Dole's long ordeal is known by now. It is campaign lore: how, during an Allied offensive near Florence, 2nd Lt. Dole led a platoon that was ordered to capture a hill; how, when his radio man was shot, Dole dragged him into a foxhole, not realizing he was dead; how, afterward, Dole was hit in the shoulder by a bullet or a shell fragment and lay face down on the battlefield, in dirt bloodied to mud, believing his arms had been shot clean out of their sockets; how the Army shipped him home in a plaster cast, crated like a piece of furniture; how the people of Russell, Kan., collected money to pay his medical bills in a Santa Fe cigar box that Dole stores in his desk drawer on top of a chunk of the Berlin Wall; how for 39 months he endured a second infancy, relearning how to eat, dress, bathe, walk and use the toilet; how an orthopedic surgeon who'd lost a brother in the war cobbled Dole back together for free; how Dole exercised tirelessly, using ropes and weights and pulleys in his back yard, to regain what limited arm strength he has; how he walked around with a 6-pound lead pipe on his arm that a former football teammate had molded for him and affixed with rubber bands in a scheme to straighten his right elbow and pry open his clawed fingers; how in college his first wife, Phyllis, took notes for him and wrote exam papers for him from dictation.
Dole never ran around bragging he had been wounded and won a Purple Heart...He never mentioned it, much to many's chagrin who thought he should. |
