MY HERO: Navy Veteran Honors ‘Uncle Bill,’ World War II Medic

Almost eight decades after Private Curtis W. “Bill” Purdy was wounded shortly after fighting in the last major battle of World War II, his nephew was able to visit the lands he liberated and pay tribute to the American soldiers who did not make it home.

David Martin, 87, a Navy veteran from Clear Lake, Minnesota, remembers “Uncle Bill” taking him and his cousins out for ice cream and showing off items from his time in Europe, such as a German helmet.

Uncle Bill, a medic with the U.S. Army’s 10th Infantry Regiment, 5th Infantry Division, was hit in the head with shrapnel after the Battle of the Bulge. After several months in hospitals in England and Luxembourg, he was discharged in 1945 with steel plates in his skull that remained there for the rest of his life.

“He was just a wonderful, warm-hearted person,” said Martin, who served in the U.S. Navy for a decade as a sailor and then as a public affairs officer for 30 years. “As little kids, we loved him very much. He was our hero.”

Martin honored Uncle Bill on a 2023 trip to Normandy with Road Scholar, an educational travel organization for older adults. On the all-veteran trip to the D-Day beaches, Martin joined three other veterans whose family members served during World War II in laying a ceremonial wreath at the Normandy American Cemetery.

“I always wanted to learn more about events that my uncle may have been involved in, and to share it with other veterans was even more special,” he said. “It was very moving.”

‘Uncle Bill’ during his service.

Courtesy David Martin

Born in 1919, in Ithaca, New York, Uncle Bill enlisted in 1942 and was sent to France in October 1944, shortly before the Battle of the Bulge, in which 19,000 Americans were killed. He reported later that many of the dead he recovered from the battlefield were frozen solid and that some of the German soldiers were teenagers, crying for their mothers.

Uncle Bill’s letters showed his devotion to his fellow soldiers. 

“Mother, I’m with the grandest bunch of boys in the world,” he wrote from Germany in December 1944. “They are so brave and such great fighters, as the whole world will soon know. You must not worry about me too much, for you know that I am here to help some of the wounded men.