Four brothers - Youngest of four Rich Fountain brothers drafted into Army after World War II

Andrew Boehmer was the youngest and last of four brothers called to service because of World War II. After completing communications training at Scott Field, Illinois, he served with the 25th Infantry Division in Osaka, Japan.

Born in 1928, Andrew Boehmer of Rich Fountain was little more than a year old when his mother unexpectedly passed away, leaving their father with six children to raise. Difficult years would follow as the Stock Market Crash of 1929 brought about a lean time known as the Great Depression and farmers in Osage County joined scores of their counterparts nationwide struggling to extract a living from their land.

The youngest of six children, Boehmer grew up to witness his three older brothers depart for military service because of World War II—one of whom, Stephen, died in 1944 after drowning off the coast of Italy while serving with the U.S. Army.

“As I understand it, my father was basically raised on the farm by his older sister, Catherine,” said Gene, the oldest of Boehmer’s children.

His son further explained that little information exists regarding his father’s early years and his subsequent military service because of a fire decades ago that destroyed many of the family records and mementos. Like his siblings, Boehmer attended Freeburg High School. The young farmhand also followed in the footsteps of his older brothers when he traveled to the courthouse in Linn, Missouri, on March 15, 1946—his eighteenth birthday—to register with his local draft board as required by the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.

He returned briefly to his work in “self employed farming,” as noted on his draft registration card, while his older brother Sylvester remained in the Navy until April 1946 followed by his brother Louis, who did not receive his discharge from the Army until October 1946. The call to service that had come for his three older brothers arrived for the youngest Boehmer on July 5, 1946, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army at Scott Field, Illinois—a U.S. Army Air Corps training site that became Scott Air Force Base on January 13, 1948.

“By the onset of World War II, Scott Field was well on its way to earning the title of Communications University of the Army Air Forces and adopted the slogan, ‘The best damn radio operators in the world,’” according to a fact sheet available on the official website of Scott Air Force Base.

An article appearing in the September 19, 2018 edition of the Belleville News-Democrat (Belleville, Illinois), reported that by the close of World War II, “Scott Field Radio School had produced an astonishing 77,370 radio operators/mechanics for the war effort, including Allied nations, such as France, China, the Netherlands, and several Latin American nations.”

For several weeks, Boehmer remained at Scott Field to complete communications training and went on to earn the designation as a “Message Center Clerk.” In early October 1946, after only three months in the U.S. Army, he was sent to the West Coast to board a troop ship bound for service overseas. Arriving in Japan on November 4, 1946, he was assigned to the 25th Signal Company under the 25th Infantry Division. Following the example of his older brother Louis, who had served as a military policeman in Japan months earlier, Boehmer became a soldier in the Army of Occupation.

The 25th Infantry Division had participated in a number of bloody battles of World War II including campaigns in the Central Pacific, Northern Solomons, Guadalcanal and the Philippine island of Luzon. The division was sent to Japan in October 1945, a year prior to Boehmer’s arrival. At the time of Boehmer’s arrival, the 25th Signal Company was located in the Japanese city of Osaka—an area that “had suffered several bombing damages, but a number of large, modern buildings remained,” which were secured for use by the occupational forces, noted the book The 25th Division and World War 2.

Throughout the next several months, Boehmer and the soldiers of the 25th Signal Company provided communication support to the military organizations under the command of the 25th Infantry Division scattered across Japan. In early October 1947, after spending a year overseas, a 19-year-old Boehmer received orders to return to the United States. Receiving his discharge as a technician fifth grade (tech corporal) at Fort Lawton, Washington, on October 29, 1947, he returned to Rich Fountain, married and became father to six children.

“He lived in Freeburg for awhile and had a shop where he did mechanic and body work,” said Boehmer’s oldest son, Gene. “We later moved to Jefferson City and he worked a number of years for McKay Buick.”

As Gene recalled, his father was later employed as part of a crew that traveled throughout the United States painting bridges but in the early 1960s, he moved to the state of California to perform bodywork at a Buick dealership. He eventually settled in Iowa, where he passed on August 31, 1977, when only 49 years old. His body was returned to Missouri and interred in the Sacred Heart Cemetery in Rich Fountain.

In the years since his passing, his son has come to realize that the fire that consumed many important records was a contributing factor to little information remaining of his father’s military experience.    
 
“I don’t know anything about what he did while he was in the service and my siblings don’t know either,” Gene Boehmer said. “He never talked about his Army service while we were growing up, and because of the fire and his death at such a young age, he was never able to give us any insight about what he experienced. It’s a relief to know that we can learn a little bit about him through other sources,” he added.
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Jeremy P. Ämick writes on behalf of the Silver Star Families of America. 
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