Former Senator Bob Dole, WWII veteran, dies aged 98

Robert Dole circa 1980s

Devtun sends in the unfortunate news that former Senator Bob Dole (R-KS) has passed away. Dole was a US Senator for 27 years and before that a US Representative for eight years. At the expiry of his final re-election he instead ran for President. He was the Republican nominee for President in 1996, ultimately losing to incumbent President Clinton.

Before his decades of public service he was a lieutenant in the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division during World War II. In April 1945 outside Bologna, Italy near Castel d’Aiano he was seriously wounded in the back and right arm from a German shell. Notes from Wikipedia;

“I lay face down in the dirt,” Dole said. “I could not see or move my arms. I thought they were missing.” As Lee Sandlin describes, when fellow soldiers saw the extent of his injuries, they believed all they could do was “give him the largest dose of morphine they dared and write an ‘M’ for ‘morphine’ on his forehead in his own blood, so that nobody else who found him would give him a second, fatal dose.”

Dole was paralyzed from the neck down and transported to a military hospital near Kansas, expected to die. Suffering blood clots, a life-threatening infection and a fever of almost 109 degrees; after large doses of penicillin were not successful, he overcame the infection with the administration of streptomycin, which at the time was still an experimental drug.[13] He remained despondent, “not ready to accept the fact that my life would be changed forever”. He was encouraged to see Hampar Kelikian, an orthopedist in Chicago who had been working with veterans returning from war. Although during their first meeting Kelikian told Dole that he would never be able to recover fully, the encounter changed Dole’s outlook on life, who years later wrote of Kelikian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide, “Kelikian inspired me to focus on what I had left and what I could do with it, rather than complaining what had been lost.” Dr. K, as Dole later came to affectionately call him, operated on him seven times, free of charge, and had, in Dole’s words, “an impact on my life second only to my family”.

He recovered, but lost mobility in his right arm and had life-long numbness in his left. After rehabilitation he was discharged from the Army in 1947 as a captain. In 2019 he was advanced by Act of Congress on the retired list to colonel. “I’ve had a great life and this is sort of icing on the cake. It’s not that I have to be a colonel; I was happy being a captain and it pays the same,” Dole said, jokingly at the time. During the war, Dole received two Purple Hearts and the Bronze Star for Valor for attempting to rescue a downed radioman.

Dole’s other list of honors include the Presidential Citizen’s Medal (awarded by President Reagan in 1987). This is the second-highest civilian award of the executive branch. Dole received the highest award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Clinton in 1997 (whom Dole had just lost the presidential election to). In 2018 Dole received the highest civilian honor from the legislative branch, the Congressional Gold Medal. He also received the second highest civil honor from the Government of Albania in 2017, the National Flag Order. He is one of only 22 people or organizations to have received the honor and only the third American.

He died peacefully this morning after having been diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year. He is survived by his wife Former Senator Liddy Dole (R-NC).

Category: Army, Historical, Politics, We Remember