The sticker on the door read “Support our Troops” and the yard placard reads “Proud to be an American.”

It is obvious the residents at 1115 N. Fifth St. are proud citizens of their country.

What many did not know for years was that Donald Hacker was not only proud to be an American, but he proudly served his country as a medic during World War II.

For this service to his country, he has been named this year’s honorary grand marshal for the Ironton-Lawrence County Memorial Day Parade.

Hacker, 81, joined the U.S. Army in 1943. He was 18 years old. He was, by his own bemused admission, a bit small for the job.

“I was 5-feet-two-and-a-half-inches tall and I weighed 125 pounds,” he grinned. “They said I was supposed to be 5-3 and 135 pounds.”

But what he lacked in size he was to later make up for in bravery and determination.

“I went down to Fort Thomas (Ky.) and from there they sent me to Camp Grant (Ill.) to be a medic,” he recalled. “Why they picked me I don’t know.”

As a Private First Class with the Army’s Company B Medical Battalion, his tour of duty took him to the heart of the fight against the Nazis: Belgium, France and the Rhineland in Germany.

His job was to tend to injured soldiers on the battlefield and retrieve the bodies of those who had been killed. Much of what he saw and did became painful, lasting memories.

“I can’t really explain it to you. It just got to me,” he said quietly. “After the war I just couldn’t say anything about it. I couldn’t tell you about a lot of it. I saw some people just blown apart, arms that got shot off, legs that got shot off, shot here, shot there.”

His own family knew little of his time in service until a few years ago.

“He couldn’t talk about it when he first came home,” Patsy, his wife of 54 years, said. “He just started talking here lately. Our children didn’t know about this until the last five or six years. I didn’t know about it for a long time.”

Hacker earned the Bronze Star for repeatedly risking his own life to evacuate wounded soldiers from areas still under enemy fire, according to official military records.

“On two occasions he disregarded warnings and deliberately entered a minefield to evacuate casualties who were in urgent need of medical assistance,” his commendation said. …“His unselfish devotion to duty and outstanding personal courage are in accordance with the highest military

traditions.”

Hacker recalled one of the instances that earned him that commendation.

“We started out one day, we had just crossed the bridge at Remagen, I found a house and laid down in it and the sergeant came in and I told him things were alright with he and the next morning he said ‘it looks like we’re going to have to use you today.’

A lieutenant had been hurt and we had to go and hunt for him and pick him up in a weasel (a tank-like vehicle used to transport wounded soldiers).

We hunted him until 2:30 in the afternoon and there was fighting on both sides of us. We found him. On the way back I got thrown off the weasel but I told them I didn’t think I was hurt bad enough for a Purple Heart.”

He also earned the nickname “Lucky” from his comrades. In all his 34 months in service, he was never seriously wounded even though war and its destruction were all around him.

Today, his medals, photographs and other mementos of his time in service are kept in neat photo albums and frames hung on the wall.

After leaving the army, Hacker worked at the Chessie car shops in Raceland, Ky. and at Dayton Malleable. He and his wife have four children, 11 grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

If time has not dimmed his memories of the horrors of war, it has also not tarnished his sense of patriotism.

“That Uncle Sam by the door, I made that,” he said, gesturing toward a wooden decoration, gleaming in its red, white and blue details.

Still, having seen what war is like from up close, Hacker said he feels for those who are fighting now.

“I hate to see anyone go to war,” he said.