BANGOR – It’s been more than half a century since an unconscious Carold Leland was removed from hostile territory in the South Pacific.

The Lincoln man says he had expected to wait a few more years before receiving formal recognition of his actions under fire during World War II.

But people close to Leland, 79, had a plan.

Leland’s wife of 55 years, Madeline Leland, and Darrell Savage, commander of Lincoln’s American Legion Post 77, persuaded Leland that he needed to be in a legion meeting Sunday afternoon at the legion hall in Bangor. “We got in there and it was all family and friends and people I knew,” Leland said. “I knew something was up.”

He was awarded a Purple Heart and a Combat Action Ribbon for extraordinary service during the war.

“I knew they had talked about looking into the medals, but I didn’t expect anything for a few more years, if at all,” Leland said. The war “was more than just a page out of my life, so this was really very nice.”

Leland served as a pharmacist’s mate third class while in the South Pacific with the Marine Corps during the invasion of Guam in 1944.

During that time, the then-22-year-old medic helped to save a man’s life by amputating his leg while under heavy mortar fire, Leland recalled. The man was one of many that Leland helped during the invasion.

“I wouldn’t pass the experience up for anything,” Leland said from his Lincoln home. “The people I worked with, and for, gave me the inspiration to do what I thought I needed to do.”

A year later, though, it was Leland who needed the help of his fellow medics when the jeep he had been driving was blown off the road by enemy fire. A day earlier, Leland had arrived on the Japanese island of Okinawa and was about to head out with his Marine detachment when members of the Army grabbed him and immediately took him to work on the wounded.

“My second day in Okinawa I was out in the jeep, going round to help out, when the [Japanese] dropped a concussion barrel in front of my jeep,” Leland said. “I didn’t know anything until two days later when I was on board the medical ship.”

Leland walked away from a hospital bed with only a concussion from the blast, he said.

The quest for Leland’s medals began two years ago when Savage was at a veterans question-and-answer day at Mattanawcook Junior High School in Lincoln, Savage said. “He had just talked about some of his experiences, so I asked him why he didn’t wear his medals,” Savage said. “He said he’d never been awarded any so I looked into what I could do.”

Savage, with the aid of Rep. John Baldacci’s office, pursued the matter for two years, seeking out and talking to former commanders who were still alive, while also obtaining information from the Navy and the Marines, Savage said.

“It makes me feel very good that he has finally been rewarded for things that he did while serving in our military,” Savage said. “A lot of veterans have never been awarded their medals for some reason or another. For whatever reason there is, it’s just gone by the wayside and the veterans die before they receive their awards. I’m glad I could help him get his.”