Bob Dole took a bullet for Dad.
God Bless and Rest in Peace.
He saved my father's life.
Thank you Sir.
WW-II was an interesting war. Everyone showed up. One day Dad, who was a Squad Leader, was in a foxhole next to a road in Italy when a German fighter plane straffed the road. A jeep stopped and a man clutching a violin case jumped out and jumped into my father's foxhole. It was Jascha Heifitz, the greatest violinist in the world. As I said, everyone got into the act.
By April 1945 my father was, in a foxhole, in the Appenines near Bagni di Lucca. The snow was deep. It was bitter cold. Every third day he had to turn his underwear inside out to keep the lice busy. Dad was sick with frostbite feet and maybe typhus. Odds were that he was going to die.
Dad had already used up more favors than God usually hands out. He was originally supposed to be in the first group of recruits sent to reinforce the Philippines. Dad caught a cold in boot camp and was reassigned, so he missed the Bataan Death March. Instead the Army sent him to spend a couple of weeks in Florida at Fighter Recognition School, where he was the only student not a field grade officer, and then sent him to England. There he had a date with some Countessa or Baroness whose family had a castle and only learned along with his colonel that they were heading for Mers el Kebir for the invasion of North Africa when the English village girls who typed the orders yelled it to them as Dad and the colonel marched to the troop ship. Dad survived that.
In North Africa Dad was sent up to observe so he was not caught in the disaster of Kasserine Pass. He took shelter in the graves the ever methodical Germans had Russian prisoners dig in advance. The Germans did not come back after the battle on the other side of the hill. No one ever discovered what happened to the Russians. Dad survived that.
In Italy Dad landed at Salerno. He asked the locals "Dove tedeschi?" and they replied "Lasciato tre giorni." Then the Americans waited for the Hermann Goering Division to show up. Dad survived that.
The Army, which is run by geniuses, was concerned that someone might steal Mt Vesuvius, so they had my father set up a machine gun nest on top of the volcano. It erupted. They did credit Dad with shooting down a Messerschmitt but Dad said that the pilot was probably already dead before he fired a shot. Dad survived that.
Dad's CO was a Colonel who had been a Midwest bank VP. I think he was like Mr Milton in "Best Years of Our Lives." A fearless character normally found someplace warm and dry two miles behind the lines he would volunteer his men for anything and threatened to put my father on report for dragging a mattress found in an abandoned farmhouse into his foxhole (naturally) before Monte Cassino. General Alexander stopped that. He shook his swagger stick and said, "That's the spirit man. Forage man, forage." Dad survived that.
Dad's own troops proved more dangerous. When he learned that they were stealing supplies and running them across the boot to sell to the black market on the Adriatic coast Dad put a stop to it. Someone tried to kill him, taking a shot that parted his hair. Dad survived that.
So when Dad was filthy hungry sick and freezing in the mountains near Bologna it was reasonable for him to think that his luck had run out. Then a strapping young Lieutenant from the 10th Mountain Division, looking like a recruiting poster, jumped into Dad's foxhole and said, "I got it. Get out of here." That was Bob Dole and three days later he took the bullet that was meant for my father and strong as he was, it would have killed my father who was a strong man but was weakened by 30 months of almost constant combat, it crippled Dole for life after putting him in the hospital for over a year and a half. Thank you Bob.
Dad went to the Aid Station where the Army doctor said he had used up his quota and was supposed to send Dad back to the line, where he would have surely died. Then the Doc said, "Hell, what can they do to me?" and sent Dad to the hospital and saved his life. Then the Army told Dad that he was going to be shipped to the Pacific to join the invasion of Japan. They said, "Make out your will. Consider yourself as already dead." Then Harry Truman dropped the bomb. Thanks Harry. Dad survived that.
BTW, Dad did not vote for Bob Dole.
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Instapundit: R.I.P. Bob Dole Dies at 98.
Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 12:37 pm
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