By Setarreh Massihzadegan
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Before William (Bill) Harrigan penned his first book, The Medic: True Stories of a Non-Combat Veteran– WWII, his family knew little of his service. After becoming a civil engineer and father of three, there just hadn’t been time to recount the experience.

“The kids never knew what I did in the service, and my wife never knew until now that I was a medic,” says Harrigan, who lives at Brooksby in Peabody.

Inspiration and love
As it happened, the book turned out to be a true family effort—his son, Barry, encouraged him to write it and assisted in the publishing process.

When Bill Harrigan began writing from his sunfilled dining table at Brooksby in 2005, his wife, Marie, was ill and receiving treatment. “It was sort of my therapy for me to write,” he recalls. He dedicated the book to Marie.The end result left her amazed. “He astounded me,” Marie Harrigan says. “He showed me a side of him I never knew.”

Just yesterday
It’s difficult to believe that 60 years have passed since the events of the book, which Bill Harrigan retells effortlessly and in detail. “It’s so much easier to remember what happened years ago than what you had for breakfast,” he says.

In a conversational tone, Bill Harrigan writes of his 33-month journey from  grueling basic training at Camp Robinson in Arkansas to the short-lived Army Specialized Training Program in California, to more training, until he finally landed at the 34th U.S. Army General Hospital in Northwood Park, England. At the time he received his call to duty, Bill Harrigan was a 20-year-old aspiring optometrist; and he was able to put his skills to use on assignment, examining GIs, malingerers, and prisoners alike.

Bill Harrigan also tells the stories of the mess halls in England, where he became responsible for ordering rations in code for the hospital, a task he was forced to figure out without much instruction.