Nov. 10--"There on the beaches of Normandy, I began to reflect on the wonders of these ordinary people whose lives are laced with the markings of greatness. At every stage of their lives they were part of historic challenges and achievements of a magnitude the world had never before witnessed."
-- Tom Brokaw, "The Greatest Generation"
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When 91-year-old Charles Battaglia of La Grange talks about the day he lost both legs in World War II, he is stoic. He could be reading a grocery list, his voice is so even.
While he was crouched in a ditch during the Battle of Hurtgen Forest in 1944 -- actually a three-month series of battles and the war's longest conflict on German terrain -- a mortar tossed from enemy lines landed close by and blew off his legs.
"Blew them off." Those are his words. He doesn't coddle himself.
"I tried to get up and I couldn't. That was the end of my knowing what was going on. I woke up in a makeshift hospital, a schoolhouse in Germany," Battaglia says. An Army buddy had saved him by dragging him through the forest, following a telephone wire that connected their group to their commander. The entire area was booby-trapped.
Battaglia and his comrades are a disappearing treasure. Nationwide, more than 500 World War II veterans die every day. Many returned home with mental and physical war wounds and encountered a shallow support system to ease their transition. Most didn't receive apt gratitude for their service, but they didn't ask for or expect it either. "Never once has he said, 'Why me?'" his wife, Mary Ann, says of her husband's disability. "He's a very moral, strong person."
Charles and Mary Ann met before Battaglia nearly lost his life on the battlefield. They wrote letters to keep in touch, and he was able to call her once on her birthday. When they finally reunited, it was at Percy Jones Army Hospital in Battle Creek, Mich., a makeshift military hospital that specialized in amputee care. Mary Ann was barely out of high school when she took a train to see him. "It was kind of shocking, but there he was, all smiles," she says. "I guess I kept thinking how great he was and how nice and handsome."
While recovering, Battaglia played poker in the hospital. Lots of it. He stashed his winnings. He was saving for something. "It's small but it sparkles," Mary Ann says cheerfully of the engagement ring, still wrapped around her finger, that he bought from those winnings. When family members suggested years later he buy her "a real ring," she said no. She had the same diamond reset into a new band.
The Battaglias raised five children in La Grange. Charles Battaglia used his military experience to launch a career: He spent 30 years making artificial limbs for wounded soldiers at Hines VA Hospital.
His story resembles those of thousands of baby-faced teenagers who left home -- eagerly, many of them -- to fight a war on the other side of the world. They lost arms and legs. They lost friends. Brothers. Comrades.
And for some, their most gracious "thank-you" came decades later. A few years ago, Battaglia flew with Honor Flight Network to Washington to see the National World War II Memorial. Honor Flight is a nonprofit organization that began as an upstart charity in Springfield, Ohio. Earl Morse, a retired Air Force captain and physician's assistant, asked his veteran patients if they planned to visit the national memorial, which opened in 2004. The veterans wanted to go, but health and financial obstacles made travel difficult.
So Morse, who was also a private pilot, recruited other pilots to fly 12 veterans to Washington at no cost. The experience was so stirring that a national movement began. Honor Flight now operates in nearly every state, and more than 100,000 veterans have been treated to a well-deserved "thank-you."
Battaglia was overwhelmed by the experience: the camaraderie, the generosity, the patriotism. On his return to Midway Airport, marching bands and military personnel greeted him warmly: "They had the Fire Department with all these hoses and all the bands and I says, 'What is this?' Seems like I'm a general or something. It was great."
Battaglia never let his disability postpone his dreams. He told his fellow veterans at Hines the same: "You have to overcome. In all of my days with artificial limbs, I did everything. I went to Hawaii. I didn't let it stop me. If you've got a dream, fulfill it. Do whatever you have to do. Do what you like to do. That's what I would tell them. It was my calling."
