Upon completion, the newly commissioned officer boarded a ship across the Atlantic with orders for Italy. Dole was assigned to an anti-tank unit in Camp Polk, Louisiana, and then attended Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. In 1944, he completed the Army Specialized Training Program in Brooklyn College, New York, where he studied engineering. The following month he left for basic training at Camp Barkley, Texas, and for basic training and he was assigned to the Army Medical Corps. At age 19, Dole decided to enlist in the Army Reserve Corps in 1942, and he took the oath of induction at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas City, in June 1943. It was difficult to concentrate on anything other than the war when so many friends and classmates were enlisting or being drafted. In his memoir, One Soldier's Story, Dole wrote that a year after the Pearl Harbor bombing, he was still in school, but barely. The war raging in Europe was little more than newsreels that Dole and his classmates watched before the feature film at the local theater. He studied medicine at the University of Kansas, where he played football and basketball and ran track. The 3rd Battalion, 85th Mountain Infantry Regiment was active on post until July 2020 when it was reflagged as the Fort Drum Soldier Recovery Unit.ĭole, son of Doran and Bina Dole, was born July 22, 1923, and grew up in Russell, Kansas. Mapes said it was fitting that the unit Dole was assigned to, the 85th Mountain Infantry Regiment, would have a presence at Fort Drum decades later when the Army established Warrior Transition Battalions. "Not only as a Soldier serving in World War II and leading his men in direct combat in Italy, but also as a member of Congress, ensuring the reactivated division would return as the 10th Mountain Division and the division patch would include the Mountain tab." "It is fairly well known, at least among those who are familiar with 10th Mountain Division history, about the impact and significance that Senator Dole had on the 10th Mountain Division," said Colonel Matthew Mapes, Fort Drum Medical Department Activity Commander. The barracks that houses service members assigned to the Soldier Recovery Unit at Fort Drum in New York was memorialized August 31 in honor of the late Senator Robert Dole – an original member of the 10th Mountain Division during World War II – at a ceremony outside the facility.
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