Earl Norem

Earl Norem saw military action in World War II with the 85th Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division. He trained in Colorado and Texas, and fought the Germans in the Northern Apennine Mountains of Italy. By age 20, Norem was a squad leader and staff sergeant who in the Italian Campaign fought alongside famed skier Torger Tokle, whom he had seen ski jumping at Bear Mountain, New York when Norem was 12. Upon Torkle's battlefield death on March 3, 1945, Norem was one of the men assigned to retrieve his body from the mountain. Norem himself later was wounded going into the Po Valley, ending his military stint.

Upon returning to the US, Norem embarked on an illustration career. At the Military Museum of Southern New England, a wall mural depicts American soldiers from the 10th Mountain Infantry Division returning from a reconnaissance patrol against a backdrop of the snowy peaks of the Apennines in northwest Italy which Norem painted.