Veterans Day Post

A POSTCARD’S STORY

Steven Wade Veatch

Sometimes postcards reveal so much, such as this one. Lorene High mailed this postcard, showing Colorado columbines, from Cortez, Colorado, on February 20, 1941, to George Baumgartner.

Columbines adorn the front or picture side of a postcard mailed in 1941 from Cortez, Colorado. The message on the backside tells a story. From the S. W. Veatch postcard collection.

George and Lorene appear to be pen pals. Lorene introduced herself to George on the postcard. She wrote on the back, “I am 21 years old and work in a drugstore and live at home with four brothers and one sister. More next time.”

George Baumgartner was 30 at the time he received the postcard and worked as a section hand on the railroad near Breed, Wisconsin. George saved the postcard and kept it with his mementos.

On June 5, 1941, George enlisted in the army and was assigned to Company A, Eighty-First Chemical Mortar Battalion. Just six months later, on December 8, 1941, the United States entered World War II—the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

George took part in the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944. His battalion supported the landing at Easy Red Beach (the code name for one of the most fought over stretches of beach). George’s Company A remained on the beach the entire morning during the allied invasion under crushing machine gun fire. George was killed that day when an enemy artillery shell exploded near him. His family buried him in Breed, Oconto County, Wisconsin.

Eight decades later, this postcard remains today to tell the beginning of a story and two lives woven together for a brief time.