A WWII remnant found recalls one Union story
A war memorabilia collector in Paris recently sent a letter to Union College asking about Dr. Joseph C. Driscoll ’32, a U.S. Army doctor who earned a Bronze Star in World War II for heroism during a 1944 battle in Belgium.
“I have in my collection two World War II identity cards that once belonged to Capt. Joseph Driscoll,” collector Nicolas Charpentier wrote. “Could you please let me know what you know about him and the units he was a part of during the war?”
Army Medical Corps captain who served in World War II from 1942 to 1945 and received a Bronze Star for heroism during the Battle
of the Bulge. Summer 2008, Union College maga
Union College magazine corresponded with Charpentier, uncovered details of Driscoll’s war service and obtained images of his U.S. War Department identification card. The ID card is a symbolic remnant of one Union story among many from World War II, which saw a bit more than 3,000 Union graduates serve and 76 die in military action, according to the Encyclopedia of Union College History. About 1,200 of the alumni who served World War II were part of the U.S. Navy’s V-12 officer training program, though Driscoll, who joined the U.S. Army in 1942 at age 32—nine years after his Union graduation— was not in that program.
After graduating from Union, Driscoll earned a degree from Albany Medical College. In 1938, after a residency at Greenwich (Conn.) Hospital and another surgical residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, he returned to private practice in Schenectady. In December 1942, Driscoll became one of the first physicians in the city to join the war effort after voluntarily enlisting.
After completing a training course in chemical warfare and working as an instructor at Camp McCain in Mississippi, he was drafted to lead a medical corps unit which later saw action during the Battle of the Bulge, according to Schenectady-area newspaper accounts from the mid-1940s.
In mid-December 1944 the German army sent about 200,000 troops into a swath of the Ardennes Forest covering parts of Belgium, Luxembourg and France in a last-ditch attempt to regain control of the war, which had slipped away in the months following the D-Day invasion. The counteroffensive led by U.S. Army Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. became known as the Battle of the Bulge. It lasted through mid-January 1945 and marked a costly but critical victory leading up the German surrender in May 1945, according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History.
The Bronze Star citation issued by the U.S. Army, reads in part: “Capt. Joseph C. Driscoll distinguished himself by meritorious achievement in … operations against the enemy on Dec. 29, 1944 in the area of La Roche, Belgium. During fierce battle action, Capt. Driscoll braved heavy enemy action to supervise the operations of his medical company. When overwhelming pressure on our defense made it necessary to withdraw, he led his men in the movement of 75 wounded to safety.”
The citation was issued by the 7th Armored Division but, while at Camp McCain, Driscoll was assigned to the 87th Infantry Division, 312th Medical Battalion.
Driscoll returned from the war in January 1946 and resumed his private medical practice in Schenectady. He ran that practice for 38 years from his home and office at 1109 Union St., about a half mile from campus. He remained in private practice until 1978, when he became an examining physician for the Workers Compensation Board in Albany.
A year prior to enlisting in the U.S. Army, Driscoll married Dr. Mary Blackmer, a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College and Albany Medical Center. In the early 1940s, Blackmer was psychiatrist at the Marshall Sanitarium in Troy, N.Y. and later worked at Albany Veterans Hospital. The couple had no children.
Blackmer died in August 2000 and Driscoll a few months later on Dec. 30, 2000. Driscoll left a $1.5 million bequest to the College. The bequest today funds the Joseph C. Driscoll Professor of Sociology and Marine Policy, now occupied by Ilene M. Kaplan, who is also the chair of College’s Sociology Department and a guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod.