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calsfoundation@cals.org
Drew H. Lander Collection Open to Researchers
Andrew Hamilton (Drew) Lander was a businessman and civic leader who spent five years as a member of the Little Rock City Council. His letters, donated to the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies by his family, reveal a different part of his life, when he was serving in the United States Army before and during World War II. The Drew H. Lander collection is now processed and available for research.
Lander attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville from 1928 through 1932. He spent all four years in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) as he also earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration. After graduation, Lander took a job as bookkeeper at his father’s company, the Shearman Concrete Pipe Company in Little Rock. He would eventually become president and owner of the company. Meanwhile, Lander remained active in the Arkansas National Guard.
When the United States entered World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Lander was activated into the army. He reported as a second lieutenant to Camp Joseph T. Robinson in Arkansas and was sent to officers’ training in Fort Warren in Wyoming. Made a quartermaster, Lander would be promoted to captain and then to major before the end of the war.
Lander was in England during the build-up to the D-Day invasion of 1944. His letters to his wife, though carefully worded to avoid revealing military secrets, provide a window into the experiences of American soldiers at war in Europe. Lander’s racially integrated unit was sent across the channel to France on June 9, three days after the invasion had begun. On June 16, Lander wrote home, saying, “Tell the babies their daddy was a part of the invasion army. Our outfit was one of the first three QM HQ [Quartermaster Headquarters] to arrive in France….[E]arly one morning I was awakened and told to be ready by a certain time. We took off for the beach and had some coffee & doughnuts by the American Red Cross and then went to the boat…”
Lander comments at length about the enormous number of ships taking part in the invasion. He describes the landing of his unit and mentions that German airplanes were never seen during the day but sometimes were heard at night. He continues, “We stayed there [on the beach] overnight sleeping in foxholes. Next morning I reported to Hq for orders. The night was uneventful but exciting for we could see the firing up ahead and the fire from the burning buildings. Of course we thought we were in the thick of it but we were a long ways off. At daylight could see evidence of previous battles around us. A battery of German 88s also occupied the same pasture, their owners long gone.” He assured his wife that he was okay and asked her to share his letter with his father and sister.
Lander remained in Europe until October 1945, serving the army and its soldiers during the war and its aftermath.
Returning to Little Rock, Lander enjoyed a successful career, service to his community, and the love of his family. He died in 1995 at the age of eighty-five and is buried in Roselawn Memorial Park in Little Rock.
The Drew H. Lander collection (BC.MSS.23.47) can be accessed in the Research Room of the CALS Bobby L. Roberts Library of History & Art; visiting information is here. The finding aid is online here.
By Steve Teske, archivist at the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies/Roberts Library
