Interview with Dallas Dinger [Undated]

Timothy Sanders:

Basics here. Your name, sir?

Dallas Dinger:

Dallas Lee Dinger. You can call it just L. if you like.

Timothy Sanders:

When were you born, Dallas?

Dallas Dinger:

March 30, 1927.

Timothy Sanders:

And your address is here at 612 Robinson?

Dallas Dinger:

Uh-huh. Yes.

Timothy Sanders:

That's Lafayette, 47906?

Dallas Dinger:

Yes.

Timothy Sanders:

Phone number?

Dallas Dinger:

We are in area 765 and 743-0772.

Timothy Sanders:

And where were you born?

Dallas Dinger:

Well, on a farm in Alan County, Jefferson Township.

Timothy Sanders:

Here is Fort Lee.

Dallas Dinger:

For the Wayne address, actually we were in the New Haven area, but for the Wayne, came around with its rural roots out there pretty long. So we officially were from Fort Lee, yes.

Timothy Sanders:

What branch of the service were you in?

Dallas Dinger:

The Army.

Timothy Sanders:

You were in the army. Were you drafted?

Dallas Dinger:

Yes, absolutely drafted. And I will add then that I did serve, I went about in the _____ I did serve my reserve requirement in the International Guard of Indiana police squad. I told them that when I replied in the postcard, short letter, that is.

Timothy Sanders:

What -- what units were you assigned to when you were in the Army?

Dallas Dinger:

Well, I got my ballistic training in Camp Atabury when the Pennsylvania Guard was federalized and came to Camp Atabury to serve as a training unit. I got my basic at Camp Atabury with Pennsylvania, 40th division.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah. And then, see, I went and I was supposed to, fact is I applied to go to officer candidate school. I had everything but my orders. I had everything but my orders to go to Fort Benning in my hand. That was after basic training was finished and I had everything but my orders in my hand, passed the physical, mental tests, the whole bit, but I wasn't a college graduate. You see, at that time only a high school graduate, and they had just _____ in Korea at that time. That's when the Chinese were starting to cross the _____ frozen. All that, we are talking about January 1951.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay. When did you go in?

Dallas Dinger:

October 3rd of '50, 1950.

Timothy Sanders:

October 3rd of '50.

Dallas Dinger:

Indiana fellas drafted that time. There was some over from Adelphi area.

Timothy Sanders:

You were about 23 or so?

Dallas Dinger:

Yes.

Timothy Sanders:

About 23?

Dallas Dinger:

23.

Timothy Sanders:

And from Camp Atabury, then you were thinking officer school, but that didn't work out.

Dallas Dinger:

That didn't work out because, again, they had -- they also started having finals for, for overseas, you see, and some of those guys weren't passing their overseas physicals. Some of them, they drafted guys who were actually 4-F at the end of World War II. They took them into Korea during the Korean -- some of them went down for the Wayne, automatic of us for physicals, this is just a _____ trip. They would _____ them again. Wasn't so. We had three guys on our bus that were told they weren't going to be drafted. I wasn't willing to trade places with them if I could have. One had palsy, you call it, his body just quivered continuously. The other one probably only weighed 110 pounds. There was something wrong with his metabolism. And the third one, I think the psychiatrist bumped him. But they said he was scared to death and apparently it showed because he -- but he actually, on the other hand, he might have had signs of some abnormality too the psychiatrist detected, but I wasn't willing to trade places with either of the three. So they took a lot of guys in who had touches of asthma, whatever, but I passed that physical in Fort Benning so I will have to say that the Army did give me a top notch physical before they sent me overseas because I had already passed the physical at Fort Benning, you see.

Timothy Sanders:

they wouldn't let you go to Fort Benning, you had the emergency _____.

Dallas Dinger:

See, the story is that -- that you see the -- they had lot more company didn't pass their overseas physical _____ and they protected all the Guardsman that came from Pennsylvania. They protected them and none of them had to reach their quota to go to Korea as replacements, and so -- and we had, in fact we had a couple of guys that were sent home during basic training. And again, I think they detected traces of homosexuality. Nobody say anything about it but there was, you know, they just quietly were sent home and that was it.

Timothy Sanders:

After Camp Atabury, you didn't get to bing. Where did you go then for your next training?

Dallas Dinger:

Well, that would -- no more training, basic training was over. It was to Korea as replacement.

Timothy Sanders:

No infantry training or anything like that.

Dallas Dinger:

We had all -- we had all the --

Timothy Sanders:

You needed basic training.

Dallas Dinger:

That was basic training.

Dallas Dinger:

That was infantry training, 28th division, wasn't -- we had all the -- we had all the --

Timothy Sanders:

That was all you needed?

Dallas Dinger:

That was infantry training, regiment 28th division, infantry training. And we went through our overseas, you know, one machine gun firing range. We had to climb on the course, the bullets were high _____ then we had to walk under artillery that was being shot over our heads and we had to simulate close encounter combat, simulated house that was a little more scary than the other two. And so yeah, we did that. It was four things. And as a matter of fact, see, as I said, you know there was a -- that was a -- I and a couple of others were set to go to Fort Benning but we just got told you're not going to go to Fort Benning because we have to make our allotment, so the ones that were set to go to Fort Benning for officers candidate school, they got sent to officers candidate school, they got sent to -- so I wasn't discriminated against. No way, no way did I consider myself discriminated.

Timothy Sanders:

When did you make it to Korea?

Dallas Dinger:

Well, see, well, I think, you know, I arrived there probably, I think it was the day before Easter, thereabouts. See, I can't remember the exact date we got there, but it was, it was late, very late in March. Very late in March.

Timothy Sanders:

March of '51?

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah, that's the month. the exact day, start losing track of time.

Timothy Sanders:

And where did you land when you got there?

Dallas Dinger:

Prusan (ph?) got wind of the city and reached the shore. It was a sneaky place.

Timothy Sanders:

And where did you go then? I mean what was your first thing you did? I mean --

Dallas Dinger:

Well, we just --

Timothy Sanders:

-- was it combat right away or --

Dallas Dinger:

Well, pretty quick, yeah, because, well, they did take us up to, in the rear echelon we all threw a hand grenade for practice. They had us pull the pin and throw the thing. It was all downhill but, yeah, we threw a hand grenade and that was about it. But we were sent to rifle companies and some of us went to the 24th Division. They broke us down from there. I wound up in Fifth Regiment. I got into the oil company and I was carrying car beam, brand-new car beam from the United States. Guy says, well, you would make a good man for the shooting gun squad, I guess, _____ and so I was glad I was on _____ machine gun squad because I liked that better than, say, being a rifleman out there.

Timothy Sanders:

Yeah.

Dallas Dinger:

Controls.

Timothy Sanders:

You started heading north and you said you were a rear echelon for awhile?

Dallas Dinger:

Not very long.

Timothy Sanders:

Way through.

Dallas Dinger:

Let me, and you know the guys in rear echelon, they told a lot of war stories. They scared me, recruits as they come up there, you know, they, they just, and they were, they were not nice, they were mean, you know, I thought the closer we got to the company in that Moore incident, they would consider us comrades, come to help us. But they just -- they were very, mean toward us.

Timothy Sanders:

I wonder why.

Dallas Dinger:

I don't know. It's just the way it is, especially with _____. See, I was among the first draftees to arrive.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

And these were, when we got there, see, there had been guys that had already gotten there ahead of us that were, who were enlisted reserves got called back in. They were maybe drafted in like '48 when they had drafting back then. Let them out after about a year and they had to go in the reserves. They got called in the first, once Truman called in, sent out over there, well, these are regular Army guys. They would single them out for, make fun of them, say how many guys are in their unit. Well, we got twelve men and two ERs, reservists. I think they were about set to do that to the draftees. We had US in front of our serial numbers but you see it wasn't long until we had them outnumbered.

Timothy Sanders:

Do you remember what your serial number was?

Dallas Dinger:

Oh, yes.

Timothy Sanders:

What was your serial number?

Dallas Dinger:

55031643.

Timothy Sanders:

It's amazing.

Dallas Dinger:

Oh, yeah.

Timothy Sanders:

These people, it's part of your _____.

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah. I think they had, they probably would have set 550, I think I always did it by 33 and 2, but they did it 23 and 3. That's the way it was broken down -- 031643 that's the way I did it. I remember I memorized it through another way because I don't know, I thought of, I thought of 550 degrees in electricity and 316, I thought of John 3:16 in my whole _____ International Harvester was 43 and that's how I did it. And I had it, I memorized it on the spot.

Timothy Sanders:

What -- You were working your way up into, toward the front lines?

Dallas Dinger:

We got there quite soon, way we moved right up. You know it only took them a day sort of time. There was a long lull, there was a lull in the action when we got there but that was because the Chinamen were getting ready to make a big push in late April.

Timothy Sanders:

That was in late April of '51?

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah, like April the 20th or thereabouts. So I was already in place.

Timothy Sanders:

What was that like?

Dallas Dinger:

Well, of course we didn't get it as bad as, as some of the other guys in our regiment got it. Apparently A company and I company, see, battalions went A-B-C and D was the battalion and E-F-G and H was the -- was the heavy weapons and then I-K-L and M made the fourth, third regiment we were in L company. That was the last of the rifle companies. The M was the heavy weapons. But they had the battalions, let's see, yeah, we were on the plank, I company was in our battalion and they happened to be butted up against where A company was from the first battalion and them two, but have been butted up against each other because that's where the breakthrough team, I company, really got torn up. And A company did too and there was a lot of casualities on that breakthrough team captured. Five were captured. Others just moved out, became missing in action just like that. So our company didn't get battered like the companies on our plank did. So we didn't -- we had -- we experienced some artillery that came over but we didn't get the -- I suppose that we bugged out. As they say, we retreated. They knew we were going to get overrun so we retreated out of there before we got overrun with _____.

Timothy Sanders:

With Chinese?

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah _____ with guns, whatever they carry. So we got out of there and we retreated and retreated and retreated. And we walked and on the way back, see, straighten up the lines, that's what they did. Then, see, as we retreated, they just dove in there, you know, behind us. Then, you see, it was a matter of getting back there and sort of bunching them off. Then the aircraft, we got good applying that fall and they just _____ they told and they just so the aircraft was, what inflicted the carb rooms.

Timothy Sanders:

Then you guys --

Dallas Dinger:

We had to be there, just sort of you don't think cowboy sort of rounding them up, see, kind of just watching where they were, those patrols, that's where they were supposed to make contact. And they, but the aircraft just came over and just threw that napalm all over the place. It was really, it was a beautiful sight to see.

Timothy Sanders:

Sure _____.

Dallas Dinger:

This was a beautiful sight.

Timothy Sanders:

How long was it before you were able to go back there and sort of push the Chinese back?

Dallas Dinger:

The month took place before we actually started to go on the offensive so we were on that too.

Timothy Sanders:

Were you capturing Chinese at that time?

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah, we did. During -- you see, I can't remember now the sequence of events, but I think it was after the counter offensive. See we, we were, we were, we were there and we just, you know, and I didn't know we were making news at home but we were. And so we just held on you know and, and started, well, we stretched them out as far as they could stretch. It's the part of the infantry turning back a little bit. And so it was, I was the radio man. Our two, well, our second platoon had gotten shot up during the retreat. They were, they were sort of, see, I was in the -- I was in the first battalion but the machine gun squad and, and our second platoon really had been on the brunt of it when we were still retreating and they got shot up pretty bad. Fact is they even had a -- they cleared these air panels the aircraft could see. They either run parallel or crisscross or make an X or make a F and they had their codes, you know, of the day as to now to display those panels in the aircraft, could see our position. And there were some mixup, they either didn't have it displayed right or -- but that aircraft came in and bumped that napalm. That was like I mentioned in my note, you know, I did write a piece about friendly fire.

Timothy Sanders:

Yeah.

Dallas Dinger:

That was one of the things I included was mixup, you know, you talk about chaos.

Timothy Sanders:

No such thing as friendly fire. That's not friendly.

Dallas Dinger:

No. It's not friendly, it's just mistaken, mistaken description. But I just shuttered. As it turned out these guys scattered and I guess none of them got hit, none of our guys got splattered, but they said they dolled me that, they left two _____ behind. They said they were killed and that they had, um, they just had to leave them behind because they had to retreat so fast. But I talked to my squad leader many years later. He was from Oklahoma City and he said actually those guys were just mortally wounded. They just couldn't -- couldn't bring them in.

Timothy Sanders:

What -- so you are working your way back up trying to push the Chinese back some and after they got softened up pretty much by the aircraft?

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah. Well, now we are -- we are at 20th of May when the, when the counter offend guys and they wanted to straighten up the line which we did, you know.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

It was called the Wyoming line or the Kansas line. I'm not sure. I knew which was which but there we were and, but certainly thereafter, shortly thereafter when we held on, so -- and see, I, we were kind of just, we had, we had casualities. I don't remember how, how they -- I know we only had one officer left by this time. The time counter offensive began, we only had one officer left in the company. One of them got wounded during the initial push by the Chinese _____ he got _____ so he was evacuated. Our company commander, he had been a school teacher. I believe he was called back in. See, they called in a lot of reserve officers, enlisted men. They reserve officers, they just thought they joined the reserves and they would counterpoints in due time.

Timothy Sanders:

Sure.

Dallas Dinger:

And I guess our company commander had been a school teacher and he wasn't going to like being there any more than the rest of us. Some said he bumped into a tree and busted his lip and got himself and that's -- he got himself evacuated. Another officer we had who was veteran of World War II and I believe he served the 20th division when it was over in Europe during World War II, that's the Pennsylvania National _____ Division and he, he eventually was evacuated because he cracked up. And this happened during the counter offensive. We are talking about May now. We started back --

Timothy Sanders:

Started back in --

Dallas Dinger:

-- good weather, good flying weather. The guys really could, they really were able to just, well, there was one said they _____ them out unrecordable language in describing the situation, but, but during this time -- and so what they did to me that day was give me the radio. They wanted me to be the radio man. And we had a sergeant who was Oriental extraction and, well, I will say first off that our regiment had been in Hawaii long before it went to Korea so most of the guys were Hawaiians. They went to Korea from Hawaii and a lot of them are native Hawaiians. So this fella was

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

So a lot of them are native Hawaiians so this fella was a _____ team surgeon was _____ and he was just absolutely, he didn't know what fear was. He was _____ _____ and we so Jean got a squad I was serving with and I think I hadn't gotten, I had been really old man until daybreak but during the night we ran out of ammo so these guys bugged out. They were supposed to be getting ammunition out there. See, the guys were supposed to be getting ammunition up there so they were bugging out _____ and I stayed right there with the gunner. My ammo was there. Stayed right there with him and this stupid Oriental that was, I'll say his name, you can blot it out if you want, his name is Suzuki. He wanted us to stay in position. We ran out, didn't have any ammo or machine guns, see, anymore.

Timothy Sanders:

Uh-huh. He wanted you to stay there.

Dallas Dinger:

He wanted to stay there and mount bayonets, and meet them with bayonets. My, my sergeant, I think he might have been a sergeant, might have been a _____ squad leader, machine gunner, mind taking this machine gun back _____ not going to waste that gun. You guys are under my command so I'm not staying with you. So we backed up but we had no ammunition for the machine guns. The guy was just nuts.

Timothy Sanders:

He was a sergeant.

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah. And he had sergeant rank. I am talking about the Orientals. So by daybreak we had, we got more ammunition and were starting to make some moves and we had a fella who was in, he moved into our company. He did heavy company and he got a transfer just before, oh, it was in early May I think he transferred to our company. He didn't like being heavy weapons, wanted to be in the rifle company _____ and he just, he too just went sort of berserk right after, spearheaded him out. He got chopped down. Everything was crossed over. You couldn't see, you couldn't see more than ten, twelve feet ahead of you because everything was, you know, covered. But he went out ahead of us and he just got cut down. I saw him get cut down. He was out there, you know, probably length of a football field ahead of us. He was just spraying as he went _____ and just got cut down. Some guy said we are going to go get his body and the sergeant says no, just stay back, just leave him in the field, we will have to wait. So by the end of the day, though, we did get, recover his body. We, we had ammo and now comes the artillery. They were doing their job, see, and I don't know who -- they had a forward observer. Of course he was, he was from the -- well, see, the 555th, see, we were regimental combat team so that went, we had our own artillery unit that was with us. That was, they called a Tipple Nickle 555th field artillery. So therefore observer, because he stayed right up there with the infantry all the time. He was directing the fire doing a good job because the artillery, we were counting on it. See, we were on an incline and I would say it was about forty-five degree angle, but our company was on it.

Timothy Sanders:

Pill going up.

Dallas Dinger:

Going up. Had to capture the high ground. _____ company, that was our neighboring company from the same battalion, they were on another finger going up so -- but anyway, the artillery, we were standing pretty close to it. And my weapon, by this time I had an M-1 rifle where there was another story about how you cost my car beam, but for now I will just tell you I had an M-1 rifle. It was swung on my shoulder while I was carrying the radio.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

But the trouble was I'd never had any radio training. The day I was supposed to be in radio training at Camp Atabury I was taking my overseas _____ program OCS. I missed the daily _____ on radio. I didn't know to transmit you had to push the butterfly. So you can hear any time; to transmit you had to push the butterfly button. And company commander was down there, the one that had survived World War II and had been a POW. In fact he was trying to call us. He kept trying to call his company, the whole company two and one, and again, I tried to talk to him but I wasn't transmitting, see.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

And he, and he, see, he thought he lost the whole platoon out there because we weren't responding. See, he didn't know what was going on. He was back there, I don't know, I suppose he was a half a mile away or something like that and I didn't -- and he just kept calling and calling and -- and finally, I caught on that I had to push that darn thing. Finally I talked to him and told him, and at that point in time he -- he said to me something about you guys, I think we were getting pretty near our objective. But he said, he says, well, use that ammunition sparingly. And I said I would like to be a little more explicit, all we need _____ and he got mad at that. Well, I didn't know was that he was already starting to crack, see.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

So he was paranoid. And again, you don't want to say that your company is running out of ammo because what does that tell your enemies? Listen --

Timothy Sanders:

Sure.

Dallas Dinger:

-- you see, again, I didn't know what -- didn't know quite how to take -- of course those guys did waste a lot of ammo, I would have to say that. But I think the before the day was over, one of the company commander finally did come into hysterics. I never saw him again. But anyway, as we got near our objective, and again the artillery was coming in very well, but again, it's hard when you're on a forty-five degree angle for them to estimate where that's going to drop. That adds, that, that uphill stuff adds another dimension to their estimating the distance. And one of them shells dropped real, real short and I actually saw this piece of schrapnel coming. It caught my rifle, it cut the strap off that rifle. See, that's a heavy _____ strap. It caught that, cut that off. It knocked the butt plate clear out of sight on that rifle and it took my side pocket on my pants and it tore it as cleanly away as a steam press could have done with her little cutter, you know, it just took that pants pocket completely off and away, side pocket. There was a sergeant then behind me. He was probably, I suppose six feet behind, closer to where the _____ but he was slightly to my right and downhill and that thing was heading right for his abdomen. See, my rifle stopped from him hitting his abdomen. Two of us just looked at each other, made eyes and just moved on. We finally did reach our objective before nightfall, and meantime I guess it was the Oriental sergeant there who was leave this make-shift company, he said, or platoon I should say. He said maybe you ought to call K company because I think we are getting close enough to them but we are getting some of their fire. They were shooting right and left, you know.

Timothy Sanders:

Sure.

Dallas Dinger:

And so I did. I, I just put my -- turned the butterfly, called for K company's platoon operator and he answered and I said this is L company one able. I said we are, I think we are getting hit by your own fire from your right _____. He says, well, we don't know where you are. I said, well, we can see you but I said, I said can you look to your right and see the air panel and he said, yeah, he can see it. I said that's where we are, right around it. So -- and they turned it over. We were reaching the objective at the same time coming up two different _____.

Timothy Sanders:

Were the Chinese, would that be, being pushed back at this point?

Dallas Dinger:

They were -- they were -- they were in retreat by then, yeah. They were really retreating, so, see, they would leave snipers are behind, suicide snipers, nothing like you see from Palestine over there, these Arabs that just kill themselves, but these Chinese, they stay behind, you know, and cut you down _____ cut you down _____.

Timothy Sanders:

So you got to that objective and that high point that you were at?

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah.

Timothy Sanders:

Did that have a name or was it --

Dallas Dinger:

No. Probably did but I don't remember. There was a lot of those details that I just don't --

Timothy Sanders:

Sure.

Dallas Dinger:

I never made any point to remember. We got guys I hear from, read about, they made details about the day this or that happened and it almost sounds trumped up because they try to get people to read. I'm not interested.

Timothy Sanders:

What happened then, you reached your objective and then?

Dallas Dinger:

Actually, that, that was pretty much, from then on it was a mop up and so we went out, we would go out daily then and start getting prisoners. So we did that. Again we have them surrounded, and of course they were _____ they make do with just a little bit of rice, you know. They were out of ammo so from there, while we would go out and platoon size patrols, and go out and around. One day we brought in about 30 Chinese. They all surrendered.

Timothy Sanders:

Were there any Koreans involved or all Chinese?

Dallas Dinger:

They were pretty well out of it by the time I got over there, the Koreans, they had been captured. They were already in captivity.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

See, the Korean War was already nine months into it when I got over there.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

First of all, the worse _____ happened in the first six months.

Timothy Sanders:

You did the round and you up and were just taking prisoners?

Dallas Dinger:

_____ .

Timothy Sanders:

Did that last until the cease fire?

Dallas Dinger:

It lasted until the peace talks began in Kay Song (ph?).

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

So actually, we didn't have much action after that.

Timothy Sanders:

All right.

Dallas Dinger:

We went during the summer, we would have to go on, kept training, walking and things. Occasionally we would get assigned to go knock them off a hill and other objectives and back, you know, just to keep training.

Timothy Sanders:

So that was from 5/20/51 is when the counter offensive started, you started to go back on in?

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah.

Timothy Sanders:

How long did that last? So you're going from --

Dallas Dinger:

Well, it was a matter of, oh, I don't know, it was a couple weeks, I suppose.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay. So you're going from the end of May to sometime in June, probably?

Dallas Dinger:

By mid-June things settled down. I wasn't much going. Peace talks began and of course that was just time for them to _____ and so forth.

Timothy Sanders:

That was mid-June of '51?

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah.

Timothy Sanders:

How long then were you in country?

Dallas Dinger:

Well, I was there until the following January.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

But that fall though they did go north toward Poon Song. They were in the Poon Song sector which is about the mark of demarcation, but we went up there and we were on the offensive that fall to straighten up the line, as it were. See that 40th parallel went dive angle across Korea. Of course Korea doesn't go north and south, sort of moves like Panama on a slant.

Timothy Sanders:

Sure.

Dallas Dinger:

They just made the line, shorten it up and straighten it up and shorten it straight across and have got rhythm. That demarcation line was held but that 40th parallel just went dive angle across that country. It was impossible thing to defend. _____ wasn't defensible. But when they made a line of demarcation, came closer to Seoul, the 40th parallel just past Seoul, short ways go separate across and _____ on in.

Timothy Sanders:

Easy to defend.

Dallas Dinger:

Easy to defend, yeah. So that fall then I got wounded. See, because again we were out there and there was a sniper left behind in the fall there and we were trying to straighten the line there. He was up, he was up on a big rock, apparently he was out of sight and we knew there was somebody around someplace and he threw a grenade down. It got me in the back and the neck and of course I wasn't disabled out of it but I went back in the company rear, and as it turns out he got both the machine gunner and the assistant gunner before the day was over and he wounded them _____ _____ and --

Timothy Sanders:

Did they get him?

Dallas Dinger:

They eventually captured him. I guess they ran out of it, they captured him, took him into captivity. See, we didn't have any idea at all he was up above. He was way up above us but he was apparently _____ _____ lobbed the grenade. When he thought I got hit, I think he thought I was the -- I think he thought I was the -- see, I had binoculars. For some reason I had somebody's binoculars. I was, and I was looking over the landscape he must have thought I was maybe the lieutenant, thought he would get me first. So I was the first casualty that day. That was the 16th of October in the fall.

Timothy Sanders:

16th of October.

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah. That was when I got wounded. The day before was when it really hit. Of course we were, they started on this move. We were getting a lot of field artillery. They had -- they didn't have much field artillery but they did shoot some, and on the 15th they got one of our officers who was, you know, he was in charge of one of the platoons and he -- he had been a reservist called in, he had just joined our company a matter of days before we started the fall offensive in '51 and he didn't even -- his wife didn't even know his permanent address yet. He was still getting mail coming, I mean being forwarded and he just got killed over there. He wasn't in the company more than five days, I suppose. Of course that was when we were getting ready, our _____ Army headquarters, we were getting ready to do an offensive, get the line straight so _____ dig in and so, but, you know, you just feel because they are your comrades, buddies.

Timothy Sanders:

After you were wounded, you moved to the rear.

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah.

Timothy Sanders:

You weren't disabled though, you were okay?

Dallas Dinger:

I walked but, see, I went back to the nice hospital.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

Nice Army surgical hospital and they X-rayed me and then they did find there was some fragments in the wound so in from there on they wouldn't let me walk. I was _____ _____ and then I flew with others on an airplane, took us back to Seoul. I think most of them probably all went there for surgery. They did what they called debriding the wound there at the hospital in Seoul and --

Timothy Sanders:

This was an Army hospital?

Dallas Dinger:

Oh, yeah, Army hospital, sure, Army hospital. Knee Tempo airways, and then they let me walk, see, because --

Timothy Sanders:

Clean it out.

Dallas Dinger:

-- they were worried about the projectile so artery or nerve _____ they were concerned about that so wasn't back _____ from days there on a train there Tai Jong and stayed there. In due time they set up the wound for me and, and it's there, oh, I would say it was, yeah, see, this is 16th of October I got wounded so I was there almost until Thanksgiving, that fall. By the time, you know, little hill had a slew of healing, had to come and aspirate the wound, took a lot of fuss, you know, and everything and they aspirated it and then it healed. So the doctor, he finally said, well, he said you're ready to go shower now. I think he figures it was a good idea, you know. So I -- I think, I think I left before Thanksgiving, started moving back, rejoined my company and got up there. And in May, they said, well, I got back the company, you just missed your group you can go on R and R anyway. They said -- he said we will keep you on _____ to your company until you go back, find them on the hill. Then the officer said, he said, you know, day later he said, say, there is room for some more _____ Japan, do you want to go? I said, yup, I'll go.

Timothy Sanders:

How were you feeling?

Dallas Dinger:

I was feeling real fine. I was feeling really good, yeah, no question about that. So then I went to Japan with the company -- I mean with the guys who were flying over there R and R. I was going to go to Tokyo. Some guy wanted to go to Tokyo, he said I would like, sure like to go to Tokyo instead of Osaka -- I'm south of here. So I went to Osaka and when I got there I met up with a couple of Illinois guys who had been drafted. It's just like myself, wanted to stick around together. And so we did and I lost track of them. I never did learn their names, really. I don't remember them, I mean, and I came back to company -- we were over in Japan on the 10th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. This is December 7, they thought there might be some uprisings of some kind but there was nothing. Japan, Japan really didn't know they lost World War II because they never saw fighting on our shores.

Timothy Sanders:

Sure.

Dallas Dinger:

The bomb took out two cities but they don't even know they lost that war, that Japanese people didn't. So I came back to company after R and R and so by that time the company had come down off the hill for their rest. So it was in fact December 15 before I actually got back on the line and had to be on second duty, but again, we didn't go on any offensives _____ underground. We just stayed put and they brought out some patrols, riflemen did but --

Timothy Sanders:

Was it pretty obvious at this point that the war was winding down, that it was just about over?

Dallas Dinger:

Wasn't to me but it was because I didn't know about the strings being pulled at the UN. I didn't have any -- at that time I had no aversion against the UN at all. But that's, that's all changed. That's all changed.

Timothy Sanders:

That's all changed. You were, in December, kind of waiting around, you said you got out in January?

Dallas Dinger:

The end of January my group was due to rotate home.

Timothy Sanders:

All right.

Dallas Dinger:

I saw I was on the front six weeks before rotating home and -- and the last night scary as any because you never know, you know. One of my -- I was on watch the very last night, I was on the front because normally, see, the two in a foxhole, one would sleep while the other one would be on watch, usually would be two hours on a shift, but sometimes an hour, usually two. That night they had me with three, two other fellows and the one they were relatively new to the company and -- and they had hadn't really been under any combat fire I don't think but the one was on watch and woke me up. I was sleeping at the time. He said I hear noise out there. So I put a shot out there I said nah-ah we got listening police out there and I said you'll endanger them not only with your shots, you may even hit them. And I said if there is anything, I said you just stay on watch so -- and I said if there is anything out there, they will hear it and they will come back, you know, so -- so _____ prevailed and again --

Timothy Sanders:

You never know.

Dallas Dinger:

-- friendly fire was avoided on that one.

Timothy Sanders:

Yeah.

Dallas Dinger:

And --

Timothy Sanders:

Well, did you -- you then were rotated back and you ended up, you came back to where in the country?

Dallas Dinger:

Well, we came back to Camp Atabury for processing.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

Then I finished off my Army tour, Camp McCoya (ph?), Wisconsin. They had field artillery and training out there. There really weren't many trips out there. It was really Beetle Bailey's Army out there. You got picked _____ so we got there and they did what they call cantors boogie, they are -- they are on their way to do, say cannon ears. Finally peace, face the peace and count off, start with one, you know, then they had a position for each person. He would have to go to a certain place _____ pick up the ammo and the other one would, you know, load it. So it was like a team, you know, and of course the guys, some of the guys got tired of that, but to me, I mean nothing, anything's better than being shot at.

Timothy Sanders:

Sure.

Dallas Dinger:

But anyway, they had said that whoever, they wanted full-time KPs, that didn't sound very good on the surface but I thought I'll take a chance on it. And they did tell us that you'll only work when the cook works; when you're off, when they are off, you're off. You work with your team of cooks. I thought that doesn't sound too bad and so I did that. I took it for a month and I liked it and I continued and that's what I was doing at the time I mustered out. But, but we, it was just like having a job in a restaurant, really.

Timothy Sanders:

Sure.

Dallas Dinger:

If we worked, we go on duty for afternoon one day and do, you know, clean up, trays, and then have the evening meal, clean up. Next morning we be there for breakfast and clean up and then we would be off because our cooks worked that way. They would be off after breakfast, 24 hours over then back on again. (Side two of tape) _____ and rotate and home. Then we got discharged with months _____. Guys had a longer time. The stay over says, then they had to stay in a full two years because they wouldn't have had enough points to come home.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

But we went over within three months of being inducted and so we got our points in long before our discharge date so we got plenty _____.

Timothy Sanders:

What was your highest rank?

Dallas Dinger:

First Class. Again, the ranks all came down when I was in the hospital _____ was corporal. The fact is there were two rounds of promotions while I was in the hospital. See, I was away from the company for two months, you know, and fact is fella who came over there followed me as a draftee came up, he trained in, I think Camp Piglet _____, he followed me by a few days but he, uh-huh, he apologized when the boat come in, he said I should have you made corporal, I just overlooked it _____ _____.

Timothy Sanders:

You got a purple heart _____ you probably Korea _____.

Dallas Dinger:

Well, the purple heart came, well, yeah, the _____ Koreans read them, yeah, they determined that the defense _____ one constituted _____ campaign turned to the defense I have is _____ _____ campaign stars _____ _____ because _____ we didn't make so much of that just _____ defense metal. It kind of humorous for me to see these fellows who have never been overseas and they are wearing a whole chest full of ribbons. But I felt that I should have, you know, if we hadn't been so disorganized, I might even have been named for -- for a bronze star for military service because, see, when we were on a retreat _____ retreat, we had to go out the back way and it was -- there was one wounded had been a marine. He had been in the Marine Corp in the Army. He was a heavy fella. He got wounded, hit in the leg. He couldn't walk. He was on a letter, four guys carrying him and they were carrying him and they were carrying him up until we got to a place where there is not room for two guys to walk side by side. It was a narrow path on the side of this mountain and they didn't know what to do. We were retreating. See, here we had him, he wrote this letter I want to show him. As a farm boy, I could carry my own weight. I had this carving off. Of course I had the ammo from the machine gun. I sat that down, somebody else to take. I got on the front of the letter if somebody can take him, lift the back, I can take him in the front. We had to walk. I don't know, we must have walked close the distance of the length of a football field, hundred yards _____ _____ until we got to where we could walk side-to-side again. And of course there was the -- down there was the letter G there _____ _____ medics there to take care of him. The guy _____ you got to let me go, I don't want you all to get captured, so he just walked on to do that _____ _____. We didn't know have, you know, we didn't have one officer serving in the company at that time _____ _____ company later on, command the company. Later on he was railroaded out with a wound healing up so he wasn't, his name was James Lee. He came back and was commander of the company and by, I don't know, by June of that year or whatever.

Timothy Sanders:

After you got out, you were discharged to McCoy. Where did you come back to, Fort Wayne?

Dallas Dinger:

Yeah, I did, because I had a job waiting on me at International Harvester and the trouble was, I think there was a strike somewhere in Seoul. I took a job at the _____ nearing depo. It was in station where it was, orders depo, during World War II. In fact, as the _____, that place after the war had begun _____ the Army still had turned over to engineering _____ _____ so they had to guard first, work around the clock there. So I took a job out there and worked that until that fall and I decided that wasn't for me to be working that slave shift and go on nights and so I went back at the International Harvester and reclaimed my job that fall. It could have been October of '52 and so I just had to admit that I didn't -- I want something more, little more something interesting to do than walking the beat, just check out, punching a check out clock. So I keep that for about three months. We were all civilians but we wore Army uniforms with no -- no brass on or anything, but we had a badge, sort of a badge.

Timothy Sanders:

How did you end up in West Lafayette?

Dallas Dinger:

Well, first I went to school, attend, got journalism degree in Indiana and, well, I want to say first, though, that when I went to Harvester to resume work in the fall of '52, doctor physical says how much disability do you get? He saw my neck.

Timothy Sanders:

Oh, okay sure.

Dallas Dinger:

And oh, I said, I'm not drawing any. He said, come on, anybody with a wound like that is bound to be drawing some disability. I says no, I said let me tell you that I had to go back for six weeks after my recovery and served all my time to get all my point to get home. He says I'm going to be -- we are going to be sure of that. And they put me in front of that X-ray and they got me from every angle you could think of. And he said, really, he flipped, he said you got nice looking spine we ever seen. But I didn't tell him was I had been seeing my chiropractor -- also worked at the Harvester, I met him prior to my being inducted and he did some work on me, little chiropractor _____ and that.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

And he had that spine of mine real in good shape and I went to see him again after I got home. So I didn't tell the MD that I was seeing this chiropractor _____ _____. Well, okay, so at Harvester, and I worked there until, well, summer of '53 and things were going great, guns and there was a fellow there who had entered the International Guard. I eventually, well, I was already a member of that. I joined that in the fall of '52 to serve out my reserve obligation. This fella, he said that, he said, well, _____ something he didn't have his own seniority. He said no problem, he said I'm not going to re-enroll, I'll be a sophomore and recently give up teaching and be a school teacher. I got a thinking all, I should be a college too, but what could I tell him, I want to study because I had to have something. See, I had journalist aspirations and I even had taken a -- a test, a test by mail, some outfit in New York called the Newspaper Institute of America.

Timothy Sanders:

Okay.

Dallas Dinger:

And because I thought that journalism people went to a trade school, never occurred to me they would go to college to do that. See, that's how little I knew about the college scene. while at the Harvester I'm working and knowing that a layoff was coming, I remembered that there was a fellow from our township out there east of New Haven _____ _____ I thought that he had gone to Indiana University and studied journalism as I remembered. So I went down to the extension center down there at Fort Wayne and I asked the guy do they each journalism at Indiana. He said sure, they work on Indiana daily students _____ _____ application and I filled it out knowing the layoff was coming and this was in August and the next month I was on the campus, Indiana, majoring in journalism.

Timothy Sanders:

That's good.

Dallas Dinger:

Then I came to Perdue because they were looking for a farm boy who had journalism _____ and I came here for years before retirement.

Timothy Sanders:

What school did you work in?

Dallas Dinger:

Agricultural.

Timothy Sanders:

That's great.

Dallas Dinger:

Extension service and experimentation I had publications _____ them publications were a great commodity _____ _____. (continued)

Timothy Sanders:

That's great, sounds like you had a great career.

Dallas Dinger:

Well, it was great and because I still, you know, I still keep my mind occupied on a detail basis, read the newspapers, learn vocabulary all the time.

[CONCLUSION OF INTERVIEW; END OF TAPE]