Three members of the 25th Infantry Division were awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism on Luzon in 1945.
The stitches from Carl Wunder’s encounter with a World War II bullet should heal up pretty quickly.
Not the entry wound: That was in 1945, when a bullet from a Japanese machine gun shattered his upper right arm.
This is more like an exit wound, after a doctor removed two bullet fragments Tuesday morning.
Three members of the 25th Infantry Division were awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism on Luzon in 1945.
The bits of metal had been there for 67 years before finally working their way toward the skin. That’s when they began to irritate Wunder — particularly the bigger fragment.
“After it got to the surface, it would hurt when I touched it,” the Vancouver veteran said Tuesday afternoon.
Brian Wunder knew his father had been wounded during combat in the Philippines: A Purple Heart medal is in a display case along with his dad’s Bronze Star, the “Tropic Lightning” badge of the Army’s 25th Infantry Division and GI dog tags still smeared with putty. (Soldiers stuck the metal tags together so they wouldn’t rattle, Brian said.)
But Brian didn’t know the wound was an ongoing story until a recent conversation with his mother, Marguerite.
The 87-year-old veteran went home with three or four stitches. Sitting in the condo Carl shares with Marguerite, he pushed back his sleeve and showed an adhesive bandage on the inside of his right bicep.
It wasn’t the first time Marguerite had seen the result of WWII hostilities. She grew up in London and her family lived through the Blitz — a months-long aerial assault by German bombers that was recounted during NBC’s coverage of the 2012 Olympics.
The family had a bomb shelter in the backyard. But when it turned cold, they risked sleeping in the house and moved their mattresses under a big metal table.
When Marguerite turned 21, she became a volunteer nurse’s aide and worked in a British military hospital.
