With years of excessive rain, wet basements became a problem and Post #60 was no exception to this menace. Many records were so badly damaged by mold, mildew and just plain soaked to the point that they were not readable. At the suggestion of one George M.C. Thompson, all records were gathered up, inventoried and moved to drier upstairs file cabinets. His work on this project turned up some very interesting things. While going through the items, a Nazi banner was uncovered. The banner had been autographed by 38 GI’s, among them a Clark native, Walter Clausen.
Clausen was the son of Ernest and Emma (Stanley) Clausen of Clark. Walter moved to Watertown, Wisconsin in 1967 and passed away in 1996. His wife Arline died in 2008. Clausen was a member of Post #189 in Watertown, Wisconsin. He fought in the European Theater as a GSR grand surveillance radar man. To this point we do not know exactly how the banner happened to end up in Clark or with the Cagley-Smith Post as the banner contained the names of 38 men, all of whom would have liked to have had this piece of history. Today this banner is part of a display at the Clark County Historical Museum.
