Sitting at the desk of his basement office, Dave Dean thumbed through the black-and-white photographs that fill his scrapbook as his face fills with pride.

The Bow resident has certainly seen a lot. The World War II veteran was a member of a unique squad, as he served for 31 months in the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, where he and his fellow soldiers were trained on skis.

Although Dean never attacked on skis, many members of the unit were crucial in helping the Allies succeed in Italy.

In 1943, Dean was sent to Camp Fannin in Tyler, Texas, where he began training for standard combat. The blistering Texas heat soon got to Dean.

“It was a beautiful place to be, but I am not the kind of person who likes the heat.

I just couldn’t take it,” he said. “I had a terrible headache for the first 21 days of training. Basic training is very difficult, and especially in those conditions.”

That November, Dean read a flier looking for soldiers to join a new group in Pando, Colo., at Camp Hale. Days in Colorado were very different from Dean’s days training in Texas.

“On Monday, we would be out there training with skis and a parka until Friday doing exercises,” he said. “I went from the boiling heat of Texas to the snow in Colorado.”

After another stop in Texas for more training in 1944, Dean was shipped to Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia, before being shipped to Naples, Italy, around Christmas of that year.

One day during combat in Italy, Dean had his closest call during his 31-month stint in the unit.

Dean and his other soldiers were walking single-file over a ridge while German tracer bullets shot over their heads. Dean was fourth in line.

“The first two men went over and the guy in front of me stopped,” Dean recalled. “I looked up and saw the tracers flying over me. If the guy in front of me hadn’t stopped, I wouldn’t have been here today.”

Another moment that stands out for the veteran came during his first day of combat.

“That was a really memorable day for me. I can still see those tracer bullets flying around us,” he said. “I went to another ridge and dove into a half-made foxhole. Next thing I know, three other guys jumped on top of me.”

From the basic training in the terrible heat of Texas to the freezing cold camp-outs in Colorado and Italy, Dean said he simply did what he needed to do.

“We were asked to do it and we did it,” he said. “We had to do it whether we liked it or not.” After the war was over, Dean became a supply sergeant before his discharge on Feb. 20, 1946, less than a month before his March 10 birthday. He takes pride in having served, and being in and out before his 21st birthday.

Dean went on to become a public accountant, and now enjoys a variety of hobbies. The backyard of his Bow home is frequented by visits from a variety of birds he enjoys feeding – although he learned the hard way to take the bird feeder down at night to keep the neighborhood bear away.

Back in his office, after he looks at the final photograph, Dean closes his scrapbook and puts it back into the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet. On Veterans Day, Dean doesn’t need a scrapbook to look back on the time he spent defending his country during World War II.