Military Histories

"One day, when I was at the top of the trail, a wounded paratrooper captain walked into the aid station in the old stone building. He was Captain Francis Sheehan, of 22 North Grey Street, Indianapolis, a man with a finely sensitive face, who almost seemed out of place in such a rugged outfit as the paratroopers. He stood out among the other wounded because he was cleanly shaven, and although his face was dirty it was recent dirt, not the basic grime that comes of going unwashed for weeks and weeks. He had gone up the mountain the day before, to relieve a battalion medical officer who had been wounded. Captain Sheehan was on the mountain only a few hours when he too was wounded, although not seriously. He got a machine-gun bullet in his right shoulder, but it apparently missed the bones. He walked on down the mountain without help, and said that the wound didn't actually hurt much.

Captain Sheehan graduated from Indiana University Medical School in 1938, and had a residency at City Hospital in Indianapolis before he went into the paratroopers. We happened to get together because he used to read my columns in the Indianapolis Times."

Ernie Pyles, in Brave Men page 151