Dr. Walt Larimore
Growing up in the 1930s in Memphis, Tennessee, Phil Larimore was the ultimate Boy Scout—able to read maps, use a compass, and traverse wild swamps and desolate canyons. His other great skill was riding horses. Landing on the Anzio beachhead in February 1944, Larimore was put in charge of an Ammunition Pioneer Platoon in the 3rd Infantry Division. Their job: deliver ammunition to the frontline foxholes. Dr. Walt Larimore discusses his father’s story told in his book At First Light.
Audio file
AVS 6.16 JOINED.mp3
Transcript
00:00:02 Kim Monson
And welcome to America’s veterans stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website that is America’s veteransstories.com, and the show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied 4D day veterans back to Normandy, France, for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings. And it certainly changed my life.
00:00:23 Kim Monson
And it’s my great honor to get to do this show. America’s veteran stories. And I’m.
00:00:28 Kim Monson
So pleased to.
00:00:29 Kim Monson
Have on the line with me Doctor Walt Larimore. He’s a family doctor. He is an author’s husband.
00:00:36 Kim Monson
Dad, grandfather and has written a really important book about his father, Phil Larrimore. So it’s so appropriate to be broadcasting this on Father’s Day and to all of you fathers out there. I wish you a very happy Father’s Day. Doctor Walt larimore. Welcome to the show.
00:00:56 Dr. Walt Larimore
Them it’s great to be with you and I and I so admire what you do of looking back on on.
00:01:03 Dr. Walt Larimore
You know what’s been called the greatest generation and I think for many years, I kind of wondered where they were. They not. But after 16 years of research on the heroes, the two million heroes who fought in Europe, I’m in that camp that says this was the greatest generation.
00:01:22 Kim Monson
And what they did for us and for the world, we cannot forget that. And we have a responsibility because of what they did, that this is our time now that we step forward into this time of history.
00:01:37 Kim Monson
And it’s as important now as it was then, but we take such heart from these stories and how I got connected with you is a friend of mine, Colonel Bill Rutledge. He’s retired, United States Air Force. He’s traveled the world. He’s 95 years young, and he has this curiosity about.
00:01:56 Kim Monson
People and places. And he reached out to me secure. And you need to try to find this guy. Doctor Walt larimore. I read this book at first light.
00:02:05 Kim Monson
And it’s one of the most riveting books I’ve ever read, particularly regarding World War 2. And so finally, we’re together. We’re we’re going to talk about this important book, and it’s about your father. So where do you want to start on this, doctor Larimore?
00:02:22 Dr. Walt Larimore
Well, I’m on. I’m so honored to have a hero like that. Call it a riveting book and it it it just popped in my mind. Army Magazine did a feature on on the book and on Dead that just came out two months ago. And and the editor of Army Magazine magazine said that at first light was a riveting story that rivals Laura Hillebrand.
00:02:42 Dr. Walt Larimore
Unbroken and.
00:02:43
Wow.
00:02:44 Dr. Walt Larimore
And to be even mentioned in in that category is. It’s just a terrific, a terrific honor, but I think it all started back when I was a kid growing up in the 50s and 60s. Most of the kids I grew up with are parents that served in World War Two or they had stayed at home and sacrificed.
00:03:04 Dr. Walt Larimore
During World War 2, and so as young boys always kind of wondered you.
00:03:08 Dr. Walt Larimore
Know.
00:03:09 Dr. Walt Larimore
Our dads are in the world.
00:03:10 Dr. Walt Larimore
With those heroes or not? And and they didn’t talk about the war. I knew that, dad.
00:03:17 Dr. Walt Larimore
Did something, but number one he was listening a leg that we knew he had lost in the war, but he wouldn’t talk about it. And in his office were just shy of a dozen pictures of generals, all her autographs, pictures to him about his fighting career and.
00:03:37 Dr. Walt Larimore
General Eisenhower signing this picture is one of the finest fighting men in World War Two. And then there’s this shadow box full of of metals that I found out later. Every metal of dollar that the army gives except the Medal of Honor he had received.
00:03:54 Dr. Walt Larimore
But all those guys were really quiet about that. They kind of rolled off that portion of their life and when he, he and mom reached their 45th wedding anniversary, him, he began to talk to us. Boys, had four brothers, and he began to talk to us. And he would tell us stories for the first time in our lives about the war.
00:04:14 Dr. Walt Larimore
I’ll tell you the truth. We didn’t believe most of them. Just making them up, but after he passed away in 2003, I found a footlocker with over 400 letters that he had written home, 3 military history books that documented most of.
00:04:34 Dr. Walt Larimore
Just stories. And then I began a 16 year pilgrimage, an epic journey to research, not just his story, but the story of the forgotten front in Europe, the southern front, the most vicious, long fought part of the war that almost nobody knows about, and that.
00:04:54 Dr. Walt Larimore
The shelter in the book at first.
00:04:56 Kim Monson
And that is true. We talk so much about Normandy, but there were other amphibious landings as well, and we don’t hear much about those. And then your father was over in, in Italy, right? That’s where he where he began the war? Yes.
00:05:15 Dr. Walt Larimore
Yeah, he actually started the the Southern Front began actually in Morocco.
00:05:20 Dr. Walt Larimore
And so the southern front guys, just his third infantry division, if you would actually fought over 900 days, 936 days and we’ll work to the Northern Front, guys, very important part of the war, obviously starting in the D-Day in Normandy, those fellows bought just over 300 days.
00:05:40 Dr. Walt Larimore
336 days. So the southern front guys, 912 guys days, the northern guys, 336 days, but the northern guys had a delay, no question. I mean the larger.
00:05:51 Dr. Walt Larimore
You know, operation of its kind in history, but the southern guys were always a little bit resentful because Dad’s unit had 70 days and the Third Infantry division had five days and and no one, no one knows that. When I asked people what was the first European capital.
00:06:11 Dr. Walt Larimore
Liberated and World War 2, almost everyone who guests Paris and and that happened in August the 44th. So we’re coming up on 80.
00:06:19 Dr. Walt Larimore
There’s, but Rome was actually the first liberated capital. Unfortunately, that happened on June 4th and 5th, 1944. So on June 6th, when all of the newspapers across America were preparing their front pages to say Rome is liberated, guess what?
00:06:39 Dr. Walt Larimore
Something else happened, right?
00:06:40 Kim Monson
If something else. Yeah, Norman.
00:06:43 Dr. Walt Larimore
They got thrown off of the front pages and 2nd the New York Times. The liberation of young was pushed back to the 14th day. Everyone’s heard of the Battle of the Bulge, you know, horrible, disastrous battle that that turned out well. But almost no one’s heard of the battle of the Colmar Pocket.
00:06:54
Right.
00:07:03 Dr. Walt Larimore
Happened in the Alsace areas the same time as battle, the bulge, perhaps arguably much more decisive battle as far as the the final outcome and waged in the worst winter conditions that had ever been reported in Europe. In fact, Stephen Ambrose, when he was riding his his best selling.
00:07:24 Dr. Walt Larimore
The band of brothers. I commented that when he would interview a veterans of the Third Infantry division that had fought in the Battle of of of Komar, that he would, he said that the conditions were so bad they were so severe that they could only have been experienced. They could never be described.
00:07:43 Dr. Walt Larimore
He says that there was thought and conditions so terrible they could only be marveled at, not even imagined.
00:07:50 Dr. Walt Larimore
Only those who were there to know more than once in interviewing veterans at the January fighting, when I asked them to describe the cold, men involuntarily shivered and and general field Marshall, German Field Marshall Albert Kesselring. He was asked after he was captured.
00:08:10 Dr. Walt Larimore
And what was the best American division that you thought? And without even hesitating, he said the Third Infantry division, the guys on the Southern Front but completely forgotten front Kim.
00:08:23 Kim Monson
It isn’t that amazing. That’s why I’m so excited to bring this bring this to light because.
00:08:29 Kim Monson
I have not heard of this, so this is so great that we’re going to be talking about this. So where where should we start with with this then?
00:08:38 Dr. Walt Larimore
That was to go back to the beginning. Dad was born in Memphis, TN. He was the only child of our legal secretary and a Pullman conductor. His dad had been a war hero in World War One, and dad grew up really a latch key child because his dad was travelling as a conductor on the.
00:08:59 Dr. Walt Larimore
Illinois Central Railway as a Pullman conductor and his mom was working really long days as a.
00:09:05 Dr. Walt Larimore
As a legal secretary, and so he kind of grew up. He was a Boy Scout. He he could read maps. He could, he could use compass, he could transverse wild swamps and desolate canyons. And and he loved going to the woods. He he would visit relatives, farms and he learned to hunt and fish and and.
00:09:25 Dr. Walt Larimore
It loves caring for riding horses. In fact later became.
00:09:28 Dr. Walt Larimore
A world class.
00:09:29 Dr. Walt Larimore
Equestrian his dad taught him to to shoot guns and that the relatives would write that by his sixth.
00:09:36 Dr. Walt Larimore
Thursday’s dad could knock corn criminals off of the fence post with a 22 caliber rifle at 25 yards away. You kind of a daring.
00:09:43
I’m like.
00:09:46 Dr. Walt Larimore
Guy, in fact on a.
00:09:47 Dr. Walt Larimore
On a on a dare during the the Mississippi River flood of 1934, he was nine years old. He swam across the Mississippi River and back.
00:09:57 Dr. Walt Larimore
With her friend Lucky that he even lived.
00:10:00
Gosh.
00:10:01 Dr. Walt Larimore
Daring Little Boy Scout, but he just won. Built for school. He didn’t do well in school and as a last three child got in a lot of trouble. Just the problems. And so history changed for him and his parents decided to send him to military school. And so in the ninth grade he was shipped off to Gulfport, Ms.
00:10:22 Dr. Walt Larimore
Where he waited for the Gulf Coast Military Academy and that’s where he found his passion slide.
00:10:27 Dr. Walt Larimore
His purpose? He became a leader there. He was one of the smallest soldiers, but he became a leader there and graduated with honors just after Pearl Harbor, right into the the Army. He, he, Kim, was the youngest ever graduate of the Army officer candidate.
00:10:47 Dr. Walt Larimore
So normally you don’t.
00:10:48 Dr. Walt Larimore
Even get into that school unless you’re a commissioned officer.
00:10:51 Dr. Walt Larimore
He went in.
00:10:52 Dr. Walt Larimore
Just after high school, he was 17 years old because he had been through advanced arts, so Young was ever graduate.
00:11:00 Dr. Walt Larimore
Beyond this, officer candidate shortage, General David Petraeus, the former CIA director and director of the Army and Afghanistan First Star General, just nominated Dad for the Officer Candidate, School Hall of Fame, which is a great honor. But the youngest commissioned officers first. We know in World War 2.
00:11:20 Dr. Walt Larimore
On his 18th birthday, he was commissioned as the second Lieutenant and then became the youngest frontline officer in Europe in World War.
00:11:28 Dr. Walt Larimore
Two.
00:11:28 Dr. Walt Larimore
The youngest company commander in the Army in World War Two and the youngest recipient of the Distinguished Service Crosses.
00:11:36 Dr. Walt Larimore
An officer losing his leg just one month before the end of the war. In fact, almost losing, losing his life.
00:11:44 Kim Monson
Remarkable. OK, remarkable. This is a good spot, I think, to stop. So before we do that, though, I did want to mention one of the nonprofits that I dearly love and that is the USMC Memorial Foundation.
00:11:58 Kim Monson
And the Marine memorial, the Action Marine Memorial, is right here in Golden, Co and Paula sales, who is the President of the USMC Memorial Foundation, is a marine veteran and a Gold Star wife, and she and her team are working diligently to raise the money for the remodel for the USMC Memorial Foundation.
00:12:18 Kim Monson
Get more information, go to their website that is US, Inc Memorial foundation.org and we will be right back with Doctor Walt.
00:12:25 Kim Monson
One more welcome back to America’s veterans stories. Be sure and check out our website, thatisamericasveteransstories.com, and we are talking with Doctor Walt larimore regarding a book that he’s written regarding his father. co-authored that and it’s at first light and Doctor Larimore you said this took you 16 years.
00:12:45 Kim Monson
To write this book right, they’re not getting.
00:12:48 Kim Monson
That correct?
00:12:49 Dr. Walt Larimore
Yeah, yeah. But it started off taking the 434 letters that he had written home and just typing them out, that they were handwritten letters to his mom and to his best friend. And and that became kind of the core, if you would. And then I took the history books that.
00:13:08 Dr. Walt Larimore
That had.
00:13:10 Dr. Walt Larimore
The history of the 30th Infantry Regiment, the history of the Third Infantry Division, the history of the war in World War 2, Winston Churchill’s history of the War, General Eisenhower’s history war.
00:13:23 Dr. Walt Larimore
And we had.
00:13:23 Dr. Walt Larimore
To leave into his genitals those battles, but there’s still a lot of holes, and so then I ended up reading.
00:13:30 Dr. Walt Larimore
Just over 200 World War 2.
00:13:32 Dr. Walt Larimore
Books, most of them written by infantrymen, people that fought on the battle and in the different battles put their information in, began interviewing veterans and the both, those that dad had fought with and then their families, which it was just remarkable to do, that visited most of.
00:13:53 Dr. Walt Larimore
Many of the military installations in this country dealing with World War Two, so the Army War College, the National World War 2 Museum, the Guider Museum in Waco, the World War One Museum in Saint Louis, and so forth, and so on. Gathering information from their.
00:14:12 Dr. Walt Larimore
There was an archives and ended up with just over 1.5 million words of research, citations and quotes, and then just began the arduous process of trying to put that into a story, almost not almost in, in a novel form, but.
00:14:19 Kim Monson
Ohh my gosh.
00:14:32 Dr. Walt Larimore
With real history and initially not received well by publishers, I I’m not a historian. I’m not a known novelist, and so had about 48.
00:14:45 Dr. Walt Larimore
Rejections for the book and then I have a dear friend. I have written a couple of books with named Mike. Yorkie and Mike had begun doing military work. She’s an author that lives in San Diego, and so I read one of the books that he he wrote about an Afghan veteran. And so I called Mike.
00:15:05 Dr. Walt Larimore
And.
00:15:05 Dr. Walt Larimore
Said hey would.
00:15:07 Dr. Walt Larimore
You be able to take a look at this manuscript and just see if there’s it’s just even worth pursuing or am I done for, for our family and he says, well, I’m really booked up. I’ve got three years of work ahead of me, but some of the manuscript.
00:15:23 Dr. Walt Larimore
Then I’ll once you send me the first five or six chapters. I’ll take a look at it. It may be 2-3 months before I get back to you, but I I’ll let you know if I think this is even worth for sure and I’ll be honest with you, I said that’s perfect. So send it to him and him. It was three days later that he.
00:15:44 Dr. Walt Larimore
And he says, I love what you’ve done, but you’ve made a terrible mistake.
00:15:50 Dr. Walt Larimore
You are hiding your dad’s story. You you want to talk about the Southern front? You want to talk about all these guys, but doing so you’ve kind of hidden your dad’s story, he said. I think I can bring that to.
00:16:00 Dr. Walt Larimore
The surface I’d.
00:16:02 Dr. Walt Larimore
Be willing to.
00:16:02 Dr. Walt Larimore
Work.
00:16:02 Dr. Walt Larimore
With you as he.
00:16:03
Wow.
00:16:04 Dr. Walt Larimore
Said like I.
00:16:05 Dr. Walt Larimore
Said I probably won’t be able to start for two and a.
00:16:08 Dr. Walt Larimore
Half years and I’m thinking well.
00:16:10 Dr. Walt Larimore
At that .14 years was like, what’s another?
00:16:14
But.
00:16:16 Dr. Walt Larimore
I sent him the the the whole manuscript and Kim believe it, believe it or not.
00:16:23 Dr. Walt Larimore
Five days later, he calls me up and he says, well, I’m. I’m working on a project he was working with a felon and Steve Auburn redoing a Mens Bible. So that edit the notes on the men’s Bible. He said that I had three months. I set aside to that project that’s just been put off.
00:16:44 Dr. Walt Larimore
I’ve got three months free. I’ll go to work on it now if you want. And so we worked for the next three months. Really, really hard on that. And finally he, he finished and.
00:17:00 Dr. Walt Larimore
We got the the the completed manuscript back and Bob was reading through it and she was so quiet as she was reading. And after that’s my wife, my boss and her. And she walked in after having read it. And she said tears coming down her face. And she said it’s beautiful.
00:17:09 Kim Monson
And and is that your?
00:17:10 Kim Monson
Wife.
00:17:19 Dr. Walt Larimore
This is beautiful. So we sent it off and we had three publishing contracts in a leather suit and that it it, Mike, really put the icing on the cake if you would. That made it such a readout.
00:17:31 Dr. Walt Larimore
Well, well, well endorsed. Well, well reviewed. But not only being compared to unbroken by Laura Hillebrand, but one reviewer said there was a combination of band of brothers and War Horse. And another reviewer said like a combination of of sea biscuit.
00:17:51 Dr. Walt Larimore
And and unbroken, I mean really remarkable, which is. And so I’m so grateful for that.
00:17:57 Dr. Walt Larimore
Not just as another, but that it just lifts up the southern front, the shuttering, the sacrifice, and the successes. I mean, these guys on the southern front, when they built out from Anzio, which is where Dad joined the battle in in January of 1944, they they swagged through what was royal blue.
00:18:19 Dr. Walt Larimore
One trench warfare for almost five months, they were pinned down by the Germans on a spit of.
00:18:26 Dr. Walt Larimore
And southwest of Rome, called Ansio Mituna, it was about 10 miles deep and about 15 miles wide, surrounded by a mountain range. And the Germans were highly defended, had guns aimed on literally every square inch of amnesia. And so the men lived in trenches. They had to dig into the ground.
00:18:49 Dr. Walt Larimore
To survive. And when they broke out of Anzio, the Third Infantry Division lost 1000 men that day. It was the largest loss of any division in one day.
00:19:01 Dr. Walt Larimore
In in world.
00:19:02 Dr. Walt Larimore
War Two that that division had about 12,000 men in the.
00:19:08 Dr. Walt Larimore
The the rest of the war, which lasted another 15-16 months until August of 1945, that division lost 35,000 men. It was horrible.
00:19:19 Dr. Walt Larimore
Horrible, dreadful fighting. I mean, most of the most of the men that went over as volunteers and World War Two, whether they were fighting in the Pacific or over in Europe, they went to fight for decency and and democracy. I mean, they were like John Wayne. They look at the adventure and and hope for.
00:19:39 Dr. Walt Larimore
And excitement. And there were depression kids, you know, and. And so for many others, always just they would ever have to travel. But their patriotism, their idealism was quickly dashed by the gastly reality of war. I mean it was killed.
00:19:58 Dr. Walt Larimore
Be killed and so for the on the ground frontline GI’s like like dad, he he commanded a platoon and AMP platoon that works all night in the in the very front lines setting wire cutting, wire shedding mines, defusing mines.
00:20:17 Dr. Walt Larimore
They were no man’s land. Sometimes 1015 yards from the animate, and so quickly these on the ground, guys.
00:20:26 Dr. Walt Larimore
Horrible job we’re fighting to get home, fighting to get back to their their gals, their families, their churches, their future life. And Ken, the thing I think that Presley the most was they weren’t fighting to conquer anyone. They were fighting to liberate people who had been conquered. They were fighting for.
00:20:45 Dr. Walt Larimore
For liberty and freedom, and it’s the liberty and freedom we enjoy today.
00:20:49 Kim Monson
Well, and I just want to mention again, I don’t think I got the numbers quite right, but these guys on the southern, the southern front there, I think you said that 936 days that they fought is.
00:21:01 Kim Monson
Right.
00:21:02 Dr. Walt Larimore
Do you have 912? The northern front guys were 336 days. If I have it right to southern front guys for 912 days, Dad thought actually frontline fighting for 415 days over 15 months, so he fought.
00:21:04 Kim Monson
Or 912 OK.
00:21:20 Dr. Walt Larimore
From Angela out.
00:21:21 Dr. Walt Larimore
And when they broke out, they went.
00:21:22 Dr. Walt Larimore
Up and liberated Rome. His unit was one of the first to liberate Rome. After that. That was in June of 1944. Then they went into intensive training for the last major and dubious D-Day of World War Two, and that was August 15.
00:21:40 Dr. Walt Larimore
1944 we’re coming up on the 80th anniversary and it was the second largest three day after Normandy ever done and it was the first one that started in daylight. First one was completely occurred in daylight and after a very successful daylight they fought out through.
00:21:58 Dr. Walt Larimore
Some.
00:21:59 Kim Monson
And and where where was that at that that day?
00:22:02 Dr. Walt Larimore
It was. It was basically in northwestern Italy and southeastern France, so Marseille and the the the lower end of France, they put up the running river all the way past Switzerland and then up into north.
00:22:15 Kim Monson
OK.
00:22:21 Dr. Walt Larimore
Eastern France. That was the Beige Mountains. They were the 1st Army in history to actually battle another army in winter in the those mountains that had been attempted five times before, including by Napoleon. No army, ever.
00:22:38 Dr. Walt Larimore
Beat a intensed enemy in the Verge mountains ever in history until the US Army went in late. As we talked about earlier and the very very of winter conditions in the very most difficult mountain territory, vehicles couldn’t even get in. Tanks couldn’t get in because of the winter conditions.
00:22:58 Dr. Walt Larimore
Often 1015° below 0 airplanes couldn’t support them. It’s.
00:23:04 Dr. Walt Larimore
Brutal and one of Dad’s most not his most serious one, the second most serious one was a leg injury that happened in the voicemail and then he was evacuated to recover from that land and that the interesting part of this story, one of the interesting parts is he was on an officers ward recovering and then the.
00:23:24 Dr. Walt Larimore
Right next to him will say a young officer named Audie Murphy, arguably one of the best known and highly decorated soldiers in World War he and Audi became dear friends. In fact their beds.
00:23:30 Kim Monson
Oh my gosh.
00:23:42 Dr. Walt Larimore
That’s bed, not his bed. We’re right next to the nursing station and the head nurse. Those name a price that’s in a price. They call their pricing. And Audie Murphy actually got down on his knee one night and the officers were there and proposed to her and she turned him down.
00:24:02 Kim Monson
Oh my gosh.
00:24:02 Dr. Walt Larimore
And then from the Bose Mountains, the battle.
00:24:04 Dr. Walt Larimore
Of the komar.
00:24:05 Dr. Walt Larimore
Rocket vicious battles. They had lost. That was the last foothold that Germany had outside of Germany, and losing that would mean, likely, that they would lose the war. And Germany fought like crazy like there was.
00:24:22 Dr. Walt Larimore
Literally told the ground was frozen to a depth of 18 inches, but it was flat. You couldn’t dig a foxhole. You’re completely unprotected as you thought, and that the men battle.
00:24:34 Dr. Walt Larimore
Thought that thought about his come our pocket and then trying to cross into Germany for the final push into Germany and the Third Infantry division that through Germany have ended up in fact a lot of people that watch band of brothers think that that DC company ended up at the Eagles nest you know.
00:24:51 Dr. Walt Larimore
Hitler’s compound?
00:24:52 Dr. Walt Larimore
And it was an easy company. It’s the.
00:24:54 Dr. Walt Larimore
3rd Infantry Division.
00:24:56 Dr. Walt Larimore
So the third Infantry division was the only division that fought in every country in Europe that the Germans were in 10 campaigns from the beginning to the end of the war. They were one of the first five divisions to enter the war, and that was in Morocco and. And so it’s just this.
00:25:16 Dr. Walt Larimore
Good, amazing division. And I’m hoping that first light will really help resurrect the forgotten front and the and and the memories of this summation here.
00:25:29 Kim Monson
Well, it is amazing heroes. We’re going to continue the story here with.
00:25:33 Kim Monson
Doctor Walt Larimore regarding at first Light, which is remarkable. Stories I I I’m. I’m almost speechless as I’m just thinking about all these different things that we’re talking about before we go to break the. No, I wanted to mention the Center for American values which is located in Pueblo on the River Walk and.
00:25:54 Kim Monson
They are doing amazing work. It is Co founded by Drew *****, Medal of Honor recipient for actions he took during the Vietnam War and Brad Pitt.
00:26:02 Kim Monson
Who is a award-winning documentary maker? And they wanted to do several things. One is honor, our Medal of Honor recipients. So they have these beautiful portraits of valor, but also these, these, these values of America for honor, integrity and patriotism to teach that to our children. So they have these great educational programs and then they do these.
00:26:22 Kim Monson
On values presentations just great work, so you can get more information by going to americanvaluescenter.org that is American valuecenter.org. We’ll be right back with Doctor Walt Larimore.
00:26:34 Kim Monson
Welcome back to America’s veterans stories with Kim Munson, be sure and check out our website, thatisamericasveteransstories.com. I’m talking with Doctor Walt Larimore, and he is a co-author of a book at First Light. It’s the story of his father, World War Two, and Doctor Larimore. During break, you had mentioned that this book would not have.
00:26:57 Kim Monson
Been possible without these handwritten letters from your father.
00:27:03 Dr. Walt Larimore
They became the core and.
00:27:06 Dr. Walt Larimore
It was a great joy to read them and to and and to kind of get the inside view of day-to-day. What? What is what’s happening? In fact, I can just submit you real quickly. Those letters. I’m posting them at at Doctor walt.com DRW alt.com.
00:27:25 Dr. Walt Larimore
And posting each day what those men were doing 80 years or 80 years ago. So today I’m.
00:27:33 Dr. Walt Larimore
I’m posting what happened today 80 years ago, so all of those letters are being posted as we go through, go through the year, but I’m just I was so happy to have them, but I was sad thinking he thought the two million other men just in Europe, 16,000,000 who.
00:27:52 Dr. Walt Larimore
Brought in World War Two, I served in World War Two and I thought, what if he had written those letters?
00:27:59 Dr. Walt Larimore
Or even worse, if they had been e-mail or texting, what if he emailed or text and I would have none of that. And so one of the takeaways from that and I think would be worthy for your audience to consider would be, are you handwriting notes to people you love, your parents, your, your children?
00:28:19 Dr. Walt Larimore
And spouse, coworkers, people that you love and admire. If you want to begin that discipline, it’s a good discipline to begin, because just Diana did that, you know, and it’s mainly for the letters issue of her kids.
00:28:36 Dr. Walt Larimore
Prince William and Prince Henry speak of what they know about her from what they learned from their letters. And so here we are. Come on. Father’s Day. I think that, you know, it might be a good time for all of us to consider writing a handwritten note from time to time. Leaving handwritten records for our kids and maybe even for those who have.
00:28:56 Dr. Walt Larimore
That is still alive, but there’s still alive interviewing them. And if you don’t know where.
00:29:01 Dr. Walt Larimore
To start, there are any number.
00:29:03 Dr. Walt Larimore
Of books about interviewing your grandparents, interviewing your parents, interviewing your spouse.
00:29:11 Dr. Walt Larimore
100 questions what is your favorite cream growing up, you know and and.
00:29:16 Dr. Walt Larimore
Stuff that you would.
00:29:17 Dr. Walt Larimore
Never think of that will leave a living legacy. And wouldn’t that?
00:29:20 Dr. Walt Larimore
Be neat, Kim.
00:29:21 Dr. Walt Larimore
If, as a result of this show, hundreds, maybe thousands of us began that same district.
00:29:28 Kim Monson
And it will change our lives it and it takes the focus off of.
00:29:31 Kim Monson
Ourselves and puts it, puts it on our our family to learn our history. And there have been times Doctor Larry Moore, when I’ve had World War 2 veterans their child, might have brought them in. And I’ve done the interview and they’ve said we never heard that story before. And so it is so important. And I’m at your website.
00:29:53 Kim Monson
Doctor walt.com. And there it is right there. What your father was doing.
00:30:00 Kim Monson
80 years ago today, June 14th, we’re recording this on June 14th. Said Dad has enough time to write a long letter to his best friend, so this is just fascinating. We’re talking about your book at first light. Now, you mentioned your your father had been wounded. He was in the hospital. He was in a bed next to Audie Murphy.
00:30:20 Kim Monson
And they became friends. So he’s wounded. But you said it was 415 days on the front line. So he’s wounded. He recovers, he goes back to.
00:30:29 Kim Monson
What happened there?
00:30:30 Dr. Walt Larimore
You know, if you goes back into the Colmar pocket and there becomes the youngest company commander in the war, he had been a platoon leader prior to that, working on the front lines. But they were fighting one night the Colmar pocket and the company commander of the company he was working with which was love company.
00:30:50 Dr. Walt Larimore
Company, the Third Battalion of the Third Infantry Regiment, a company that had two Medal of Honor winners during the war. The the four dad. So a story company. But that company commander was killed. Dad was given a battlefield.
00:31:06 Kim Monson
Oh my gosh, comma.
00:31:08 Dr. Walt Larimore
To become the youngest company commander, he had just turned 19. Excuse me. He just turned 20. So he went from a 19 year old teen to a 20 year old company commander. And then they bought up through and into Germany, crossing the SIG food line. And I’ve been fighting.
00:31:11 Kim Monson
The promotion.
00:31:28 Dr. Walt Larimore
In through Germany and one month before the end of the war, the war in York ended. On May 8th, 1945 April.
00:31:37 Dr. Walt Larimore
Eight was when he had a wound that almost took his life, but I’m doing real quick, Benny Trump because Dad was an equestrian. He grew up riding horses, and when he came into Africa and rock out, he he learned to ride bobber horses, and then when he was in Italy.
00:31:57 Dr. Walt Larimore
In Naples, who learned dressage and how to ride dressage horses and then in southern?
00:32:04 Dr. Walt Larimore
France. He was recruited by his commanding officer to gather up horses the the Germans. Their artillery was predominantly horse strong. It wasn’t mechanized. The Germans at one time during the war releasing up to 5000 horses month and so dead and and.
00:32:24 Dr. Walt Larimore
Some other farm boys got together to to hoard those horses. Those are just three of lots of horse stories that are throughout this book. But because of his equestrian.
00:32:34 Dr. Walt Larimore
History. He recruited mules on angio to help carry ammunition to the front lines at night and did the same thing under those mountains. During ammunition on these, these mountainous hills that vehicles couldn’t.
00:32:50 Dr. Walt Larimore
Go up and.
00:32:51 Dr. Walt Larimore
Down. But anyway, on April 1st of 19.
00:32:54 Dr. Walt Larimore
35 his commanding officer came to him and said, Phil, there’s been a rumor.
00:33:00 Dr. Walt Larimore
Not Hitler has sequestered all of the lipizzan horses in the world in Czechoslovakia. This this little tiny evil man Hitler, who wanted to have the perfect race. You know, the Aryan race wanted for that race, the perfect horse. And he had.
00:33:20 Dr. Walt Larimore
Early, even before the war began, sequestering all of the war breeds and illusions and burgers and quarter horses and thoroughbreds and liposomes as famous.
00:33:32 Dr. Walt Larimore
Right. Dancing stallions within Austria and putting them together try to develop a perfect horse and he had essentially all of the Littles on horses in the world. The question in Czechoslovakia and the Russian army because of the Yalta Agreement had been given the right to liberate Czechoslovakia.
00:33:52 Dr. Walt Larimore
It was a starting army and they were killing and eating every animal they came across and in eastern Czechoslovakia, the Russian army came across a trailer carrying twelve lips on. Excuse me, 22 lipizzan stallions.
00:34:06 Dr. Walt Larimore
And these world famous magnificent horses they butchered and ate them so the Nazi veterinarian at the at the at the horse farm in hostile Slovakia that had all of the remaining leprechauns, became extremely alarmed. And so he contacted the US Army.
00:34:26 Dr. Walt Larimore
So would you come save the look the sons? And they didn’t know the US didn’t know if it was fake or real, so they needed to volunteer to go in and to check the story out as your dad.
00:34:38 Dr. Walt Larimore
Kings asked to go in to fly in on a Piper cub with the pilot, he would not know who the pilot was. The pilot would not know him if they were caught or killed, they would be considered AWOL deserters. Their family would not get life insurance. They would not get any benefits. They would have no future.
00:34:58 Dr. Walt Larimore
What’s your career?
00:35:00 Dr. Walt Larimore
And Dad said I’ll do it. I’ll. I’ll go in. And so on April 2nd, he 1945, he and a pilot left on 180 mile flight. The plane only had enough gas for 180 miles, and they ended up landing in a.
00:35:20 Dr. Walt Larimore
First, they actually slide it in because they run out of gas and then a Nazi upset. The caption lesson came and met death. He was riding a lipizzan stallion and he had a fear bread with him without a writer because he didn’t know if the American coming in could ride or not. Dad.
00:35:40 Dr. Walt Larimore
The Thoroughbred and catch and lesson wrote the lips on and they rode to the horse farm and Dad was able to identify not.
00:35:47 Dr. Walt Larimore
Only the lipizzans and the Andalusians and the purples and all of the wonderful horses that were there, but that there were American and British POW’s there. So now it became an even more important rescue, if you will. I’ll be an illegal rescue because they had no right to be there. But Dad got back in the plane.
00:36:08 Kim Monson
And and the reason they had no right was because it was the Russians that had been given prevalence for Czechoslovakia. Is that right?
00:36:16 Dr. Walt Larimore
Under international law to illegal, but they flew back on April.
00:36:20 Kim Monson
3rd and how did they?
00:36:22 Kim Monson
Well, I guess probably they were refueled then by the Nazis.
00:36:27 Dr. Walt Larimore
Czechoslovakian Underground met them and they had arranged for the meeting with Captain Lessing. And so they camouflaged the plane, refueled it while Dad was was riding and he could have to ride ride him up the sun and. And so when he got back, that information went all the way up to General Patton.
00:36:46 Dr. Walt Larimore
Authorized the.
00:36:50 Dr. Walt Larimore
The operation that went in and saved the lifesigns. In fact, Disney made a movie of that that came out in the 1950s that didn’t do do very well, but Operation Cowboy. So Dad has been credited with saving the liquefies. And in fact, when when the Austrians gave.
00:37:09 Dr. Walt Larimore
The the US Army 12 lipizzans in the 1960s, I believe it was for all antisymmetry the the burials, Arlington Cemetery, the the caisson horses pull the pull, the casket they they have a.
00:37:27 Dr. Walt Larimore
A black team and then they have a Bay team where they developed a white team. When Austria, central leprechauns, and so Dad was invited to go to Washington. When those lipizzans arrived and it was a wonderful, wonderful event for him. But anyway, that was April 3rd, 1944, just five days.
00:37:47 Dr. Walt Larimore
Later on April 8th, one month to fit into the war, they were fighting through a forest.
00:37:53 Dr. Walt Larimore
And a squad attachment got surrounded by 150 Germans were just being potentially slaughtered and dead moves. He needed to go in and save his men, and so he hopped on the back of a Sherman tank.
00:38:09 Dr. Walt Larimore
And went in Manning the 50 caliber machine.
00:38:15 Dr. Walt Larimore
Fishermen were behind the tank, they went in and were able to save the squad that the fire was so intense. It was like a described as in a hailstorm of bullets and bullets bouncing off of the tank, losing by him, he he.
00:38:33 Dr. Walt Larimore
Thought he shot and killed. Who knows how many men while his men were being saved and at one point a sniper bullet glanced off of his helmet, knocked him off.
00:38:46 Dr. Walt Larimore
To take, he continued to shoot, but a slide that shot him through the leg and he fell.
00:38:54 Dr. Walt Larimore
The tape commander assumed he was dead, and so they backed up into the woods and left him left his body and his commander later that evening, after they, after they had won that particular battle, the armies have won that battle. His commander came out of the woods to get him, but then he was still alive.
00:39:15 Dr. Walt Larimore
I had put a tourniquet.
00:39:16 Dr. Walt Larimore
Around his leg, I’ll say a little bit.
00:39:19 Dr. Walt Larimore
So that was evacuated behind the lines, but the remaining German officer and the remaining roughly 30 Germans that survived there was about 120 had been killed, with the remaining field and surrendered.
00:39:33 Dr. Walt Larimore
And the German officer came out and I have the eyewitness statement saying that that the German officer said.
00:39:40 Dr. Walt Larimore
That his men had been demoralized by the men on the tank that bullets couldn’t.
00:39:49 Kim Monson
Wow.
00:39:52 Dr. Walt Larimore
Said that, I went to account when I wrote the book. I think the subtitle right now, you know that first flight, the true story of the of a hero, his bravery and an amazing horse.
00:40:06 Dr. Walt Larimore
There’s that thorough bread that we can come back.
00:40:08 Dr. Walt Larimore
To I think.
00:40:09 Dr. Walt Larimore
I probably would say that first light, the man that bullets couldn’t stop, but he was evacuated back.
00:40:16 Dr. Walt Larimore
Back to the states, to to rehabilitate. General Eisenhower actually saw him off. He was flown out on a on a hospital plane, and General Eisenhower came to meet those and also will sleep meeting. But when he came back, he had one year of rehabilitation, and he learned a couple of things. Kim, one was.
00:40:37 Dr. Walt Larimore
World War 2 veteran with metals is very, very attractive to young women less unless they learn to.
00:40:47 Kim Monson
OK, we’ll let’s go to break and let’s talk about that. Then I’m talking with Doctor Walt Larimore regarding his book at first.
00:40:56 Kim Monson
Like his father and a happy Father’s Day to all of you out there, we’re pre recording this. But Happy Father’s Day to all.
00:41:03 Kim Monson
Of you, we will be right.
00:41:04 Kim Monson
Back.
00:41:05 Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s veterans stories with Kim Munson. And be sure and check out our website, thatisamericasveteransstories.com and a sponsor of both the shows. They’ve been with me for a long time. Is Hooters restaurants. They have five locations. Loveland, Aurora, Lone Tree, Westminster. Co springs. Great place to get together. For to watch the games and to get together with friends. But.
00:41:25 Kim Monson
How I got to know them? It is a really important story about when I was on City Council and those pesky people, I those politicians, bureaucrats and interested parties that were trying to exert control over capitalism and free markets and freedom. And that’s how I got to.
00:41:40 Kim Monson
You know the people over at Hooters restaurants and it’s an important story and I am grateful for their for their their sponsorship of the show. I’m talking with Doctor Walt larimore.
00:41:52 Kim Monson
About his book at First Light regarding his father’s story and doctor Larimore the war is almost over. They’re in their final battles.
00:42:01 Kim Monson
Your father is wounded and he ends up losing his leg. He’s an amputee and you said that that World War, two guys coming back from World War 2 with a lot of metals were very attractive to the young ladies. Except if you’re an amputee. So tell us about that.
00:42:23 Dr. Walt Larimore
That was terribly discouraged, discouraging to him as a young single man. But even worse, he learned.
00:42:29 Dr. Walt Larimore
That the army.
00:42:30 Dr. Walt Larimore
Policy was at the time, if you were an enlisted soldier and lost a leg, you could.
00:42:37 Dr. Walt Larimore
Stay in the.
00:42:37 Dr. Walt Larimore
Army. But if you were an officer who was an amputee, you were discharged.
00:42:42 Dr. Walt Larimore
And others weren’t considered fully human. You weren’t considered an officer and a gentleman anymore, and that was so discouraging to him throughout his letters that he wrote his best friends and his. His daddy talked about loving the.
00:42:58 Dr. Walt Larimore
And loving the army and wanting to serve it for life. And when he found out he couldn’t, he became just terribly depressed. But because he had grown up in church because he had a relationship with with God, that was important to him because he was a man of prayer. He was wise enough to seek the help of a of a chaplain at the.
00:43:18 Dr. Walt Larimore
At the house.
00:43:19 Dr. Walt Larimore
It was lost in General Hospital in Atlanta, which specialized in amputees, and the chaplain sat down with him and gave him some advice. He actually wrote what he heard the chaplain saying a letter to his mom. I’ll read it to you real quick, Kim. But he was like, I confessed my awkward feelings through chaplain.
00:43:39 Dr. Walt Larimore
And I heard this life altering advice quote.
00:43:43 Dr. Walt Larimore
Sun your room will either make you a better person or a better person. It will either harden your heart or soften it. You’ll either be a person change for the worse, or one who chooses to make the world better. In my opinion, the worst disability in life isn’t being disabled, it’s being disabled with a bad attitude.
00:44:02 Dr. Walt Larimore
Now I put the word bad in there. Chaplain used a.
00:44:05 Dr. Walt Larimore
Different.
00:44:08 Dr. Walt Larimore
He said the Germans smashed your leg, but don’t let them shatter your heart, your talents, your gifts, your will or your faith in God and his plan for you. The choice is really up to you in club.
00:44:21 Kim Monson
Yep.
00:44:23 Dr. Walt Larimore
Wonderful biblical advice changed his life, and so he began a horse rehabilitation program at his hospital, likely the first one ever done in any hospital. I can’t find. It’s called hippotherapy or horse therapy or equine therapy.
00:44:41 Dr. Walt Larimore
I think Dad started the first equine therapy program in our country’s history, maybe in world history, but certainly in military history. But he also began the battle fighting the War department. Their their policy, he thought, was in a.
00:44:57 Dr. Walt Larimore
Inhumane and insane, he said. And so he recruited the assistance of of generals, of politicians, congressmen and senators. And in fact, after his army, just after his hospital discharged after he’d been rehabilitated on an order.
00:45:16 Dr. Walt Larimore
So like instead of being discharged, he was sent to Fort Myer up in Washington where he.
00:45:24 Dr. Walt Larimore
Came the executive officer, so he had six months to actually fight for amputees there in Washington, DC, and the first day he arrived in Washington, his best friend had been stationed there as commander of the Honor Guard. So Dad got to be part of the honor guard, his commander in Europe was stationed there.
00:45:45 Dr. Walt Larimore
The the executive officer of Fort Meyer, General Eisenhower, who he came to be friends with, played bridge with on every Wednesday night card games, all of these.
00:45:57 Dr. Walt Larimore
Men went with.
00:45:58 Dr. Walt Larimore
Him alongside him for for this battle because he was in charge of the the This, the the different men that would go to the White House for state of us, who became friends with President Truman. So all of these people helped him fight that battle and it ended up in a final.
00:46:19 Dr. Walt Larimore
Hearing with seven officers and Kim, I found the transcript of that hearing in the National Archives in Washington. And Dad always said it was really nasty.
00:46:29 Dr. Walt Larimore
How he was treated as an amputee. But when I read that transcript, it it almost made me cry. It reminded me of Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in that courtroom scene. In that movie, a few good men. The sad news is that he lost that appeal. He was bounced out of the army. But just four years later.
00:46:50 Dr. Walt Larimore
Based on what he had done, the only change this policy and now ever since the Korean War, Army amputees can stay in the army and serve, he lost that that battle. But he actually won that won that war. And I think one of our most precious moments together.
00:47:09 Dr. Walt Larimore
I my I grew up as a a church club, but I I never really had that personal relationship with God that some of my friends had. And with that relationship dawned in college, so made my face became very personal and very deep. And that was kind of back in the jungle.
00:47:29 Dr. Walt Larimore
70s, you know, and so.
00:47:31 Dr. Walt Larimore
The the the different way of doing spirituality. Then my dad didn’t show that. And so I questioned him. I questioned his faith. You know you.
00:47:41 Dr. Walt Larimore
Say you’re a man of faith.
00:47:42 Dr. Walt Larimore
Are you, you know, are you really? And people became visibly upset at that and and almost shaking he pulled out his wallet and he pulled out a piece of paper and he unfolded it.
00:48:02 Dr. Walt Larimore
Mr. Dawson.
00:48:04 Dr. Walt Larimore
I have this with me every day during the war I’d like.
00:48:07 Dr. Walt Larimore
You to read it and so I’m.
00:48:10 Dr. Walt Larimore
Looking at that piece of paper now and just what it says, count no shell or bomb can on me burst except my God. Permit it first, then let my heart be kept in peace.
00:48:24 Dr. Walt Larimore
His watchful care we’ll ever see.
00:48:27 Dr. Walt Larimore
No bomb above nor mine below need cause my heart one pang of love.
00:48:33
The Lord of.
00:48:33 Dr. Walt Larimore
Hosts encircles me. He is the Lord of the Earth and sea, and then he folded up that piece of paper.
00:48:41 Dr. Walt Larimore
Look me right in the eye. So, Walt, I couldn’t have survived 15 months, 415 days of living hell. A bloody trail of 3200 miles or seven countries and 10 campaigns without my savior walking with me. Every step I walked with him, I talked with him, and so did.
00:49:02 Dr. Walt Larimore
Every one of my men.
00:49:05 Dr. Walt Larimore
You don’t have the piece of paper he put in his wallet, he said. Son’s true faith isn’t just words. There’s a heart that overflows with love, gratitude, loyalty and service. And that’s what he demonstrated. That’s why he’s such a great man and a great husband and a great a great father.
00:49:25 Dr. Walt Larimore
Great Scout leader and a beloved beloved professor, but a wonderful horseman and the pharmaceutical and know our times. Getting short as when he arrived at Fort Myer, the commanding general that he had served with him in Europe, his best friend, that he had served with in.
00:49:44 Dr. Walt Larimore
Took him just South of Fort Myers, Fort Bell law, and that’s where the the caisson horses, the horses that are used at the in the military funerals. And that’s where they’re restored. And he thought they were going down there just to see the horses that were resting. But when he got there in the field, he saw horse.
00:50:03 Dr. Walt Larimore
Thoroughbred, with a square head and a White Star in its chest, and he knew instantly that that was the horse that he rode when he saved the Lipless arms.
00:50:14 Dr. Walt Larimore
And General Patton had flown that horse from Europe to the United States and saved that horse the day. And so during that service at Fort Myer, he taught that horse to to respond to A1, like lead the first time in question history because he had no official leg. He couldn’t.
00:50:32 Dr. Walt Larimore
Use those legs to command the horse and the end of the book is how dead and that horse.
00:50:39 Dr. Walt Larimore
Get together for the rest of their lives. Sweet, sweet, Sweet nuts award. But so it’s got some salty language, but it’s got an incredibly redemptive message and a message that I think all of us need to hear. The shoulders that we sit on in the in our country, the liberty and freedom that we enjoy.
00:50:59 Dr. Walt Larimore
Was hard thought and sacrificed for and Kim, I know you.
00:51:04 Dr. Walt Larimore
And I shared the.
00:51:04 Dr. Walt Larimore
Feeling.
00:51:05 Dr. Walt Larimore
There may be people in our country that.
00:51:07 Dr. Walt Larimore
Want to throw that away?
00:51:11 Kim Monson
There are and that’s why we have to tell these stories. The book is at first light. Where is the best place for people?
00:51:18 Kim Monson
To get the book Doctor Larimore.
00:51:20 Dr. Walt Larimore
I think the least expensive place is probably Amazon, but any of your independent bookstores can order slated tattered cutter covers able to get it. It’s in hard cover, soft cover. It’s in the CD, it’s in audio book. In fact, the most famous narrator of books, George Bush, and narrated the book.
00:51:41 Dr. Walt Larimore
And it’s all.
00:51:42 Dr. Walt Larimore
A variety of formats that it’s available.
00:51:44 Dr. Walt Larimore
For people to.
00:51:45 Kim Monson
Enjoy. Well, doctor. Walt larimore. Thank you so much.
00:51:50 Dr. Walt Larimore
To treat Kim, thank you for what you do lifting up these amazing men and women, our ancestors and forefathers.
00:51:57 Kim Monson
Well, indeed. And my friends, we do stand on the shoulders of giants. So God bless you and God Bless America.
