it does  not refect on the formation as a whole. We discussed his and my war experiences just for the fun of it.

Pierre made a few statements on his site before he passed away that I did not agree with.

He said that veterans organizations never made any changes at all for the benifit of veterans. This was not true and the major groups were instrumental in working with Ronald Reagan in 1987 to get the Veterans Adminstration raised to cabinet level. This allowed veterans the right of appeal through the VA’s own court system.

He thought that General Paul should have relieved Colonel Colley and all the command involved in the Cumberland Gap drowning incident. General Paul was an interesting person, he was a player in the Regular Army and was a fast mover that orginally was from Worcester.  There were many training accidents in the military at that time and it is still quite common for people to die in them to this day.

As for the Irish in the YDVA, the association has always been a Boston based entity and his regiment the 104th was really from Central Massachusetts, a slight culture difference. Yet he continued to send his dues in even though he did not approve of the drinking.

Pierre entered the division after the Lorraine Campaign, so the divison was really well battered by the time he got there. His claim it was full of draftees in a training divison was true at that point, but the Lorraine Campain was every bit as deadly and devastating as World War II combat could be, Pierre missed the unit before then and may have had a different point of view.