September 2007 | Back to Table of Contents

Perspective

War Stories

By Hollis Krug, M.D.

An encounter with a patient becomes a lesson in World War II history.

I had known him for almost 20 years, treating his arthritis, discussing the pros and cons of surgery for spinal stenosis, and providing him with wheelchairs and other aids to help him manage his disability. He was an excellent patient for a teacher, generous with his time and with a wealth of physical findings—degenerative knee and lumbar spine disease, and rheumatoid arthritis that was minimal in comparison. Although I knew he had served in World War II, I had never before heard his war stories; but this day he was talkative, maybe because his daughter was with him or because a student had examined him, or perhaps because we just took more time with him.

I pointed out to the student that the combination of knee and spine disease was common in people who had done certain jobs. We asked if he ever jumped out of airplanes, one very significant risk for such disease.

I had just finished reading Band of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose’s history of Easy Company of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, so when he volunteered that he had been a paratrooper in World War II, I innocently asked if he was part of the 101st Airborne. Immediately, he bristled, uttering a few expletives. He had been in the 82nd Airborne, he told me, the first division designated “airborne.” This division had seen combat twice in Italy before D-Day. The 101st had never seen combat. The members of the 82nd were battle-hardened, while those of the 101st were novices. He was angry about all the fame and glory the 101st had received. I silently recalled that Ambrose’s “hook” was the story of the weakness of the leadership of the 101st. Perhaps the 82nd had not had such weakness and so had not made such a good story.

Then he mentioned that his knees had been severely injured during the air drop into Normandy on the eve of D-Day. After a brief pause, he added a detail more amazing than any in Ambrose’s vignettes: “My chute didn’t open.”

The room went silent. My eyes must have been the size of silver dollars. I imagined the terror the young paratrooper must have experienced jumping from a plane in the middle of the night, suddenly realizing that his parachute was not opening. How must he have felt falling through the sky, waiting for his end? “How did you survive a fall like that?” I finally asked.

His daughter had heard the story before, but you could tell she liked to hear him tell it. She had a slight smile on her face and looked at her father expectantly.

“I fell into a bog,” he explained, “up to my neck.” “The Germans flooded the fields to make it hard for the Allies to move through the area. The mud was so deep, it broke my fall.” I had read about this, how the fertile fields of Normandy were flooded and turned into muddy quagmires to limit the mobility of invaders.

“How did you get out?” I asked, imagining a soldier with a full pack, buried up to his neck in mud. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could extract himself from something like that.

He looked at me with a steady gaze. “I don’t remember,” he said softly. And I could tell he really couldn’t remember. It wasn’t likely he could have pulled himself out. Someone had to have helped him, and he, my patient, had probably spent his life wondering who that was.

I now pictured him muddy and badly hurt, probably with back and knee injuries given his present condition. “What did you do then? Did you get to a field hospital?”

The question made him laugh. “No! We were behind the German lines. I found a few others to join up with, and we kept going.”

The history books say that the 82nd Airborne was instrumental in taking Sainte-Mère-Église from the Germans, making it one of the first French towns to be liberated by the Allies.

I envisioned my patient making his way into this small town with great effort and in great pain. He recalled that he was hospitalized for a subsequent injury through the end of the war. I noted his good luck given that 20 percent of his division had gone on to become casualties of the Normandy invasion. His memory is of regret for missing the ticker tape parade in New York City that honored the 82nd.

We have new combat-hardened veterans in our hospital now. Although they are largely segregated from the rest of the patients, sometimes our paths cross. Their wounds are heartbreaking. Some are missing fingers or arms, some are missing legs, some are missing parts of their brains, saved by excellent battlefield care and speedy evacuation. Many have multiple injuries that are too devastating to comprehend. Some are only wounded internally, in their hearts and souls.

These new veterans are young enough to be my children. Unlike the veterans of World War II, their enemy is not so well-defined, and their numbers are not so great. But their stories, I am sure, are just as stunning. My hope is that the veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, like the veterans of World War II, will live long, productive lives, and that some day, in their old age, they will tell their stories to other Veterans Affairs physicians who will listen with eyes as big as silver dollars. MM

Hollis Krug is an associate clinical professor at the University of Minnesota and a staff rheumatologist at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center.