Photo by Zachary Siebert / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

St. Joseph’s Fred ‘Fritz’ Lederer turns 88 on Aug. 8.

Photo by Zachary Siebert / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

St. Joseph’s Fred ‘Fritz’ Lederer turns 88 on Aug. 8.

The numerical oddity occurred to Fred Lederer just after the first of the year. He would turn 88 in August. On the eighth day. Of 2008.

That is, 88 on 8-8-08.

“That sounds like a party to me,” said Marie, his wife of 66 years.

The St. Joseph couple will celebrate the birthday Friday with 150 or so of their friends and relatives. The occasion will have a patriotic theme that commemorates Mr. Lederer’s service during World War II.

Born in 1920 in Kansas City, he moved with his family to St. Joseph at age 6. He attended St. Mary Grade School and Christian Brothers High School, graduating in 1939.

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and one year later, Mr. Lederer found himself in Pearl Harbor, a draftee bound for the Army’s 24th Infantry Division.

Mr. Lederer laughs now at the preparation he got on the way to war. He and others marched to a rifle range, then got 10 rounds of ammunition and an order to fire.

“That made it legal for them to send me overseas,” he recalled.

He shipped out for the Pacific Theater and would eventually set foot on 10 islands, seven in combat situations. The soldier served as a medic, exposed in the field to an enemy that didn’t respect the red cross he wore on his sleeve.

A staff sergeant by the time of his discharge, the Missouri native and two litter bearers went up Malinta Hill on Corregidor to tend to a soldier with a stomach wound. Fire from a Japanese gunner sent rock fragments into his chin. As night fell, and under a tent of ponchos and with the illumination of a cigarette lighter, he found a vein in the injured comrade and gave him a pint of plasma.

For this mission, the Army awarded the medic a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He would get two other Bronze Stars before the war’s end.

Like most servicemen of that time, Mr. Lederer sacrificed and suffered the indignities of war. So long was his service overseas that his first child was nearly age 3 before he saw her. He contracted jaundice and a stomach disorder while in the tropics. And he once had to take boots off a dead man because a coral island had tattered the soles on his.

After his return to civilian life in St. Joseph, Mr. Lederer said he sometimes lapsed into behavior more consistent with a combat zone. One night, playing cards with an older couple, he let loose with some foul language almost against his will.

“I never felt so bad in my life,” he said, looking back. “You weren’t all human when you were over there.”

Ken Newton can be reached

at kenn@npgco.com.