I was on Saipan when I got hit. Not too bad, but bad enough to hamper me if I stayed. I was hit in my left buttocks just below the belt line.
While a guy at home is sweating over his income tax and Victory garden, a dogface somewhere is getting great joy out of wiggling his little finger. He does it just to see it move and to prove to himself that he is still alive and able to move it.
I'm a soldier who didn't know how nasty the battle was going to be, and now, I've got a purple heart and I'm back.
My ancestors came over from Germany about the time of the Civil War and one of them lost a leg and went back to Germany.
If you're injured in an automobile accident, and you sue the driver, you get much more for your injury than if you're fighting for your country. There's a double standard here.
I was injured by an enemy hand grenade in Afghanistan in 2010. I spent three years recovering at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center... And through that three years, I was forced to search for the silver linings during the long dark and painful nights and days in the hospital.
You see a guy with one leg, he's got a story. "Land mine '69." You see a guy with one arm, he's got a story, too. "Snow blower, bottle of whiskey." You see a guy with one tooth, what would the story be? "Well, uh, I like a lot of taffy."
I don't know where you're reading all this stuff, but it's pretty accurate, yes. It was in 1942. I was on a ship called the Accelo(ph) coming back from the Red Sea and we were sunk off the coast of Africa by a German submarine. And I was in a lifeboat for 14 days and landed and lived with the Pondos in South Africa while - who took care of us and took care of me. I had some wound in my left leg.
It's a little strange when you have never been to war, and you eye-roll about a guy who's got shrapnel still in his body, as Chuck Hagel does.
I am classified as a disabled veteran. The reason I'm disabled is because I have wounds and injuries that I got while on active duty... from parachute jumping to combat to gunshot wounds, all that stuff.
In 1949, I saw a World War II veteran named Lou Brissie, who had nearly lost a lower leg in combat, pitch in the All-Star Game in Brooklyn.
I had hope, however; I had been wounded seven times during the war, and once before in this same lung; and I did not believe I was going to die.
I have no military application in my research. You know, we are all involved into rehabilitation medicine.
I had an attack of the gout two days before pulling out, and I went limping off to the war instead of coming limping back from it.
To step on a bomb, have your legs blown off and survive, is lucky. Everybody has a good-luck story. Mine was the fact that the senior medic was on patrol that day. Those who don't have a good-luck story are the ones who don't make it.
It seems a stray bullet actually pierced the testicle of a Union soldier and lodged itself in the ovaries of a woman standing approximately 100 ft. away. She's alright, the baby's doing fine...ofcourse the soldier's a little pissed off.
I suppose I was very disappointed that I was injured during training for Korea. In fact, I had an argument with a grenade and it won, and consequently I was forced to come back to Australia for twelve months.
I then realized my appearance was a bit odd. My right leg was no longer with me. It had caught somewhere in the top of the cockpit as I tried to leave my Spitfire.
