Once in the Army, Bob Dole rotated around several U.S. camps before getting into Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning in Georgia. As a 2nd lieutenant in the Army's 10th Mountain Division, he deployed to Italy.
But just a few months into that deployment, Dole, on April 14, 1945, led a charge on Hill 913 north of Castel D'Aiano, with his soldiers taking heavy artillery fire. When he saw a fellow soldier go down, Dole went to help pull him into a manhole and as he scrambled out, he felt a sharp sting in his shoulder.
He collapsed on the battlefield and it was nine hours before medics could evacuate him to a field hospital. The next two and a half years were spent at the Percy Jones Army Medical Center in Battle Creek, Michigan, in a head-to-hip plaster cast, having lost a kidney and full use of his right arm.
"For nearly a year, I couldn't feed myself. I had to learn to walk and dress myself all over again," Dole told the Topeka Capital-Journal.
For his sacrifices, he received two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster. But it was the use of his right arm and hand that he so desperately sought to restore, undergoing extensive therapy and seven failed surgeries.
The right arm has remained essentially paralyzed for the rest of his life and he holds that pen in his right hand to prevent people trying to shake that hand.
So sorry to hear of his cancer prognosis. Wishing him the best.
Definitely One of the Greatest of the Greatest. --GreGen
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