Wake Up With Bob Dole's Heartbreaking Salute of George H.W. Bush
On this National Day of Mourning for President George H.W. Bush, I defy anyone to find a moment as pure, as heart-felt, a wrenching and as full of pride as this one. Or any other day, for that matter.
No politics. No comparing Bush 41 to any other president. No talk of legacy. Because long before they were political allies or political opponents, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush were teenagers who volunteered to leave their homes, say goodbye to their families and loved ones – perhaps forever – and set off across two separate oceans to do nothing less than save the world.
Dole is one year older than Bush. Meaning he was all of 19 years old when he left behind his life as a three-sport athlete at Kansas U. to enlist in the U.S. Army’s Enlisted Reserve Corps, soon becoming a second lieutenant in the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. In fierce fighting in the Apennine mountains of Italy he took German machine gun fire in his upper back and right arm. His comrades eased his suffering with the largest dose of painkillers they safely could an ‘M’ for ‘morphine’ on his forehead in his own blood, so that nobody else would give him any more because it might have killed him. He survived after a long and agonizing rehab. But he never used his right arm again.
Inside the 95-year-old body in that wheelchair is the young man who earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with “V” Device for valor. Paying respects to a fellow warrior, soldier to airman. Two former scared kids who found the inner strength to survive worldwide conflict, return safely home, start families, lead the country they fought for and live to see 2018.
I’m not one to suggest The Greatest Generation guys have a monopoly on valor. Dole and Bush’s footsteps have been followed by tens of thousands of men who have fought valiantly at places as disparate as Chosin Reservoir, Hue City, Kuwait, Fallujah and the compound at Abottabad. But theirs is the last generation to see all of America take part in a total war that threatened the very survival of the nation. And the knowledge that there is one fewer of his kind left who understands what they went through is reflected in Lt. Dole’s eyes. That’s what honor looks like. RIP, Lt. George H.W. Bush.