War Hero

It was late 1944 in northern Italy. My great-uncle, Frank Drudge, was a soldier in the 85^th Infantry Division of the United States Army. The objective of his division was to push upwards through Italy into the “soft underbelly of the axis”.

His company had just received a new captain, who was new to the war. Consequently, he immediately ordered Frank, a squad leader, to take his men out on patrol.

“I tried to tell him it wasn’t as safe out there as he thought,” Frank said. But he insisted on a patrol to gather enemy intelligence.

Frank took his squad, consisting of eight men, and began moving away from American lines.

“We had gotten about as far as I wanted to go,” Frank said. “I felt it wasn’t safer to go any farther.”

Frank told his men to lie against a bank they had come to. They waited there until 0200 hours when they heard a group of Germans approaching.

“I told my men to wait behind the bank while I crawled forward to investigate. There was a little hole in the brush I crawled through, and I told my men to shoot anything that didn’t come back through that hole.”

When he got over the bank, Frank saw a patrol of 17 heavily armed Germans. Knowing they could not stand up to them in a fair fight, Frank ordered an ambush.

“I pulled out my grenades, and ordered my men to open fire with their rifles and grenades as soon as I had thrown mine.”

Frank lofted his grenade towards the Germans as his men threw grenades of their own, and followed this up with furious rifle fire. After a short firefight, the German patrol was quiet. Knowing they had already traveled deep into enemy territory, Frank chose not to advance and instead brought his patrol back to American lines.

The next day, advancing American soldiers found the bodies of 15 Germans were Frank’s squad had ambushed them the previous night. Only two of Frank’s men had been wounded, and none killed.

Frank was awarded the Bronze Star for his valor in combat. The Bronze Star is awarded for “bravery, acts of merit, or meritorious service above and beyond the call of duty.” It is our nation’s fourth highest military honor. Like most medal recipients, Frank refuses to acknowledge that he did anything special.

“I was just doing my duty.”

A special birthday

Frank’s birthday is May 7. This also happens to be V-E Day, the end of World War Two in Europe. At this point in the war, there was almost no fighting, and Frank’s unit was barracked in the northern Italian town of Udine.

His commanding officer put the company on strict orders to not leave the compound under any circumstances. Their German counterparts on the other side of town, however, had no such restrictions and we’re free to roam the town, and being soldiers this means pubs, as they pleased.

This was too much for Frank. It was his birthday, the war was over, and he had made it through alive and relatively unscathed.

He sneaked out of the compound and spent his birthday celebrating and drinking the night away with his new-found friends.

The next morning he woke up safe and sound in his bed.

Later in the morning, his captain called him in, “Drudge, you were aware of my order to stay in the compound last night, were you not?”

“Yes, sir” Frank replied.

“So then what did you do last night for your birthday?”

“Oh, you know. Played some cards with the boys.”

“Oh that’s interesting,” his captain replied. “That’s not what the Germans said who brought you to the front gate last night.”

Mortal enemies the night before, Frank and the Germans had become best of friends while celebrating the end of the war. Those two German soldiers had gone from shooting at Frank to making sure he got back to his base safely.

How to deal with your problems

It was the mid-1940s and Frank had just gotten back from the war. In the spirit of being a true Hoosier, he took my grandpa, Tom, to the high school basketball sectional tournament.

In those days it didn’t get any bigger than high school basketball in Indiana. The local sectional was being held in a gym that only seated 1,000 people. Frank knew it would be packed so he and Tom planned to get there early.

There were already lines when they got to the game, but they went to a side door and were only fourth in line, an excellent spot. While they were waiting for the doors to open, a man came and cut in front of them.

First, Frank politely asked the man what he was doing. The man simply ignored him.

“I’ve been standing in line for 3 years in the Army and I don’t want guys cutting in front of me.”

The man continued to ignore him.

“Grab a leg,” Frank said to 13-year old Tom.

Tom grabbed the man’s leg as Frank grabbed the rest of him.

They dragged the man over to the nearby railing and pitched the man onto the concrete steps 6-8 ft below.

The man quickly scrambled to his feet as Frank offered him a spot at the back of the still-short line. The man said nothing and walked off.

The nearby fans said nothing as they agreed with what Frank had done as that was how you handled things in those days.

“Frank taught me that was how you handled things like that,” Tom said. “You don’t let people push you around.”

The Great Deception

Frank played basketball for Silver Lake High School from the late 1930s to the early 1940s. Unfortunately, the Ramblers were terrible. Consequently, a local tavern owner said that if the team ever won a game, he would give them all free hamburgers.

On this night the Silver Lake squad was traveling to play Etna Green. Etna Green had a good team that year and no one expected Silver Lake to win. The Ramblers battled hard and gave it their best effort.

Etna Green won by 40.

On the way home, the Silver Lake team stumbled upon a great realization. No one from Silver Lake had come to the game. No one knew they lost!

As the bus rolled back in to Silver Lake, the players opened the windows and began singing, “We won! We won! We won, by golly, we won!”

True to his word, the tavern owner fired up his grill and began making the promised burgers. The team stopped at their high school, then headed over to the tavern to eat their supper.

As he served the burgers, the tavern owner began asking about the game. The players told him the score, but they conveniently reversed the scores in their favor.

The meal and conversation continued, and the owner asked about players stats. The team began telling him, “Oh so and so had three points, he had five, he had six.”

All of a sudden the tavern owner made the connection. “Wait a minute, that doesn’t add up!” he said. Fortunately, he was a good sport about it and laughed as the team finished their meal.

Mousetraps

After the war, Frank worked a variety of jobs, but his first was a grocer. Like most groceries of the day, Frank’s store had jars of penny candy on the counter. There were approximately six of these jars and they held everything from peppermints to chocolate drops.

As there wasn’t much to do in the late 40’s, the local high school boys would often stop by the store to talk to Frank, only a few years their senior. They would listen to his war stories, and discuss the sports teams of the day.

They also gathered to pitch pennies, a game in which you tossed pennies at a crack in the floor, and the goal was to be the closest to the crack.

While the boys were there, they would always sneak a few pieces of candy out of the jars without telling Frank.

“I don’t know if they thought they were being sly, or what,” said Helen, Frank’s wife.

But he knew.

Frank wasn’t too mad, so he thought he’d teach the boys a lesson while having a little fun at the same time.

“I put mousetraps in all of the jars,” Frank said. “Then I covered them over with candy so the boys wouldn’t see them until it was too late.”

Sure enough, the boys were in for a surprise the next day when they tried to steal some candy. After recovering from their shock and minor pain, the boys had a laugh with Frank and agreed they had learned their lesson.

The Final Game

It’s going right, I thought. Sure enough, the running back went in motion and the ball was snapped.

It was the football sectional championship in 2009, my senior year. My team, the NorthWood Panthers, was facing the Jimtown Jimmies, our archrival. We were looking to make ourselves back-to-back 3A Sectional 18 champs. We were also out for revenge as we had fallen to the Jimmies in overtime the first game of the season.

As the running back went in motion, I began to float over to the play side from my strong safety position. Just as I had been expecting, the quarterback handed off. I picked up speed as I headed toward the line of scrimmage. Running out of room along the sideline, the back decided to cut up field, and that was when I made my move.

I braced my body for impact as I hurled all 190 pounds of myself at the ball carrier. He had seen me coming, and accelerated towards me, lowering his body to protect against the oncoming blow. We collided with a tremendous crash, both of us dropping straight to the ground.

“Nice hit, John!” I heard my teammates yelling. “You messed him up!”

I wanted to jump up and celebrate the play with my teammates, but all I could think about was the white-hot pain that had engulfed my left shoulder.

Our free safety, my best friend, ran up to congratulate me, but stopped when he noticed the pain that must have been etched across my face.

“Are you alright, man?” he asked.

I looked at him and said matter-of-factly, “I just dislocated my shoulder.”

As the clock expired on the first quarter, we ran off the field to get some water and have a short meeting with our coaches. The first thing I did was walk over to my defensive backs coach.

“I can’t move my arm,” I told him. I also told him that, as a two-way starter and team captain, there was no way I was coming out of this game. He understood completely and told me to do the best that I could. I avoided our athletic trainer and headed back onto the field, asking a teammate to strap up my helmet on the left side, as I could not raise my arm.

Two plays later, it was third down and Jimtown had the ball inside our 20-yard line. The game was still scoreless, and a stop here would be huge.

The quarterback handed off to the same running back, off the right side of our defense once again. I would later learn that the running back had felt the effects of our collision as well, and this would be his last carry of the game.

But none of that mattered at this instant. Expecting a run, I had inched up to the line of scrimmage. As I saw the running back take the handoff, I stormed into the backfield, grabbing the runner with my good right arm. As my left arm hung limply at my side, I wrapped myself around him and brought him to the ground behind the line of scrimmage, giving us that badly needed stop.

As my teammates once again began to celebrate, I took my time getting up as the fire in my shoulder had intensified with that last hit.

By this time the coaches had noticed my injury, and called me off the field instead of allowing me to join the offensive huddle, where I was the tight end. Our trainer met me as I jogged off the field, and began to make his preliminary diagnosis.

After a short examination, he determined that it was not dislocated, but as to the extent of other damage he could not be sure. Following a short dispute, he allowed me to finish the half, promising to perform a further examination at halftime.

We battled hard throughout the second quarter, and headed into halftime down 7-0.

In the locker room, the trainer had me take off my shoulder pads which was, in itself, a task. Almost every test he had me perform resulted in extreme pain filling my entire arm.

 “There is too much pain for me to get an accurate diagnosis at this point,” he told me. I was given the OK to play as much as my pain threshold allowed me.

Given the game situation, and the fact that I have been blessed with an extremely high tolerance for pain, I went and told the coaches that I was good to go for the second half.

I fought as hard as I could in the second half, making tackles and blocks with only one arm. The pain had receded from its initial intensity, but was still agonizing. Numbness had also developed, stretching from my neck to the tips of my fingers.

The game went back and forth, as we tied it with a touchdown, and then Jimtown went up by a field goal that would prove to be the decisive margin.

As the clock ticked down to zero, I began to cry, out of pain, frustration, and the realization that I had just played my last down of high school football. I had truly left it all on the field. I simply didn’t have any left to give. This knowledge was of little comfort to me.

As I stood on the field crying with my teammates, my brothers, one of our assistant coaches came up to me.

“John, I just want to thank you for your effort tonight. That was one of the best displays of heart I have ever seen. I know you’re hurt and you didn’t have much left at the end, but all you had to give is still out there. So thank you.”

Although I only managed to mumble a quick thanks through my tears, I was humbled by these words. This praise of my effort, my heart, meant more to me than a thousand people congratulating me on my skill.

After the season, basketball started although I missed the first few weeks as first my trainer, then 
another doctor, and finally an orthopedic surgeon tried to determine my injury. The final diagnosis was an extreme pinched nerve, deep in my shoulder. It resulted in constant pain and numbness for over a month, and I still get occasional pain and numbness today. However, I would gladly play that game again, injury and all, just to get one more chance to play under the Friday night lights.

Overtime Thriller

Finally, it was the fourth quarter and I was allowed to go back in the game. We were playing the Fairfield Falcons, and the game had been a dogfight the whole way.

  
It was the fourth game of my junior basketball season, and I was splitting time between the varsity and JV. Consequently, I was only allotted two quarters a night on the JV. On this particular night, I was playing the second and fourth quarters.

My specialty on that team was defense and rebounding. Our coach had saved me, along with Dave Zeltwanger, our other defensive stopper, for the end of the game and we were ready to go.

Two minutes into the fourth quarter, Dave picked up his fourth foul. This was hardly a surprise as the referees had been terrible all game. I had been playing with three fouls since the first quarter. As Dave was sent to the bench, I moved over to guard their star player. I did my best, but he was good and the game was tied when I was whistled for my fourth foul with just over two and a half minutes left.

Knowing it was now or never, our coach sent Dave back into the game. Together, we shut down Fairfield and we were up two with thirty seconds to go.

And then the refs bailed them out. Two straight bad calls put the Falcons on the free throw line, and just like that they were ahead by two points.

We pushed the ball up the court, and our point guard found Dave open under the basket for the tying layup!

The clock ticked down as they brought the ball up for what would be the last shot. As the point guard turned his back, I went for the steal. He never saw me coming as I cleanly picked his pocket and took off for the basket. I laid the ball in, and then I heard the whistle.  

Carrying. The officials had given the Falcons yet other chance. With only two seconds left on the 
clock, their half-court shot fell short and we were headed into overtime.

The incredibly unfair officiating had given us a fire and we came out ready to go. I hit Dave with a long pass on a fast break to start the extra period, and we were in business. Continuing to find the open players, we built a six point lead.

As often happens in basketball, the Falcons picked this exact moment to heat up. It seemed as if every shot they threw up went in, and just like that it was again tied with fifteen second left.

Our point guard slowly brought the ball up the floor, setting up our carefully designed play. Our goal was to get the ball to our best shooter, and let him take the last shot. Fairfield knew this would happen, however, and he was covered.

Seeing everyone was covered, I flashed to the middle of the lane. With no one else open, our point guard fired me the ball. I took one dribble, pump faked, pivoted, and put up my shot.

I am not a scorer. I started every game my senior year, and only managed to average four points per game. I was under strict instructions not to shoot from beyond 15 feet, and for good reason. But on this night, the ball was in my hands.

I had misjudged exactly where I was on the court. Thinking I was closer to the middle of the lane, my shot was off. Instead, I was extremely close to the basket, and my shot hit the bottom of the rim.

How could I have missed such a bunny?! I was filled with thoughts of embarrassment and anger over missing the game winning shot, especially at such close range.

And then, as if guided by an unseen hand, the ball spun up over the top of the rim and in! Fairfield rushed to inbound the ball, but it was too late. The buzzer sounded as my teammates stormed onto the floor. We had won!

Not only was it great to win a game against all odds, my play that night got me noticed. I kept working hard, and when one of our varsity starters got hurt later in the year, it was me that got the nod to start.