Chapter 12 Valley Forge VA

A year or two later, Sonny realized that facing danger and dying was one thing, but facing danger and being incapacitated for life was something totally different.  The sobering truth struck him real hard during one weekend visit to Valley Forge Pennsylvania Hospital to participate in a boxing tournament dedicated to war veterans who were war wounded. Sonny, now 5’ 10” and weighing 170 pounds boxed in the Light Heavyweight category. Before the tournament while the other fighters were warming up, Sonny wanted to warm up his heart instead.  He decided to sit with the veterans, bond, share emotions and listen intently to their life stories.

 Each of those veterans had their own story of unsung heroism to relate. They had all been patriotic young men filled with a deep desire to make a difference in the world. They were young enough to believe they could. And they all paid dearly for it. Many were double or triple amputees and some had suffered severe burns.  One guy had sadly lost his ears and had just a small stub for what once used to be a nose.  His name was Phil, a P-38 Pilot from Baltimore who was attached to a unit in North Africa.  Flying missions over the Mediterranean, Phil spent much of his time escorting bombers to southern Germany or across the Balkans, attacking targets in Yugoslavia.

On only his 2nd mission to Vienna on August 1944 he was strafing a large concentration of trains and locomotives in Hungary when he caught a wing tip on a tree and cart wheeled forward crashing to the ground on its back.  Phil was badly burned and as he was climbing out of the flaming wreckage, the Hungarian soldiers captured him and lugged him in a horse-drawn cart to a Catholic hospital in Kormand, where he was expected to die. With resolute strength and stamina, he survived, and in a couple of months, a couple of Hungarian guards took him to another hospital in Budapest by train disguised as a Czech prisoner-of-war. On the train two German soldiers came up to him and put a gun to his head threatening to shoot him as a spy in disguise before letting him go. It was just one of the many close calls he was able to survive. 


Eventually Phil joined up with other Prisoners of War and were led to Frankfurt forty-five days after leaving Budapest.  Phil was interrogated and deloused then led to a huge room where several hundred starving Russians were lying on the floor.  The stench was so overwhelming one of the prisoners fainted.  A few days later they were all sent off to Numberg in crowded boxcars.    

Phil was in terrible shape. To sleep he had to roll his eyes up into his head. In the mornings he'd had to wipe the caked pus from his eyes with a dirty piece of gauze, while staring at his horribly disfigured face from a cracked piece of mirror.

Later in 1945, all the POWs were liberated and flown home for hospitalization.  Eventually Phil made it to the VA Rehabilitation Center in Valley Forge where he had been recovering for the last few years, hoping one day, soon to be back on his own two feet.

At the end of the talk, Sonny had completely broken down in tears.  His heart went out to the Veterans and War Wounded who had served unconditionally and sacrificed almost everything they had for their country and cause that they held so near and dear.

With some of their injuries, it became challenging to return back to normalcy and the lives they once knew. Some could not make their relationships with wives or girlfriends work. Their injuries and the pain and memories of the insuppressible horrors of war had taken a huge toll, but now they had embarked on a slow but steady road to recovery.  Some had become strangers to their own families.  Some who were severely wounded could not handle the compassion or perceived charity they received from their loved ones and preferred to live in a world away and to heal peacefully in this sanctuary where doctors and nurses catered to their needs and their brothers in arms who were coping with the same life situations consoled with each other so that they could come to grips with what had transpired.  It was not easy to comprehend, it was not easy to hear.  One or two broke down when speaking of their children who they deeply missed and wanted to be with again. The war was over and the world had moved on. It was their private tragedy now.

As Sonny listened and watched, he was filled with admiration for these hard-core men who had given their limbs and lives for our country and who had adapted themselves to life stoically, even cheerfully, despite their heart-wrenching handicaps. It seemed to him a reinforcement of what Valley Forge stood for, the suffering and stoic endurance of American soldiers – a modern day version of the patriotic young men in George Washington’s Army. In their own way these men appeared content with their lives, smoking and laughing as if they had no care in the world. Sonny was determined to do his very best to lift their spirits.  Unlike, them, he had never fought in combat, never even stepped foot on foreign soil.  But tonight, he would fight for them and tonight, they would cheer for him.