OLD WRONG TO BE RIGHTED FOR WWII VET.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

It's taken almost 60 years but the wrong done to Sgt. Albert Searcy in 1945, while he was recovering from combat wounds in an Army hospital in Italy, is finally being corrected.

The 83-year-old Reseda man will receive his Purple Heart on Saturday the way all wounded combat veterans should receive it - with honor and dignity.

Not thrown from across a hospital room by a nurse too busy to walk it over to Al's bed and hand it to him.

``I've always told my friends and family the Purple Heart was stolen from me while I was in the hospital - and it was,'' Searcy said Thursday.

``The dignity and honor of it was stolen,'' he said. ``The Purple Heart is a badge of honor. You fought and got wounded for your country.''

Searcy was wounded three times, in fact, during his five years of combat in Italy and northern Africa.

But none of that meant anything the day the nurse tossed the badge onto Al's bed from across the room, he said.

As he recalled, his response was, Wait a minute, lady, that's no way to hand out a decoration.

``She said, 'The hell with you,' picked it up and walked out of the room. That was the last I saw of my Purple Heart,'' he said.

Al was mad, but he never made a big deal about it. Like a lot of young GIs, he just wanted to get home to start a family and career, he said. The war was behind him. He wanted to leave it there.

``He never talked about it much through the years,'' said Mary Ellen, Al's wife of 55 years, ``but as you get older, you look back and remember things. When you've lived through three invasions in five years of combat, the war never leaves you, not completely.''

Al finally told Mary Ellen and his daughter, Margaret, about the nurse, and how that day still hurt and rankled him.

``I just have to think that nurse was overworked and under a lot of stress to do something like that,'' Mary Ellen said.

Al agrees, sort of. ``People are human, they make mistakes,'' he said. ``I've done some pretty strange things in my life, too.''

But that still left him without his Purple Heart - until Margaret took matters in hand and wrote to U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman's office for help.

``We run into these cases every once in a while, when medals are lost and need to be replaced,'' said Larry Horner, Sherman's aide in charge of veteran's affairs.

``Al's case was different, of course, but we treated it the same,'' Horner said. ``This man was wounded fighting for his country and deserved that Purple Heart.''

On April 8, Robert White Jr., chief of the Army's Military Awards Branch, cut permanent order 098-29.

It read: ``By Order of the Secretary of the Army - Searcy, Albert P., sergeant, company E, 175th Engineer General Service Regiment, European Theater of Operations, is hereby awarded a Purple Heart for wounds received as a result of hostile actions.''

Margaret says the entire family is excited and proud for Al, and that everyone will be on hand Saturday when he steps onto the Granada Hills High School auditorium stage to formally receive his Purple Heart from Sherman at one of the congressman's town hall meetings.

This time he'll receive it the way all wounded combat veterans should receive a military badge. With honor and dignity.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

World War II veteran Albert P. Searcy, 83, of Reseda will finally receive the Purple Heart medal that the government issued to him 55 years ago, while the young sergeant was wounded and laid up in a U.S. Army hospital in Italy.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer