“Lead Us To The Saving Of Our Country.” – FDR

Posted on | August 11, 2025 | 3 Comments

Mike Magee

When the Depression struck, he was 5 years old. Simultaneously, the great dust storms arrived. John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” immortalized the travails of the Joad family from Oklahoma, tenant farmers trapped in the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck could have easily substituted the family with this boy, who remembered years later, “The dust killed everything it covered. The crops died, trees, flowers, and other vegetation died, and people died – some from dust pneumonia, some from despair and self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Everyone in town knew a nearby farmer who had gone to the bank and been turned down for a loan. Everybody in our town had been broke at one time or another.”

The point is that his family’s early life was shaped by hardship, and tempered with sardonic wit and a heavy dose of hope provided by Roosevelt. Watching it play out in his own home, in odd jobs, in small town chats at the drug store and beyond, by the time he neared completion of high school, he came up with a plan. “I was going to earn enough money to attend college. I’d go on to medical school, eventually become one of those doctors who didn’t have to worry about which way the wind would blew or how much rain we were likely to get this summer.”

Not long after, in 1941, he entered his Freshman year at college, with help from the drugstore where he had worked for the past few years of high school. He was away at school on December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. With classmates, he huddled around the radio when President Roosevelt addressed the nation.

He hung in with school a bit longer, even as his grades suffered for lack of attention. On December 14, 1942, at age 19, a year and a week after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted. This was nearly six months to the day after my father had enlisted as a First Lieutenant, Medical Corps, United States Army. When D-Day arrived on June 6, 1944, the boy, now a young man, was completing his advanced training at Fort Leavenworth in Kentucky. My father was already in Europe at the time, having landed in North Africa some months before.

On D-Day, the young soldier was again tuned to the radio as the President’s voice rang out, ignoring for the moment separations of Church and State, “Almighty God: our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.” 

Perhaps forecasting our nation’s dilemma these many years later, FDR ended that day with these words,  “With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. ”

Years later, the young soldier, now gone, remembered that night. “Tears clouded the eyes of several of the soldiers sitting near me, listening to Roosevelt’s prayer. A few sobbed openly… Somehow he had tapped into the soul of America, and had expressed its cry without reservations or embarrassment, to God.”

Now a seasoned soldier, he had first arrived in Naples, Italy a few days before Christmas, 1944.  Four months later, struggling under the weight of battle gear as part of the 10th Mountain Division, they were charged with “the daunting task of capturing 3,800-foot Mount Belvedere” near Castel D’Aiano in the Apennine Mountains.

When the blast hit him, it ripped through his body, lifting and twisting him off the ground, and landing him face first in the cold dirt. Still conscious, he struggled to spit out blood and soil, realizing as he did that he could move neither his arms nor legs. “Body numb, brain active, vision blurred”, he later recalled of his self-assessment. Six foot two and two hundred pounds, he owed his life to a 5’ 5”, 145 pound sergeant who realized he was still alive and pulled him to safety. “I was conscious, but only my eyes could move. I couldn’t even unclench my teeth.”

He lay there for six more hours, drifting in and out of consciousness, in a crumbled heap, set behind a protective stone wall, with an “M” drawn in blood on his forehead. It told all that he had already received a hefty dose of morphine in the field, and to be cautious not to kill him with an overdose.

His morphine-laced mind was elsewhere. “Lying there on the cold ground, I wasn’t thinking about the future. I wasn’t even thinking about survival. I was thinking of where I had come from. My mind kept going back, back…I didn’t know where else to go, so I went home…

He survived, by way of rapid evacuation to the 15th Evacuation Field Hospital in Pistola, Italy, and from there was sent by ship to the states, ultimately landing at the Percy Jones Army Hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan.

He had been hit in the right back and arm by German machine gun fire, dosed up on Morphine and penicillin, and waited 9 hours on the battlefield near Castel d’Aiano before being rescued.  His injuries were severe. Not only was his right shoulder and arm shot up, but his spinal cord was traumatized. 

For months, he had minimal movement in his legs, no movement in his arms, and no control over his bodily functions.  He would spend two years in various hospitals. On two occasions, his temperature rose to near 108 degrees and death was imminent. In both cases, he was given penicillin, now known as often by the moniker, “The Miracle Drug”.

He gradually regained use of his legs and learned to walk, and even run at a slow trot, again. His arms were a different matter. The right one was all but useless, except, as he said, as a “blocker” for his left arm to brace against. Several surgeries improved the rest location of his forearm and clawed hand. But he would never regain use of his right hand or raise his right arm above his head. As for the left arm, it would carry the load for the rest of his life, but he never again had sensation in that hand, except for his fourth and 5^th fingers.

He’s dead now. But I had the privilege of traveling with him for a little over a year in 1998, often to visit veteran groups around the country. They loved him, rushing to him, reaching out with enthusiasm to shake his left hand.

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