FARMINGTON — Seventy years ago, William Friberg enlisted in the U.S. Army and traveled from Illinois to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. He trained for a year to survive and fight in harsh weather at high altitudes.

The next stop for the 19-year-old was Italy, where he climbed Mt. Belvedere with the 85th Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division. Along with the 86th and 87th Regiments, the 85th routed German forces and drove fascist dictator Benito Mussolini into the Alps, where he was captured.

Friberg, of Farmington, was honored at the fourth annual veterans recognition service at the Farmington Baptist Church on Saturday.

“I wasn’t a hero, by any means,” he said, after receiving a Bronze Star and two additional medals for his service in World War II. “I was one of thousands who did what they had to do.”

Mountain fighting was new to the military. The U. S. Army took notice of the Finnish military’s trained skiers, who successfully fought against Soviet divisions. Facing concerns over escalating aggression across Europe, they decided to create a military division with a high level of preparedness for winter warfare.

The 10th Mountain Division was organized in 1943 at Camp Hale in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. The division became the alpine combat arm of the US military, and Friberg became part of the 85th Regiment that helped change the course of World War II.

“We trained at 10,000 feet and higher,” Friberg said. “We learned to survive in harsh conditions.”

He spent a year learning to fight and survive under the most cruel weather conditions. In Italy, in 1945, he saw combat in the North Apennine Mountains. His division was ordered to take German positions on Mt. Belvedere, a feat no other American troops had accomplished. Troops were ordered to “fix bayonets,” which signaled close combat.

“It was sort of a stalemate until we made that breakthrough,” Friberg said. “Then, the German army pretty much collapsed and began to retreat, and our division just kept pushing them all the way to the Alps.”

The fighting was bloody and exhausting, and few of Friberg’s fellow soldiers survived. The 10th captured more than 1,000 prisoners, and the division continued toward the Po Valley. According to Army records, 553 mountain infantryman were killed, wounded or missing in the first day.

On April 20, seven days and 1,283 casualties later, the first units of the 85th Infantry Regiment got to the Po Valley, and the 10th Mountain Division was the first to reach the Po River. The first battalion of the 87th Mountain Infantry, the original mountain infantry unit, made the crossing under fire in 50 light canvas assault boats.

Friberg said the next step was the trek to Lake Garda, in the foothills of the Alps. On April 27, the first troops reached the south end of the lake, cutting off the German army’s main escape route to the Brenner Pass. The Allied troops had an advantage with their transportation options.

“From our view, we could see a long caravan of lights snaking from the valley towards the Alps,” Friberg said. “We found out later that Mussolini was in that convoy.”

Dictator Benito Mussolini was caught and executed with other fascist leaders in Milan on April 29.

Organized resistance in Italy ended on May 2, and Friberg said he went to rejoice privately in a local church.

“I just knelt down and said, ‘Thank you, Lord, that this war is over,'” he said Saturday.

Soldiers were loaded into open boxcars, and they traveled back to ships that took them home. The railroad cars were designed to carry 40 men or eight horses, but they usually carried many more during the war, he said.

“It was quite something to be in one of these boxcars, waving to people as we rode through the countryside,” he said.