Purple Heart for Battle of the Bulge veteran

Antipodean Andy · Aug 24, 2008

For 86-year-old WWII soldier, a long-overdue honor - Salt Lake Tribune

Whether it was the emotion of the moment or simply the years in his step, Clinton Sagers shook as he stood before a crowd of dignitaries at the Utah Capitol on Thursday.
There was the governor. And to his right, two members of Congress. And across the room an Army general. All around, cameras flashed and popped. The crowd stood and applauded. A few old men - grizzled war veterans, no less - couldn't hold back their tears.
They had come to thank him. To honor him. And the 86-year-old Rush Valley man was overwhelmed.
"I've never seen a crowd like this come to see an old farmer," Sagers gushed as he stood, chest puffed forward with a bright purple medal pinned to his dark suit.
It was the Purple Heart - an award he had earned when he was wounded in the Battle of The Bulge, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, fought over two winter months in 1944 and 1945. Sagers says he first sought the medal after being freed from a prisoner of war camp in Mulberg after the Nazi surrender. But when it didn't come, he didn't complain. He was simply happy to be returning home alive.
A demand for proof: Nearly 60 years had passed before Sagers gave the medal any more thought. Wanting one to pass down to his children, and to their children, the aging farmer wrote to the Army seeking a correction in his records.
Playing strictly by the rules, Army officials asked to see documentation of his wounds. They said records from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which had long acknowledged the shrapnel in Sagers' leg, wouldn't do. They wanted to see the records from the doctor who first treated his wounds - a Russian medic who was being held at the same German prison camp.
But in the unlikely event that any medical records had been kept in the camp, such documents had long since disappeared.
Undeterred, Sagers suggested there would be a record in his own Army file of his original request for the award. But if that record ever existed, according to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, it likely was destroyed in a 1973 fire that claimed millions of pages of documents.
Finally, Army officials suggested that Sagers produce a witness - someone from his unit who was there when he was wounded.
Nearly 20,000 Americans were killed in the battle. Even more had been captured or were missing. Sagers had fallen behind the rest of his unit when he was injured - and, he says, he never saw a single one of his comrades again.
A six-year quest: Terry Schow first heard Sagers' story in 2002. At the time, the director of the Utah Division of Veterans Affairs believed a little push from his office would be enough to break through the red tape preventing the award.
He was wrong.
It took six years - and more than 40 letters from state and federal officials - before word came that the old infantryman would be granted the medal. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said that Schow, in particular, had been "relentless" in his pursuit of Sagers' award.
"Every time the president would come to town," Huntsman laughed, "Terry would say, 'Would you please bring up Clinton Sagers?' "
Schow said his zealousness was rooted in a deep fear that Sagers might die before the bureaucracy could be peeled back. It was not an irrational worry: The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that more than 1,000 World War II veterans die every day.
Choking back tears on Thursday, Schow said he was content that "at the end of the day, right certainly did triumph."
For his part, Sagers was simply humbled by the devotion that Schow and so many others had given to his case.
"I'm just as happy as can be," Sagers said, the long-sought medal gleaming on his chest. "I love you all."
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