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Posted on 03/09/2003 3:16:24 PM PST by chance33_98
War veteran gets diploma, thanks dog
By MILLETE BIRHANEMASKEL
Greeley Tribune
EATON, Colo. (AP) - Fine pieces of metal continue to fall from Harold ''Al'' Tesch's mouth, the result of being wounded in the chest 57 years ago during World War II. He equates the feeling to being poked by a needle.
The veteran has counted 29 pieces so far, rubbing the roof of his mouth where he feels No. 30 ready to come out.
''It feels like a little hair on the roof of my mouth,'' he said. Tesch says the shrapnel continues to move through his body.
Tesch dropped out of high school in 1942, his senior year, to join the Marines. He has had only one regret: never getting a high school diploma.
That changed recently when Eaton School District Re-2 awarded the 78-year-old his high school diploma through Operation Recognition, a program for veterans who left school to join the war effort.
Eaton Re-2 Superintendent John Nuspl said the ceremony was a tear-jerker because Tesch was so excited to get his diploma.
''I told him to be there 20 after 6 and he showed up at 6,'' Nuspl said.
Tesch has spoken to seventh-graders at Eaton Middle school on Veterans Day for the past two years. He said those students told him about the program.
''They said, 'Get your diploma,''' Tesch said. ''So I did.''
Second to God, he said he owes gratitude to his dog, Tippy, for saving his life during the war.
The husky-German shepherd-mix was part of an experimental project to put dogs into combat alongside troops to serve as messengers or to run ahead of the troops to sniff out enemies.
Tippy was a reject from the Army because he was so mean, Tesch said. The dog attacked almost everyone who approached him. Except Tesch. For both of them, it was love at first sight, he said.
''His hair was long, and he hadn't been taken care of because no one could,'' Tesch said.
Every dog was paired to two Marines except for Tippy, who refused to work with anybody else. Tesch had to persuade officials to give them a chance. They would be the first ''one man-one dog team'' to be sent overseas, with the understanding that if Tippy attacked any of the Marines, he would be put to sleep.
Tesch said that, without Tippy, he never would have made it home alive from the Pacific island of Guam.
When Tesch was shot and a fellow Marine treated his shrapnel-filled chest, Tippy clenched the man's free wrist. Every time Tesch would flinch, Tippy would bite down a little harder on the wrist.
''He was always protecting me,'' Tesch said, his feet constantly twitching, a result of Parkinson's disease.
Doctors suggested that Tesch, then 20, stop fighting - something he wasn't prepared to do. Again, Tesch had more persuading to do, only to nearly die three days after returning to combat.
He and Tippy were lost while shadowing a Japanese tank crossing a clearing. Tesch didn't realize that he was walking into a trap of fox holes, body-size dugouts covered with leaves that the Japanese hid in.
Tippy ran ahead of Tesch and smelled them.
''If he hadn't have, we'd have gone through and been shot from behind,'' Tesch said. ''He saved us.''
After the war, the dogs were returned to their owners, and Tippy and Tesch were separated. But months later, Tesch received a telegram from the Marine Corps that he had a package at the trade depot in Rochester, N.Y.
''There was my dog,'' he said.
Tippy's owner was an 11-year-old girl with leukemia whose last request was that Tesch get Tippy after she died.
Two years later, Tippy was killed in a hit-and-run car accident.
Ever since, Tesch has had sleepless nights full of flashbacks of the war. He said he sometimes has had to tear the bed apart to make sure nothing's in it.
His wife, Ruth, sleeps on the edge of the bed to give him room to kick and fight. He warns her to never fight him back.
''Just call my name, and I'll wake up,'' he said.
Ruth gives Tesch five years before she thinks he'll lose all control to the Parkinson's.
But for now, the bright red, 5-by 5-inch diploma that sits on the kitchen counter keeps them both smiling.
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