WWII vet finally gets his medals

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Posted 8:01AM on Monday, December 30, 2002

LILBURN, Ga. (AP) Junior Compton finally got the Christmas present he's been wanting for 57 years two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for his service in World War II. Compton, 83, of Lilburn, asked the Veterans Administration over the years for the medals, which were listed on his discharge papers from the U.S. Army in 1945. ``They kept telling me, 'We're working on it,''' he said. ``It's been so long I had forgotten about them.'' Last year, he was told the medals were on the way. But he didn't get excited until they actually arrived last month. Even then, he went another month without the medals while they were mounted. He got them for keeps at Christmas. They're now displayed in a glass case along with a black-and-white picture of him, hanging across from his favorite chair. Compton tears up when he looks at the medals, as he remembers the war and his fellow soldiers who became like brothers. ``I enjoyed it all. I wouldn't exchange it for a million bucks,'' Compton said. Compton earned the Bronze Star when he and another soldier turned back a German attack with on 30-caliber machine gun. He received a Purple Heart because he was shot in the shoulder just days after surviving D-day's Omaha Beach without a scratch. Months later, his feet froze and he couldn't walk for three months. Compton enlisted in the Army in 1940, determined not to be a farmer. He visited Iceland, Scotland, Wales, France and Germany while enlisted and made it to tech sergeant before being bumped down to private again. That's what happens when you're court martialed twice. He was sentenced for 30 days for fighting under General George Patton's command. ``He chewed me out pretty good,'' Compton said. ``I was pretty mean back then. I was trained to be mean.'' His received his second court martial, for which he served 45 days imprisonment, when he went ``absent without leave'' at a Georgia military base. Compton thought it was unfair for draftees to get a 30-day pass while enlisted men had to stay put. ``I was a damned good prisoner,'' Compton joked.