World War II
In 1942, Bob Dole joined the Army's Enlisted Reserve Corps to fight in World War II. He became a second lieutenant in the Army's 10th Mountain Division.
By April of 1945, he was fighting the Nazis in the hills of Italy where the action was fast paced. One of the platoon's radio men was hit. Bob Dole crawled out of his foxhole to help him, but it was too late.
Suddenly, while trying to assist the downed radio man, Dole was hit by Nazi machine gun fire in the upper right back and his right arm was so damaged that it was unrecognizable. Dole was immediately given morphine by an Army field medic to alleviate the pain, and his forehead was marked with an "M" in his own blood to alert medics. He was not expected to live.
Dole waited nine long hours on the Italian battlefield before he was finally taken to the Fifteenth Evacuation Hospital. After a brief stay in a field Army hospital in Italy, he was transported back to the United States and to Topeka's Winter General Army Hospital, where he continued his painful recovery and endured a kidney operation. Then, he was transferred to Percy Jones Army Medical Center in Michigan, where he survived his second brush with death -- blood clotting. He was a patient in that hospital along with Phillip A. Hart, whose name graces one of the U.S. Senate office buildings, where Bob Dole occupied an office.
Eventually, he returned to Percy Jones Army Medical Hospital for extensive therapy on his rebuilt arm. It took about three years and nine operations for Bob Dole to rehabilitate. He learned to strengthen his injured arm, and also had to learn how to write with his left hand, as the doctors could not rebuild the excessive damage done by the Nazi machine gun fire.
Bob Dole was twice decorated for heroic achievement, receiving two Purple Hearts for his injuries, and the Bronze Star Medal for his attempt to assist the downed radio man.