General Don Pearson
[b. 10/ 7/ 31]
Today is Saturday, September 20th. I am Josh Phillips and I am interviewing General Don Pearson at 9440 Moore Road. Mr. Pearson is a family friend. Mr. Pearson is 73 years old and was born on 10th of October, 1931. Mr. Pearson served in the Korean War. He was the Battalion Motor Officer for the 981st Artillery Battalion.
[001]
JP: Alright, so, your educational background, where were you born, or go to college?
DP: I was born, in—just north of here, no too far out in the country. And my birth certificate actually says I was born in Boone County, but , I was not born in a hospital, I was born at home. So Lebanon is considered my home of record I guess. I grew up in Tipton, went to Tipton High School. Graduated in 1949 from Tipton high school and then went to work with General Motors. I got drafted in 1951 for the Korean War, and on November the 14th, that’s 1951.
JP: Oh, so they had a draft, they drafted everyone?
DP: Yeh, they, we had a draft. I was drafted in 1951; I took basic training at Camp Breckenridge Kentucky, which no longer exists, which is just across the border.
[104]
JP: Oh yeh, I’ve been there.
DP: And then, after basic training I went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for officer candidate school, I got out of Officer Candidate School in 1952 and went to Korea in 1953. I was there when the war ended. After the war ended, I came back and went to Purdue University where I did four years to get a BS degree in medical engineering and, then I did a year’s graduate work, I had run out of money ‘cause I had already had a wife and two kids, and so I went to work for Lakebelt, here in Indianapolis, and I stayed with Lakebelt for thirty five years. I also spent thirty-seven years active in the reserves after that, so I had, I retired from the army in 1988 as major general, and I had two careers. I had a surveying career and a military career, so that had been my background. My education in the army is also quite extensive because in order to get promoted in the army you had to keep moving with your education and, so as I said, I went through OCS, which is field artillery OCS, and then I went through advance individual training, or advanced officer training, and then command joint staff school, then the Army War College, and then the also, another college which is called the National Industrial College, so but its a military school, also, so that’s my total background and education.
JP: Alright, so you said um, it was officer training school, so that, is that everybody can go there or are you selected?
DP: No, you have to be selected to go there, and, I was selected for artillery officer candidate school which was at Forts Hill, Oklahoma. And , that’s , a twenty-two week school, and we learned artillery skills and learned how to be an officer I guess. But , and then we had a little bit of troop duty, what they call troop duty after that then we were deployed to Korea.
JP: ok, um, so, ok, um, so where, you lived all sort of here around Boone County, before and after the war?
DP: well I, like I say I grew up in Tipton which is just North of here, and I, when I got out of school, I still lived in Tipton, and then when I got out of the army, I lived in Lafayette because I was going to school in Purdue,
JP: Alright.
DP: After I graduated from Purdue, I moved to Indianapolis. I was down very close to Ben Davis High School; we lived out in the west side of Indianapolis, and then in 1966 I moved to Zionsville here.
JP: Alright, for the artillery school, no, the field artillery school, is there, what is there a difference, like, is field artillery is that like a general term? Or artillery, is that a specific type?
DP: Well, field artillery are cannons. We had air defense artillery, which back when I was going to school were also guns, but now they are mostly missiles, like the Patriot Missiles. And, the infantry school, the infantry is people who carry the rifles and the artillery, but the artillery is in support of the infantry. There’s armor, which is the tanks, and, there are all the combat service support units, such as quartermasters, engineers,
[JP: engineers?]
DP: Engineers, well engineers are combat, it’s a combat operation, combat engineers particularly, and, so those are the basic branches of the army. And there’s also aviation, course aviation is a big part of the army.
JP: So, I’ve read a book, we had a book my dad was given for his birthday, it has lots of stories in it, but one was on the Korean War. Bu there was one point the Americans in Korea, they launched an attack from the west into just about North Korea. Were you part of that?
DP: No I was not part of that. That was very early in the war, just after it got started, it was a flanking move where they came in around from the rear. And, course then, the American troops were outflanked, they were also, the Chinese came in and trapped the, trapped the, trapped the Americans in there. So it was, kind of a give and go situation. But I was not part of that.
JP: Where about were you?
DP: In Korea?
JP: yeah.
DP: I was all over Korea. I started out in the east coast and ended up in the west coast when we left there. So we moved, quite a bit. I was in the punchbowl, I don’t know if you read anything about the punchbowl. But I was in the punchbowl. I started out on the east coast, we were, were a 155 Artillery Battalion, and I was, started out with Bravo Company, or Baker Company as it was called back then. And that was, just a (student) battery, not a company, but a battery. And , that was a 155 battery had, it had six pieces, six guns. They were howitzers. Now there’s a difference between a howitzer and a gun, a gun shoots a low trajectory, a howitzer shoots a high trajectory.
JP: So like a large mortar?
DP: Well, yeah kind of. But, so we were a howitzer. We were towed, we had tractors that towed us, we were not towed by trucks, but we had tractors. I served, I served as an exec officer there for, oh, I don’t know several months and then I was moved to battalion motor officer, which I had all the battalion vehicles to worry about and keep going.
JP: So you were in charge of all the transportation?
DP: Well, no I was just Battalion Motor Officer, we just kept all the vehicles going. The transportation, you know, there’s transportation like you need fuel and all those kinds of things, but I didn’t have any responsibility for the fuel.
JP: you just kept people going.
DP: Yeh, right. Exactly.
JP: Um,
DP: So then, then after we left, after we left the punchbowl, I mean after we left the east coast, we were in a place called Smoke Valley, and the valley had smoke generators out in front of it all the time because the enemy had the high ground and they could see us.
JP: Oh okay.
DP: So we had to smoke the whole valley so they didn’t know where we were at. And— then we moved from there to the punchbowl. And then we moved from there to Injung, which is on the west coast. And then I wrote ticket back home from that last assignment there.
JP: So, I don’t know, was there a lot of controversy over that war, I mean like, with the Vietnam, lots of people were against that. Was there, was there any people?
DP: I—I don’t think there was a lot of controversy about the Korean War, like there was with Vietnam, but we still, now, today, it rotates units. Back then we did not rotate units, we rotated, used fillers or individuals. Like, I didn’t go to Korea in a unit, I went as an individual, and then I had to fill a space over there. That’s sort of a, not a good way to do it, in some respects because its better to rotate a whole unit, to send a whole unit over there to replace another unit, because you had the camaraderie at the end, the fellowship and all those kinds of things that you need, otherwise you go in and you don’t even know who your with for while until you get acquainted and and, so… Vietnam was the same way, they went as individuals. There were units over there but they just used fillers and replacements.
JP: So if someone got killed or injured they would just send someone out as replacement.
DP: The Vietnam situation was, was not a good situation because I had, I had command out at Fort Harrison, which is no longer at, on the east side of town, but I had a command out there, and it was difficult, because people were totally against the military, I mean not, well yeh, totally against the military in some respects. In matter of fact a lot of times we didn’t wear uniforms, we went in civilian clothes, because of the controversy. Particularly if we were going on campus someplace.
[10:07]
JP: Okay, but none of that happened in Korea?
DP: No, I didn’t have any kind of situation like that in Korea.
DP: In Korea we were fighting under the UN banner. The United Nations, in Vietnam they were not.
JP: It was just America.
DP: It was America, well there were other troops there but it was basically an American War.
JP: It wasn’t a contribution to a united front.
DP: Right, right.
JP: So, did you know many people, I don’t know about, did you answer it already. Battalion’s base record on casualties, did you have many?
DP: Yeh, we had casualties, and you know, particularly when we were in Smoke Valley, I told you, if those generators ran out of fuel and they couldn’t, they didn’t, we would get counter battery coming in.
JP: Did you know, many people who died, like friends?
DP: I had some who were wounded, I don’t, did not have any that were actually killed. We did have people that were, that I know were killed.
JP: But you weren’t really acquainted with them?
DP: No, they were just in the units, and , they were someplace in the battalion for example. But we did have people in our own battery that were injured, yes, and from counter artillery and mortar fire.
JP: Did you ever, was there a situation when enemy infantry would be coming, would be like really close?
DP: Well, the worst part that we had, was, we were never over run by the infantry coming in, but Sigmon Rhee, who was President of Korea then, released a bunch of prisoners to our back. They had them in prison and they released those prisoners on our backside so, they were filtering through. We had, like I said, in a battery we had, we had 6 pieces, 6, what we call a howitzer piece, and it’s not a gun, it’s a piece. But anyway, we had 6 pieces and one time we had three laid forwards and three laid backwards so we could fire even, 180 degrees apart.
JP: That’s clever. Ok um, how many people did, you have, per a howitzer, like crew wise?
DP: Oh, howitzer crew.
JP: Yeh
DP: Well we had um, probably a fifteen man crew maybe.
JP: Oh, quite a lot.
DP: But there were other people that had to man the howitzers because you couldn’t have a crew on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
JP: So you had other people sort of.
DP: We had other people, that , like cooks and things that were qualified, could also man the tubes.
JP: Were you ever worried that your side, the UN might lose, the battle at any time? Were you ever sot of worried about that?
DP: Well I don’t know that the UN actually won, they,
JP: Well…
DP: There was an armistice signed and, there’s it’s still never been, its still currently today the war has never been finalized in Korea. As far as I know, there was just a, just a signature ceasefire, and there’s never been an armistice or anything else. So, actually, the UN was there, but, most of the fighting, was, were actually, well I can’t say most of it, but , all the people in command were American people.
JP: Um hmm.
DP: I know the Princes Pats were there cause they came home with me on the ship coming home. The Princes Pats was your Canadian unit, came home with me so, so they were. The church were there,
JP: Oh, ok. Yeh, I know there were lots of countries that sent troops over there.
DP: Yeh they were there, but in much smaller numbers than U.S. forces were.
JP: So that then, I dot know what it would be, they wouldn’t send the whole army, would they only send like battalions?
DP: Well, they would send battalions usually, but we would have divisions over there we had, you know we had, I was in the 40th division, which was the Californian National Guard, who had activated. But all the National Guardsmen were gone, so we, we were all active duty people. And there was a 25th Division, there was a 2nd Division, , the 45th Division, which was the Oklahoma National Guard, but it had been called to active duty so, so there were several divisions that were over there at the time.
JP: What age, what age were you during the war? Like, how old were you?
DP: I was about, let’s see I was over there in 52, I was born in 30, I was 21.
JP: Alright, okay. And then, about how long was the war? I can’t remember.
DP: The war, how long did it last?
JP: Yeh
[15:01]
DP: Oh, it started in—it ended in ‘53, and it started probably, early 50, I’m not exactly sure what the start date was.
JP: Alright, you were 21 when it started?
DP: Yeh, I was 21, years old.
JP: Alright. Um, what was your most memorable experience?
DP: Oh, coming home, [laughter]. No, we had, you know, when you’re in the military like that, you have bad times, and you have bad times. But you never remember the bad times, you only remember the good times. And , oh I don’t know, we had some funny things happen, they were, um humorous, today I still have the jokes from the Army Times, that were published when I was over there, and , I get them out and I chuckle or laugh at them once in a while. About some of the jokes. But my wife, she don’t see anything funny about them because she, she wasn’t there, so the humor just isn’t there for her. But , oh I don’t know, um, some of the most memorable times, like I say coming home was the best, because I had a calendar that I kept marking off everyday when it was down to the close points. But , getting orders to come home was the most memorable time. But there were other fun times, I mean, when we get together with classmates from OCS or something like that and we would just get together and have a party someplace or something.
JP: Who was there any single person who you remember most from the war?
DP: Oh, well I remember my battalion commander, he was , well I thought he was something special. Then, , my battery commander was, he was kind of a special guy too, so they were , they were people I remember, they were people I no longer associate with but people who were in my OCS class, they were over there, they were in different units than I was, so I would go from, visit them and , but I would say that probably, my battery commander was probably one of the best people that I can remember.
JP: Did you have any social opportunities, I mean like so you weren’t on, when you were over there did you have, did you ever rotate out, or have time with other divisions, time when you weren’t fighting? Or were you on the front the whole time?
DP: Well the artillery are never on the front but when ah we ah but whenever we moved somebody had to replace us and we were replacing somebody else. And probably one of the most interesting experiences that I had was as battalion motor officer and we were moving and I had to keep the vehicles running and we came to a major interception that our division had to go through. What we call the ROK division we called the Korean’s ROK’s, Republic of Korea, ROK’s—okay? A ROK division was going through and another American was coming through. And the Korean’s timing meant nothing to them they, timetable meant nothing to them so they didn’t get there at the right time, they had the whole intersection blocked so we had divisions. Oh. Just on the road just waiting to get through. So it was kind of a mess.
JP: So it’s like, what a transportation officer is it like the sort of thing you had to deal with when traffic was bad.
DP: Well it turns out that the 40th division—military police office was the one who had to get the whole thing straightened around. Because he had to get in there and say okay, these units go on, these units stop and but it was a just a mess trying to get through that one intersection. And so the forest Division M.P was the guy that got it all straightened around. Course there was a couple of generals out there yelling and screaming too!
JP: Imagine that! Um, do you have a most humorous experience from the war, humorous experience?
[19:48]
DP: Oh, humorous? Oh yeah. That situation, that intersection, it was very funny because a lot of bad words were floated around. A lot of yelling and screaming. Another situation was when we were on the front of the Punch Bowl. I was on the OP on the front of the Punch Bowl at the time, observation post. And, there was a strip of land to get to the OP that you had to cross. And the enemy could see you. And they called it the mad mile because they went as fast as they could to get to that hot hole where the enemy could see you. And it was very humorous to see people come scrambling through there as fast as they could so they wouldn’t be taking rounds in them, so, you know there was just lots of other situations were there eh. Well I tell you one thing I was in the Punch Bowl, see we were moved to the Punch Bowl— to build, see we were going to move into there and we wanted to build the gun pits and everything. And what we did we cut trees down, and we would put trees in and we would pile dirt up around it to make the gun pit. And the gunner would sit in the middle. And on each side,
JP: --Would be protected from gun fire.
DP: Yeah, be protected from fire but on one side, see the 155 is a separate round. You got the bullet which you ram in. Then you put the powder in behind it. It’s not a casing, it doesn’t have a shell casing like the 115 did and so on each side you had the rounds sitting over there and a shit load of powder over there cause you didn’t want those two to ever get together. Cause if you did you would have a problem! And so we had to build the pits over here on this side well, I was in what we call a preamble tent and we had a big squad tent and I was in there by myself. And one night they moved a Quad 50 up behind me. Now a Quad 50 was an old World War II vehicle. It had 4 50. caliber machine guns.
JP: Anti-air craft gun sort of?
DP: Well, yeh, it was basically an anti aircraft gun in World War II, however Korea they used it for what they called harassment and interdiction fire. And what they did with it was, they put just regular tape, like medical tape on the elevating mechanism and that would give you an elevation and on the return they put tape down here that would give you deflection. So that’s how artillery works, it fires an azimuth which is deflection and an elevation which gives you the law (?) They would use this Quad 50 for harassment and interdiction fire. And so I did not know that the 50 caliber, that they had moved it up there. And in the middle of the night one night they started firing cause they usually fired it as harassment and interdiction fire at night to prevent people from crossing like. And as a result of that I came out of the tent with a pistol in one hand and a carbine in the other. Cause I thought we were being attacked. Just simply our own forces firing overhead. And another situation that, they moved an 8inch howitzer right behind me one night when they didn’t tell me that they had moved it up there. An 8-inch howitzer is or was the most accurate artillery weapon we had at the time. And it’s a big one. I mean the diameter is 8inch’s, so. I did not know they had moved it up there and they fired that over my head one night and I thought it was a freight train coming through the sky. When that went off I didn’t know if I was coming or going. So it was kind of. The first time we ever took, when I was in the battery, the first time we ever took fire, I had just been there a day or two and the smoke generators went out. And so they started firing and I was out behind, the battery commander said, you know, we had an exec. officer and two assistant exec officers. And so each one of us took 2 guns, or 2 pieces and so I was behind a piece and I turned around. I didn’t know whether it was coming or going. And so I dove underneath the track which is the big tracking vehicle and the battery Commander pulls me out and says when you can here them it’s already too late. So it was an out going rattle! See that’s another humorous story, see I was in Browbale Battery, it was Baker Battery back then before they changed it to the frenetic alphabet. And I was in Baker Battery and Alpha Battery was behind us and they were smart alec’s. I told you that the 155 is a separate piece and a separate round, you got to put a fuse in the end of it.
JP: Okay.
DP: And tightened it up. And you put a fuse in it and set it up for impact or air burst or whatever, well the fuses come in cans and what they would do id they would take those fuse cans and they would pour coals in them with bayonet. And they would put them over the rounds or the end of the rounds and fire the round and they would whistle like the devil. And again you didn’t know if they were coming out or going in!
JP: So quite a bit of humor.
DP: Oh yeah, quite a bit of humor. And an interesting story that most people don’t realize. Whenever you ram a round into a 155 you got to ram it, it takes about 5or 6 guys to get on one of them big old rammers. They have a tray, they put their round on a try a and then they ram it in. To seat the brass ring against the grooves. The rifle rings have them too and that seals it so when you put the powder in and then when you put the firing mechanism in the back that seals it and as a result it pushes the round out. Well once you, we were firing one night a lot of rounds, we really shot a lot of rounds. And so they, they ordered a new azimuth and new elevation . So when they give you a new azimuth and elevation, when they give you elevation that tells you the ramp, put it in and load it. And so all of a sudden, I was in the FDC at the time, and they said cease firing and ammunition. Well when they cease, the tubes are already loaded and they are hot, so you always fire. Now you never ram them out, well they gives us the order to ram them out, so that means you got to go round the front of the piece, you got to take the powder rack, you got to take the every thing out. And you ram them out from the top. The bell rammer is a piece of brass and so what happened is on one of the pieces, we rammed it and the bell rammer evidently split. And locked over the round and you couldn’t get the round out either way. We tried, we pulled a piece out of a gun pit. We found a tractor and tried to push it out with a tractor. Broke the rammer staff so we had to get the rammer staff out. So after about 3 days, um, we, I, finally got approval to fire the round, but by then the rammer staff had been broken. It was down in there and we fired the rammer staff and every thing out at maximum elevation so it would go the furthest you know. I suspect the Chinese are still wondering what kind of artillery piece that was! So there were all kind of fun things that happened but eh.
JP: What sort of things did your unit do to occupy yourself when you weren’t firing?
DP: Oh you know we played cards. And we had, we could play basketball. Well I mean we played softball. We lived in bunkers and eh, because you know. In artillery getting what they call counter battery because they, they can run a back azimuth on a round when it goes in the ground it splices you can tell, what direction, you can get an azimuth on it.
JP: Oh that’s cool.
DP: And eventually if you get enough azimuth you can try to blend in. At that point you know enough math you can pin point where that artillery piece is from. And so we lived in bunkers, and you know during the daytime we still had maintenance to perform and every thing like that. But an evening we had USA shows. I saw Marilyn Monroe, she was over there. Almost got run over by a Bulldog Tank. Because I was up taking pictures and she, and all the troops fell in behind me. And they bought her in a tank and the troops weren’t breaking away and I wasn’t sure I was going to get out of there. But you know we saw Marilyn Monroe and we saw USO shows come in. We actually had USO come, would come right into the battery, arranged the battalion, and spend the day with us in the battalion, and maybe an evening in the battalion, and , one time USO show came in and the battalion commander said he wanted bridge partners and he and I played bridge with some of the USO people, and , and the other thing, we weren’t restricted. I mean we could travel; we could go visit friends in other units and things like that. And, believe it or not, I had—I was battalion motor officer so I found an old tank and I had, I had welding equipment so I cut the belly out of the tank, it was destroyed, and we made a h a grill out of it and we charcoaled steaks and things like that on the belly of a tank, and old destroyed tank. So, and the other thing is— I wont say I stole, but I traded a bottle of scotch for a jeep engine and a generator. And then we hooked the generator to the set of pulleys, to the jeep engine and then we could, we could run movies ‘cause it was, that were rated X. so we could get movies and I can run and play movies, see movies and so I wasn’t supposed to have the jeep engine or the generator but look what we got ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
[30:16]
JP: So there was sort of, lots of like—sort of not like a black market but sort of like, trading?
DP: Yeh, well, yeh I mean we didn’t have a shower, I mean they had what they call shower units, and they could be—
JP: --miles away.
DP: Well, they could be several miles away. And they always had to be next to a stream because they would take the water from the stream. And, and then pills to purify it. And then, and then they would have, they would have h, engines that would generate heat and , you could take a shower but you had to go to the shower to do it. We , we had we moved into one place in Korea, and , there was this small stream running out of the mountains ‘cause Korea is very mountainous.
JP: Yeh.
DP: And, so we were able to get a bunch of engineer stakes so, you know what an engineer stake is? It’s a metal fence post but its kind of shaped like a U. and so what we did is we welded those together and then we run that water all the way out of the mountaintop
JP: Umm hmm.
DP: Down to the battery area. And then I took, about 4:5 55 gallon drums. Welded them together, and let the water run into the 55 gallon drums, welded them end to end. And, then we put the powder canister, the big powder canisters for the 155’s, we made a T on the bottom, and then we just put little spigots like you use to, on the when you drain the engine, water out of your engine on the car. You got to drain the block, there’s little spigots there, and we put a bunch of those spigots in there, and then we put the emersion heaters down in there to heat the water, and that’s how, we had our own shower that way [laughter].
JP: [Laughter] so you [laughter], you sort of had lots of, made lots of—
DP: Well, there’s—the American soldier will find comfort; he will find a way to be comfortable one way or the other. And so, [laughter] instead of having to go miles to a shower, we built our own shower. [Laughter]. That water coming out of the mountains was pretty cold, so it took about all day long to get warmed up but we had warm, a warm shower of our own.
JP: And so um, the winters were quite bad, in North Korea. Did you, were you in there?
DP: Yeh, the winters were bad, and the summers were quite warm too, that’s what most people don’t realize. You know, they are about the same, about the same parallel as we are.
JP: Yeh, so the winters are probably pretty bad.
DP: But and— but the rain.
JP: It rained a lot?
DP: Yeh, it rained a lot, of course its mountains and the roads were a disaster, they were muddy and you were slipping and sliding around on those roads all the time.
JP: Did you ask if you every got, well you had tractors not trucks so, well
DP: Yeh, we had trucks though. But yeh, we had tractors, just to tow the howitzers. All the rest of the stuff that we moved, like the ammunition and everything, was moved by trucks.
JP: All right, but was that just for your division or as that sort of, a few artillery units could… use that ammunition.
DP: Well we were, the, our, the 155’s were the only ones that were tractor born. The 105’s, which is the direct support unit for the division, they, they were truck towed.
JP: Okay.
DP: And of course, there were some vehicles that were self propelled, which, these are, these are vehicles that have there own track lane. The gun is mounted right on a track lane vehicle. Our tracks were separate. I mean the guns were spuk trails. And the tractor was just like a—it was a separate vehicle. But there are self propelled artillery pieces.
JP: Okay.
DP: If you go up to Lebanon and see the armory up there they’ve got, they’ve got an 8-in gun up there. On display, and it’s a self-propelled gun.
JP: Did you um, with all the mud and everything, did you guys, did you ever get stuck?
DP: What do you mean?
JP: Did you ever get stuck in the mud?
DP: Oh yeh, lots [laughter].
JP: Even with the tractors?
DP: Oh well, not the tractors. We used the tractors usually to, we would have to use the tractors to pull them out. We also had a bulldozer, for digging gun pits and things, so we could use the bulldozer to pull them out with. But we had, we always had a spare tractor. Incase one of them would break down. You couldn’t leave a gun, I mean you had to move a gun. So, and we cold also move a gun with a truck if we had too, but , but , we had a spare tractor so we could always use a tractor to pull people out. I, we actually ran them over the mountain cliffs too. I mean, they just slide off. I lost a howitzer that way one time, it just slid off and went off the mountain and it took us, quite a while to get it up. And we had a wrecker. We had great big wreckers too, cause we had to have wreckers because of the tractors and things so. It turn out they’re not quite as small as some of the tracks [laughter]. They had two engines in them, they were twin wockashaw engines and they were called MI15 track lane vehicles. But they had two diesel engines in them.
[35:12]
JP: So wait, did you, when you came back, did you, was it on a boat, like a big transport boat?
DP: Yes, yeh
JP: Alright.
DP: I came back, they flew me over. They flew me over. I was telling some friends yesterday that I have been to Japan about five times. The first time I went, they took us too Japan, and then they took us from Japan to Korea by boat.
JP: There was a—wasn’t there a station of US marines, or just a US army base over in Japan?
DP: Yeh, in Japan.
JP: It’s where the first troops cam from.
DP: It took me three days to get Japan the first time. We were flying Super Con EG, which is a 4 engine piston jet. We stopped in Hawaii, we stopped in Wake Island, then we flew in to Tokyo. The last time, the next time I flew to Japan it took me twenty two hours from, from Seattle, but that was in Svae Moth [?]. And then the last time I flew to Japan it took me thirteen hours from Chicago. [Laughter] to fly.
JP: [Laughter] yeh, that’s where I flew to Japan from, it was long.
DP: Yeh, so it takes, it takes progress. [Laughter] but then they, they see the reason they wanted, they the reason took us, they flew us over, and artillery officers were needed for forward observers. When you direct an artillery round, what you do is you register first, you have a forward observer up that can see the round, sometimes even in airplanes, and you can see the round, and when you see it you just mur—and they tell you too
JP: Right, left.
DP: Right left, or add, subtract. And so, they needed forward observers and so they were flying all the 2nd lieutenant artillery officers over there, well they weren’t so anxious to get us back, they put us on a ship to send us back home. And I came in through Seattle, on a ship, and it was one of the old troop carriers, and ‘course, you understand the great arcs, the closest distance on the globe is,
JP: Yeh, yeh
DP: Is not necessarily, it’s an arc yeh, and so we had to, when coming back we had to come up pretty close to Alaska to come into Seattle, and we hit a terrible storm, we were out for several days beyond what we though we would be out. And we had no fresh water for showers, you know what I mean. We had fresh water for was to, cook an drink yeh, and do those kinds of things. So, we ran out of fresh water for showers and we had to shower in salt-water [laughter]. And , and that’s when I said the Princes Pats came back with us, they were on the shame ship we were coming back. We came into Seattle so they
JP: It wasn’t that far?
DP: It wasn’t too far for them and where they had to go from there. The Princes Pats were actually stationed there, but that’s been a long time ago.
JP: Then, so, after the war you came back, and you, married?
DP: Well I was married.
JP: Oh, you were married before.
DP: I was married before, yeh. I came back and then. I enrolled in Purdue.
JP: Oh yeh.
DP: Well I actually enrolled in Purdue while I was in Korea, so . When I came back I already had a job, I went back to work with General Motors that summer, then I started Purdue in August of a.
JP: So were you able to communicate back and forth, was that, what was the communication like when you were out in Korea?
DP: Oh it was just, snail mail [laughter]. We didn’t have, we didn’t have internet or anything like that, of course,
JP: Did you have telephone lines?
DP: No, well we did, I mean there were lines, but , but, in the army, out in the field in the combat zone those wires were just lain across the ground or hooked up into some trees or something and , they are not very reliable. You could, if your lucky call home, and the only time I was able to call home was when I was in Japan, on R&R,
JP: Yeh.
DP: And I called my wife while I was there. And even back then you had to do that in advance, you had to make arrangements in advance. You would say I am going to call on such a such a time, on such a such a date and then they would have it all set up for you so you could call. So ,
JP: Okay.
DP: But that’s, like in Vietnam most of the communications were done by VCR’s. I mean, families would communicate with the, the husband would have a VCR and the wife would and they would, they would switch tapes back and forth and things like that. And then the tape recorder too, became more popular. But we didn’t have that kind of stuff in—
JP: --Korea.
DP: Korea, yeh, right.
JP: Then, so you said in R&R you would go back to Japan. How long would that
DP: It was, I think I was there about a week. I went on R&R twice, I had one when I was down in , down in the southern part of Japan, and the next one I was in Tokyo. So I spent 2 R&R’s in Japan.
JP: How long was the trip back and forth?
DP: Oh it was probably, we paid flew less because, so it was probably, oh couple hours, maybe 3 hours, I don’t remember now. But we flew in the great big old globe masters, which were those C130’s, not C130’s. But they were the big airplane that mathematically wouldn’t fly, they were like the bumblebee [laughter]. Another interesting story, I got on the airplane and they said “here”, they threw me a parachute and said strap this on. I said, “I’m not about to jump out this airplane”. And the pilot said, he was a lieutenant colonel, he said, “Lieutenant”, he said, “Ill jump, and I’m last” [laughter]. You said you’d jump right? [Laughter]
JP: um, what was the health care there, was there fitness issues. Did you find that the health was okay?
DP: I think that the military health care was good, but the civilian health care for the Koreans was not a lot. But we had doctors at the time and we had our own H station. Of course the hospitals were there. I went to, while I was there, as I told you I was a type motor officer eh, we had, our battalion through a little caution on my part were the first ones to get new vehicles. We were still using World War II vehicles that were there. And we got what was called the new insert vehicles. Well what we did with the old World War II vehicles we would take them back to Soul and give them to the Koreans. And so I had to call a convoy of vehicles back to Soul one time to give to the Koreans. It was quite a drive and overnight, we overnighted at a nice hospital. And you saw nice T.V and all that. And you know those crazy doctors in those nice doctors over there were just about as crazy as the crazy doctors on T.V! Yeah I mean. You know the military doctor does a fantastic job. They’ve got nothing to work with. And he’s in a tent or of course they’ve got blow up medical units now and things like that. But they’re working off, they’ve don’t have electric lights. I mean they have a generator they can run and it could go out. But they are fantastic doctors. And so many medical procedures come out of war zones. And not only American I’m sure the Brits and every body I the same situation. Because they are doing miraculous surgery’s and the most adverse conditions. Well when those guys get out of an operating room after having some tough surgery, they party! Ha ha! And those guys really did party. Just like the, what was the guy in Mash on television? You know they were always mixing their Martini’s and things, well these guys kind of did the same thing. It was because that was their one way to relax and enjoy themselves. Well just relax I guess because I mean they bought them in helicopters and every thing else. Just it was how you get them there, and , and , they cant say lets send him on because he may be in such a condition that you just cant send him on, you must do something right there and now. And so, that’s why they are like they are [laughter] I guess. A lot of fantastic guys come out of the military.
JP: and then, so you said you had your aid station with you… battalion.
DP: yeh, we had an aid station at battalion headquarters, and of course we had an aids man at everyone of the batteries. I mean, the batteries had there own aid people but , so yeh. But yeh, you asked you know, we took rounds one night in the battery area when we were in Smoke Valley. And the bunkers that the people slept in were made of logs, you know the frames were logs and then we put sandbags over them, around them. And then on top of the roof we put tarps and then put sandbags on top of the tarps. The tarps would keep it from leaking water, and the sandbags would keep the rounds out. Well, one night our supply sergeant, they took a round directly on his bunker and it drove one of those logs straight, right through his ribs. And, we got him out and to an aid station and as far as I know he survived. But ,
[45:05]
JP: was that the sort of worst injury sort of…
DP: beg pardon
JP: was that the, one of the worst injuries you had?
DP: yeh, it was one of our injuries certainly, in our battery, but , Hen, you know, he took a direct hit on the bunker, so , and we don’t know what kind of round it was I mean, it was big enough to have, it blew one of those logs out. And
JP: umm hmm
DP: and , but there’s, it was a, you know, I, we had to relay the battery a lot. Because we fired what you called harassment and interdiction fires, and what you do, is say when you lay the battery you change the azimuth of all the guns and you and you, they all got to be changed until you,
JP: so you switched the guns.
DP: yeh, just switch the direction of fire.
JP: would that make it harder for them to triangulate the distance?
DP: no, we what we call public, we were firing harassment and interdiction fire, we were just trying to annoy the enemy you know, and our aiming circle was on top of the mess hall, our mess bunker, the mess hall was a bunker. And we would have to go up there to the aiming circle’s what you use as a kind of like a transit.
JP: OK
DP: and , but instead of in degrees it’s in Mils, and all those kind of things, but , but you’d lay, what you’d do is you could, a sight on the gun has a light on it, and the aiming circle has a light on it, and so you’d get those two on the same azimuth. And then the battery would be laid, and then they had, when they fired the guns they take the azimuth of aiming stakes, there’s aiming stakes put out here, two, one here and one here. And they line those, the aiming stakes have lights on them too.
JP: oh, ok
DP: so, the people, the sight, the sights in on that and then all the tubes are laid in the same direction,
JP: alright.
DP: and they all fire at the same time, well what you do when you direct fire you use the center battery, which is the two guns that are center, and you fire rounds out there until your ready to fire for affect, and what you do is you split fifty yards on range, once you get the azimuth and then you fire one over and you fire one short and you split 50 yards and fire for effect. Well then you fire all six guns,
JP: ok
DP: to barrage the target if you would. And then you could, you could fire, like in a division, we had 3 105 battalions and one 155 battalion. And the 155 is general support, so we could mass fire all, see each one of them would have, each battalion would have 18 guns so we could, and there’s three battalions, so well threes actually four battalions so we could fire.
JP: that’s a lot
DP: well that’s a lot of artillery and if you wanted to you could mass the whole core. I mean you could mass every piece of artillery in the country to fire on the same target, well fire a barrage, it wouldn’t be the same target.
JP: yeh. Um, how, what was the reload/ fire time for each gun, like how many rounds could you fire? Like per a minute.
DP: oh, I don’t remember how many rounds that they could fire, they, a gun crew gets very good, and once they are fired, I mean once they get the round all fired, you know, they just reload and fire again. I’d say, two or three minutes. I mean they have to swab the powder out of the breech and then they can just ram another round and cut the charge, you know. I don’t know if you can fire charge nine, or charge one. And what they do is the bags, there are bags of powder in there and you just, you just cut the strap and you know, you had less powder. And then, you put the fuse on the end, and most of them are already fused, its just a matter of, you got some that area already fused, it’s just a matter of setting the fuse. Whether it’s for impact or for overhead fire. You could set a fuse to fire for proximity, above the ground or you can fire on impact. Yeh. So it probably takes 3 or 4 minutes to, and like I said it depends on the proficiency of the crew, the record crew is one thing, but then like I told you we had cooks that could also fire and when your firing 24 hours around the clock you need extra cooks, or extra men to fire.
JP: so the cooks would come out and fire?
DP: yeh
JP: would you have someone else who was a cook?
DP: well, it wasn’t that often that we had to do that, but sometimes we did have to do that. Particularly the last day of the war, we burned up some tubes. And , the traversing mechanism on one piece, we fired so many rounds, had fired so many rounds through it, that the traversing mechanism, that was probably brass, and it just wore out and so, it one, when a round went out it spins right handed, and so it shoves the tube one way. So it just beat those traversing mechanisms. Another funny story, we were, after the war ended we had a dignitary over there, and actually he was a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who came by, and we were going to fire a demonstration round for him. And , they said fire, and , its behind him. And as that tube I told you that we didn’t know that piece was, traversing mechanism was all fouled up. And it was fouled up so bad that instead of firing the round up this way it fired over here. [laughter]a and we had to cease fire intermission very quickly on that [laughter].
JP: Probably gave him a bit of a shock. Um, so, you said, and then you came back and then you, did you choose an occupation and you kept doing military stuff.
DP: Well, I stayed in the reserve when I came back and , I retired from the, from the military in 1988, so I went in 1951 so I had 37 years.
JP: Wow, so you were in reserve?
DP: Yeh, my last assignment was at the Pentagon and General Schwarzkopf had a glass with us.
JP: Okay, and then—
DP: But in between time I had command out at Fort Harrison and I had a lot of other commands in between—all around Indianapolis and Fort Harrison. So—
JP: Then, so you just kept doing the education, you said moving up.
DP: yeah, well you need, well in the military you have to have to maintain your education or your not promotable. And same with the enlisted troops, I mean if you don’t go through NCAIOC, which is operational officer courses and so on and so forth, you can’t get promoted. And the officers are the same way, you got to go through what they call the basic officer course and then the advanced officer course. And then they have the specialist training and in between times and commander staff college, which is at Fort Leavenworth, Missouri. And the Army War College, which is at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And the, I can’t remember the name of it now but the National Industrial College and of course all the military engineers, the Air Force has there own war college and the Navy has it’s own war college and so on so. And of course the Marines are part of the Navy.
JP: Yeah I wasn’t really sure.
DP: The Marines are part of the Navy. The Coast Guard, they’re a separate force as well. But I still know, already know that on December 6th we will be meeting, when we meet at Purdue. For the next class of people from Congressman Boyer’s District which is the 4th District in Indiana. To, what we do is we have probably 20-25 people that we will interview for the for the different categories and we will select, the most we can select is for sure, is 5. That’s all the Congressman can have at any one cabinet at a time. But there could be a situation where, like, Senator Lugar does not get his 5. And so he could give Congressman Boyer one of his people. So we will interview and, and, pick more than 5 for the different academy but we will prioritize as to which ones were number 1 and so on and so forth. And then we will pass that information onto the congressman and the congressman will review it and pass it on to each of the academies. Because we select them as being viable candidates does not mean that the academy will accept them. They have to, the academy will also, um, have to, well most of the people will go to the academy for a visit. And , there are people that sometimes they come to us they have already been approved by the academy because they are good athletes and , so if they have an athletic ability or something the academy will say yeh, but just because you’re a good athlete does not mean they can go, they have to get an appointment. Somebody has to, one of the congressman, or the president, or the vice president has to have given an appointment otherwise, no matter how good they are with athletics they cannot got dishonestly. The only person who can go is the congressional medal of honor. The son, or son of a daughter child of a congressional medal of honor would have an automatic right.
JP: Okay.
DP: If their grades were good enough and if the grades weren’t good enough, you know, they probably won’t make it any way. Between the rigors and the abuse that you get. Abuse is the wrong word to use. But the pressure is put on you by the classman and the study required is pretty tight. Gets to you after a—
[55:04]
JP: And what was your rank now?
DP: I retired as a two-star General.
JP: Two Star general, right. And the star’s go up to what? Is it 4 or…?
DP: It stops at 4. Except at war time when there is a 5.There are no Reservists that, there is only one Reservist that ever gets the 3 Star. And that’s the Chief Market Reserve. Or the Chief Naval Reserve of whatever.
JP: One last question, um. Were there like, Unions sort of during the war?
DP: Unions?
JP: Yeah, like work Unions sort of during the war.
DP: Well, no. I mean a lot of us get together now for reunions now after we are back. But , for example I was installed in a hall of Fame at Fort Wayne, Oklahoma for OCS because of my accomplishments. And they have a reunion every year down there. I didn’t get to it this year cause my wife had a trip to San Antonio and I couldn’t be in two places at once. So, but a lot of people get together. Are you aware of the honor flight for World War II veterans? Well we have, what they call Boone County Honor Flight and there are others as well. There is the National Honor Flight. What they do is they send World War II veterans to Washington DC to see the Memorial.
JP: Okay.
DP: So we have sent two different bunches from Zionsville. And, well from Boone county not just Zionsville. But they always leave from Zionsville and eh. So we sent two different groups which we chartered an airplane and eh they don’t have to pay for anything. They get to go, it’s all paid for. Through donations and they spend a day. They leave bright and early in the morning and then they pick them up at the airport. And bus them to eh, bus them to eh, well they see the Vietnam memorial, they see the Korean Memorial they see the World War II memorial they see Arlington Cemetery the Iwo Jima memorial and, so they, we take them , we take them , there’s another trip scheduled for November this year. It would interesting if you came and saw them off, they leave early in the morning but , but
JP: Last year we took a trip up to Washington D.C. we saw, maybe not all the memorials but a lot of memorials. The Vietnam, the Iwo Jima, we saw lots.
DP: What I usually do is I, we’re going to Washington in October, the last of October, and what I usually do is I take a taxi and I get off at the Vietnam Memorial. And then I walk around and I walk to the Lincoln Memorial.
JP: Yeh, yeh.
DP: I walk down to the Korean Memorial and then walk the length of the reflecting pool to the WWII memorial.
JP: Yeh, those are actually really cool because remember when…. [can’t hear].
DP: And, so I, you know I like going to Washington, but I wouldn’t want to live there, ha-ha-ha, and there are so many interesting things to see there. A lot of them I don’t think they let you see anymore, I don’t think they let you see the, I don’t think they let you into the FBI building anymore. I, the last time I was there I went to the FBI building but I’ve heard they’ve since closed it. So—
JP: Okay, well thank you very for having an interview.
DP: Okay.
JP: Thanks.
DP: It was nice to meet you Josh.
JP: Thanks, nice to meet you, too.
DP: And any, and any time that you, listen, you have my telephone number.
JP: Yeh.
DP: Alright, so, I’ll be more than [can’t hear]. I was written up, oh a year or so ago in the Zionsville times I don’t remember, if you, I don’t know if I have copies or not, [laughter] you don’t, you probably don’t read it do you, but yeh, they wrote me up on for several.
JP: Alright, thank you.
[58:57]
