Bud Hamer reflects on WWII, life in Eagle Grove and words of wisdom

Marvin Hamer was born in 1925 on a farm southeast of Eagle Grove. From little on, they called him Bud. People still do today. How he got the nickname he says he’s not really sure, but chuckled as he said it was probably from the warnings he would get from his parents saying “Listen here buddy boy.”

Hamer started country school at the age of eight and graduated from Eagle Grove High School in 1943. After graduation, he helped his dad farm for a year. His plan was to enlist in the Army in 1944, but then his father became ill. Instead, he took over the family farm. By 1945, Uncle Sam had other plans for him - he was drafted.

“I was ready to go,” said Hamer proudly. “I just thought it was a thing I should do.”

At 19 years old, Hamer was inducted into the Army at Fort Snelling, Minn., then sent to Texas for basic training. There he spent 17 weeks training for the infantry division. A couple weeks before finishing his training, the U.S. dropped a bomb on Japan. Hamer recalled how he never even knew that bomb was dropped.

After finishing boot camp, he was sent to Europe to serve as an engineer. He was assigned to part of a group who was in the process of building an airbase in Falda, Italy.

“When we were on the airbase, we had different Prisoners of War (POWs) doing the work. My job was running the POWs,” said Hamer. “We had several thousand of them.”

Hamer served two years, the whole time, like all of the other soldiers, having handwritten letters as their only form of communication with loved ones back home. He thinks how nice it would have been to have the technology that is out there today that now allows soldiers away from their families and friends to at least be able to see their faces and actually talk to them.

Hamer was humbled to have met many other Veterans (only two from WWII) like himself and hear their stories when he went on the Brushy Flight Honor Creek last May.

“It brought back a lot of memories,” he said.

After returning from the service in 1947, Hamer went back to farming, which he continued to do until 1990. In total, Hamer lived on the farm for 62 years before moving into Eagle Grove.

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