WWII Purple Heart Army Veteran Dan Dougherty’s Journey

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98-year-old Dan Dougherty of Fairfield, CA appears on episode #821 of Hometown Heroes, airing January 20-25, 2024. A native of Austin, MN, Dougherty served in the European Theater with both the 44th and 45th Infantry Divisions during World War II. The day that the United States was drawn into the war by Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor is a day that Dan and his family would never forget. 16 years old at the time, Dan remembers sitting in the living room of the family’s Minnesota home, listening to the radio on December 7, 1941.

“The first thing they announced was that the Arizona had been hit,” you’ll hear Dougherty recall. “My dad’s brother, we knew was on the Arizona, and my dad’s face just turned white.”

You’ll find Ralph Dougherty’s name on the wall at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, one of 1,177 members of the battleship’s crew who perished on that “Day of Infamy.” But the Doughertys had been a Gold Star family for nearly a quarter-century by then, since before Dan was born.

Another one of his father’s brothers, Francis Dougherty was killed in action October 15, 1918 in France’s Argonne Forest, just three weeks before the armistice that ended World War I.

“When the armistice occurred, his family thought he was alive,” you’ll hear Dougherty explain. “I knew that, so towards the end of World War II, I and everyone else was doing everything we could to stay alive, because we didn’t want to be a victim in the last week or two of the war.”

After finishing high school, Dan entered the Army Specialized Training Program, studying engineering at St. Louis University. When the need for manpower led to the disbanding of ASTP in March, 1944, infantry training went into high gear, and Dougherty ended up in Europe as a Browning Automatic Rifle (B.A.R.) gunner. You’ll hear him recall German loudspeakers welcoming his division, the 44th, by name after they relieved the 79th on the front lines, complete with the name of the ship they had traveled on, the time they had landed, and an invitation to cross the lines for some “hot chow” with the enemy instead of their K rations.

“That October-November-December-January, that was the worst part of my life,” you’ll hear Dougherty explain. “That was the worst European winter in 40 years, and we spent the whole time in foxholes, with very heavy snow, and we were just constantly wet and cold.”

Because of casualties the 45th Infantry Division absorbed – highlighted by the capture of six entire companies – during Operation Nordwind, Germany’s last major offensive, Dan was sent from the 44th to the 45th, and what would be a different kind of warfare. Among the twists and turns that helped him navigate those challenging months overseas were a battalion surgeon who saw Dan’s swollen hands and took the gloves off of his own hands to give them to the teenager, and a sprained ankle Dan suffered in mid-December, sparing from his unit’s activity during the Battle of the Bulge. You’ll hear about what he considers his “closest call,” not to mention the story behind his Purple Heart, acquired during the “mother of all artillery barrages.” Of the 36 casualties his company suffered that day, March 18th, 1945, Dan was the first one to return to C of the 157th Regiment, on April 2nd. He got back just in time for the conclusion of the Battle of Aschaffenburg, in which 60 more men were lost. A few days of R&R gave him the chance to snap some of the photos that he cherishes today, and then it was back on the move toward Nuremberg, where he was spared the anticipated combat by Allied airpower.

“We watched the U.S. Army Air Corps dive bomb over and over again, all day long,” you’ll hear Dougherty recall of what he witnessed in Nuremberg on April 15th, 1945. “When we left, Nuremberg was just turned to rubble.”

You’ll hear Dan reinforce that statement in sharing what they had to to find a place to sleep that night, hike out to the suburbs to “find a building that was still standing.” As the division moved on toward Munich, neither Dan nor his fellow “Thunderbirds” of the 45th had any idea what they were about to encounter. His memories of the liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp are captured in Episode #822 of Hometown Heroes…

—Paul Loeffler