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ARMY | BCMR | CY2001 | 2001059168C070421
Original file (2001059168C070421.rtf) Auto-classification: Approved
PROCEEDINGS

         IN THE CASE OF:


         BOARD DATE: 13 SEPTEMBER 2001
         DOCKET NUMBER: AR2001059168


         I certify that hereinafter is recorded the true and complete record of the proceedings of the Army Board for Correction of Military Records in the case of the above-named individual.

Mr. Carl W. S. Chun Director
Ms. Deborah L. Brantley Senior Analyst


The following members, a quorum, were present:
Mr. Fred N. Eichorn Chairperson
Mr. John E. Denning Member
Mr. Terry L. Placek Member

         The applicant and counsel if any, did not appear before the Board.

         The Board considered the following evidence:

         Exhibit A - Application for correction of military
records
         Exhibit B - Military Personnel Records (including
         advisory opinion, if any)

 FINDINGS :

1. The applicant has exhausted or the Board has waived the requirement for exhaustion of all administrative remedies afforded by existing law or regulations.

2. The applicant requests, in effect, that his records be corrected to reflect award of the Purple Heart. He states, in effect, that his legs and feet were frozen during the Battle of the Bulge and as such he is entitled to the Purple Heart. In support of his request he submits a copy of his 1947 appeal to the VA which he contends confirms that his records incorrectly listed his injuries as “trench feet” when in fact it was “frozen feet.”

3. Records available to the Board indicate the applicant entered active duty on
20 September 1943 and arrived in the European Theater of Operations in August 1944. The 1947 appeal to the VA confirms that he was receiving disability compensation from the VA for his foot condition but he (the applicant) was appealing the basis for the disability (frozen feet vice trench feet) and the date compensation commenced (4 December 1945 – the day following his separation from active duty vice 22 January 1947 – the day the VA apparently established as his eligibility date for receipt of compensation). According to his 1947 appeal to the VA he included an affidavit from this commanding officer confirming that in January 1945 he received medical treatment “in combat service during Battle of Bulge, Ardennes, France, due to exposure resulting in frozen feet and legs." He also apparently attached several statements from doctors who had examined him following his release from active duty who also confirmed his foot condition was the result of frostbite. The affidavit and those statements, however, were not included as part of the applicant’s petition to the Board and were not in available records.

4. As a result of the applicant’s foot condition he was medically evacuated and ultimately returned to limited duty status in April 1945. He was honorably discharged as a result of demobilization on 3 December 1945.

5. Files maintained by the Office of The Surgeon General (OTSG), commonly referred to as the SGO File, indicate the applicant was hospitalized for “trench foot” between January and March 1945 and attributed his hospitalization to a “non-battle injury.” However, the SGO File did note that the “causative agent” was “Cold Injury, Ground Type.”

6. While award of the Purple Heart for frostbite injuries is currently prohibited, such injuries were previously a basis for the award. Until 1951 Army Regulation 600-45, which governed the award of Army decorations, stated that for the purpose of considering an award of the Purple Heart, a “wound” is defined as an injury to any part of the body from an outside force, element, or agent sustained while in action in the fact of the armed enemy or as a result of a hostile act of





such enemy. An “element” pertains to weather and the award of this decoration to personnel who were severely frostbitten while actually engaged in combat is authorized.

 7. In similar cases the OTSG has provided excerpts from an Army historical document discussing the topic at issue. It makes clear numerous specific points including the following: the term “element” (included from the beginning) meant weather. The governing regulation and policy were not always the same. Both policy and enforcement varied from time to time and place to place and were not consistently applied even in adjacent major European commands. The regulation normally authorized the Purple Heart for frostbite while in combat and sometimes excluded the award for trenchfoot while in combat. The Medical Department resisted administering a policy they could not control; in part, because initial diagnosis was very difficult yet the symptomatic development of individual conditions invited re-diagnosis; in part, because the ultimate degree of permanent disability had virtually nothing to do with the initial cause; in part, because training and enforcement of prevention rested with line commanders; and finally, because initial diagnosis, while extremely difficult, was almost always made by medical personnel who were intimately familiar with both the weather and the tactical situation, but rear echelon doctors tended to change the diagnoses for various reasons.

8. The Battle of the Bulge, which lasted from December 16, 1944 to January 28, 1945 was the largest land battle of World War II in which the United States participated. Ardennes – Battle of the Bulge, a book published by the Army’s Center for Military History, documents the U.S. Army's role in this WWII confrontation, detailing events leading up to the conflict, orders of battle and subsequent clashes. In a chapter on the weather it notes:
“The German selection of a target date for the commencement of the Ardennes offensive turned on the prediction of poor flying weather. This type of weather had a useful side effect during the rupture of the American lines since it veiled the attacker with fog and mist, a very important feature of the initial German successes just as it had been in the great offensives of 1918. The high pressure system which came in from the Atlantic on 18 December, however, worked momentarily against the attacker. A thaw set in which slowed his tanks and the erstwhile heavy ground fog began to show sudden openings, such as those which exposed the German tanks and infantry during the fight at Noville. On the 20th and 21st the higher ground began to freeze in patches, leaving stretches of the Ardennes roads slippery and muddy. By the 22d competing weather systems from Russia and the Atlantic had brought on a hodgepodge of snow, blizzards, fog, and rain. In the north the Sixth Panzer Army was bogged by rain and mud, in the south the Fifth Panzer Army was hampered in its swing around Bastogne by fog and snow, and along the German supply roads back over the Eifel snow fell continuously. The dramatic change of the 23d, brought by cold, dry winds from the east, stripped the German armies of their immunity to air attack. But this was not the whole story. Snow began to drift in the Eifel hills, bringing traffic on the main supply roads west of the Rhine almost to a standstill. Horse-drawn snowplows were few and ineffective, hastily erected snow fences were torn down by troops scrounging for firewood, there was no gravel available, and a large number of the engineer construction battalions had been taken west for employment as infantry. By the time power snowplows reached the Eifel the American fighterbombers were strafing and bombing every large vehicle that moved. Engineers were brought into the Eifel, but their very efforts delayed the German truck columns so urgently needed farther west. For five days the weather favored the Americans, in the air and on the ground. Superior numerically in tanks, the Americans benefited more than the Germans from the sure footing the big freeze provided for armor. Then, on 28 December, came clouds and overcast followed, a day later, by arctic air from Scandinavia, heavy snows, blizzards, and greatly reduced visibility at ground level. Vehicular movement was slow, the riflemen exhausted themselves wading through the drifts, and the wounded-those in a state of shock-died if left in the snow for more than half an hour or more. This was the state of the weather when, on
3 January, the Allies began their final counterattack.”

CONCLUSIONS:

1. Clearly the applicant sustained a cold weather injury to his feet during the Battle of the Bulge which was sufficiently severe to warrant his hospitalization for nearly two months and for the VA to subsequently award him disability compensation. While the medical diagnosis of trenchfoot and frostbite was widely debated during World War II, as noted in the historical document provided by the OTSG, the Board concludes that in this particular instance there is sufficient evidence to conclude that the applicant’s foot condition was the result of a cold weather injury, regardless of the diagnostic term ultimately used to describe the injury. This is particularly supported by the fact that his 1947 appeal to the VA cites a statement from the applicant’s commanding officer which confirmed the source of his foot condition and the weather conditions under which the Battle of the Bulge was fought. As such it would be in the interest of justice and compassion to award him the Purple Heart for the cold weather injuries he sustained to his legs and feet in January 1945.

2. In view of the foregoing, the applicant’s records should be corrected as recommended below.



RECOMMENDATION:

That all of the Department of the Army records related to this case be corrected by awarding the individual concerned the Purple Heart for cold weather injuries sustained in January 1945 during the Battle of the Bulge.

BOARD VOTE:

__FNE __ __JED __ __TLP __ GRANT AS STATED IN RECOMMENDATION

________ ________ ________ GRANT FORMAL HEARING

________ ________ ________ DENY APPLICATION




                  ____Fred N. Eichorn_ _
                  CHAIRPERSON
INDEX

CASE ID AR2001059168
SUFFIX
RECON YYYYMMDD
DATE BOARDED 20010913
TYPE OF DISCHARGE (HD, GD, UOTHC, UD, BCD, DD, UNCHAR)
DATE OF DISCHARGE YYYYMMDD
DISCHARGE AUTHORITY AR . . . . .
DISCHARGE REASON
BOARD DECISION GRANT
REVIEW AUTHORITY
ISSUES 1. 107.00
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.



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