FOR VETERANS’ DAY, a podcast about my father’s exploits in WWII was just released. It’s titled, “Youngest WWII Officer, Saves Lipizzaners, and More.” The “Heroes Behind the Headlines” podcast is hosted by Ralph Pezzullo, a New York Times and International Bestselling author whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide,

I hope you’ll use Veterans’ Day this year to recognize, thank, and honor the veterans in your sphere of influence. As my father used to say of those with whom he served, “All gave some; some gave all.”

You can listen to the 80-minute podcast by clicking here. Just scroll down the page to find the Monday, October 27, 2025, podcast. You may have to click on the “See More Episodes” link if it’s not listed on the homepage.

Another option is to listen on Apple Podcasts here.

Here’s what Ralph had to say about our time together discussing my father:

World War II hero Phil Larimore remains the youngest candidate to ever graduate from Army Officer Training School, which he did at the age of seventeen, on the eve of America’s involvement in World War II.

Landing on the Anzio beachhead in February 1944, Phil – the youngest commissioned US officer in World War II – was put in charge of an Ammunition Pioneer Platoon of the 3rd Infantry Division. Their job: to deliver ammunition to the frontline foxholes—a dangerous assignment involving regular forays into No Man’s Land.

As Phil fought his way up the Italian boot, into Southern France and across the Rhine River into Germany, he experienced some of the most intense combat ever. But it was what happened in the final stages of the war, when Phil was sent on a secret mission into Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to find the farm where Hitler was hiding his world-famous Lipizzaner stallions that makes his story incredibly special and is  the ultimate expression of Phil Larimore’s life-long love of horses.

Like so many veterans of that “greatest generation,” Phil didn’t talk much about his war experiences until much later in life, and when he did his stories seemed outrageous to his family and his sons.

After his death, his son and our guest Dr. Walt Larimore discovered his father’s papers in the attic—and learned that his father’s stories were all true.

In this episode, Dr. Larimore describes his father’s remarkable service to his country, including meeting Eisenhower, losing his leg, fighting to stay in the army, and being awarded  the Distinguished Service Cross, two silver stars, two bronze stars, three Purple Hearts, the Medal of France, the Crois du Garde with a palm, and more.

All of this and more is described in Dr. Walt Larimore’s remarkable book At First Light.

For those of you who prefer to read rather than listen to a podcast, here’s a transcript of the podcast. Feel free cut and paste it into a document to read at your convenience.

TRANSCRIPT — MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2025

Youngest WWII Officer, Saves Lipizzaners, and More

 

“As he was being evacuated, a German officer and about 30 of the remaining men surrendered. And they came out to surrender, and the German officer surrendered to Major McFalls, who was the US officer, and Major McFalls, and his eyewitness account of this says that the German officer said, had that tank not come forward, that they would have wiped out the squad. And he said, his men were demoralized by the man that bullets couldn’t stop.

Welcome to Heroes Behind Headlines. I’m your host, Ralph Pezzullo. Our guest today is Dr. Walt Larimore, family physician, bestselling author, and son of the World War II hero, Phil Larimore.

Phil Larimore, Walt’s father, remains the youngest candidate to ever graduate from Officer Training School, which he did at the age of 17, on the eve of America’s involvement in World War II. Landing on the Anzio beachhead in February 1944, Phil, the youngest commissioned US officer in World War II, was put in charge of an ammunition pioneer platoon of the 3rd Infantry Division. Their job to deliver ammunition to the frontline foxholes, a dangerous assignment involving regular forays into No Man’s Land.”

“As Phil fought his way up the Italian boot into southern France and across the Rhine River into Germany, he was caught up in some of the most intense combat ever. But it was what happened in the final stages of the war, when Phil was sent on a secret mission into Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to find the farm where Hitler was hiding his world-famous Lipizzaner stallions that makes his story incredibly special and is the ultimate expression of Phil Larimore’s lifelong love of horses. All of this is recounted in his son Walt’s excellent and heartwarming book At First Dawn.

We’re very honored to have Dr. Walt Larimore with us today as our guest on Heroes Behind Headlines.

Heroes Behind Headlines with Ralph Pezzullo.

What an amazing man your father was.

You know, I didn’t realize it when I was younger. I grew up in the 1950s, 1960s, and we watched World War II TV shows and movies, and all the guys in the neighborhood kind of argued about whose father was the greatest hero. And I knew my dad had fought, I knew he lost his leg, but he never, ever talked about it.”

“And then finally, on he and mom’s 50th wedding anniversary, he began to talk. And he told stories. And I found out that he really was an amazing hero.

And a very modest man, it sounds like.

You know, he was. He didn’t consider himself a hero. I remember at one time asking him, did he?

And he really got kind of angry. He said, no. He said, well, the heroes of the two million American men that fought in Europe, the heroes are the ones that are still there, that are underground.

And those are the heroes. The rest of us did our job.

Yeah.

And then we came home.

Wow. Wow. What a thing to say.

That gives me the chills. Tell us a little bit about, you know, where you grew up. Yeah.

Well, I was born in Virginia. My dad was a student there at the University of Virginia. And taking advantage of the GI Bill, he and mom moved down to LSU with my brother and I, and had two other boys as he became a professor.”

“And he spent 50 years there as a beloved professor and scout master. And he and mom were very active at the Episcopal Students Center on campus. But all those boys grew up there.

My mom was a nurse and she would work evening shift three days a week to help supplement dad’s income. And whenever she got home after her 11, 7 to 11 shift, she would wake me up and tell me about the babies that she had delivered as an obstetrical nurse. And so I got interested in medicine and actually ended up in medical school.

And then began a career in family medicine and sports medicine through over 40 years. But then after dad began to talk about, after his 50th wedding anniversary, again, talking about his stories. I’ve got to tell you the truth, Ralph.

My brothers and I didn’t believe them. They just seemed outlandish, incredible, you know, exaggerated. There’s just no way that they could be true.

But what bothered me as a physician, I knew how to take histories. I had worked in small towns where I was the coroner and we had to learn how to interrogate and interview people. And, one thing about people when they lie, they don’t tell the same story the same way.”

“Yeah, no matter who he told his stories to, scouts, scout masters, students, other professors, to us as family members, the stories were all the same. And I thought, hmm, maybe there’s something to that. Anyway, he passed away suddenly in 2003.

And when we were cleaning out the attic supplies there at their house, I found an Army trunk, just a regular old Army trunk. And in it were uniform, parts of his uniform. A German Nazi helmet, over 450 letters, three history books, one including the history of the 3rd Infantry Division, one including the history of the 30th Infantry Regiment.

And in those letters, and in hundreds of newspaper articles, magazine articles, journal articles that his mother had saved from literally all over the country, and in those history books were his stories. It turns out he wasn’t lying that they were real. And so, Ralph, what I did, I began the process of, just for my own interest, putting, typing his letters.

They were, many of them were handwritten. Some of them were V-mail from the front. And so I just put them in chronological order.”

“I interjected the stories that were in the history books and the magazines and the newspaper articles. But there were some holes in the narrative. And so I just began reviewing those, studying those.

It involved traveling to 12 different states, to military installations, to the National Archives, the Army Heritage Education Center, National World War II Museum, National Personnel Records, et cetera, et cetera. And then Barb and I, my wife and I traveling to Great Britain, to France, to Italy, to Germany, going to archives there, finding stories and original documents, and then just putting that together. It ended up being a 1.5 million word document.

But I thought, I think there’s probably a book here that I wanted to put together. And quite frankly, Ralph, my motive was not my dad’s story, but the story of the men who fought on the Southern Front of Europe, particularly the 3rd Infantry Division. Their story is forgotten, their successes, their sacrifices, their suffering is completely forgotten.

I’ll give you an example. Every one of our viewers and listeners is aware of D-Day. But very few are aware that the Southern Front had five D-Days.”

“The Northern Front guys fought like hell, but they fought for 336 days. The Southern Front guys fought for 940 days. The 3rd ID fought 10 campaigns, the most of any division.

They were the first division in the war, the first five divisions attacked in Morocco in 1943. They fought over 3200 miles. They had the most Medals of Honor, the most Distinguished Service Crosses, the most Purple Hearts and they’re the most forgotten.

Perhaps the most egregious thing that history forgot was when they liberated Rome. They liberated Rome on June 4th and 5th, 1944. And the newspaper headlines, I found newspaper headlines across the country, great big fonts of Rome liberated, the first European capital liberated.

And all of those headlines were thrown away because they were going to be published on June 6th, 1944. And what happened June 6th? The Normandy invasion.

And so, dad and his buddies always kind of had a chip on their shoulder. They had so much admiration and respect for the Northern front, but they felt that their story had been forgotten. And I hope that this book in some way would help resurrect the memory of the Southern front.”

“So tell us about your dad’s background.

He grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. His mom was a legal executive. She worked for a large law firm.

She worked 12 to 16 hour days, six, sometimes seven days a week. So she was really busy. His dad was a Pullman conductor on the Pullman trains that ran between Chicago and New Orleans.

And so he was halfway in Memphis where he could get on and off them. The two trains were the City of New Orleans that Arlo Guthrie sung about, and the other one was called the Panama Limited. But as a Pullman conductor, he would be gone days at a time.

So dad was basically, he was an only child, and he was a latchkey child. He loved outdoor stuff. He loved hunting, equestrian, horseback riding, being in the wilderness, camping.

But he wasn’t so good in school. In public school, he didn’t do well. Vacation, Bible school, he didn’t do very well.”

“His mom even sent him to Miss Lee’s School for Etiquette for Children to try to teach him some manners. He didn’t do very well. And so getting in trouble as he did, not doing well in school, they made what was for them a difficult decision, but it ended up being the right decision for him, sending him to military school.

And so after his junior high school career, this juvenile delinquent who was just a hell of an athlete. In fact, as a kid, when he was 12 years old, he swam across the Mississippi River twice, you know, with a buddy. I mean, he was a terrific horseman.

He was a horse whisperer. There was one story when he was nine years of age, his mother took him to see the Lipizzan stallions, the white dancing horses from Vienna, Austria. And he went and spent a day with the stableman there.

And the story that the stableman told about how he, how Phil was able, dad was able to communicate to those horses, almost whisper to them, and actually was able to ride one, which you don’t get to do until you’ve been trained to do that, But anyway, he got sent to military school as a 13 year old, and there he found himself. He found his leadership skills.

“He found his love of military, his love of organization, his love of weapons, his love of flying, his equestrian skills increased, and he graduated with honors from Gulf Coast Military Academy just after Pearl Harbor. And from there, his career was set. His military career began during the war years of World War II.

And initially he trained to become an infantry officer candidate. But he was assigned to the 82nd Airborne, 326th Glider Battalion.

Well, he graduated from high school at 17 years of age. And then because he was an honor graduate from Advanced ROTC, he was sent to officer candidate school as a 17-year-old. Now you usually don’t get into officer candidate school until you’ve graduated from college, until you’re commissioned as an officer.

And he was neither. He had never been to college. He’d never been commissioned.

He was 17. But he went to officer candidate school and actually finished with honors just before his 18th birthday. And we’ve now learned that he’s the only ever 17-year-old graduate of OCS, and thus he’s the youngest ever graduate of OCS.

“He had to wait until his 18th birthday to be commissioned as his second lieutenant. And being commissioned just after his 18th birthday, he’s the youngest ever commissioned officer in World War II. So the youngest OCS guy, the youngest commissioned officer, his initial assignment was to Camp Wheeler, Georgia, where he led a platoon of African Americans.

And my dad had grown up a racist. His parents were bitter racists. And commanding a platoon of African Americans who loved their country as much as he did, and who were disciplined, maybe even more so than him, actually melted his racism.

His letters back home to his mom about those men and how much he admired them are really admirable. But then he was sent from Camp Wheeler to train with the 82nd Airborne. He got his paratrooper wings and the 82nd Airborne at that time actually had two glider battalions because General Marshall, the four-star general in charge of the Army at the beginning of the war, had a vision for using gliders with invasions.

“And so dad was in one of two glider battalions of the 82nd Airborne. Then the decision was made by the 82nd Airborne to only have one of those battalions. So there was a flip of the coin.

His battalion was sent out of the 82nd Airborne and sent to Alliance Air Base in Nebraska. And he did 10 months of specialty training as an infantry officer. Besides getting his paratrooper wings, he also got his glider wings.

He also got his marksmanship badge, both rifle and pistol marksman. And it was there that he learned how to not only lead men, but how to fight. And then at the end of his time there, he had demolition training, and he also had winter cooking training, not realizing how much he was going to need that.

“At the end, when they were getting ready to deploy, because of his demolition training, he was transferred out of the glider battalion into the 3rd Infantry Division, and it was sent overseas to begin his actual war experiences on ANC. He wasn’t there for the actual invasion, D-Day at ANC, which was the 4th D-Day of the 3rd Infantry Division. They had had D-Days on Morocco, they had had a D-Day on Sicily, a D-Day on Salerno, Italy was their 3rd.

Their 4th D-Day was ANC, and of course their 5th D-Day was Southern France. But he landed on ANC about two weeks after the D-Day, and then began his battled career in Anzio, which was essentially, Ralph, trench warfare. It was like World War I trench warfare.

And the reason was that Anzio was a strip of land roughly 40, 50 miles southwest of Rome that was about 10 miles deep and about 15 miles wide, surrounded by a mountain range. And the Nazis, the Germans, were dug into that mountain range. And the moment the men came ashore, they essentially were bombed 24 hours a day.

“And they had to dig in and dig in deep to survive. And it was winter heading into spring. And so they had all of the water and all of the ice because Anzio had been a marsh that Mussolini had drained.

So the Germans would blow up the dams. And then the ground would flood. The mosquitoes were terrible.

Malaria was a miserable problem. Getting supplies in was a miserable problem. So it was literally from January to May of 1944 that the Allies had tremendous casualties until they had the eventual breakout in May of 1944.

But it was there he found his leadership skills. He was assigned a front line platoon, an A and P platoon. It was called Ammunition and Pioneer Platoon.

And their job was to take supplies every night. Their work began at dusk and ended at first light. And they had to take ammunition to the front.

They had to take wire and mines to the front. They had to cut away German wire. They had to defuse German mines.

“They had to work in No Man’s Land. And Dad, like many of his comrades, if his colleagues, you know, they went into the military for adventure and excitement and to win liberty back for the conquered countries of Europe. But boy, as soon as they got into the front line, the reality of war hit.

In fact, Ralph, the first night he went out with one of his experienced men who was defusing a mine, did something wrong and blew his face off, right next to dad. Then the second night he went out, just at first light, he and one of his men were walking away from the front line and a German anti-aircraft gun called an 88, 88 millimeter gun. The Germans created them to actually not only fire against aircraft, but they could fire them horizontal against tanks or whatever.

And an 88 projectile hit one of my dad’s men that was walking by him, and literally cut him in half right by dad. That was the second night of battle. And the third night, he had a horrible thing that happened.

“He was in the front lines, no man’s land. In fact, one of his men sneezed and a German in his foxhole said, the Gesundheit. They were that close.

But one of the Germans stood up to surrender. And this wasn’t an atypical thing. But as he stood up to surrender, the Germans who would surrender would always wave a white handkerchief or something.

And they would yell, comrade, comrade. But dad knew by then that there were fake surrenders. He had a brand new man with him.

A German stood up, said, comrade, comrade. And dad’s man, a private, stood up to accept the surrender. And before dad could pull him down, the German ducked into his foxhole and a sniper shot by dad’s man’s head off right next to him.

Wow.

“nd so immediately dad was thrust into the horrors of war. And in a particularly bad time, an Anzio, a frontline second lieutenant, had a life expectancy of 21 days. And dad ended up fighting for 415 days.

Wow. And he had actually been sent over as a replacement officer.

Yeah. In fact, unit, he went to the 30th Infantry Regiment, one of three regiments in the 3rd Infantry Division. Everything was threes, you know, three squads made up a platoon, three platoons made up a company.

Three companies would make up a battalion. Three battalions would make up a regimen. Three regiments would make up a division.

And three divisions would make up an army. So it was something that General Marshall had begun as part of war strategy. And so the 30th Infantry Regiment that he was assigned to, he was one of 60 officers that came on shore that day to replace 60 officers that had died in the front lines.

He actually catches malaria. Why is that, Anzio, is that correct?

“He did. He got a temperature of 104 and chills, and they sent him to the hospital. Basically, against his will, at that time, an antibiotic for malaria had been developed, and so he went to the field hospital, and he spent a day and a half to two days there.

They wanted him to stay longer, and he actually left AWOL, took his medicine, and he went back to be with his men. One of the things that disturbed him, Ralph, in the hospital was the first day that he was there, a ward clerk walked around and put purple hearts on every bed. Anyone in the hospital was getting a purple heart, and he asked the ward clerk that was walking around, what’s this for?

He said, well, you’re in the hospital, you get a purple heart. And he handed it back, and he said, no, I don’t. I will not accept the purple heart that I haven’t earned, haven’t deserved, and I hope I never get one.

Turns out during those 415 days he fought, he was nominated for six purple hearts. He turned down three of them because he didn’t feel that they were earned or deserved.

“The Battle of Anzio began on January 22nd, 1944, when 36,000 troops from the Allied Six Corps landed on the beaches near Anzio, 33 miles south of Rome. The assault force, including the US 3rd Division, British 1st Division and US Rangers, quickly took control of Anzio and the neighboring town of Netuna. Defending German forces offered little opposition.

British General Harold Alexander, head of the Anglo-American 5th Army Group, wanted to quickly move inland to take advantage of the situation. But 6th Corps Commander, US General John P. Lucas, opted for a more cautious approach.

No serious advance was attempted for more than a week, allowing the Germans to rush reserves to the scene and seal the Allied force into a shallow and narrow bridgehead along the coast. The result was 4 months of brutal fighting, during which the Americans suffered nearly 24,000 combat casualties and the British nearly 10,000. The Allies also suffered 37,000 non-combat casualties caused by malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases that were endemic to the marshes in the beachhead area.

“The Germans suffered some 27,500 casualties. From a tactical standpoint, the Anzio landings were clearly a failure and delayed the Allied liberation of Rome until June 4, 1944, two days before the D-Day landings in Normandy, France. Let’s move up the coast.

So, he is promoted to First Lieutenant at 19 years old. So, right away, he’s distinguishing himself.

Yeah, I mean, First Lieutenants tended to be in their mid-20s, and he was still a teenager. They eventually broke out of Anzio in May of 1944. The battle to Rome, although it was only 30 or 40 miles, was terrifically difficult, and the losses were huge.

In fact, the 30th Infantry Regiment in one particular battle lost almost half of the men. The battle was so intense that entire squads, and one time, entire platoon, would be wiped out by artillery fire. And the men that followed literally had to just walk through the bodies, their comrades who were dead or who were dying.

“And they were trained not to stop. Medics were to take care that they had to keep going. At one point, dad and his men were captured, got into a hand-to-hand melee, and it was the first time that he had to kill another soldier face to face.

It was a German officer. And that really impacted him to have to do that. There was another experience they had where an officer and some of his men had been captured, and the Germans strapped a sergeant and a lieutenant to the front of a tank, thinking that if they attacked the Americans with those men strapped to the front of the tank, the Americans wouldn’t do anything.

And they didn’t realize how these men had been trained to sacrifice. I love the saying that they sacrificed their tomorrows for our todays. They laid their life on the altar of war.

They did that when they entered the battle. And so that tank moved forward, and dad and his men opened fire on the tank. The sergeant was able to get loose and get off of the tank.

The lieutenant died. It was tragic. It was horrible.

“But it was kill or be killed, literally. Fortunately for Rome, Hitler declared Rome a sanctuary city, if you would. And so as the Americans got closer and closer surrounding it, the Germans abandoned it.

So when they liberated Rome, so many of the artifacts there and so many of the ancient structures and the Vatican were all saved. Had a real Roman holiday, if you would, for a few days before they began to train for what would be their fifth D-Day, the D-Day of Southern France in August of 1944.

So he landed again in Southern France. He did.

That was a huge invasion. It was the first and only European D-Day that occurred, started in daytime, started in daylight. But they now knew how to do D-Days.

Right, right. They had.

The bombing that had occurred before, the spying that had occurred before, the demolition that occurred before, the breakup of all of the defenses on the shore that had occurred, made it a fairly easy D-Day. And then the advance through France began, and it was a spectacular advance, Ralph. There were times that individual units would move 25, 50 miles, sometimes 75 miles a day.

“The German 19th Army was running like crazy to get up to northern France, get around Switzerland into northern France, and the guys were chasing them. It became quite difficult because they had captured the port of Marseille, where they brought supplies in. But getting supplies to the men who were moving so quickly was really difficult, and it slowed down the process a bit.

One of the most dramatic, if you would, battles that occurred was the Battle of Mont-Alimar, up in France a little bit. But the escape route for the Germans went on a highway called Highway 6. It was a two-lane road through a canyon, through a gap.

On one side of the canyon was a rail line. Then there was the river, the Rhône River, and then this two-lane road. And the entire German 19th Army was attempting to escape through that road, through that gap.

And the Americans did a pincher move. Brought in artillery on both sides of the gap. And on the Battle of Montalimar, began to bomb, mortar, shoot the escaping German Army.

“They also used the P-47s, the Army Air Corps. There was no Air Force in World War II. And so the Army Air Corps was bombing.

And, Ralph, it was horrible what happened. There were thousands of Germans that were taken prisoner. There were thousands that were killed.

There were thousands of vehicles that were destroyed. And then there were thousands of horses that were killed. Most people don’t know that the German Army was predominantly a horse-drawn, artillery horse-drawn infantry.

They did have mechanized units. But the Germans used hundreds of thousands of horses. In fact, at one time during the war, there would be 5,000 to 7,000 horses a month dying.

“And so dad, because of his equestrian background, his commander was an equestrian, the commander of the 30th Infantry, Colonel McGarrett was an equestrian, the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division was an equestrian. So dad was charged to gather up some country boys, just gather up some guys that knew how to be cowboys. And they were to ride into that awful battlefield and find the horses that were still alive.

Those that had fatal injuries, they put down humanely. And then those that didn’t, they gathered up and they had a roundup that day. Audie Murphy, one of the most famous World War II heroes, was actually part of that roundup and wrote about it in his book, To Hell and Back.

I don’t think we realize how much horses were part of World War II because it was sort of the, still the transition between a horse-led army and a mechanized army. And as you say, I didn’t realize this myself, that the Germans really relied on horses.

“Dad, having been in an equestrian, a horse guy, that background was really helpful for him. In fact, we didn’t talk about it, but on Anzio, one of the things that he pioneered for the army was using mules to carry supplies in. Now, he wasn’t the first to do that.

They used mules in Italy, after Salerno, when the guys were fighting north, got to Monte Cassino, mules were used to some extent, but not to the extent they were on Anzio. And so dad and his men were actually encamped near a guy that had an Italian farm that had dozens and dozens of mules. And dad learned about mules.

Now he knew about horses, he didn’t know about mules, but he learned how smart they were, how able-footed they were, how intuitive they were. They knew where mines were, for example, and how strong they were, how sure-footed they were, and how much they could carry compared to a horse. And so this farmer leased his mules to dad and his men, trained them how to use the mules at night.

“And one of the things they learned early, Ralph, was these animals were so smart. When the Germans would send up a phosphorus flare into the sky to light the battle, so that then snipers could shoot, or the artillery could shoot, the mules instinctively, when a phosphorus flare began to go up, they would lay down, which meant they were protected, and the men who were walking with them were protected. Who knows how many lives were saved by those mules.

But it’s just one of many horse stories that occurred that dad had a privilege of being part of.

Yeah, incredible, and perfect for him because his mission was to resupply the front lines, so to have the use of mules to do that instead of lugging it all yourself.

Yeah, it was so successful that as winter of 1944 approached, by now the Allies are fighting up through France and heading up to the Vosges Mountains in northeast France, an area into which the Germans had been deeply dug in. The Vosges Mountains aren’t terribly high. They peak out at about 4,000 feet, but they’re very, very rugged.

“And the men were heading into what they didn’t know then, but would turn out to be the worst winter in Europe in 40 or 50 years. They’d debate, but anyway, in quite some time. And no dug in army in history, whether French, German, Napoleon’s army, no dug in army in the Vosges Mountains had ever lost.

Here’s the US going in for football game number seven, and the home team has a zero to six record. But Dad was asked by General Truscott of the 3rd Infantry Division if he would re-pioneer the use of mules in the Vosges Mountains. Because there were little mountain roads.

They weren’t big enough or reinforced enough to hold tanks or tank destroyers. I mean, literally men were having to go in by foot to battle. And so the mules became just crucial in that battle.

And you also talk in your book about how they discovered a unique way to dig foxholes.

They did. That became a little bit more important when they got to the Comar battle, after they won the Vosges Mountains. Dad had kind of a difficult time just before that.

“He was bringing in supplies one night to a ranger troop that was surrounded on three sides by one of the most elite Nazi forces they were. It was a group of Nazi infantry that had been brought from Norway. Elite group, because this area of Northeast France was sort of the last foothold that Hitler had, and so he wanted to fight to the death for it.

So a group of men were surrounded on three sides by this elite force. Dad brought in supplies, and then they got completely surrounded, and so for two days he had to join in what ended up being hand-to-hand fighting. They eventually fought off this elite force and were able to hold their land, but he was shot through the leg.

I think that required him to be transferred to field hospital to recover, and it was several weeks of recovery, but the interesting part of that recovery was he was in officer’s ward, and his bed was right next to one of the cowboys that he had been part of, the cowboys that saved the horses in France, and it was Audie Murphy. Oh, wow. And so Audie Murphy

“was in with a hip wound, and he was in the bed next to dad, and they became fast friends.

In fact, they both fell in love with the ward nurse. Her name was Lieutenant Price, and Audie Murphy called her Pricey, and he fell in love with her and actually proposed to her one night. She soundly turned him down.

At that time, he had just been given a field commission as an officer, and so they both recovered together. Then dad went back into the Vosges Mountains to fight, and then they actually re-met again during the Battle of Colmar, the Colmar Battle, and this was, you were mentioning, it was horribly cold. The Colmar Plain was flat as a pancake.

The ground was frozen 18 to 24 inches deep. It was coated with snow. The men did not have winter gear at that time.

They didn’t have snow camouflage, so they had to use pillowcases and sheets and whatnot. But you mentioned digging foxholes. Well, it’s impossible to dig a foxhole in frozen ground.

“And so dad developed a technique where they would, they take their knife and they would chip a little bit of the ice into the ground. And then they would take their M1 Grans and then shoot into the ground, which would, the heat of the bullet would melt a little bit more, they dig a little bit more. And then they take a half a piece of dynamite, of TNT, and the hole had to be big enough to hold that.

But they put the dynamite in and light it and then run like hell to get away. And then it would blow a deep enough hole that they could then go in and dig a foxhole. It had the advantage that they could dig a foxhole, but it had the disadvantage of drawing attention.

So once that thing blew, they had to dig pretty quickly. But the guys spent, they would be two to a foxhole, and it was just horrible conditions. At nighttime, it would average between 10 to 15 degrees below zero, and trench foot was a problem, frostbite was a problem.

“In fact, the winter was so cold, the conditions were so horrible that Stephen Ambrose in his book, Citizen Soldiers, wrote about it. I love the quote of what he wrote. He said, all but forgotten today, the battles that raged through January of 1944 were for the GIs among the worst ever in the history of war.

It was worse than Valley Forge. It was worse than World War I. He said, the conditions were so terrible.

This is what Ambrose said. The conditions were so terrible, they can only be marveled at. They can’t even be imagined.

And then he told about interviewing men who had fought in those January fightings. And he said when he asked him to describe the conditions, they would shiver. The memories were that difficult.

“One of the things that helped the 30th Infantry Division survive that was that Colonel McCarr, their commander, developed a rotation system where men who had been in foxholes were in the front lines would be brought back to the back lines and they would have 12 hours where they could have a hot shower and a hot tent and a hot meal before they went back. And it saved who knows how many lives because his men didn’t develop trench foot. They didn’t develop hypothermia.

They didn’t develop frostbite. They didn’t, in his regiment, they didn’t shoot themselves. You know, the million-dollar wound, you know, in some of the companies, men would actually shoot a hand or shoot a foot to get a wound to get out.

Trench foot was awful. It was horrible. The damage, the gangrene that it caused, the amputations that it caused.

And dad developed a number of techniques for getting around that. And one of the interesting ones that he developed was using shaving cream. Interestingly enough, that men would coat their feet with shaving cream, rub it in.

“It had a moisturizing and a protective effect. He had them double sock and he also had them carry double socks under their arms. And because if there was melting and water began to build up, if your feet got cold and frozen, they would have to take off their boots, take off their socks and repeat their socks.

And so, but it was a horrible, horrible condition. The guys on the Southern Front, one of the chips they carried on their shoulders was, everyone knows about the Battle of the Bulge. Nobody knows about the battle for the Colmar Pocket, which was arguably much worse.

And there was one battle on the Colmar Pocket where the US literally could have lost the war. And it was called the Battle of Maison Rouge Bridge. And the 30th Infantry Division was attacking one night.

And there was only one bridge available, which was this Maison Rouge Bridge. Maison meaning house, rouge meaning red, because there was a red farmhouse just across the river. And when the men got there to cross this one remaining bridge, they found that their own airplanes had bombed it.

“It wasn’t usable. And so the middle of the bridge was destroyed, but the engineers came in and put some planking up to try to do a temporary bridge. But while that bridge was being built for artillery, there were foot bridges for the men.

And so the men were sent in. Instead of one of the battalions, two of the battalions were sent across the ILL River, aptly named, to attack the Germans in a surprise attack. What they didn’t know was that they were walking into a trap.

Their left flank, which was a French flank, didn’t show up. The right flank didn’t show up because of the conditions. So two battalions walked into a German buzzsaw.

The bridge behind them, that artillery was coming in, the first tank that went across that bridge collapsed. And so two battalions were sent on a surprise attack that was a trap with no artillery. Because of the clouds in the winter, there was no air cover and there was no armor.

And they just got slaughtered. Dad lost his best friend in that battle. Those that were able to escape back to the river, and Dad was one of them.

“When I wrote the book, I was privileged to interview a number of men that he had fought with. And one of them was a machine gun, a gunnery sergeant. He was a smaller man.

The heavy machine guns were really quite heavy. They had a base, they had a tripod, and they had the gun itself, and each of those components weighed 50 to 70 pounds. And this gunnery sergeant was carrying a machine gun, just the gun itself.

And so they were moving back to the Maison Rouge farm to set up a defense, because if they lost this battle, the whole force would be pushed back. The bridgehead would be held by the Germans. So it was a crucial battle.

And as they were heading back, there was a small little creek they were crossing. And so the gunnery sergeant hit a hole and fell in above his head. And he had been trained, you never drop your gun, you never leave your gun.

“But he didn’t have the strength to get up. He was drowning, holding his gun in an ice cold creek. And he told the story about his commander, grabbed the gun off of his shoulder, grabbed him by the collar, and walked out of that creek with the gun and the soldier.

And this was a little five foot ten, 135 pound, First Lieutenant Larimore. How did he have that strength? I have no idea.

But they got back to the farm and they were able to hold that night against an overwhelming German force. And not only saved that battle, even more so, arguably than the Battle of the Bulge may have saved the war. And dad was able to be part of that battle.

The next day, they were recuperating, they were gathering together, and the replacements were sent in to take over the battle. And dad saw Audie Murphy again. That day, they embraced and hugged and said goodbye to each other.

And that was the day that Audie Murphy had the action in which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. The Battle of Colmor Pocket.

“So much bravery.

And the losses, the casualties were… Now Afghanistan and the battle of the airport where we lost 13, I believe, servicemen. And the nation is appropriately upset and concerned about that loss.

In World War II, there’d be battles where there’d be a thousand lost in a day. I mean, it was just… There was just no comparison.

One of the nighttime battles at Comor Pocket, they had developed a new technique where balloons, little hydrogen, gas-filled balloons were sent up, and spotlights would shine on them, and it would create almost like a full moon situation in the Battle of Comor Pocket. But one of the lieutenants of Company L, one of the more storied companies in the 30th Infantry Regiment, and in fact, the Medal of Honor winner Maurice Footsie-Britz had commanded that company earlier in the war. It was the only company in the war that had two presidential unit citations.

“I mean, incredible bravery among those men. But the lieutenant leading that L company, Love Company, was killed on Comor Pocket, and on the field, dad was assigned to become the company commander for Company L. He had just had his 20th birthday, so he was the youngest, as far as we know now, the youngest company commander in World War II, the only 20-year-old company commander in World War II.

But he was able to help complete that battle for the Allies to effectively kick the Germans out of France.

Fantastic. Absolutely amazing.

And it only was getting worse, because now the motherland was next.

On the 9th of February 1945, the last German forces on the west bank of the River Rhine were defeated by the French and Americans. The fighting in the Colmar Pocket was a significant strategic moment, wiping out most of the experienced troops in the German 19th Army and securing a defensive line along the Rhine. It freed up Allied troops to join Operation Undertone, the advance into Germany through the Siegfried Line, without worrying about German troops advancing west of the Rhine.

“Symbolically, the battle was also a huge moment in restoring French national pride, as it put the region of Alsace back in French hands. Alsace, the region in which the Pocket existed, had been a source of conflict between France and Germany for nearly a century. It had been taken from France by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War.

Retaken by the French at the end of the First World War, and seized once more by the Germans in 1940, and now it became French again.

And so they began to train for, for invading Germany. That was, of course, the final, the final push of the war in March, April and May of 1945.

Wow. And you talk about how fast they were moving. At one point, you’re saying, with Company L, they liberated 22 towns in 16 days.

Just incredible.

Yeah, it was just stunning. Dad’s best friend was Ross Calvert.

Yes.

“Ross had actually trained him at OCS, and then they met again in Anzio, and then they fought together up until the Comar Pocket. And then dad thought Ross was killed there. He was actually taken as a POW.

One of the battles that they fought, they battled into a small village. And when they got there, there were Germans still in that village, in a tavern hotel, if you would. And they didn’t realize that Ross and Phil and their men were surrounding that hotel.

But anyway, they went in, captured the hotel. The commander of the Germans was sitting in the restaurant there. So they went in, you know, arms drawn, and the commander put down his cigar and raised his hand and then invited them to have a seat.

They were suspicious, so they checked for grenades. It wasn’t unheard of that German commanders would commit suicide rather than surrender. But this commander knew a little bit of English.

They knew a little bit of German. And he sat down, he ordered dinner for them. He ordered drinks for them.

“They said the complete surrender took about four hours to be completed. I think Ross Galvert got a silver star for that surrender. The other kind of fun surrender was after they were in Germany.

There’s a resort in Germany called Bad Kissingen. It’s a world famous resort. And for hundreds of years, kings and queens and monarchs and czars would vacation in Bad Kissingen.

And the elite of the elite, the rich and famous would all go to the Bad Kissingen Resort. And so the 3rd Infantry Division, and particularly Dad’s 30th Infantry Regiment, was heading to Bad Kissingen, and they expected quite a battle. There were seven or eight German hospitals there, and they just expected the Germans wouldn’t give it up without a fight.

But one of Dad’s squads was moving down a road heading to Bad Kissingen, and a jeep started driving towards them with a white flag. Of course, because of fake surrenders, they were very careful. But it was an officer and an enlisted driver coming out to say that Bad Kissingen was going to surrender to the Americans, which in fact they did.

“And there were not only German soldiers that were hospitalized, but there were American POWs. But there was also a silk factory that made silk clothes. And so, Dad and his men were able to capture the factory, if you would.

And so, they were able to abscond silk undershirts and silk underwear and silk caps. And so, that was April 7th, maybe 6th or 7th of 1945. He said they became one of the best dressed companies in the world.

At least with the silk underwear.

Yeah.

And then, on Easter of 1945, your dad was selected to go on a special mission.

It was three or four days before Bad Kissingen.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. Just after Easter of 1945, his commander called him in. Dad was an equestrian, the commander.

“Colonel McGarro was an equestrian. General Truscott, who was the general of the 3rd Infantry Division, was an equestrian. General Patton, of course, was an Olympian equestrian.

Yeah, that’s right.

But he got called in to a private meeting. And the meeting said, Lieutenant, we’ve heard that Hitler, he was trying to make the Aryan race, right, the perfect race, was also trying to develop the perfect horse. And so he had absconded, if you would, all of the royal breeds in Europe and Northern Africa.

So the Lipizzans, Andalusians, thoroughbreds, Friesians, et cetera, et cetera. And put them into horse farms, predominantly in Czechoslovakia. And the Lipizzans quickly became his favorite breed.

And most of them were in a large royal horse farm. But the Nazi veterinarians, who were far more veterinarians than they were Nazis, were very concerned, A, about the breeding practices, but even more concerned about the Soviet Army. The Soviet Army under the Altar Condition was given Czechoslovakia to liberate.

“They were coming in from the east, and they were eating everything in their path. And there was one trailer of, it’s not clear from the records, either 24 or 25 Lipizzans that was trying to escape. The Russians caught them and killed all but one of the Lipizzans and cooked them.

So the horse farm veterinarians were appropriately concerned that the world’s population Lipizzans was going to be eaten. And so they sent word out to the Americans, please come save the Lipizzans. Not knowing if it was valid or not, a top secret mission was developed.

Dad was asked to go in to confirm whether there were Lipizzans there or not. And so he volunteered. The conditions were that he had to go in in civilian clothes.

He couldn’t have his dog tags. He could have no identification. He would be flown in on a Piper Cub with a pilot he could not know the name of.

“The pilot couldn’t know his name, because if either one of them were caught, they didn’t want information to be tortured out of them. They were told if they were caught, their mission would be disavowed. They would be considered AWOL.

And if they were killed, they would have no access, their family would have no access to life insurance or any benefits. Did he want to volunteer? And the story is, he didn’t even think, he said, yes, I’ll volunteer.

So the next morning, he aborted a little Piper Cub. They had to fly about 200 miles. In the mid flight, he realized that the Piper Cub had a flight radius of about 180 miles, 185.

And so fortunately, it was cloudy enough that no anti-aircraft guns were able to pick them up. No German airplanes were able to chase them. But the Czechoslovakian Resistance had developed a little runway in a forest field.

“And literally on fumes, they were able to glide into that runway. A Nazi veterinarian came out on a Lipizzan and they had a third bread horse with him. The Nazi veterinarian did not know if whoever was coming would know how to ride or not.

Not knowing that a master equestrian was… But anyway, Dad mounted the third bread. They went and scouted the farm.

He was able to identify several hundred Lipizzans as well as hundreds of other royal breeds and about 400 POWs, British and American POWs that the allies did not know were there.

The POWs were attending to the horses.

They were. They were caring for them, if you would, day and night. These horses were really quite pampered, but Dad was able to get back to the plane.

Actually, the veterinarians had set up a steeplechase course. And so once the veterinarian realized how good Dad was as a rider, he let Dad ride the Lipizzan.

Wow.

“The veterinarian rode the thoroughbred and they raced on the steeplechase course. And Dad and the Lipizzan won the race. The plane had been filled up with fuel and they were able to take off and get back to the front line, which had moved in just in that day.

But they were able to report the Lipizzans were there. That news went up to General Patton, who authorized an illegal operation called Operation Cowboy, that sent in a Calvary unit to bring the Lipizzans out and save the breed.

What a story. That should be a movie, definitely.

Well, it actually was. Disney made a movie, I think it came out in 1952, called The Miracle of the White Stallions. Not really a good movie.

It didn’t do well at the movie theater. But dad’s role was completely top secret. I had a member of the Medal of Honor Center up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, tell me that he wondered if all the men who did secret missions had to sign agreements that they would not reveal the information.

“Those agreements would be 35, 40, even 50-year agreements. He wondered if dad had a 50-year do not disclose agreement. And that corresponding with his and mom’s anniversary became the point that he could talk about some of those secret missions.

Phil Larimore’s courage expressed itself once again when he volunteered to lead a top secret mission 200 miles behind enemy lines to find the farm where Hitler was hiding the world famous Lipizzaner stallion. Based on the intelligence Phil gathered on March 28th, 1945 in the last days of fighting in Europe, General George Patton authorized Operation Cowboy, the creation of a small task force to return to the farm in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and rescue the horses. After fighting through thousands of German troops deployed near the town of Hastal, Sunderland, the 325-man Allied force joined by defecting German fighters reached the farm.

They were then faced with the task of evacuating the horses, which they did with the help of Allied POWs recently freed from concentration camps in the area. Some horses were mounted, others were herded until all of them were loaded onto trucks and secured behind American lines. So shortly after that your father is ambushed in Rauterhausen.

“Yeah, it was. It was after Bad Kissingen and they were fighting through a thick forest. This was April 8th of 1945 and starting early in that morning, there were battles overcoming German squads and platoons.

They were intense, reported to be hand-to-hand melees. One eyewitness said that in one hand-to-hand melee, that dad was leading his company and ended up shooting a German officer at Point Blank Range. That continued through the day until mid-afternoon, dad heard that one of his point squads was surrounded by between 120 and 150 German infantry soldiers.

And so he determined to go in and find his men and save them. He and one of his forward observers, artillery forward observers, actually hopped on the back of a Sherman tank and went in to find his squad and to save them. Doing so, they came under withering fire.

“There’s three eyewitness accounts of this, but they said dad was manning the 50 caliber machine gun in the turret of the tank as they went forward. And firing without stop, reloading, firing, they said that he wiped out three machine gun nests and countless German soldiers. The bullets were raining around him.

At one point, a bullet grazed off his helmet. At another time, dad tells a story about being shot in the hip. It didn’t hurt him.

He didn’t feel the pain, but he felt the femoral artery pulsating. And he felt the warm blood going down his leg. And he knew that he had only seconds to apply a tourniquet or he would die.

And so he tells the story as he began to unbuckle his belt to make a tourniquet, he looked down and he saw that the bullet had gone through his canteen. The warm fluid was just water from his canteen.

Oh, wow.

And he said, he wasn’t wounded, but he said, I think my pants were wet both from the warm water of the canteen and from something else.

“Right.

Then as he ran out of ammunition, he found the squad, they were all alive except one, but they were able to get behind the tank. And he ordered the tank to go backwards. Because he was running, he had ran out of ammunition, he was going to hop off of the tank to get behind it.

As he did so, a second bullet hit his helmet, knocked his helmet off. And then as he was backing up, shooting his Garand, he was shot in the leg and it shattered, shattered his right lower leg. Both the observation officer that was with him and the tank commander both saw the blood, saw him on the ground, assumed he was dead, and the tank went ahead and left him in the field to get the men back to safety.

He was able to apply a tourniquet and tells the story that as he looked over a ditch that he had rolled in, he saw the Germans attacking and he knew he was dead. He played dead and they jumped over him. That battle was won, all but 30 of the Germans were killed.

“And so that evening they went in to get dad’s body and his commander went in to get his body and found him and found that he was alive. And so they were able to get him onto a jeep and back to a field hospital. But the interesting part of that story is that as he was being evacuated, a German officer and about 30 of the remaining men surrendered.

And they came out to surrender and the German officer surrendered to Major McFalls, who was the US officer in Major McFalls. And his eyewitness account of this says that the German officer said that had that tank not come forward that they would have wiped out the squad. And he said his men were demoralized by the man that bullets couldn’t stop.

I didn’t have that eyewitness account when I wrote the book. I think if I had have, I think the subtitle of the book would have been the man that bullets couldn’t stop. And Major McFalls identified that there were two bullet scars on his helmet and that his canteen had been penetrated.

“Dad almost lost his life, but he lost his leg. And because of that battle was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, that’s the Army’s second highest medal. They say that he was one of the most decorated junior officers in the war.

He had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, the Medal of France, the Crois du Garde with palm, the French Forge, on and on and on. 15 months, 415 days, gave his leg almost his life.

Yeah. What an incredible story.

Yeah, a teenager. I mean…

I know. Where do you find that fortitude and bravery?

What most of the guys said, and his letter seemed to indicate it, they fought not to be conquerors, but to be liberators, to give people liberty and freedom back. They fought for their buddies. They fought for each other.

“That’s what gave him the strength to pull a listed machine gunner and a 75-pound machine gun out of ice-cold water. It gave them the courage and the fortitude to fight on. And it’s amazing.

Two million of them had that strength and had that fortitude. And greatest generation? I think so.

I don’t know that we could fight that way now.

Well, it just shows you that when you really put people to the test, that’s when they shine. That’s when the heroes step forward and other people are inspired by them. Your dad was a 17-year-old kid.

There was no indication in his childhood or in his upbringing that he would do things like this, right? But put in that situation, he did it readily.

I think this is the indomitable spirit that rests in most of us.

Yes.

“And being able to find it, he was fortunate enough to have a mom and dad that helped him find his passion and find his place and then build upon that. But he came back and he still had additional battles to fight.

First of all, his best friend shows up still alive, which is an amazing story in and of itself. And then he goes on to have this really interesting career, taking care of horses, playing bridge with President Eisenhower and his wife. And I’m sure they had heard about his incredible bravery in the battlefield and the price he had had to pay by giving up his leg and were appreciative.

Yeah, in fact, the day that he was evacuated out of Europe on a hospital plane back to the United States, it was in Reims, France, and General Eisenhower came out. That’s where his headquarters were. And he addressed each of the men that were boarding on that plane.

“He had actually been a member, Eisenhower had been a member of the 3rd Infantry Division and one of the things that he told dad was, I look forward to seeing you at future reunions. So dad flew back to the US to Atlanta, Georgia, to Lawson General Hospital. It was one of 15 hospitals for amputees in the United States.

They had specialty hospitals just to care for amputees. And it was a one year recovery. And while he was there, he found out a couple of things that were disheartening to him.

One was that although young girls loved men in uniforms with lots of medals, they didn’t cotton to amputees. And so he was shunned by Atlanta Society. In fact, he started dating a young lady, sort of a socialite.

People in Atlanta on Sunday after they went to church or Friday after synagogue would invite soldiers to come over to their house for family meal. And so dad met a young lady, and her dad was an equestrian. And she was an equestrian.

“And so to learn how to ride as a one legged adult, he developed a horse therapy program along with the physical therapists at Lawson General Hospital. And as far as we know now from my research, that was the first Army equine therapy program ever. Until today, soldiers who’ve had major limb loss or major PTSD or major wounds are incorporated into horse therapy based upon a program started by a teenage hero back in World War II.

But the other thing that distressed him almost to the point of despondency was he found out that although Army enlisted men who had a major limb loss could continue to serve if there was a job offered to them, officers were automatically discharged. At the end of rehabilitation, once you had your prosthetic, you were out. And he thought that that policy was insane and inane and inhumane.

And he decided to fight it. It was a difficult fight. In fact, his battle where he lost his leg, his commanding officer was deciding whether to put him in for the Medal of Honor or for the Distinguished Service Cross.

“And his commanding officer supported him. Colonel McCarr supported him fighting the Army to stay in. But he told dad, he said, Phil, you got a choice.

I can put you in for the Medal of Honor or you can fight this battle, but you can’t do both because you’ll risk losing both. If you, if you tick off the Army, you may get no valor award and no one can stay. And dad didn’t even think about it.

He said, I want to fight for my brothers who’ve lost limbs. And I want to stay in the Army that I love and serve the country that I love. And so Colonel McCarr put him in for the DSC instead of the Medal of Honor.

And then Colonel McCarr took over as the executive at Fort Myer in Washington. Ross Calvert, dad’s best friend, became the executive of the Honor Guard. General Eisenhower became the general of the Army.

And all of them lived at Fort Myer. So the three of them conspired to bring dad there to fight his appeal. He became the XO there at Fort Myer.

“And he fought that appeal with the help of President Truman, General Eisenhower, Senator and Congressman. And he got to his final appeal. And, Ralph, one of the most stunning days of my research was the day I found the transcript of that hearing in the National Archives.

And it stunned me how the Army felt about amputees, what those officers hearing his appeal had to say, that he was a handicap, that he was a disability, that the Army didn’t need one-legged handicaps if it was going to fight the war. And he very calmly defended himself. He brought in physicians who testified on his behalf, but he lost that appeal by a vote of 3 to 2.

And he had to be discharged from the Army. And it was so, so disheartening for him. He thought about suicide, his life with the Army he loved, serving the country that he loved was over.

“But rather than taking his life, he had the wisdom, the strength, the courage to visit a chaplain and to talk with a chaplain. And he wrote down some of that chaplain’s advice. I put it in the book, but I think it’s good advice for all of us who are despondent or down or wrestling with difficulties.

And here’s what the chaplain said. He said, son, your wound will either make you a bitter person or a better person. It’ll either harden your heart or soften it.

It’ll either be a person changed for the worse or one who chooses to make the world better. And then the chaplain said this, in my opinion, the worst disability in life isn’t being disabled. It’s being disabled with a bad attitude.

He told dad, he said, the Germans smashed your leg, but don’t let them shatter your heart, your talents, your gifts, your will, your faith in God and his plan for you. And he looked him right in the eye and he said, son, it’s up to you. And it was that moment dad said, OK, I’ve lost the battle, but not the war.

“Yeah. And so he was honorably discharged, medically discharged. He was discharged as a major at 22 years of age at a time when the average majors were in their thirties.

So the youngest ever OCS officer, the youngest commission officer, the youngest company commander, one of the most decorated young officers became the youngest major in the Army. And he settled into a 50 year career as a beloved cartographer, map maker at LSU, a beloved scout master, active in his church and raised four boys. And I should mention, he won the war because that appeal was heard in 1947.

The Army changed its policy, likely because of Dad’s battle. And in 1950, the first military officer with a major limb loss was allowed to stay in the service. And that still happens till today that we can honor our service men and women who’ve lost a limb and allow them to continue to serve the country they love.

Wow, Walt, what a remarkable story. What a remarkable man. Absolutely inspiring.

“Well, and for all of us, and I think one of my encouragements to people when it comes to Armed Forces Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Anniversary of D-Day, we all get together. We celebrate, have barbecues, family and friends over. But my encouragement to all of us is, on those days, take just a few moments.

Find a story, a video of something like this. Dad was one of two million men who have similar stories. And share that story.

Honor their legacy. Those men who gave their tomorrows for our todays, who gave their all for the altar of war, to remember them and honor them, that the freedom and liberty that they have given to us needs to be wisely stewarded in these troubled, troubled times that you and I and all of our listeners and viewers are living. We can sit high on their shoulders and walk in their footsteps to preserve the liberty and freedom that they gave their all for.

Beautifully put. Beautifully put.

“I think probably the sweetest story was when he got back to Fort Meyer, the day after he arrived, Colonel McCarr, very soon after that became General McCarr, and his buddy Ross Calvert took him down to Fort Belvoir, where the caisson horses were kept. The caisson horses draw the caissons for the funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. And when they got there, Colonel McCarr and Ross Calvert were showing him the horses in the pasture, and he looked across the pasture and he saw a horse.

And it kind of had an ugly square head. It was a thoroughbred. And for a second, he thought, could that be?

He looked at Colonel McCarr, and Colonel McCarr shook his head and he said, That’s Chug. That’s the horse that you rode in Czechoslovakia.

Wow.

General Patton had that horse brought back for you. So after rehabilitation, you and that horse could be reunited. And Dad whistled, and that horse’s ears picked up and he raced across the field to Dad.

“And then Dad was able to ride that horse, train that horse, trained it to what’s called, Ralph, called a one leg lead. So the caissons pulled by six horses, and the infantry soldiers are one each on the left three horses. The right three horses have empty saddles.

And then there’s an executive officer that rides, that was Dad. And then if it’s a Colonel or above being buried, there’s a horse behind with the empty saddle and the boots are reversed. But anyway, those soldiers riding those horses cannot move.

And yet they have to communicate to the horses when to move and how to move. And they do it with what’s called a two-leg lead, where they’ll move ankles, knees, hips. There’s a McClellan saddle, which is kind of a bivalve saddle.

They can even squeeze their buttock muscles to tell the horse what to do. But that’s always done with a two-leg lead. Dad only had one leg.

“So as far as we know, he was the first equestrian in history to train a horse to a one-leg lead. Well, then when he got discharged, Chug stayed at the Army, Dad didn’t. He went to school.

But Ross Calvert called him one day. Ross was still head of the Honor Guard at Arlington Cemetery. And he said, Phil, they’re going to auction your horse off.

Calvary is being decommissioned and Chug is going to be auctioned off. And Dad was able to go back to Washington, DC and go to the auction for his horse. And it’s a precious story.

His horse was going to be one of the last four auctioned, along with a horse that General Patton owned, along with a horse that Eleanor Roosevelt had owned, and along with a horse that General Marshall had owned. And so Dad knew that the horse was going to be too expensive. There would be no way that he would be able to bid the $50 minimum and get his horse.

“But he stayed because he wanted to be able to talk to whoever bought Chug to let him know what a special horse he was. And when they got to that auction that night, the riding arena there at Fort Myer is still there. I was able to go there and see where this happened.

But the auctioneer said, ladies and gentlemen, this next horse, he described the horse and he said, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before and I may never do again. But he said, this horse was trained by an Army hero who was with us tonight. And I’m going to ask you to let that Army hero bid and I’m going to ask you not to bid against him.

And so he said, do I have $50? They had $50 and a spotlight hit dad. There was a dark arena, spit dad, and he got all nervous and he reached for his wallet and he pulled out money that his dad had lent him, the $50.

“And actually the money fell to the floor and he reached down, he grabbed the money and he waved, he said, I’ll bid, I’ll bid, I’ll bid. And the auctioneer said, is it going, going, gone, sold to the soldier. Wow.

The story is that dad hopped down the steps to the arena, he whistled, that horse Chug broke away from the stableman holding him across the arena and they embraced. And later in the paddock, there were journalists interviewing him. And one of the journalists said, so this is the horse that you saved in Czechoslovakia, because Chug had been doomed to the glue factory because he was only 7 eighths thoroughbred.

So this is the horse that you saved. And dad looked at the journalists and said, no, he saved me.

Wow.

“And how do I know that story? Because it was carried in newspapers across the country over the next two days. And it’s a wonderful foundation that he took into the rest of his life.

He rode Chug for several years while he went through school at Virginia. He was able to see the Lipizzaner stallions, including reunification with one of the vets from that horse farm. And then he was invited to Washington, DC when the Spanish Riding School in Vienna sent a platoon of Lipizzans to the Arlington National Cemetery to become a caisson platoon.

He was there when those horses arrived. It’s a precious story.

What a life, at all, before the age of 30.

Before the age of 22. And it would have been forgotten. And I think of how many of those 2 million men in Europe never talked and never told their stories.

But Ralph, a take home for me and my brothers was this. If dad had not written those 450 letters, we wouldn’t have the story. I wouldn’t have even known the questions to ask.

“Without those written letters. And so, so many of us send e-mails and texts. And they’re easy.

But if dad had had e-mail and text, we wouldn’t have this story. And so for those you love, those you respect, people you admire, from time to time, just write a note. In my desk here, I’ve got a pile of note cards.

And my brothers and I have begun to hand write notes because people will save those.

What an amazing story, so inspiring and so much to learn to take away from it. And yeah, what a privilege to the son of a man like that and to write his story. I mean, it’s a beautiful book, and it should be a movie or a TV series.

I don’t see how you can do better than that.

From your lips to God’s ears. I, for no other reason, to remind us of the suffering, the sacrifices, and yet the successes of that southern front of Europe, a time when the greatest generation flourished in a way that has given us so much of what we have today.

“Absolutely. Well, Walter, thank you so much. It’s been a privilege to have you on the show, and what a beautiful story.

You’re welcome, Ralph. It’s been a real privilege. And God bless you in what you’re doing.

Thank you.

In uncovering the heroes behind the headlights.

After his badly injured right leg was amputated, Phil was flown home to an Army hospital, joining more than 15,000 soldiers recovering from major limb loss. Army policy at the time mandated automatic discharge for all amputee officers after rehabilitation. Phil refused to accept it.

He appealed the policy, calling it unjust, unfair, and unethical. During his appeal hearing on April 15, 1947, one colonel told him, quote, You’re a handicap to the Army. You’re a highly decorated cripple, but still a cripple.

“The board denied his appeal by a single vote. Phil received an honorable discharge with the rank of Major at just 22 years old. Though the Army later reversed the policy in 1950, the damage had been done.

Phil left the Army as one of the most highly decorated junior officers of the war. His awards included the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, the Medal of France, the Crois du Garde with a palm, and more. It’s my great honor to name World War II hero, Phil Larimore and his son, Dr. Walt Larimore and author of the book about his extraordinary military service at First Dawn.

Today’s Heroes Behind the Headlines.

Please join our Heroes Behind Headlines community. Go to hbhpod.com and enter your email to receive updates and information on exclusive Q&As with our hosts and guests. That’s hbhpod.com.

Heroes Behind Headlines, Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo. Produced and engineered by Mike Dawson. Heroes Behind Headlines.

From Heroes Behind Headlines: Youngest WW2 Officer Fights Hitler, Saves Horses And More!, Oct 27, 2025

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PHOTO GALLERY

 

1999 – Phil and Maxine on their 50th anniversary

Phil, his medals, and the book about him

“Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”

“For the veteran, thank you for bravely doing what you were called to do so we can safely do what we’re free to do.”

If you’ve not read the award-winning book about Phil Larimore, you can learn more about it or order a copy by clicking here.

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