[Editor's note: The following was sent as a letter to the editor in regards to "The Boys of Company E"]

To the Editors:

This is regard to the recent Memorial Day article on the Boys of Company E by Joe Olvera. There seemed to be some discrepancies in the facts as I have heard them. This is offered as potential clarification. I previously had submitted this material as reader's responses.

According to many sources I've seen, the Commander of Company E at the Rapido River crossing on January 22, 1944 was Captain John L. Chapin, who was killed in this action and subsequently awarded the Silver Star along with Staff Sgt. Roque O. Segura. Your article stated that Gabriel L. Navarrete was the commander of Company E at the time.

Gabriel L. Navarrete was Captain Chapin's Lieutenant. Chapin was to be promoted to Major though had not received official notice at the time of his death at the crossing as Company E member Ignacio Roseman of El Paso recalled. Your article stated that Navarrete was Captain at the time. I believe that Navarrete was promoted to Captain and assumed command of Company E after the death of Captain Chapin, after the Rapido River assault.

According to Ricardo Palacios, Company E Staff Sergeant at the time and participant in the Rapido River crossing, Gabriel Navarrete who was a Lieutenant at the time, was order to reconnoiter the enemy side of the river along with Roque Segura and Edwardo Romo, late of El Paso. Navarrete was wounded and sent back across the river in the raft and rope system mentioned in your article.

Mr. Palacios has stated that Navarrete was not a participant in the actual pre-dawn suicidal crossing which took place at 3:00 a.m. Navarrete had been sent back with the wounded. Capt. Chapin lead the crossing and was later found dead on the enemy side of the river. According to one source Chapin was not found until a week after the assault, in a foxhole with his radio in his hand.

Palacios recounted this when he and two other surviving members of Company E, Martin Luna and Alex Rivas, gathered at the sculpture studio of Julio Sanchez de Alva on the 700 block of Texas Street in El Paso. Sanchez de Alva has been commissioned by the city to create a memorial bronze depicting Company E and their campaigns in Italy, including the Rapido River crossing.

Being the son of a Company E member, I grew up knowing many of the men in Company E: They had formed a social club after the war that held monthly dances, even bringing the Glen Miller Orchestra to the El Paso Civic Center on one occasion. They all shared war stories at gatherings, colorful and terrible in their accounts. Many of these men had grown up as childhood friends in the same neighborhood, what was then known as East El Paso, the area between Five Points and Concordia Cemetery. They enlisted together in the Texas National Guard because they were truly a band of brothers. World War II saw the induction of the Texas National Guard into the army, into the famed 36th Division, the "T" patchers.

Chapin is commemorated in a scupture in the rotunda at John L. Chapin High School on Fort Bliss. The names of all the members of Company E including my father are inscribed in the same rotunda above. Segura who was a close friend of my father from childhood is commemorated at the VFW Post named after him located near the intersection of Dyer and Pershing streets. Other Company E members I was privileged to know as family friends were Angel Ponce, now residing in California and Alex Carrillo, late of El Paso.

In the mid 80's or thereabouts, the members of Company E held a reunion in El Paso with surviving members of the famed 442nd Infantry Regiment all Japanese American combat unit in World War II, recognized as the most decorated army unit with the highest casualty rate at the time. The boys of the 442nd had been sent in to rescue Company E from behind enemy lines when their position had been overrun by the Germans in Italy. There was a close bond between the men of both these units as a result. The story of the 442nd is preserved in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

Alberto Rivas