Leiter Rancher To Submit Story to Purple Heart Roll of Honor List

The National Purple Heart Hall of Honor Inc., founded in 1997, is dedicated to paying tribune to our nation’s veterans who were wounded in battle.

To help ensure all the Purple Heart heroes in the United States are memorialized for generations, the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor is building the Roll of Honor, a repository of Purple Heart recipients and their stories.

Philip Little, Leiter, Wyoming rancher, was the recipient of a Purple Heart during the Korean conflict. With the help of Ira Roadifer, Clearmont, Little is working on his story to submit it to the Purple Heart Roll of Honor list.

Little entered the service in 1952, with twelve other boys from the Sheridan area. Little, went into basic training in June, 1952, at Camp Roberts, California. There was eight weeks of basic, after which Little chose to attend the Leader’s Course, a prep course for officer’s training. He was 20 years old. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Little said. Sixty-five soldiers started the course, but only Little and 12 others finished.

Then it was Korea. “I had just got off the plane in Korea,” Little said. “I had been there for two hours, and they told me they needed two replacements in the dog outfit, the 26th Infantry Scout Dog Platoon. I was a country boy, so I was used to dogs. I really wanted to get into this outfit,” Little said, getting a slightly emotional. “It appealed to me.”

All the dogs were German Shepherds, and Little was assigned a dog named Avee. The dog’s sole purpose was to alert the platoon of the enemy soldiers when the 26th Infantry was patrolling the “No Man’s Land” between the area where the enemy claimed and where the US army paroled. “It stretches all the way across Korea,” Little said. The patrols went out at night, with a hand-drawn map showing where they were to patrol.

“We had harnesses on the dogs,” Little said. “When they smelled the enemy soldiers, they began lunging against the harness, letting us know that the Chinese, by then it was Chinese, were nearby.”

The night he was wounded, Little had been in combat about three months. He said “It was a dark night. Darker than hell.” He was the ‘point man’ for the patrol. He knew the Chinese were nearby, he could hear thumps, as if the Chinese were throwing rocks at them. “I probably should have said, I ain’t going no further, there are Chinese right here,” Little recalls, “But the patrol leader said, ‘go on with your mission.’”

“So we went on and walked right into an ambush.” Little and Ave were both hit by shrapnel when a grenade exploded nearby. In spite of the their injuries, Little and his dog lead the platoon back through the mine field.

“There were 300 feet of mines, but there were ‘safe zones’ through them, and I remembered where the safe zones were. The other men followed me single file. I still don’t know how I did it.” He said he has always had a good sense of direction, so that helped. Two men were killed and seven injured out of the 11 who were in the patrol.

Once back at camp, Little was taken to a M.A.S.H unit, then was lifted by helicopter to a hospital ship. The shrapnel entered Little’s left eye in the corner, and severed the optic nerve, but left the eye intact. Due to the severed nerve, Little lost sight in that eye for the rest of his life.

Little’s dog recovered and was soon back in action, with a new handler. “He was a small guy,” Little recalled. “And one of the other soldiers told me that Avee drug him all over. Avee was 90 pounds, and very strong.”

After Little healed, he spent some of his recuperating time in Tokyo, then back to San Francisco. “I was in the service for 18 months. When I was in the hospital, the war ended.” After he was discharged, he returned to the family ranch near Leiter, Wyoming.

“I rode the train home. The engineer asked where I lived, and I told him. Our homestead was right near the railroad, and the engineer stopped the train and dropped me off at the bottom of my lane, and I could walk on home.”

Little’s father homesteaded the land and that and is still in the family today. After his time in the service, Little married his wife, Glory, and they raised four daughters.

Little added that his father, Philip Sheridan Little Senior, served in France in WWI both his brothers served as well. Jack in WWII in 1942 and Pat in the Air Force in 1951.

The National Purple Heart Hall of Honor is for those who, like Little, who received the Purple Heart. It is located north of West Point, NY. Not far away, George Washington first awarded the Badge of Military Merit in 1782.

It was designed by Washington and is considered the first award of the United States Military. Today’s Purple Heart is the official successor of the Badge.

There were three people who received the honor during the American Revolution and received the award from General Washington himself. On May 3, 1783, Sergeant William Brown, 5th Connecticut Regiment, May 1783; Sergeant Elijah Churchill, 2nd Regiment Light Dragoons June 10; and later Sergeant Daniel Bissell, 2nd Connecticut Regiment.

Since the Revolutionary War, around two million American soldiers have been awarded the Purple Heart. The mission of the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor Roll of Honor, is that it will be the nation’s repository of Purple Heart recipients, along with their stories.

Phil Little’s will soon be among them.