Excerpt: 'One Soldier's Story,' by Bob Dole
April 17, 2005 — -- Former senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole tells his coming-of-age story as a young soldier in his new memoir, "One Soldier's Story."
Dole writes about growing up in Russell, Kan., serving in Italy in World War II and struggling to recover from near-fatal injuries he sustained there as a young soldier. In his own words, Dole recounts his harrowing experiences on and off the battlefield and how they changed his life.
Dole, 81, was recently recovering from another serious injury after taking a fall in his home, suffering from multiple injuries, including internal bleeding in his head. While recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Dole had the chance to meet with today's soldiers, which he talks about in the first chapter of his book.
You can read an excerpt from "One Soldier's Story" below.
He looked so young, just a boy, really, not much more than 21 years of age. It wasn't fair that he'd already experienced so much pain and misery in his short lifetime. It wasn't right that his lofty hopes and dreams for the future had been snuffed out by one blast from an enemy explosive device.
But there he was, in the intensive care unit at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., fighting for his life.
My wife, Elizabeth, and I often visit wounded soldiers at Walter Reed, but this occasion was different. It was Christmas day 2004, and I was about to be discharged from the hospital myself. I had recently undergone surgery in New York, and had been transferred to the medical center in Washington to recuperate.
We were in the dining room shortly before two o'clock, visiting with several young soldiers who had been wounded in the Iraq war, when a mother and daughter spied us. They approached us and introduced themselves as distant relatives of my family. The mother then told us about her son, Craig Nelson, the young man in whose room I now stood. My friend Dr. Charles "Chuck" Peck had informed me of Craig's presence in the hospital, and I had hoped to see him before I left, so the encounter seemed almost providential.
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