The pernicious dwarf has gone too far this time. “Now, here’s a guy that’s supposed to be a war hero,” said Ross Perot of Bob Dole. “You’d think he’d be willing to stand up and talk to another person, wouldn’t you? But he can’t.” A supposed war hero?
On April 14, 1945, the 85th Mountain Regiment, Third Battalion, advanced on Hill 913 in Italy’s Po Valley. The 2nd Platoon of I Company, led by Lt. Bob Dole, came under a torrent of steel as Germans fired everything they had — machine guns, mortars, and grenades — to halt their advance. When his radio man was hit, Dole, then 21 years old, crawled out from the cover of a bomb crater to drag his fellow soldier to safety. But Dole’s friend was dead. The Germans then fired on Dole and wounded him from behind. As Dole biographer Richard Ben Cramer describes it, steel fragments shattered his shoulder and collarbone and “smashed into his vertebrae, crushed a piece of his spine, it was broken, the spinal cord was knocked out. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel anything below his neck.”
Exactly ten years later, in April 1955, Lt. Junior Grade Ross Perot began a failed effort to get out of the Navy after two years of service rather than the four required for Annapolis graduates. He hated the Navy and pestered his superiors for an early discharge. Perot’s requests resulted in the following evaluations from his superiors: Rear Admiral J.C. Daniel, then head of destroyer forces in the Atlantic, wrote to the secretary of the Navy and the chief of naval personnel in July 1955 that this behavior “indicates that Perot is too immature to be entrusted with the leadership responsibilities inherent in sea duty.” He advised that Perot be given a “purely administrative” assignment on land away from the Navy’s ships. Also in July 1955, Perot’s destroyer division commander, Captain G.H. Miller, sent an official letter to the chief of naval personnel advising that Perot was ” emotionally maladjusted for a regular Navy career.”
That emotional maladjustment continues to this day.
