Albert D. Lantrip knows there are thousands of veterans like himself, those who served their country despite having poor eyesight, flat feet or bad knees.
Three years after Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, the Army came calling for Lantrip, who was raised in Missouri and at age 10 lost an eye when a barb from a wire fence punctured his pupil. He was a limited-service draftee, meaning he could serve but was unfit for overseas duty.
"If you could walk, they would take you," the 85-year-old Lantrip, who lives in Union Gap, says of being drafted. "The only guy they didn't take was drunk."
After being drafted, Lantrip went to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and eventually served as an Army cook at O'Reilly General Hospital, a 2,200-bed Army hospital in Springfield, Mo. -- one of the best in the nation.
According to articles on the Springfield-Greene County Library Web site, O'Reilly served more than 100,000 patients during its five years of operation. Of those, 42,000 were wounded and injured soldiers.
"We had people we had to puree their food for them," remembers Lantrip.
After 19 months as a private, Lantrip was promoted to mess sergeant. He was in charge of making sure the mess halls were clean, he supervised the civil service employees and figured out supply orders based on the menus drawn up by dietitians.
And while Lantrip never carried a gun or fought in a battle, he's proud of his service to his country.
"We didn't do nothing wonderful, we didn't get any medals," he says. (He does have American Campaign, Good Conduct and Victory ribbons.)
"But I done what my country expected me to," says Lantrip. "I feel like we done a good job and I think they should get credit even though we didn't win any battles."
What he did was work seven days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day, keeping patients, hospital staff and officers fed. He also donated a pint of blood every three months.
"That was beyond the call of duty," he says with a smile, before adding, "I got $10 for it."
And every time Lantrip went in for a physical, the doctors would try to figure out a way to fix his eye so he could ship out to battle.
"Physically, I was A-1, but I couldn't see past the end of my nose," he says.
When he was honorably discharged March 1, 1946, at Fort Lewis, an officer told Lantrip he shouldn't have been drafted in the first place.
"I told him he's about three years too late," Lantrip says with a smirk.
At the time, Lantrip's father had moved to Washington, so Lantrip and his wife, Florence, moved here, too -- the Army paid to move their furniture because he was a sergeant.
They've made a home here ever since, putting down roots, raising their five kids, dutifully attending the Church of God for 40 years where Lantrip still teaches Sunday school. Lantrip retired in 1989 after building a lengthy and successful career working on IBM computers -- he doesn't own a computer now and doesn't want one.
But in all that time, Lantrip says he hasn't run into another limited service soldier like himself. Of the more than 10 million men drafted into WWII, Lantrip wonders how many were limited service like himself.
"I know I wasn't the only one," he says, a scrapbook of his Army documents and photographs spread out on the dining room table. "I know they're out there somewhere."
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