Bob Dole was quite simply the greatest U.S. senator and the greatest American who served in the Senate of our lifetime.

He was great not because he survived once, twice, thrice, four separate times when he was fully expected to die but because of what he did in the 77-plus years after he survived horrific wounds in World War II. Those wounds left him paralyzed, lying in his own blood on an Italian hillside for six hours after Nazi ordnance shattered his shoulder and severely damaged his neck and spine. When the field surgeon “opened Dole up, there wasn’t much to go by: Nothing was in the right place, and half of it wasn’t there,” wrote Richard Ben Cramer in the book What It Takes. “They just sewed him back up. Nothing more to do. If he lived, sure as hell, he was never going to walk. Of course, they didn’t tell him that.”