PORTRAITS OF COURAGE: Russell Sanders

At the age of 16 while living in Georgia, Russell Sanders convinced his parents to let him join the military so he could take advantage of the program that would give him a school loan after one year of service.

Russell Sanders stayed in much longer, though. His enlistment date was Dec. 7, 1940, and exactly one year later, Pearl Harbor was bombed and America was at war.

“I didn’t go nowhere,” he said.

Sanders was assigned to the 4th Division of the 10th Field Artillery unit as a communications chief officer.

He was one of the first six students to go through training at Camp Gordon, Ga., in 1940. He spent a few years in training and guidance teaching others in the unit on the communication systems — telephone, switchboard and walkie-talkies. At the time, his rank was junior grade warrant officer.

In early 1944, he was sent on a ship overseas and was promoted en route.

“My bars were pinned on, on the USS Washington on the way to Liverpool, England,” Sanders said.

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Sanders was on the 21-mile canal between France and England.

“I got shot in the leg that trip and was sent back to England,” he said.

He spent a month in the hospital healing and then found out another unit was short a communications officer.

“Give me a hat and something to get over there on,” he said when he found out. “I ain’t going to swim that channel.”

He also saw combat in Germany after going through France. It was a cloudy night and the Germans were shooting across at them. There were two other soldiers with him and they were up on a pole working on establishing communication. One of them got shot and fell to the ground. Although Sanders was an officer, he went up the pole and took the guy’s place.

“My rule was that there were two people on the pole always,” he said. They had communication up and running within half an hour.

But, before the night was over, they were attacked again.

“I had 127 pieces of shrapnel in my body from the waist down,” he said. He was sent back to New York to receive care and then back home to Georgia to finish his recovery. The war ended when he was in Georgia.

“It was nice when it was the end,” he said.

Sanders got married during his training days and while he and his wife kept in contact during the war, the marriage only lasted a few years.

“It was a war marriage,” he said. “When I got back, we stayed together a couple years and that was it.”

Sanders was discharged in November 1945 after being offered a desk job, which he turned down.

“‘If I ain’t fit to serve, I ain’t going to stay,’ I told them,” he said. “They had no choice but to discharge me.”

In 1951, Sanders’ father came to Alaska with some friends and he invited Sanders to come up.

He followed in 1955 and first worked at a service station in Anchorage on International and Seward.

He would like to remind people that “you can do whatever you want to do in the U.S.”