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Senator Bob Dole dies at 98: WIA WWII


Bob Hudson
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https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/05/politics/bob-dole-dies/index.html

 

n 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 seriously wounded by a German shell, being struck in his upper back and right arm, shattering his collarbone and part of his spine. "I lay face down in the dirt," Dole said. "I could not see or move my arms. I thought they were missing." 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.

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I got to shake hands with him when I worked for the Senate. He shook with his left hand because of his war injuries. At the time I knew nothing about the Italian campaign or the extent of his wounds. He was a brave soldier and a fair and honest public servant. 

 

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Only met him once doing security on a campaign stop, he came through a back door into a pantry where I was stationed, and he stuck out his hand to shake and I didn't even think and stuck out my right, I quickly recovered and shook with my left but always felt bad for doing that and knowing of his injured right arm.  Good man

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