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Airmail Letter
Postmark: (missing)

Return Address:
Sgt. V. Misitano
2628th Hospital Section
APO #698
c/o Postmaster N.Y.
(Mother's notation: Rec Nov 14 2:30 P.M.)

Nov. 7, 1944

Dearest Mother,

    Just a few lines letting you know that I'm O.K. and in the best of health, and hoping that all at home are the same.

   There isn't anything new to write about except that I'm still here in the hospital and coming along O.K. My arm is really O.K. now and doesn't bother me at all.

   I have to have another operation on it but not here though.

   I'll be home before long mother, so don't worry about anything. I may arrive there before this letter does, if nothing goes wrong.

   I only regret one thing mother and that is that I can't be bringing my other brothers home with me.

   It will really feel good to get back mother, and I hope I never hear of Italy again.

   Well mother, I guess this is all for now so I'll close with lots of love to you mother dear, daddy and the kids.

   Your loving Son,

"Jimmy"

Supplemental Notes, Quotes, and Anecdotes:
 

Treatment and Recovery from Injury:

When we were growing up with dad, we knew he had a patch of skin on the inside of his left wrist that was different. It was a little thicker than the surrounding skin, and had "peach fuzz" on it, or short growing hair. It wasn't noticeable unless one was looking for it. It did not seem (to us) to limit him in any way.

I believe the final corrective surgeries took place in the United States. Dad's description was that they opened the wound on his wrist and opened a similarly sized area on his lower left stomach, and sewed his arm onto his stomach for a time. I believe this may have been after they had already done repairs to the nerves and tendons in his wrist.

After the wrist area had sufficiently healed, they detached it from his stomach and placed a patch of the skin it had been attached to as a permanent skin graft on his wrist. This made the visible patch, roughly 3 by 4 inches, that he had afterwards.

To repair the missing skin on his stomach (which had been taken for the wrist), they then took a partial skin graft from his inner thigh and put that on his stomach wound.

I could not locate any records on where these procedures were performed, but I believe they were done by surgeons at the Newton D. Baker Hospital in Martinsburg where he was taken upon his return to the United States. They probably took place in early 1945, though I have no direct knowledge of how much time was involved in the surgical and healing process. The only relevant record I can find lists his discharge from the army being from this same hospital on January 23, 1946, a little over a year after his arrival there.

I did find a military Hospital Admission Card File with the following information:

  • Military Branch: Infantry
  • Diagnosis: FirstLocation: Wrist; Second Diagnosis: Paralysis, nerve other & unspecified, not elsewhere classified. Second Location: Ulnar nerve; Causative Agent: Artillery Shell, Fragments, afoot or unspecified.
  • Type of Injury: Casualty, battle
  • Medical Treatment: Graft, skin, other (preference over cast)
  • Injured in Line of Duty: In line of duty

   - Jim Jr.

 

 
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