“Being a medic doesn’t make you impregnable to enemy lead, as I found out in a hurry,” Cpl. Leon C. Stoler, Waterloo, said after arriving in the United States on the USS Queen Elizabeth following 34 months duty overseas.
Corporal Stoler, now spending a 30-day furlough with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. C. L. Stoler, 559 Indiana street, received the Purple Heart for wounds suffered in a tank battle while he was serving with the 331st medical battalion of the 106th infantry.
“I was busy tending to a wounded soldier who had been hit in the shoulder,” the Waterloo corporal stated, “when I felt a piece of shrapnel tear into my leg.” Corporal Stoler finished attending to the wounds of his comrade before he went for any first aid for himself.
He has 57 points toward a discharge and will report to Jefferson Barracks, Mo., on completion of his visit here.
Source: Waterloo Daily Courier, September 4, 1945
