World War II and Recovery
In 1942, Dole joined the United States Army's Enlisted Reserve Corps to fight in World War II. Dole became 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 hit by German machine gun fire in his upper right back and his right arm was also badly injured. 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." The hospital where Dole recovered from his wounds, the former Battle Creek Sanitarium, is now named Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center in honor of three patients who became United States Senators: Dole, Philip Hart and Daniel Inouye.
Dole was decorated three times, receiving two Purple Hearts for his injuries, and the Bronze Star with combat "V" for valor for his attempt to assist a downed radio man.
Read more about this topic: Bob Dole
Famous quotes containing the words world, war and/or recovery:
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”
—Bible: New Testament, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19.
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)