Memories of War : 71 Years After Being Wounded, WWI Veteran Gets Some Glory

ALTADENA —  A quiet man, 94-year-old Bill Martin rarely talked about the four days he spent during World War I in the Battle of the Argonne Forest, when shrapnel from an exploding artillery shell tore off his left heel and left him disabled for the next 71 years.

Martin never received the Purple Heart to which he was entitled for injury in battle, or a ribbon for the Army campaign. And he never joined a veteran’s organization.

But Friday, the former North Dakota farm boy raised his right hand and in a tremulous voice pledged loyalty to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post No. 10560.

While a dozen post members gathered around him--veterans of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts--Martin received belated recognition as one of the nation’s few remaining World War I military survivors.

Of the more than 4.7 million American soldiers mustered into action in the “Great War,” only 111,000 were still alive earlier this year, according to statistics from the Veterans Administration.

Friday’s ceremony for Martin was conducted in front of a veterans memorial plaque on a busy Altadena street corner where cars gunning their engines and trucks rumbling by at times drowned out Martin’s words.

“When I was young, I always wanted to be in the Army,” Martin recalled after the ceremony. “They used to show how they rode on the horses in the (movie) shows.”

But the cavalry was not for Martin. Instead, when he was called to duty at age 23 in April, 1918, he joined the 137th Infantry.

After only a month of training at Camp Dodge, Iowa, Martin was shipped out of Hoboken, N.J., on a cattle ship bound for England.

A farmer’s son used to aiming his shotgun only at pheasants, Martin was carrying a military rifle into battle. But he was not worried, he said.

“I thought it was just my duty to fight for the best country in the world,” he said.

By September, he found himself in the trenches of the Argonne Forest, the scene of a major U.S. offensive that began Sept. 26 and eventually involved 1.2 million Americans.

When pressed for further recollections Friday, Martin suddenly stopped.

“I think I better quit,” he said.

An acquaintance, Duane Merrill, filled in the rest of Martin’s story.

On Sept. 29, 1918, Martin volunteered with three other soldiers to search for battle survivors. While returning with a wounded soldier that the three others were carrying on a makeshift stretcher, Martin was hit by an exploding shell and fell wounded.

Details on what happened next are fuzzy, but Merrill said Martin remained on the ground for 26 hours until he was discovered by two Americans laying barbed wire.

Martin was hospitalized for nearly two years before he was discharged in June, 1920, his left heel encased in a brace. He went on to work for 41 years as a hospital orderly in Bismarck, N.D. Four years after the death of his wife in 1977, he moved to Altadena to live with his son. But he kept his war tale to himself as he puttered in his garden, an elderly man on crutches.

Not until members of the Altadena VFW Post, newly created in June, began to look for veterans did Martin and his story become known through his friend Merrill, who told members of the chapter about the reclusive veteran.

And despite almost 70 years of modesty, Martin may still get the medals he deserves.

“Nobody had ever talked to him about joining a veteran’s organization, and he never was issued his Purple Heart,” said post Cmdr. Joe Seif. “So, we’re going to apply (for one) for him, and a campaign ribbon, too.”