Amanuensis Monday: Harold Newmark and the 101st Airborne - 1950

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

Harold Newmark (1918-2003) was the brother of my grandfather. When I transcribed his obituary, it mentioned he was in the 101st Airborne division during WWII. However, at that time, I didn't know what that may have meant.

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The St. Louis Star and Times – Jan 18, 1950 p. 29
Vets of Bulge Reminisce At Area Reunion
By Bob Schulman – Star-Times Staff Writer

BOB CAWEIN, who has only two fingers on his right hand and a jagged scar along his right temple, smiled wryly.

“Five years ago last month, most of us wouldn’t have bet a plugged nickel this meeting would ever be held.”

Cawein’s delight at being present was keenly shared by the 20 other St. Louisans who showed up with him the other evening, in the Armory on Market st.

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FIVE YEARS AGO they were still members of the 101st Airborne Division, thrown into the snow-covered Belgian town of Bastogne to bleed, freeze, or both, as eight crack Nazi divisions surrounded them in one of the most dramatic episodes of World War II.

The Armory meeting was their first formal reunion since the war. It was called by onetime Pfc. Harold Newmark of University City, vice-president of American Textile Products, Inc., to create a St. Louis chapter of the 101st Airborne Division Association.

The current movie, “Battleground,” is a graphic portrayal of what happened at Bastogne. But until the reminiscences started rolling it was difficult to fit the men at the meeting into the roles.

At Bastogne, the Germans had dubbed them “the big-pocketed butchers.” But now they were just another collection of civilians and an airman.

“We’re not the commando type,” Cawein, a truck lines salesman, conceded with a grin. “I used to wear a size 34 suit. Now I wear a 46.”

Newmark was up from a size 30 to a size 36. George W. (Pops) Hendrix of Webster Groves was down to 119 pounds when they froze him in at Bastogne. Now he’s back to his 168 – quite proper for a man of 45.

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Notes:

1) More on the Siege of Bastogne.