Italy

Bob Dole’s Incredible Story of Survival in World War II

Bill Thompson

In April 1945 the war in Europe was nearing its end. But battles were still raging, And on April 14 one such battle left a young American 2nd Lieutenant gravely wounded.

His name was Bob Dole, a 21-year-old from Kansas who had joined the Army in 1942.

The German shell that hit him that day in Italy in 1945 was nearly fatal. Miraculously Dole survived, but it would be another three years before he was out of the hospital.

Dole, of course, went on to a long, illustrious, and successful political career, culminating with the 1996 Republican nomination for president.

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Get your copy of Bob Dole’s book

In 2005 Dole wrote a memoir of his World War II experience, a book called One Soldier’s Story. I met with him in his Washington DC office one day that spring to talk about it, some 60 years after he nearly died on that battlefield in Italy.

So here now, from 2005, Bob Dole.

Bob Dole died in 2021 – he was 98.

Elizabeth Gilbert and How She Learned To Eat, Pray, Love

Bill Thompson
Photo by Erik Charlton

A 2006 book about a young woman’s journey of self-discovery landed on the New York Times bestseller list – where it stayed for nearly two years.

The author of that book, Eat, Pray, Love was the then-37-year-old Elizabeth Gilbert, an accomplished writer and storyteller.

It was a profound sense of not knowing who she was that led Gilbert to radically change the direction of her life. First with divorce, then with a year-long “hero;s journey” to Italy, India, and Indonesia.

Get your copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book

When the book was made into a movie in 2010, Julia Roberts was cast as Elizabeth Gilbert:.

I met the author when the book was republished in paperback in 2007.

So here now, from 2007, Elizabeth Gilbert.

Elizabeth Gilbert is 55 now. Time magazine has named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Eat, Pray, Love has sold over 12 million copies.

Gen. James Dozier

Bill Thompson

Fprty years ago this weekend a U.S. Army general who was stationed at a NATO facility in Italy was kidnapped by a Marxist terrorist group known as the Red Brigades.

General James Dozier spent the next 42 days in captivity, before a dramatic rescue.

And, as you’re about to hear in this interview, Dozier’s rescue by Italian special forces actually help break the back of the Red Brigades.

I met General Dozier and his wife Judy several years later. They wrote a book about that harrowing episode.

So here now from 1990 general James Dozier and his wife Judy.

General James Dozier is 90 now.