(He salutes with his left hand. His right side is mangled from an injury incurred in World War II. The description is below.)
In 1942, Dole joined the United States Army's Enlisted Reserve Corps to fight in World War II, becoming a second lieutenant in the Army's 10th Mountain Division. In April 1945, while engaged in combat near Castel d'Aiano in the Apennine mountains southwest of Bologna, Italy, Dole was badly wounded by German machine gun fire, being hit in his upper back and right arm. As Lee Sandlin describes, when fellow soldiers saw the extent of his injuries, all they thought they could do was to "give him the largest dose of morphine they dared and write an 'M' for 'morphine' on his forehead in his own blood, so that nobody else who found him would give him a second, fatal dose.
While I am not politically aligned with people like Bush, Dole (or John McCain, who recently passed away) I can say they are/were honorable men who did what they thought was right, based on their values, ethics and integrity. These men, all Republicans, stood for something above and beyond, and outside of just their self interest.
Fuck Donald (Cadet Bone Spurs) Trump.
They really were the greatest generation!!!
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather served in Burma...he told me a funny story once about it.....
One night someone on guard duty thought they heard a noise in the jungle and he opened fire.....the rest of the post turned out and they all blasted the hell out of those infiltrating Japs!!!!
In the morning the Colonel informed them that they had wasted 40,000 rounds of ammunition shooting at the surrounding trees and that there wasn't any Japanese within 30 miles of their position!!!
The colonel then informed them that they were all to spend the entire day picking up every stone on the base and painting it white....he said it was backbreaking bending over all day...
The next morning the colonel told them that all those white stones made them a very easy target for an air attack and he wanted them to pick up every stone and scrub the paint off....
So like any good soldier, my grandpa said he had a relapse of his malaria on the spot and spent the next two weeks in the hospital...
It was funny when he told me when I was little and it's still funny but then I remember the man.....the man who left his wife and three children to fight for what was right....these kind of men are few and far between....they fought because they knew they had to save the world for us!!!
All politics aside....I want to thank them for what they did for all of us!!!!
Sorry didn't mean to get off on a rant....
Love
Kaaren
Great story and I very much enjoyed reading it. I also agree with your assertion of they're being the Greatest Generation. :)
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