It was a message Kathleen Little had prayed would never come. But the telegram, containing frustratingly little detail, was delivered to her in Kansas City on April 18, 1945.
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It was a message Kathleen Little had prayed would never come. But the telegram, containing frustratingly little detail, was delivered to her in Kansas City on April 18, 1945.
“The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret that your husband Pvt. Little Elmo B Sr was seriously wounded in Germany 31 Mar 45…”
The wounds suffered by Little, which also led to his capture and two days as a prisoner of war, qualified him to receive a Purple Heart and, in fact, his discharge papers indicate he was awarded a Purple Heart with one Oakleaf Cluster. However, his transfers from one hospital facility to another and a desire “to just get out” led to a 54-year wait to actually receive the medal.
The Purple Heart he had waited so long to receive was finally pinned to his Army uniform Wednesday afternoon at the Republican-Times office. VFW Post 919 Commander Chester Ishmael and Little’s nephew, James Wattenbarger, made the presentation, which brought back a lot of memories for Little, a foot soldier with the 318th Infantry Regiment, “I” Company of Patton’s Third Army.
On March 31, 1945, Little, now a resident of Edinburg, and his platoon were near Frankfort, Germany after receiving orders to head away from Berlin, when they came under artillery fire. As he crouched in a grader ditch between two small villages, Little raised his head to check on the soldiers around him and saw a “ball of fire” so close he thought he could “have reached up and caught it” with his hand. The ball of fire, he now believes, was an anti-aircraft gun shell that, had he remained crouched in the ditch, would have struck him in the back of the neck. Instead, the shell cut his chin, splitting his lower right jaw, and left him wounded in the chest as well.
After lying wounded and bloody for about two and one-half hours, Little said he made his way to the next town.
“I got into town and got on the first step of the first house I came to, then I blacked out,” Little recalled. “When I woke up, I was in a U.S. Jeep being taken back to an aid station. They put me in an ambulance and had cut off my shirt and underwear, patched my chest wounds and wrapped a blanket around me. There were four of us in each ambulance and there were three ambulances. They waited until dark before starting back to get medical help for us.”
What happened next was likely as frightening as suffering the wounds itself.
“A German company had moved in behind us and cut us off,” he said. “The ambulance drove right into them and the driver got out. I knew right off something was wrong. Two Germans got in the ambulance and drove us the rest of the night.”
The Germans finally parked the ambulance in some timber during the day and took advantage of the situation by taking some of the soldiers’ belongings, including their clothing. Still wrapped in his blanket, the captors apparently thought Little was naked and didn’t even attempt to take what little clothing he still had. Nor did they take what looked like a small shaving kit, but was actually filled with Little’s diary (which he kept throughout his service) and other trinkets.
When night came again, the Germans took the ambulance to town, where the injured were housed on the floor of a building. On April 2, the 5th U.S. Division overtook the Germans and regained control of the town, allowing the injured to finally be treated for their wounds.
Little was flown to England, then on to the U.S. on a flight that had him eating breakfast five times as he crossed into different time zones. Once he got back to the states, Little was sent to O’Reilly Hospital in Springfield, where he first got on the list for the Purple Heart. Then, before the date came up to receive the award, he was moved to Camp Carson, CO.
“I was just never in the right place to get it, I guess,” he said. “And you know, at the time, I didn’t care a whole lot. We were looking for the discharge papers. I just wanted to get out.”
So Little, who at the time of his enlistment was a 28-year-old married father with two children who could have used a deferment to avoid service, returned to civilian life. He picked up where he had left off, working for the railroad in Kansas City before moving to north Missouri to farm. He and Kathleen reared their three children and, though he has sometimes talked about his war experience (which also included an earlier, less serious wound), he did not pursue his missing Purple Heart.
In 1994, after prompting from his grandson, Mark, daughter Donita Smith began corresponding with the National Records Center in St. Louis, getting mired in the proverbial government red tape. Earlier this year, after numerous calls and letters, Ms. Smith gave up on the records center and contacted Sixth District U.S. Rep. Pat Danner, a move that proved to be the catalyst for Wednesday’s presentation. Ms. Smith said Rep. Danner corresponded monthly to keep the family informed of the progress in the endeavor and three weeks ago the letter arrived, saying the medal would be forthcoming. Two weeks ago, it arrived in the mail.
While there was a time when Little didn’t think much about receiving the medal, he is pleased to have it now.
“I really appreciate it now,” he commented.
And while his daughters, which also include Sharon Allen of Trenton, talk about him being recognized for putting his life on the line for others, Little becomes quiet, then talks about friends who were killed in action.
“There were times when there were men all around me who were hit and died,” he said. “A normal platoon has about 36 soldiers at full strength and we’d get down to eight. They’d send us a few replacements, but it always seemed to be the same eight. We had a buddy system and I think that’s one reason we won the war. If we would get their officer, they were kind of helpless. They would just stand around and wait for someone to give them an order. If we found ourselves in that situation, we figured out what to do and did it. And we looked out for each other. That was the difference.”
The stories of war become real as Little tells of bullets buzzing all around him and of comrades laying on either side of him, dying at the hands of the enemy. And even as he sits in the same uniform he wore in 1945, finally holding the medal that honors him for his sacrifice, Little is humbled by the fact that he, unlike so many others who served with him, lived through the war and returned to live a full life.
“It’s hard to understand why one person makes it and another doesn’t. Sometimes I think about it, about the ones who were killed. I feel really lucky, but I just can’t hardly account for getting by.”
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Ronda Lickteig