Wounded in WWII, Bob Dole Fought for Those with Disabilities

Former Sen. Bob Dole almost didn't make it to his 22nd birthday, let alone past his 90th. More than 70 years ago while on active duty in the hills of Italy during World War II, he was hit by Nazi machine-gun fire.

Dole had joined the Army's Enlisted Reserve Corps in 1942 and soon became a second lieutenant in the 10th Mountain Division. On April 14, 1945, Dole's "I" Company of the 85th Regiment was attempting to take Hill 913 in their zone when they ran into intense enemy fire raking a clearing they had to cross. Dole threw a grenade at a machine-gun nest and dove into a shell hole.

In his 1988 autobiography, Dole, who died on Dec. 5, 2021, at age 98, wrote, "I could see my platoon's radioman go down. … After pulling his lifeless form into the foxhole, I scrambled back out again. As I did, I felt a sharp sting in my upper right back."

Although Dole left the Army as a captain, Congress voted to promote him to colonel in honor of his service in 2019.  

In a 1998 campaign video, Dole described his wounding graphically: "Some high-explosive bullet entered my right shoulder, fractured my vertebrae in my neck. I — I saw these — things racing — my parents, my house. I couldn't move my arms, my legs."

A medic gave the young lieutenant morphine and then marked Dole's forehead with an "M" in his own blood. After nine hours on the battlefield before being evacuated to an Army field hospital, Dole was not expected to live.

Although Dole often makes light of his maimed right arm and his hospital stay, recalling his "bedpan promotion" to captain, his recovery took him through several hospitals, nine operations and more than three years of rehabilitation and recuperation. He learned to write with his left hand and to rely on that arm, since his other cannot be used.

As one journalist pointed out during Dole's last presidential campaign, Dole neither exploits his disability nor shuns it. Rather, he has "folded it into his life" — through establishment of the Dole Foundation to help the disabled, by pushing the Americans With Disabilities Act through Congress and by aligning himself with the physically impaired.

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