Скачать или смотреть He Refused A Purple Heart

"Got into a little trouble, a lot of trouble," Robert Moore.

**THIS STORY AIRED IN DECEMBER 2017

Robert Moore was born in Dandridge, Tennessee.

"My mother and father were both teachers and we lived on a farm and they paid for this farm during the Depression by whatever legal means they could," Mr. Moore said.

He was drafted into the Army in 1943. He went to training in Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky.

"When we got our basic training we walked to Winchester, Tennessee," Mr. Moore.

That's about 240 miles. He says that part of his training went well, but things soon took a turn. He was put on a train to New York.

"I dropped my rifle and hit across my foot," Mr. Moore said. 'It turned as black as that table."

He went to the medic for three days. When he came back his unit had already left to fight the war. So Robert Moore left and went home.

"(I) got into a little trouble, a lot of trouble," Mr. Moore said. "I thought about it for a week. I went back. They wouldn't even let me in the camp. They thought I was a spy or something. (They) wouldn't let me in the camp."

It took him months to get it all straightened out. He was asked what would it take to get him to stay out of trouble, and he said he wanted to go back to his unit. So they sent him to Italy.

When they were in camp he dug a fox hole in case they were attacked.

"(I was) going to breakfast and our kitchen was blown up," Mr. Moore said. "They would throw a shell into our kitchen just to disorient us."

He says he took off running to his foxhole. He fell and hurt his knee. He said he was hurt a couple of times, but Mr. Moore refused a Purple Heart.

"If I had claimed either one of them getting hurt I would have had enough points that I would have been sent home before I met Maria," Mr. Moore said.

He met his wife Maria on a train in Italy after the war ended in the fall of 1945. They were married in January in 1946

They both left Italy that year. Robert and Maria Moore were married for 59 years. They had five children, and moved to Cleveland, Tennessee in the 1970's

Maria passed away almost 13 years ago.

Robert remarried a few years later to his second wife Ruth Ann.