- 15/05/2025
‘Diary of a Sergeant’ is a 1945 American short documentary film produced by the U.S. Army Pictorial Service. The film stars Harold Russell, a soldier who lost both hands in a military training accident. It follows his journey through medical rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, showcasing his resilience and adaptation to prosthetic hooks. The documentary was originally intended as an instructional film for wounded veterans but gained wider recognition when director William Wyler saw it and cast Russell in ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’ (1946). Russell later won two Academy Awards for his role, making history as the only actor to receive two Oscars for the same performance.
Credits:
Director: Joseph M. Newman
Producer: U.S. Army Pictorial Service
Starring: Harold Russell
Cinematography: U.S. Army Signal Corps
#DiaryOfASergeant1945 #HaroldRussell #WorldWarII #DocumentaryFilm
Credits:
Director: Joseph M. Newman
Producer: U.S. Army Pictorial Service
Starring: Harold Russell
Cinematography: U.S. Army Signal Corps
#DiaryOfASergeant1945 #HaroldRussell #WorldWarII #DocumentaryFilm
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00THE END
00:30THE END
00:59THE END
01:02On this June day in 1944, someone else's fingers were writing down my words in my diary.
01:11But there just weren't any words for many of the things I thought of.
01:15I had a lot of time for thinking.
01:20I had all day and more of the night than anyone knew.
01:23Crazy thinking at first, like remembering a kid's party where they tied my hands behind my back
01:31and made me take a bite out of an apple hanging by a string.
01:35I thought of the time in the meat market where I worked before the war,
01:41when I sliced the tip of my right middle finger and had to get along with my left hand for a week.
01:47Just the tip of one finger, yet I was 50% helpless.
01:51How would it be now with stumps instead of fingers and palms and wrists?
01:58How would it be when I couldn't even handle a cigarette by myself?
02:02Then I began to remember stories from civilian days of armless men
02:08who learned to paint good pictures with the brushes held between the toes.
02:13And back home, I'd heard of a woman without hands
02:16who knitted sweaters for the Red Cross with her feet.
02:19That wasn't much of a comfort.
02:23It was clever.
02:24And it was okay if someone's ambition were to paint portraits or knit sweaters with his feet.
02:30But it wasn't what I wanted.
02:35With the help of my neighbors, I could get by.
02:38I found that out early and felt better for it.
02:41But I didn't want to go through life dependent on others.
02:44Most of us in the ward felt that way.
02:46Days we'd kid each other and have plenty of laughs.
02:51But after lights out, I wasn't the only one who'd stare into the dark, thinking.
02:58I still thought of that kid's game with the apple on the string.
03:03Rip, who fixed it up for me to smoke,
03:06probably thought of other things,
03:08like walking across a frozen lake on stilts.
03:15He'd lost both feet at Anzio.
03:16One thing I envied the others, though.
03:20They got theirs in combat.
03:23I got mine on D-Day, all right.
03:25But it was in North Carolina when half a pound of TNT exploded ahead of schedule.
03:32I didn't have a German scalp hanging from my belt.
03:35I didn't have a purple heart.
03:38I didn't even have an overseas ribbon.
03:40All I had was no hands.
03:44Then, three weeks after I went into the ward,
03:52something came along that made a big difference to all of us lying there day after day,
03:56worrying and wondering.
03:58They'd shown us movies before, but they said this one was special.
04:01This one was made by the Army just for us.
04:06There wasn't a single blonde in it,
04:08but they said we'd all feel better if we'd take time out to meet McGonagall.
04:12This is my neighbor, Charles McGonagall.
04:19I'd like you to meet him.
04:21I think he's an interesting fellow.
04:24Watch him shaving for him.
04:27What's unusual about that?
04:28Well, Charlie has no hands.
04:33No hands other than these ingenious substitutes.
04:37When he does things as easily as...
04:39We were a tough audience for movies.
04:41The day before, one of our guys who left a foot at Quadra Lane
04:45had thrown his crutch at the screen when the hero recited poetry to some pin-up girl.
04:51But we listened hard this day.
04:53All of us.
04:55Johnny with one leg.
04:56Buck, one leg.
05:03Frenchie, one arm.
05:08Bailey, one leg.
05:12Red, one arm.
05:17Cradella, no legs.
05:21Papa Frank, one leg.
05:24Then me.
05:26I listened because here was a man named Charlie McGonagall,
05:31a man without hands since the last war,
05:33doing all the everyday things I thought I'd never do again.
05:37Doing them with hooks.
05:39Nothing fancy like pole vaulting or repairing watches or even knitting with his feet.
05:44Just the acts of normal living, like shaving and eating and dressing himself.
05:49He does it alone from the first sock to the final tilt of his hat.
05:53This vest is a bit of buttoning up in a regular way.
05:57Hooks together for convenience sake.
05:59Charlie can handle buttons, but the hooks are time-saving.
06:03In a world where the tendency has always been to streamline time,
06:07there are forecasts of the zipper vest that you and I'll be wearing when Hitler and Hirohito are things you talk about,
06:12only in the past tense, like Dillinger and Model T.
06:16Even the leg boys seemed encouraged by what they saw on the screen.
06:24It showed them what a man could do if he tried.
06:29Charlie has none of the characteristics of the Superman.
06:33He's a man who lived normally before the war,
06:35and he set himself no goal but to live normally after it.
06:42He succeeded because he had patience.
06:45He had faith in himself.
06:47And he knew that it could be done.
06:53It took a little while.
06:56But he got there.
07:05Right then, I knew I could get there, too.
07:12Perhaps even a little faster than McGonagall.
07:17After seeing the picture,
07:18for the first time, I really put something into the daily calisthenics.
07:22I didn't just fan the air with my arms anymore.
07:25I worked out as though I had a date to play in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day.
07:30Actually, it was going to be a bigger show than the Rose Bowl.
07:33The date I had was with McGonagall's way of living.
07:37Place, the normal world.
07:40Time?
07:41That was a big question mark.
07:44I spoke to the doc about it
07:45and said I was figuring on about three months, like McGonagall.
07:49Well, he said, maybe six.
07:53If I'd said six months, he'd probably have said maybe nine.
07:57That's the way they were in the hospital.
07:59Cautious.
08:00They didn't want to build us up to a letdown.
08:03The doc told me to begin toning up in what we call the workshop,
08:08which was less of a mouthful than the orthopedic occupational therapy shop.
08:14With a cuff attachment, things became easier right away.
08:17I wrote the words, dear mother, again.
08:23I hadn't done that since June the 5th, five weeks before.
08:27The writing wasn't as pretty as it used to be, but it could be read.
08:31And it was my own.
08:32I discovered that I owed a great debt to the man who invented the typewriter
08:38and to the nurses who were patient when I got the keys into a traffic jam.
08:44Ping-pong helped limber up my arms and shoulders.
08:47I couldn't reach the ones on the far outside, but my control was good,
08:51and I won more games than I lost.
09:00August the 3rd was a great day.
09:03Less than six weeks after my accident, the doctor told me my stumps looked okay
09:07and it was time he gave me some new hands.
09:09Well, I felt like turning a couple of cartwheels, but that wasn't quite possible.
09:15So I just thanked him and made a date to go downstairs.
09:19It used to take Chubby an hour to make a plaster cast in civilian life,
09:23but he was having more customers these days and could do it in a breeze.
09:28Chubby assured me I'd be dealing myself a Pat Royal flush a month from now.
09:32A month.
09:33That was more like it.
09:35Well, said Chubby, maybe six months.
09:37Everyone was playing it cozy.
09:42There was nothing left to chance with the plastic forearms called buckets.
09:47They had to fit snugly with no more tolerance than you'd find in the cylinders of a P-38.
09:53The reach had to be just right.
09:56Everything had to be just right because these were going to be my new hands.
10:00Strong enough to carry a trunk.
10:03Sensitive enough to thread a needle.
10:04Some fellows have dress hands with fingers that would fool anyone when covered with a glove,
10:10but there's not much you can do with them except look pretty.
10:14I got my prostheses, as they're called, a week after Chubby took the mold,
10:20and the doc explained just how to work them.
10:23The normal position of the hooks is with the tips together, locked by strong elastic bands.
10:28Each hook is opened by a cord, which is pulled by moving the opposite shoulder.
10:35It had been nearly six weeks since I'd held anything under my own control,
10:39and that had been half a pound of TNT in North Carolina.
10:42I got quite a kick out of holding that pencil.
10:48When I came back to the ward, I couldn't help flashing my new hooks.
10:52I sure felt cocky.
10:54I puffed casually on a cigarette and swaggered as though I'd won the Medal of Honor with Oak Leaf Gluster.
11:01I wanted to drink a toast to the world with my own new hands, even if it had to be milk.
11:06Boy, was I riding high.
11:08No straw for me.
11:09It was like catching one in the belly.
11:15Maybe the doc's schedule was right, and mine was a lot of optimistic hooey.
11:21Instead of trying to run before I could crawl, I started off from scratch, practicing every chance I got.
11:28I had to keep adjusting the hooks to find out the best angle and tension for different jobs.
11:34I had to develop new muscles and a whole new sense in place of the sense of touch that I'd lost.
11:39For instance, it seemed unnatural to have to move my left shoulder if I wanted to do something with my right hand.
11:46I began to think of it as a sort of remote control, like looking in a submarine periscope to see something up on top.
11:55After a few days and nights, it came more easily.
11:59But I wouldn't be satisfied until I could do it automatically without having to tell myself, left hand, right shoulder, right hand, left shoulder, every time I took a pencil or a box of matches.
12:10It was slow, dull work, and it was hard.
12:14There's no sense pretending it wasn't.
12:17But one thing I knew, it wouldn't do any good to cry over a bottle of spilt milk.
12:24Things were better in the orthopedic workshop where they dressed up teaching to make it more like a game.
12:29The checkers were different shapes and weights, and I didn't win often because the nurse could figure out her next three moves while I was making one.
12:37There was a funny feeling coming face to face with gadgets that a child could operate, and realizing that I had to learn them all over again.
12:49In the first couple of weeks with my hooks, I dialed more numbers than there were Smiths and Joneses in the New York phone book.
12:57And they weren't just collect calls either.
13:00I dropped enough coins in the fare box of a bus to take me all the way across the country.
13:07A cup was more difficult because it was slippery and breakable.
13:12And from the time I sat in a high chair, I'd always picked it up with a thumb and two fingers.
13:19Every time I handled a glass, I thought of a certain bottle of milk.
13:23And that saved the ward department plenty of petty cash for breakage.
13:29Maybe it wasn't the most exciting work in the world, but they'd rigged it up for our benefit.
13:34And every hour a man spent practicing brought him just that much closer to home, which was what the hospital wanted for us.
13:43It wasn't all work and no play.
13:46They provided us with just about every kind of sport there is, outdoor and in.
13:50I would never play basketball at Madison Square Garden, but in the pool I found that I could breeze along because speed and swimming comes as much from the legs as from the arms.
14:00Most of us had jalopies in the garage back home, and we used to wonder sometimes how it would be to sit behind the wheel again.
14:18They had a practice car for us, and I soon found out I wasn't going to have to be a backseat driver all my life.
14:25Though there was one time I wished I had a chauffeur.
14:28I wasn't the only one who was making progress.
14:38It was wonderful to see how quickly the fellas had lost a leg, or both legs, had learned how to handle themselves.
14:48Watching them, I learned something about guts and the knack of having fun again.
14:58On September the 6th, exactly three months after I lost my hands, I got a furlough.
15:17I was going home for the first time in a long while.
15:20I was way ahead of the dock's schedule, and it felt great.
15:29A furlough is a beautiful way to spend a piece of calendar.
15:33I was hopped up about it.
15:34But something happened on the train that got me unhopped.
15:42I spotted a seat.
15:45Then I saw who was on the other half of it.
15:49Well, I didn't want to scare her away like little Miss Muffet.
15:52So I sat there, thinking of how I would have done it if I had met a girl like that when I still had my hands.
16:07I'd have had a conversation going in two seconds flat.
16:11Tough traveling nowadays, I'd have said.
16:14If that hadn't worked, I'd have talked about the weather, which works when nothing else does.
16:18But somehow I was sure she didn't.
16:28I'd have asked her where she was going, and wherever it was, I'd have said I was going there, too.
16:33And what's more, I'd have gone there whatever was written on my furlough papers.
16:38But there I was, sitting across the way, scared that it would scare her to see my hooks.
16:43I thought about the dress hands that looked natural, covered with gloves.
16:49I thought, is this the way it's going to be with me from now on?
16:54And I thought about the weather.
16:58That's what I thought for 20 miles of track.
17:02Or maybe 30.
17:02Wherever a man's home is, that's where the water is softest.
17:14And I never felt so clean in my life as the first day home.
17:18It was easy to work up a lather with a sponge gadget-fed selfie next door, whipped up in less than half an hour.
17:24I had three showers that one day.
17:29Nothing had changed at home.
17:30The grass was in pretty bad shape because Mother wasn't husky enough for the lawnmower,
17:36and there aren't many men left in our neighborhood since the war.
17:39But I took care of it the first afternoon.
17:42Everything else was the same.
17:44I don't know how they managed all the food.
17:47They must have been saving up points for weeks.
17:50By the second day, I wondered if I'd have difficulty fastening my belt.
17:54Not because of my hooks, but because of those meals.
17:56One of the important items on my furlough schedule was to make arrangements to go to college.
18:11Before the war, I wasn't able to do much about it.
18:14But now, with a good pension and a generous educational allowance from the government,
18:18I could easily afford to take a crack at something I'd always wanted.
18:22A college degree.
18:23Inside the university, getting myself oriented,
18:29it occurred to me that study might come hard after all these years away from school.
18:34They had some fairly impressive names for most of the courses,
18:38and every one of them looked a lot different from basic training.
18:42Almost every one, that is.
18:44But I was soon convinced that going back to school wouldn't be as tough as I thought.
18:53When I was a kid, I was somehow always in Dutch with my teachers.
18:57But here was the president of Boston University asking me to sit down with him,
19:01instead of making me stand in the corner.
19:04He told me there was no course I had to reject because of my physical disability.
19:08I could learn to be just about anything except maybe a brain surgeon or a concert violinist.
19:15And for the first time, I knew how long something would take.
19:19Four years.
19:21Not maybe six or maybe eight, but four years flat.
19:26That made good listening.
19:32That night, I dressed as carefully as if I were going to stand Saturday inspection.
19:37And in a way, I was.
19:39I had a date, and there couldn't be a hair out of place.
19:42I kept thinking of two things.
19:45That train ride from the hospital, and the weather.
19:48I thought about them so hard, I'd still be getting into my blouse
19:52if it hadn't been fitted with those time savers I saw in the McGonagall picture.
19:58It had been quite a train ride after those first 20 or 30 miles of track.
20:06Yes, when you want to meet somebody, whether it's snow or sunshine,
20:10whether it's very warm for May or very cool for September,
20:14it's the weather that gives you the opening.
20:16I guess it always works, hooks or hands.
20:21This time, anyway, it worked like a charm.
20:24As for the hooks, she didn't ignore them completely that day on the train.
20:29That would have been more embarrassing than staring at them all the time.
20:32She noticed them, but she took them for granted,
20:34like too many freckles or flaming red hair.
20:38And after five minutes, I didn't feel I was much different from anyone else she knew.
20:43A bit luckier, that's all,
20:44because she lived only a mile from me.
20:47Now here I was, dancing with her.
20:48I had a swell furlough.
21:09I saw all my old friends and made lots of new ones.
21:13The only girl who turned away when she saw me was Peggy, someone, I forget her name.
21:18And she'd been doing that ever since we were 12 when I put gum in her inkwell at school,
21:22so I almost liked her for not changing.
21:23And so that night, just a little more than three months after I was hurt,
21:40I found myself writing.
21:43This is the last entry in my diary,
21:45because I think a diary is mostly to help remember things in the past.
21:50Right now, I'm more interested in the future.
21:53And I'm really looking forward to the next 45 years of my life.
21:57Or, as the doc would probably say, maybe 80.
22:03THE END
22:14The End
22:14The End
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