This is a
copy of an old post that I posted on the blog on Memorial Day back in 2005. I put a link to it on Facebook just the other day on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day. I am reposting it for blogging friends who are not on Facebook. When I think about this experience my father had as a 25 year old young man from New Jersey, it blows my mind.

My father was a combat medic during World War II. He landed in Normandie
on D-Day +3, and made his way behind enemy lines in the Battle of the
Bulge. He was awarded the Purple Heart for a severe back injury
sustained while rescuing fellow wounded soldiers from an overturned
tank. That was a life-long, but bloodless injury.
When my father was released from the hospital, he went AWOL. It's true.
He and a fellow solider went to Paris for a week to really recover. When
he returned to the front lines, he was told that he had a choice to
make: Be recommended for a Silver Star for bravery AND face a court
martial for going AWOL, or no court martial, but lose the Silver Star.
He chose not to go to court.
The combat medic was one
of the unsung heroes of World War II. He lived with the front line
infantrymen and was the first to answer a call for help. He gave first
aid to his wounded comrades and helped them out of the line of enemy
fire. More often than not, he faced the enemy unarmed and was the
foundation of the medical system with hundreds of thousands of
surgeons, nurses, scientists, and enlisted medics.
The
main objective of the medic was to get the wounded away from the front
lines. Many times this involved the medic climbing out from the
protection of his foxhole during shelling or into no-man’s-land to help a
fallen comrade. Once with the wounded soldier, the medic would do a
brief examination, evaluate the wound, apply a tourniquet if necessary,
sometimes inject a vial of morphine, clean up the wound as best as
possible and sprinkle sulfa powder on the wound followed by a bandage.
Then he would drag or carry the patient out of harms way and to the
rear. This was many times done under enemy fire or artillery shelling.
My
father told us many stories of the things he had seen on the
battlefield. The cries he heard. The limbs he had seen strewn about. I
wouldn't say he was haunted by it, but he never forgot.
When
I was young, my father was the go-to guy for all the neighborhood kids
when they sustained a street injury. He could put together a butterfly
bandage with his eyes closed. He was fearless around blood, and the
kinds of things that made other parents very squeamish. When my cousin
nearly tore off her finger in a door-closing accident in the 1950s, my
father was the one who bundled her up and took her to the hospital. He
was the epitome of the calm and quiet combat medic always.
On this day the 75th anniversary of my father's landing, I remember my father who passed away in 1992. This is my Silver Star of recognition for a true hero.