Bob Dole, great American

His service in World War II is almost certainly how he defines himself, even though he spent much of his public life hiding the wounds: right shoulder, arm, hand. He was never one to use the story to further his image, hardly even talked about the whole mess until recently in a memoir.

He was an athlete. He was a poor kid from rural Kansas—Depression, Dust Bowl, his parents moving the family to the basement to rent out the upstairs for money. He was a good kid, honors, played football, a basketball hero, gorgeous young man the girls adored, delivering the morning paper, working the soda fountain at Dawson’s Drugstore. A local banker lent him $300 to go to college to become a doctor, and so he started, got a girl, but then America called just as manhood did, so he went into the army. Within twenty months, he was in a foxhole, ducking, spitting out dirt. “Move out!” came the command, and he snapped to, got on his feet, waved the platoon obediently out of the trench and forward into the wall of smoke in the middle of nowhere, Italy, in the Apennine mountains. Nazis were pouring artillery rounds from the pillbox bunkers on the hill above, the U.S. bombers blasting that hill to bits, napalm bombs, the mountains soon in flames. Guys tripping into wires, traps, land mines, explosions, then machine-gun fire, guys down everywhere, just lying there dead, everywhere, and then his buddy Sims, his radio guy, bam, Sims was down, Sims! So he crawled in the dirt, having no idea Sims was already dead, slithered in the dirt to Sims and grabbed his shirt and pulled, pulled, and then bam! He felt it in his back, fire in his back, and he lay in the dirt gurgling words, his body seizing up to his eyeballs, only his eyeballs could move, but maybe his mouth, he could feel the dirt in his mouth, yes, his mouth. Another soldier weeping, pissing his pants, a skinny kid shouting, “God help me!” crawling under the artillery, dragging guys, dead guys, barely alive guys, dragging Lieutenant Dole, who was way too big, way too heavy, so the skinny kid rolled Lieutenant Dole like a sack of sand, over, over, blood pouring out, down into a ravine. In and out of consciousness for six more hours on the bloody battlefield, Bob Dole’s mind went home, to Russell, Kansas, running up Maple Street. I always run. I’m running track in school. Hey, Dad, I think we have a good chance of going to state in football this year. I see Spitzy, our little white dog. Spitzy, what are you doing out in this kind of weather?