The Hole Truth

Seventy years ago Clinton Gardner ’44 put his college career on hold when he volunteered for the Army. On June 6, 1944—one month after his class graduated without him—he landed on Omaha Beach as part of the D-Day invasion. He narrowly escaped death when he was hit in the head by German mortar fire. His damaged steel M1 combat helmet, which was standard issue up until 1985, now resides in Special Collections.

SUDDEN IMPACT While viewing smoke rising from a nearby explosion, Gardner suddenly heard a loud crack and his head jerked back- ward. “There was a curtain of blood running down my face,” he recalls. “I couldn’t even open my eyes the blood was so heavy.” He felt past sharp curls of metal and was able to fit both hands through the hole in his helmet. “I felt around and thought I was feeling my brain. I thought, ‘Why can I think?’”

lo n G E st day Gardner poured sulfa powder into the hole and pushed in some gauze bandages. Due to casualties to medics, he received no further treatment until 23 hours later, when three officers required several minutes to twist and jerk the helmet off his head. At a hospital in Salisbury, England, doc- tors used two inches of skin from Gardner’s leg to seal the hole in his head, where a large round scar remains to this day.

t h i c k s ku l l Gardner informed his family of his injury in a letter written on June 13. “In my development into a young man I have always seen to it that my skull remained relatively thick, with the fortunate result that today I have only a small scalp wound,” he wrote.

d u b i o u s ac h i E V E m E n t An officer from the British Imperial War Museum visited Gard- ner at the hospital and told him the helmet hole was the largest he’d ever seen from a surviving soldier in WW I and WW II. The officer asked for the helmet, but Gardner held on. “If it’s that special, I thought, I want to show my grandchildren,” he says.

lost a n d Fo u n d Gardner kept the helmet in a desk drawer for more than 50 years along with a collection of his letters and photographs. He donated the helmet to Rauner in 2012.

bac k i n ac t i o n After he recovered Gardner expected an honorable discharge. No such luck. He returned to battle and was wounded again at the Battle of the Bulge six months later. He subsequently received two Purple Hearts. —Rianna P. Starheim ’14twoPurpleHearts.