Boise Basin Search and Recovery Club » Dog Tags

US vet’s dog tags found on old Italian battlefield

Quinn — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:30:40 +0000

(AP) – May 31, 2010

BUDA, Texas — A retired police inspector’s newly acquired metal detecting hobby helped him find dog tags and other items belonging to a Texas World War II veteran who was wounded on an Italian battlefield.

Oscar Glomb served with the 36th Infantry Division and landed at the Bay of Salerno in 1943. He was wounded in a June 1944 battle near Gavorrano.

Glomb died in 1998. His son says he never forgot about his dog tags.

Retired Italian police inspector Daniele Bianchini found the tags, a ring and a medallion while practicing his new hobby on the old battlefield. Bianchini asked to keep one of the tags and sent the rest of the items to Glomb’s family in Texas.

Glomb’s 85-year-old wife Dorothy calls it a miracle to have the items back and says the family is thankful.

Information from: Austin American-Statesman, http://www.statesman.com

Scott Everhart Brewer’s mystery is solved

Dan Lute — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:45:26 +0000

By Tim Woodward - Idaho Statesman

Edition Date: 02/06/08

Everyone loves a mystery, right?Especially when it can be solved.

Last week’s column on Scott Everhart Brewer is a good example. Brewer was a Boisean who died in Germany while serving as a gunner on a B-24 during World War II. Last month, a German named Tomas Hauschild was working with a metal detector when he found Brewer’s dog tag 64 years after his plane was shot down. Hauschild wants to give it to one of Brewer’s relatives.

But how? Brewer never married. Would any of his family members even be alive after so many years? If so, who and where and how to find them? And who was the mysterious “Mary” whose name was on a bracelet he was wearing when he died?

My phone was ringing when I came to work the day the column was published and didn’t stop for four hours. Readers called and e-mailed from as far away as Virginia.

Bit by bit, pieces of the puzzle began to fit together:

Boisean Dan Lute went through old city directories and found that Brewer had a sister named Juanita and a brother named Millard. Juanita was listed as a Navy nurse, Millard as a reporter and photographer. Their father, Paul Brewer, was a salesman at the Mode, a Downtown department store.

Ronda Watson searched genealogical records on the Internet and found two more siblings, brothers Paul and Noel.

Former Big Sky Commissioner Ron Stephenson checked census records and called to report that Brewer had had a grandmother named Mary in Illinois. The Mary on the bracelet?

Several people called to say they knew the Brewers when they lived at 1202 E. Washington, the address engraved on Brewer’s dog tag. Harry O’Neil, 85, knew them best.

“Noel was my best friend,” O’Neil said. “I knew Scott when he was a bartender at a place called the Smokehouse in Downtown Boise. He was a good-looking guy and probably the most popular of all the Brewer kids. He was friendly to everyone and always had a smile on his face. It was a terrible blow when the family learned that he was missing in action.”

A terrible blow made worse by the fact that Paul Brewer, the Mode salesman and the children’s father, had died of natural causes two days earlier.

Noel Brewer, O’Neil said, later moved to New Mexico and had three children. Juanita Brewer “married a football player. They got married in Seattle and had a son.”

Records show that Brewer’s sister and all of his brothers have died. But there was a good chance that Juanita’s and Noel’s children were still alive. Finding them, however, could be difficult.

Then came the e-mail from Elinor Chehey. Chehey grew up across the alley from the Brewers’ house. She not only remembered Juanita’s son’s name – Richard Justice – she’d found a telephone number for him.

A couple of hours later, once my phone had stopped ringing, I was talking to him.

O’Neil was right about Juanita’s marrying a football player.

“My dad, Edward Justice, was an All-American halfback with Gonzaga University and went on to play for the Washington Redskins,” he said. “He played in the Pro Bowl. I have a copy of his NFL contract. He made $165 per game.”

Justice doesn’t have any brothers or sisters. But he does have three cousins – Noel Brewer’s children – all alive and well and living in New Mexico.

He thinks the “Mary” on the bracelet was his late uncle’s girlfriend.

A day after our conversation, however, the New Mexico branch of the family called. Scott Brewer is named for the Scott Brewer who was shot down. He has a brother named Terry and a sister, Christy Evans. She thinks the Mary on the bracelet was Scott Everhart Brewer’s aunt, a nun named Sister Mary Paul.

So who gets the dog tag? Justice would like to have it to pass on to his son, a family history buff. Scott Brewer would like to have it because it belonged to his namesake. When the family decides, arrangements will be made for Hauschild to send it.

So – thanks to the Internet and a lot of Statesman readers – a family is about to receive an heirloom 64 years in the making.

“We never knew Uncle Scott’s story before,” Evans said. “We asked our dad about his brother, but he’d never talk about it and now I see why. He lost his father and two days later his brother. We never knew that. The whole thing has always been a family mystery. Now we finally know what happened.”

Tim Woodward: 377-6409

Did you know Scott Everhart Brewer?

Dan Lute — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:44:59 +0000

Brewer was a gunner on a B-24 who died in Germany in 1943. A man recently recovered his dog tags.

BY Tim Woodward - twoodward@idahostatesman.com

Edition Date: 01/30/08

Sixty-four years ago, an American bomber carrying a crew of eight and a New York Times reporter was shot down in Germany. Two weeks ago, a German with a metal detector found one of the crew members’ dog tags.

The address engraved on its decaying surface: 1202 E. Washington St., Boise, Idaho.

Jim Hamilton of Marshfield, Mass., e-mailed the Statesman last week with news of the find. Hamilton is the author of “The Writing 69th,” which tells the story of the bomber’s demise. Tomas Hauschild, the German who found the dog tag, contacted him in hopes of finding at least one of its late owner’s relatives, who may still live in Boise.

“I consider it my duty, when I find personal effects, to find the descendants or direct relatives and get them these artifacts,” Hauschild said. “In addition, through this piece of metal one sees a reference to the events of the time and to a life and its history.”

To that he added his hope that no other generation ever has to face a tragedy like World War II, which the members of Writing 69th risked their lives to cover.

It’s an odd name, isn’t it? The Writing 69th sounds like a misprint for The Fighting 69th, but it isn’t. Also known as “the Flying Typewriters” and “the Legion of the Doomed,” it was a group of eight journalists who volunteered to fly combat missions and report what they saw. Two of the eight, UPI reporter Walter Cronkite and Stars and Stripes writer Andy Rooney, went on to become famous. Robert Post wasn’t so lucky.

Post was the New York Times reporter. Like the other eight members of the group, he felt guilty about having a relatively safe job interviewing flight crews that never returned. They decided the only honest way to cover the air war was to report it firsthand, by flying missions with the airmen they wrote about in their stories. Their first – and last – mission was on Feb. 26, 1943.

The journalists flew in separate planes. All but Post flew in B-17 bombers, which they considered safer than B-24s. Post was the only one who volunteered to go in a B-24. Its gunner was a young airman from Boise – Scott Everhart Brewer.

Their target was an aircraft factory in northern Germany. It was too cloudy for them to see it, so the pilot diverted to a secondary target, a submarine base on the North Sea coast. He was turning back after the bombing run when German fighter planes attacked.

“The plane carrying Bob Post was hit and blew up at 20,000 feet,” Hamilton said. “Two crew members who were able to pull their rip cords were the only survivors. One ended up in Stalag Luft III, the prisoner of war camp made famous in the film, ‘The Great Escape.’ Both have since died.”

Post, Brewer and the rest of the crew either were killed in the explosion or fell to their deaths. Three generations later, Hauschild was working with his metal detector near the lakeside village of Bad Zwischenahn when he found Brewer’s dog tag.

Hamilton is trying to help him find a family member, so far without success.

“I think it’s really great that Mr. Hauschild wants to tie this up by giving the dog tag to the family, but I’ve struck out on finding any of his relatives,” he said. “They may still live in Idaho, but it was a long time ago and Brewer is a very common name.”

Here’s what he’s been able to learn so far:

Brewer as born in 1915. He was 28 at the time of his death.

His mother’s name was Louise E. Brewer. Hamilton thinks her middle initial may have stood for Everhart.

Louise Brewer spent time in Grand View, Idaho.

Scott Brewer’s father’s name was Paul B. Brewer. Hamilton learned from Scott Brewer’s military records that his father was born in Toledo, Ohio, and is buried at Cloverdale Memorial Park in Boise.

Brewer was wearing a bracelet engraved with three names – his, his mother’s and “Mary.”

“Who was Mary?” Hamilton asked. “If we could find her, we’d have something.”

Paul Brewer died on March 6, 1943 – two days before his wife received the telegram saying that their son was missing in action.

“That poor woman,” Hamilton said. “Her husband dies, and two days later she gets word that her son is gone.”

Whether Brewer had brothers, sisters or other relatives in the Boise area isn’t known.

“I’m hoping your column will bring out a relative or someone who knew the family,” Hamilton said.

If you know anything about Scott Everhart Brewer, his family or the mysterious Mary, please contact me at twoodward@idahostatesman.com or the phone number below.

It will make a good-hearted man in Germany happy, and close a chapter for the family of a Boise hero.

Photo 1:

Courtesy of Jim Hamilton – Part of the crew of the ill-fated B-24.- Brewer is on the far left.

Photo 2:

Scott Everhart Brewer in uniform.

Tim Woodward: 377-6409