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Show t ' UKUSUAL RECORD IS MADE BY SOLDIER Sergeant Major J. V. Pal-mer Pal-mer t, Wounded Many i Times in 18 Months. Wearing a Croix de Guerre, a distinguished distin-guished service cross, a sharpshooter's badge, three gold service stripes and two wound, stripes,' Sergeant Major J. V. Palmer, 86 Riverside Drive, New York, reached Salt Lake last night for a visit with friends. Sergeant Palmer has the unique record of being the most shell-battered soldier ever received at an army hospital. He was wounded at Montdidier by shrapnel which burst directly in front of him and filled hie body with hundreds of pieces of the metal, the extraction of which required re-quired many months of careful operating. operat-ing. When he. was sufficiently recovered recov-ered to return io the fighting, Sergeant Palmer was struck by fragments of a six-inch shell, iwenty-nine different fragments frag-ments entering his body. , When dismissed dis-missed from the hospital he was a network net-work of soars and stitches. Sergeant Major Palmer received his citations ci-tations for exceptional bravery in action. He was a dispatch rider, undeA fire most of the time, and had hundreds of thrilling thrill-ing experiences and narrow escapes. At one time he crawled on his hands and knees two miles to deliver an important message. He rode a motorcycle through an artillery barrage that was considered impassable. He carried a message at Metz under conditions that won him the distinguished service cross. The sergeant Is very modest about his honors. Ordinarily he' does not wear his medals in public and is -very reticent about his experiences. Like most real war heroes, he dreads publicity. He went into. Germany with the army of occupation until his-wounds necessitated necessi-tated further treatment, and he was invalided in-valided home for discharge. He is still suffering from the effects of his many injuries and uses a cane for support. Sergeant Palmer has an extensive collection col-lection of war souvenirs, including several German helmets, a German newspaper, a handful of German money, a Hun hand grenade filled with a deadly gas which the Germans were using in the last days of the conflict, and a number of other interesting in-teresting 'relics of the battlefields. Sergeant Palmer is a guest at the Hotel Utah. He was formerly well acquainted with Governor Bamberger, and expects to renew many acquaintances among the business men of the cltyJ He will return to finish a year at Yale and get his degree. |