NATIVE GETS PURPLE HEART 45 YEARS LATE

PARAGOULD, Ark. Forty-five years after bomber pilot Urban L. Dohogne was injured as his plane was shot down in the South Pacific, he will receive the Purple Heart.

Dohogne, a Cape Girardeau native who now lives in Paragould, Ark., will be presented the medal in a ceremony at Eaker Air Force Base in Blytheville, Ark., on Jan. 31.

The mission took place June 13, 1945. Dohogne was flying a B-24 bomber as part of a six-plane formation attempting to destroy Japanese anti-aircraft batteries and gain control of an airfield in Borneo.

As the attack began, Dohogne's plane suffered two hits, one piercing the fuel tank, causing 400 gallons of fuel to pour into the plane. "We were a flying bomb," Dohogne said.

With the plane losing fuel rapidly, Dohogne knew they wouldn't make it to an airstrip, so the crew began to bail out. Dohogne was the last one to leave the plane. He released the controls and the plane went into a spin.

As he attempted to reach the bomb bay opening to jump, his parachute got caught on a fire extinguisher in the cockpit.

Just as Dohogne had given up hope of freeing himself, the plane rolled over onto its back, throwing him through the bomb bay.

On his way out of the plane, Dohogne tore his left leg from the ankle to the knee on the bomb bay's catwalk.

Dohogne survived the jump, avoided a shark attracted by his bleeding leg, and waited five hours in a life raft before being rescued.

"When I got on board the ship, the doctor poured some sulfur powder in the wound," Dohogne said.

"When I got back to my home base, the flight surgeon lived in the tent next to mine. I showed him my leg and he said `Maybe you should go down to base hospital and spend a week.' I didn't feel bad, so I didn't see any reason to go.

"So there was no record of the injury."

On his way home he stopped in Manila where some initial inquiries were made about a Purple Heart. "But I was shipped out. When I got home and found out I was being discharged, the people at Jefferson Barracks said getting the Purple Heart would be like finding a needle in a haystack."

Dohogne didn't think about the medal again, until he and a friend were reminiscing about World War II last year.

"I made some comments about what happened. He went home and told his boss." His boss was a friend of U.S. Rep. G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery of Mississippi, who is chairman of the veteran's affairs committee.

"Several days later I came home and my wife was going through my military file. She told me someone in Washington was trying to get me the Purple Heart."

That started Dohogne's year-long quest to secure the medal.

"I had given up on it," Dohogne said. "I hadn't even thought about it. But when this fellow goes to bat for me, goes to all this trouble, I felt it would be ungrateful if I didn't follow through."

In October, the Purple Heart board in San Antonio, Texas, notified Dohogne he would be receiving the medal.

"They gave me an option of receiving it in the mail or accepting it at a ceremony at Eaker Air Force Base. I decided to accept it at the ceremony."

Dohogne was born in Kelso and was raised in Cape Girardeau where he attended St. Vincent's Grade School and St. Mary's High School. He also worked at Gamble Store here before entering the military and after he returned before moving to Ottowa, Ill. and then to Paragould, Ark. He retired a year ago.