Shot through the heart

Afteralmost 67 years of marriage, Mildred Haedge still knows her husband Glen’s military serial number by heart, even though she forgets her own social security number. She spent 33 months writing letters to him during World War II before they were officially engaged.

“I always say it took me six years and two weeks to get him to the altar,” Mildred says.

The two met in 1940 at a church convention. Mildred lived in Austin and Glen in Dallas, so their long courtship consisted mostly of letter writing, though Glen visited several times. In May 1941, they shared their first kiss and spent an afternoon dressed up in their Sunday best drinking Dr Pepper on a motorboat on Lake Austin.

Mildred and Glen only saw each other a few times before he went overseas but built their relationship on paper and postage.

“We did so much writing to each other. We loved each other,” Mildred says.

When the United States entered the war in 1941, Glen — who was an army private — asked Mildred to wait for him. He spent a couple years training in the United

States and eventually headed to Africa, Italy, France and finally Germany, where he was wounded. One month before the war ended, Glen stepped on a landmine that broke his femur and shattered his knee. He was carried on a door from aid station to aid station, about six of which gave him morphine shots.

“I felt like I’d made it through the war because you were in danger of getting killed every day and when I got wounded, I wouldn’t have to face that death every day,” Glen says.

In July 1945, he was sent to the only Texas military hospital that could treat his wounds, in El Paso. Mildred and her mother hopped on a Greyhound bus in August and went to see him for the first time in almost three years. Glen and Mildred married on June 30, 1946.

Mildred and Glen, who now live together in C.C. Young Retirement Community, were separated again recently. Glen moved to the community’s nursing building after heart trouble. For two years, Mildred walked across the community campus once or twice a day to visit him. They now share an assisted living residence at C.C. Young.

“We’re just glad to be back together,” Mildred says.

After significant time apart, the secret of their marriage is in their togetherness, they say.

“That’s the main thing: putting up with each other,” Glen says. “If we get to arguing with each other, we put up with that.”

“And then we settle it before we go to bed,” Mildred says.