134th Infantry Regiment Website "All Hell Can't Stop Us"

Pfc Rex M. Bowers

134th Infantry Regiment - Company C

South Idaho Press, 11 November 2005 (Veterans Day) - by Sarah M. Blasius

The stories of the "Unsung Heroes" have all been told directly and recorded as told by persons who experienced combat, or combat-related assignments during World War II. Each of these narrators went to war, and many were engaged in combat on land, on sea, and in the air. These stories, all told after a 60-year hiatus between the experiences and the telling of them, are compelling. The miraculous survival of these combatants, almost always under horrendous circumstances, allowed them to return from war as heroes to their communities - to be reunited with their families and friends. Each of these men survived to tell their stories, to share their laughter and their tears with those of us who live in this area of Idaho, so far away from those unfamiliar places where their stories played out in the annals of history.

Many WWII heroes did not survive their battles and are either buried where they fell or were brought back to their homes to be buried with military honors, often beside other members of their families who had preceded them to the grave. We sing about them and tell their stories for them. In the case of Rex Bowers who left his young family in Burley to answer the call to serve in the U.S. Army and to die on January 25, 1945, in the drifted snow which covered a battlefield in the Ardennes, near Weiswampach, Luxembourg, we have to find his voice in the letters he left behind.

Rex's oldest child, Marilyn Bowers Jensen, describes her dad's departure for Ft. Meade, Maryland, the last time she saw him alive. At the age of 5, it was difficult for Marilyn to fully understand the circumstances which took her beloved father so far away from home. She describes the experience, shared universally by thousands of other families, in her memoirs.  "All of us were there to see him off. I remember going to the train station and I remember the steam coming from under the wheels. I remember the loud whistles. My father boarded the train, looked out the window at us, covered his face with his hands, and then turned away. He had confided to his father and his close friends that he did not believe he would make it home."

Marilyn goes on to write that her grandfather promised her dad that he would look after his kids. "Grandpa and Grandma Bowers kept their promise to their son. They looked after us, but they never got over the death of their son. They couldn't talk about him, and whenever we asked things like, 'How tall was my dad?' they answered quickly and then left the room. It was too painful for them. When Grandpa Bowers died in 1992, at the age of 94, I found a shoe box of my dad's letters in his closet. It was the first time that I had seen my dad's handwriting or heard his voice through his writings."

Marilyn always thought her birthday was the day that Rex died. "December 22, 1944, was my fifth birthday. I'll always remember my fifth birthday, as that was the day I lost my dad. That is not exactly so, as my dad was killed in January, but childhood memories are not made up of facts alone, and that is how I remember it. My dad was killed when I was five. I don't remember if I had a birthday party. My baby book offers no clues, but I must have had a birthday party. I always did."
As Marilyn read her father's letters, the hiatus which had separated her from him since her childhood closed. "I have always missed my dad. But in the Fall of 1992 following the death of Grandpa Bowers and the discovery of the shoe box full of letters, I felt for the first time the agony of his death. His words revealed a young man full of strength and courage."

Here are Rex's letters, transcribed exactly as he wrote them.

The bullet which had his number on it left Rex's questions unanswered. They died with him in the snows of the Ardennes on the final day of the Battle of the Bulge, not to be brought to light until Marilyn read her father's letters.

The KIA report was filed on January 29, 1945. In a personnel report which Marilyn received in 1996 after extensive inquiry into the circumstances of her father's death, one poignant, and revealing item was listed among Rex's personal effects. Almost unnoticeable among the usual items - wristwatch, fountain pen, leather billfold, and the French Francs which made up the pocket change - was a money order receipt for $20, the combat pay which he had promised to send home. A promise made - a promise kept - a testimony to the loyalty of a husband and father who would not be coming home to the welcoming embrace of his family.

Three years after his death, Rex did come home again. Marilyn's words document the efforts made by her grandfather. Elias Bowers (the Grandpa Bowers mentioned in Rex's first letter) requested that his son's body be sent home for burial in the family plot in Burley. According to his request the body was disinterred at the Grand Failly Military Cemetery in Luxembourg and shipped to Ft. Douglas, Utah for return to his family in Idaho.

"When the remains of PFC Rex M. Bowers arrived on Union Pacific Train #49 at 6:13 a.m. on December 4, 1948, Grandpa, Neal and Clyde were there to receive the casket. His body was accompanied by a military escort, SPF James H. Robinson."

Another unsung hero, one of the Band of Brothers, had come home to stay.

by Sarah M. Blasius
South Idaho Press, 11 November 2005 (Veterans Day)

For more information about the battle that claimed Rex Bowers' life and the monument established by his daughter contact Marilyn Jensen and visit: http://www.coulthart.com/134/weiswampach.htm

Thanks to Marilyn Bowers Jensen for this photograph and information about her father