Recent injury puts Dole in an all too familiar spot

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The sunlit third-floor physical therapy room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center is not for the faint of heart.

A young woman sits on a stationary bike, her left leg severed at the knee, a crosshatch of stitches closing the wound. A thin young man with a spider web of facial scars sits quietly working with a therapist, his left arm a stump. Other amputees try out their artificial legs, balancing precariously on crutches.

Here, the wounds of war are fresh -- even for 81-year-old former Sen. Bob Dole, a World War II veteran who cheated death 60 years ago, but remains permanently disabled. Mr. Dole -- who represented Kansas in Congress for 35 years -- has been coming to Walter Reed for physical therapy three times a week since a fall in January left him with a badly injured left shoulder and paralyzed left arm.

That fall came only one month after Mr. Dole got a hip replacement. One doctor said he would never recover.

"He was in a lot of pain," says Mr. Dole's physician, Dr. Charles Peck. "He kept saying this is an awful lot like 1945."

Mr. Dole has returned to Walter Reed just weeks before publication of his new book, "One Soldier's Story," a memoir of his war experience, especially his long recovery and rehabilitation from the wounds he suffered in northern Italy in April 1945.

He wrote the book, he says, to give hope to others. Now, he grimaces as the therapist lifts his left arm in slow motion.

"There was a period I couldn't move it at all," Mr. Dole says of the recent injury, "but they're getting it back."

Mr. Dole is upbeat about his latest recovery and looking forward to a book tour.

He was awarded two Purple Hearts for his war injuries, as well as the Bronze Star for bravery for crawling out of his foxhole in an attempt to rescue his platoon's radio man. Wounded by German machine-gun fire, Lt. Dole lay paralyzed for nine hours on an Italian battlefield before being evacuated.