Fred belonged to the USCC Corps in 1935 and was a metalworker in 1940. He was listed "in US Army" in 1943. He had three brothers and five sisters, he had been inducted in November 1940.

Fred attended the East Side High School and gratuated. A History teacher of that school searched the yearbooks to find Fred's picture and found the entry in the 1933 yearbook which is shown below.

His sister Carmela explained that Fred was a real gentleman. He wanted to go to college but his parents couldn't afford it. He entered the 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th "Keystone" Infantry Division Company M as a radio operator. On November 8, 1944, he was laying communications wire in the Hurtgen Forest when he was struck in the back and killed instantly by shrapnel from a German artillery shell. Fred's obituary was placed in the Newark Evening News of April 6, 1945 (five months after his death !).

When Fred's father learned that his son had been killed, his hair turned white overnight. Fred's sister Carmela, who kept all her brother's letters and pictures, is the only one who came to Henri-Chapelle to visit her brother. She came with a cousin in 1956 or 1957. Her father asked her to bring back some soil from the grave, which she did. The soil is buried with him, as he requested.

A reader of the local newspaper The Star Ledger stated in a letter: "When Fred Villani posed for his East Side High School yearbook in 1933, a madman in Germany was beginning his trek toward world war. The picture of the handsome young soldier 10 years later was a painful reminder of the fate of this man and so many of his friends from Newark during World War II. These youngsters stood up to the strongest Axis forces and defeated them, often at a terrible price."

Special thanks to Régine Villers, Fred's sister Carmela and William Gordon