http://www.181stengineerheavypontonbattalion.com/page-d/
Here's some text again (see one of the previous links above) from the The Corps of Engineers - The War Against Germany. Notice how it mentions my dad's unit too (540th).
Peninsular Base
With the arrival of more service
troops from North Africa, the Fifth
Army Base Section assumed more re-
sponsibility for supply in the army's
rear. Through summer 1943, Fifth
Army's support organization was only
a skeleton, designated 6665th Base
Area Group (Provisional) and modeled
after the NATOUSA Atlantic Base Sec-
tion. It changed its provisional charac-
ter and its name to the full-fledged
Fifth Army Base Section on 28 August.
Under Brig. Gen. Arthur W. Pence, an
advance echelon accompanied Fifth
Army headquarters to Italy, landing
at Salerno on D plus 2. General
Pence established his headquarters at
Naples the day after the city was
captured, and on 25 October his com-
mand became the Peninsular Base Sec-
tion, with its Engineer Service under
Col. Donald S. Burns.^^
By 10 October the first full-sized con-
voy brought the 345th Engineer Gen-
eral Service Regiment to the base sec-
tion. The Base Section Engineer Ser-
vice also had at its disposal the 540th
Engineer Combat Regiment, two engi-
neer general service regiments (the
345th and 94th), the 386th Engineer
Battalion (Separate), one company of a
water supply battalion (attached from
Fifth Army), an engineer port construc-
tion and repair group, an engineer
maintenance company, a depot com-
pany, and a map depot detachment — in
all, about 6,000 engineers. ^^