Ronald Earl Wagner
[b. 02/06/36]
[00:00:00]
“Today is September 27, 2008. I am Phillip Cox and I am interviewing Ron Wagner at his home in Brownsburg [Indiana].”
[00:00:10]
Phillip Cox: Mr. Wagner, what year were you born?
Ron Wagner: 1936
PC: He was born on 1936 and served in the Korean War as an army engineer and he was a specialist fourth class. All right, so you enlist, what year did you enlist?
RW: I enlisted February 13th, 1959.
PC: Where were you living at that time when you enlisted?
RW: Chicago, Illinois.
PC: Is that where you were born?
RW: No.
PC: So what were you doing there?
RW: I was born in a little town - Sandburn, Indiana.
PC: So how did you move to Chicago?
RW: Well, lets see, I graduated out of high school in a little town in Linton, Indiana. From there I got a job in Shelbyville, Indiana and from there I got a job in Chicago selling shoes.
PC: All right.
RW: And didn’t really like that as much so I decided to join the army and I did it in Chicago.
PC: Okayay, how old were you?
RW: At the time?
PC: Yes.
RW: Eighteen.
PC: Okay so what did you just do this on your own did you talk with you parents about it?
RW: Talked with my brother.
PC: So what were their advice to you?
RW: My parents knew nothing about it and the reason I decided to join the Army because my brother was in the army.
PC: All right, well, that was another question I had so that’s good. So your brother was in it. Did you know anyone else in the military at that time?
RW: Not at that time no, no.
PC: Okay, so why did you pick the service branch you joined?
RW: That’s a good question. Well, I knew it was something I had to do eventually, so I wanted to do and get it over with and I joined. It was a three year term that I joined, so just something I wanted to do.
PC: Okay, so tell me about the process about actually joining. Do you recall your first, well, first of all, where did you go to join and enlist?
RW: Well as I said, I joined in Chicago and of course that’s where I was inducted and then once I was inducted, I went to the service which was probably about a three, two to three week time before they got everything processed and I went in from right there.
PC: Okay so your parents, how did your parents feel that you had joined?
RW: I just called them on the phone and told them.
PC: So were they happy or did they?
RW: Well, they were a little apprehensive, but I just explained to them it was something I just wanted to do and, of course, my brother was already in so it was something they weren’t expecting because they, you know, he was in already so.
[00:03:32]
PC: Okay, so tell me in detail about your training experience or about the boot camp you went to.
RW: Okay.
PC: So after you enlisted what happened?
RW: Well, I-my first assignment was Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for my basic training. Lot of my time spent in Fort Leonard Wood was learning how to be a soldier. They taught you how to stand correctly, stand up straight, taught you how to – let’s see, I got something from down here. Taught you how to disengage a military weapon, taught you how to shoot the weapon. A lot of my time was spent going to the rifle range and what else? Polished a lot of boots, peeled a lot of potatoes, and lot of it was you know just teaching you how to respect your elders, your military combatants, you know, your sergeant, and you know, when they told you something they expected you to adhere quickly, but that was basically what they taught you. There was-you did some school room learning, but most of it was getting up early in the morning, standing attention, roll call, this type of thing but-
PC: Was there anything especially hard to do or?
RW: Well at my age at eighteen, everything was kind of hard because it was different. Exercising-you exercised everyday, you know, it was a constant routine, you know, you did something incorrect they’d say, “Get down and give me twenty pushups,” or something like that. I don’t know if they still do that or not but it was very, very regimental and but it was good.
PC: It was good?
RW: Yeah, it was good.
[00:06:42]
PC: So how long did you stay there?
RW: Well now Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri-you have your basic training, which is eight weeks at that time.
PC: Okay
RW: Then you find out where you go. Some recruits would go to Texas and learn a different skill and so at a fort in Texas so just all over, you know, you got different skills handled in different camps and of course my skill was, I was a-
PC: Engineer?
RW: Engineer and came back, I came back to Fort Leonard Wood because they had a huge engineering school there.
PC: How did you choose engineering?
RW: You didn’t. They told you.
PC: They told you
RW: When they had, when the needed, when they had to fill allocations, they might have needed a thousand for infantry, maybe a hundred for engineering, maybe another hundred here for computer skills, that’s the way worked.
PC: So before going to the army you never wanted to be an engineer?
RW: No.
PC: Okay so-
RW: But it was good.
PC: It was good. So what did you do? Did you become an engineer after the war or did you do something totally different?
RW: No. Unbeknownst, I was in the shoe business before I went into the army and came back to it when I got out. [mower noise outside]
PC: Okay all right so which wars did you serve in Korea?
RW: I’m sorry.
PC: So what years did you actually serve?
RW: My years? The year was from February of 1959 to February of 1962, so three years
PC: So where did you go after you had your training?
RW: After basic training?
PC: Yeah, and then after you engineering training
RW: Well, let me give you a little better insight on the basic training
PC: Okay
RW: Again, it was learning how to operate heavy equipment: bulldozers, huge trucks, just anything within the heavy equipment line. Now, kind of the basic training had sort of phased out and then the next was learning all these, the heavy equipment. There was a lot of schooling that you had to learn the book, the book learning part and later you’d go out and try to demonstrate what you’d learn in the classroom and so we did that and then once that was over with then I got my assignment. This was where I was going to, which was Korea. Once I got basic training was another eight weeks.
PC: All right. Okay.
RW: Go ahead.
[00:10:25]
PC: Let’s just go, so let’s go to your assignment, tell me -
RW: When I was in Korea?
PC: Yeah.
RW: Okay, okay, when I arrived in Korea, I was assigned to - I was assigned to the Third Engineering Battalion.
PC: What year was this?
RW: That was probably, I would say, 1960.
PC: Okay and so this was your first time out of the country?
RW: Yes.
PC: So ok so what happened there?
RW: As I was assigned to this Third Engineering Battalion, which was strictly engineering, not only the Third Engineering Battalion was assigned to the 25th Infantry Regiment. We were what you would kind of say the support team of the infantry division. Well, when I was there I started out, started out driving trucks wherever they wanted me to go. I drove a lot of these semi trucks that had flat bed on them, you know, with flat beds, course they put equipment on the trucks and you had to drive them up to the farthest port North or the front line and then after that I did that two or three months then I was assigned to a crane. You know what a crane is?
PC: Yeah.
RW: Okay, and the crane was stationed in a army lumber yard. My duties there were to unload quonset huts, quonset huts to house the military people and I was, my job with this crane which was like a 30 ton crane. My job was to unload these quonset huts onto trucks and then they’d take these trucks up to the front line or wherever they needed them, but my job was to - this was like a rail yard - rail head and a matter of fact that rail head, that was a farthest we went to North Korea. In other words about a mile up the way, there was no more rail.
PC: Where in, where in what city were you near?
RW: Munsan-ni. Munsan-ni, Korea.
PC: Okay.
[00:13:33]
RW: I don’t know how you would spell that.
PC: I can find out.
RW: Yeah, but they had a lumberyard there. Everything was kind of, we had to always take the crane that it was on wheels, a thirty ton crane that you could drive around on wheels but we’d always have to lock it up inside the lumber yard because we were afraid somebody would steal it and take it away, so, but I with this, being assigned to this crane, I not only unloaded buildings, quonset huts, also built bridges with this crane, building steel posts in the bed of the river or what ever did that. Did quite a bit of that. We were constantly building and then every building bridges then also they had two long bridges that was the only two that was only able to go North or South. I also put explosives, well I didn’t do it, they had specialists that could put demolition underneath the bridges and matter of fact what happened I would lower these two demolition people would be on a platform and I’d drop them down with my crane so that they could work underneath and put there demolition explosives underneath there because of the North Koreans came down it was going to be an automatic, they were going blow the bridges, so anyway I did that. I guess part of the most honorable, well every thing I did it was honorable to be able to help, but the most honorable thing I, installed a fifty foot flag pole farthest point North up that we could go to the North Korean, well the 38th parallel, what was the dividing line, but I took my crane and put this flagpole in the ground and quite a big ceremony. They put the flag and rolled the flag up to the top. That was the first America flag that the North Koreans could see.
PC: So you were the one actually in the crane actually doing it.
RW: Yes.
PC: So what year was that?
RW: I would say it was probably ‘60.
PC: Okay.
RW: Because I was only required, well, they only allowed you thirteen months in Korea, but that was quite an exciting, an event, was putting that pole in and they raised the flag, the American flag.
[00:17:20]
PC: So what was your, like, day to day schedule, like, daily schedule. When would you wake up and then what did you do?
RW: Okay, we’d get up and, you know, course you’d go to breakfast, you’d eat your breakfast. I was [unintelligible] transferred to this army lumberyard and so we were sort of on our own and, but it was up to us to get up and to get our breakfast done and course you had to get up seven and then you’d go out and get your equipment and you’d check to make everything’s ok and you’d go to work. It’s just kind of a eight hour job, you know, five days a week. Weekends sometimes we’d be asked to have guard duty and we would do that and sometimes that in the winter time, it was very, very, very cold in Korea, so but still, nevertheless you had to 24/7. It was a guard duty situation that you had to, so any way, but it was sort of a basic routine, you know, you just like here in the united states. You get up in the morning, you have your breakfast, you go get your equipment ready, and go out and do your job.
PC: So beside bridges and that flagpole was there anything else you helped build?
RW: Was there anything else I helped build?
PC: Yeah
RW: Well, as I said just that was pretty busy, busy time because with my crane that I was, 30 ton crane, and the, was mobile, you had the crane part and you had the front part that you drove to where ever they would want and it was constant and all [unintelligible] call up and say hey, we need a crane operator over here and you might have to drive thirty to forty miles and of course, in Korea, driving, there was multitude of people walking on the side of the road, so you had to be careful so you didn’t run over people they, you know, they wouldn’t get out of your way, so it was time consuming.
PC: All right, so you were working at this lumberyard. Did you see any combat at all?
RW: No, no, I did not. Matter of fact, when I got there, they had just called off martial law. Now there was many a times, there was a lot of alerts going on. When I say alert is that we had to be combat ready if something was going to happen, but nothing did, thank God, when I was there.
PC: So there was no close calls or anything?
RW: No, no, I wasn’t right up on the 38th Parallel. I was kind of, maybe, back in the middle of it, yet as I said the railroad only went up, it was this lumberyard that we still had the rail going up that far then, they were chopped off or they cut them off, but I had a, my son in law was also in Korea. He was a captain in the army. Course, he came quite later than I. He told me all the roads are paved and he says its changed dramatically since I was there. I mean, I spent lot of time, if you want to go from point a to point b, you had to walk through the rice paddies, not in the rice patty, but around them. You just, a little path, but no, there was no, it was just after they had military problems there that I got there, just after all that had finished.
[00:22:34]
PC: So beside the flagpole were there any other memorable experiences you had it? Doesn’t have to be like historically significant.
RW: Well, I had one memorable experience and to you this may not be memorable. I was using my crane and I was picking up something and all of the sudden the item I was picking up drops and when you got about a, might have been thirty foot, thirty foot arm on the crane came all the way back, missed me about that much [Wagner gestures its missed him by a few inches], the crane part. So in other words, my whole, the arm of the crane came back and kept on going back and my crane went backwards. Could have been a troubling experience, but I’m hear to tell about it.
PC: So did you make any like friends in.
RW: Lot of buddies made, lot of buddies. Well that’s all you had, was guys like you over there that, yeah, made a lot of friends. Matter of fact, got a friend in Florida. I got two friends in Florida, one in Wisconsin, one up in Michigan City. Met these all in the army, so but, met a lot of friends. You know, really, really haven’t made much contact with them, but they were nice. They were nice to have were alone in the military
PC: Okay so how did you did you stay in touch to your family? How did that work?
RW: Oh yes, in fact met my wife when I was in the army.
PC: Really?
RW: I met her, matter of fact, I came home from Korea, my step mother had cancer. She didn’t pass away ‘til after I got home but when something like that happens the army or the military, they call that an emergency situation. So I - the Red Cross takes care of all that kind of stuff. So I came home and went out to be with her. Matter of fact, my brother was in the army at that time too, and he was in Germany. He came home. We both were together and she was in the hospital and we visited with her and then, that was in South Bend. My parents at the time lived in Evansville, so I was kind of running myself out of Evansville and had friends there, but I had a real good friend thatI graduated from high school, you know, we always used to run or drive to Jasper in where they had some nightclubs and this kind of stuff, and I came there and that’s where I met my wife. So went back to the base. I had to go back. I was matter of fact, after going to Korea, they always said Fort Leonard Wood was like a little Korea because there was nothing there. It was just a blah situation, a blah camp so unfortunately, where did I get assigned back to after Korea? Fort Leonard Wood! So anyway, the, my wife, she was in Jasper and we, of course, bonded a lot. Wrote letters and so on and so forth.
PC: So you married her in Jasper?
RW: Jasper, Indiana.
PC: And you met when you came back.
RW: Yes, from Korea.
PC: So all right, but when you were in Korea?
RW: Well, I was assigned to when I came back from Korea, I was assigned to Fort Leonard Wood and from Fort Leonard Wood, matter of fact, when I came back from Korea, I had about a month vacation and during that time was when I met my wife and then I went to I was assigned to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and we, the wife and I, corresponded back and forth.
PC: Ok, so but, when you were in Korea did you send letters to your parents?
RW: Yes, yes.
PC: How often did you correspond?
RW: Maybe once twice a month.
PC: Okay but they was always kind of constant communication.
RW: Yes, yes. Well back then, they had the telephone, so spent a lot of time on the telephone.
Sure, sure.
PC: All right, in the actual, where you were, what were the living conditions like?
RW: Okay now, where do you want? What place?
PC: In Korea.
RW: Korea?
PC: Yeah.
RW: I was pretty fortunate. I as I said, I was transferred to this lumberyard and we had sort of lived in officers quarters. I wasn’t an officer, but what they had set up there was officer quarters and I was able to stay there and matter of fact all of my, had a lot of my buddies were also in that quarters, but stayed there and stayed there for probably well, until it was time I was sent back here to the states
PC: So it was always kind of like, there was never any like, shortages of anything?
[00:29:28]
RW: As to what?
PC: As to like supplies or food.
RW: No, nothing like that. Matter of fact, I had to, my buddies, we stayed in the officers’ quonset hut. Actually, what it was, quonset huts not far from this compound, this lumberyard compound, was a quartermaster, where they had cooks. They trained cooks and needless to say, we got the best of all the food that we wanted and could eat there almost any time we wanted. They were constantly cooking and a lot of the military infantry people would bring there companies or what ever and there and was to be fed there at that quartermaster.
PC: Did you feel pressure or stress?
RW: I felt pressure or stress of having such an easy job.
PC: Did you know people, beside what was your brother doing at this time, he was in Germany?
RW: Brother was in artillery. He was a member of an artillery gun crew I think he had like four, five people who were assigned to one gun, one of there bigger guns. I don’t know what, hallets or of some kind, but he loved it over there too, said it was a nice duty. So no, I never, never, that was the best thing that ever happened to me, my brother and I both, was, I mean, we learned discipline. We learned, well, we grew up to put it that way. We grew up.
PC: So you were right out of high school when you-
RW: Yes, yes, best thing for us.
PC: How did people, how did you, entertain your self when you were not working?
RW: Well, lot of times I would go, to the had a lot of posts there where different, different companies, different battalions were set up and we could, say you’d have movies for the G.I.s, for the soldiers, and, you know, with my position, I was able to go where ever I wanted to as far as to see those type of things. Of course Seoul, Korea, was probably, maybe thirty miles south of where I was at, so a lot of weekend buddies and I we’d just go into Seoul. Lot of entertainment there, you know, just what ever you wanted to do. There was no boredom.
PC: Sounds like it wasn’t that boring.
RW: No.
PC: Did you, maybe this happened when you weren’t working, any unusual events that happened any funny things, interesting things?
RW: That’s something it hard for me to remember that far back.
PC: That’s ok.
RW: You know, funny things, memorable things, the whole aspect of being in a foreign country seemed, another countries way of life. It was quite a experience, one fabulous experience that to see the culture of how other people lived you and I wouldn’t live that way, you know, to you and I it would be inhumane because these people lived in, a lot of there roofs were grass huts there. They heated their homes from the bottom and let the, I mean, they had fires in the bottom of their floors and hoping that it would go up. They would have huge boulders, rocks, that they would put in underneath their house to warm their homes. You and I wouldn’t have done, you and I wouldn’t do that. It was just, you would drive along, or there wasn’t a lot of driving, but you’d be walking a long the road and all of a sudden you see, this what you and I would call a restaurant, but to them it was just an open cooking pit. They’d be cooking fish. Their biggest thing over there was kempshi.
PC: What’s that?
RW: It was a food that they ate. I don’t know what it was made of, but it was horrible. Tasted horrible. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t eat it, but my son-in-law that came back, that I just spoke of a while ago, he loved it. Matter of fact, he’s over here he says, pop, he calls me pop, how can I go find some kempshi some place? So anyway, but, you know, the way they lived you and I wouldn’t live that way. Now today, I think it’s totally different, but once you get into the burbs of the place, they still live ancient.
PC: So, is there anything else you want to say until we go on after the war?
RW: After the war?
PC: Is there anything, like the next questions will be after you came back from Korea, is there anything else you want to add?
RW: Nothing. I don’t know what else you want to know.
PC: No, it was perfect so far.
RW: I might have told too much.
[00:36:43]
PC: No, it was exactly right. Okay so do you recall the day your service ended?
RW: Okay, now let me think here. Do I ever? Matter of fact, this was while I was still in the army, this was prior to maybe a month before my time ended. As I told you, I got married and I brought my wife to the Fort, in other words we had residence outside the base and again my wife was pregnant. We had our first son in the army. Well, my son was born prior to us getting out of the service. Well, when we had, she had, the child, it was a boy, she had complications with the birth, so she had to go back into the hospital, something about they couldn’t stop the bleeding and so who was there left to take care of the baby because she couldn’t take the baby back into the hospital. I had to stay home and take care of the baby. I’m talking about a two or three day old baby. I had to take care of it until she got back out of the hospital and during that time, I kept calling into my first sergeant. That was the man, you know, I always had to report to and I he says, just let me know what’s going on, you need more time until you wife gets home, and I did. He said, be sure you call me everyday and report, which I did, so when my wife came home and course, my mother in law came up from Jasper, Indiana, to help take care of the baby, when all that finished and transpired, then I went in to report into the company commander, and he looks up at me, well look, Mr. Wagner, we’re going to give you an Article 15 because you’ve been absent without leave. Well I said, “What do you mean absent without leave?” He said, “Well,” he said, “You’ve been gone here for three or four days and you have not reported in.” So I said, “Just a minute.” So I went out and got the first sergeant, “Please tell the company commander I did report in,” which he did, and luckily, luckily I got out of that. When you get an Article 15, you’re, like, 15 days suspended without pay and they want to court martial you, but that was, well, anyway, I got through that and as I told you, my mother in law had come out. We lived in this two room house, a bedroom and a kitchen, sort to speak, and so, once I got what they called mustered out, I had just bought a new car, a 1958 Ford Fairlane, and we packed that car up, headed back to Indiana.
PC: Where in Indiana?
RW: Indianapolis. I, as I said, I received a job at Glendale Shopping Center. They had a Kinney’s shoe store there at the time. You probably don’t remember that, but I worked for a friend of mine, the manager there, and that’s where we came back to after I got out. Got an apartment and that’s where we started off.
PC: Okay, so after, ok so any of the friendships you made in the war have you kept those up or even right after the war after you got out?
RW: Not really and I’m ashamed of myself for not doing that especially because I had a close, close friend in Michigan City, Indiana, and then I had a young man who lived in Miami, Florida who was very close with me. He and I were really good buds. The young man in Michigan City was what I went into or when I met him when I was in the first basic training series then the second eight weeks of training then he went to one area and I went to another, but we were real good friends that first part and as I said, I’m sorry I did not communicate with them.
[00:42:55]
PC: So did you join any veteran’s organizations after?
RW: Yeah, what I can tell you, what, VFW, American Legion. I joined the American Legion and that was in Speedway, Indiana, and was there for a while. I’m a non-smoker. Unfortunately, these old veterans, they love to smoke a pack while there in the, I kind of dropped that because I, the wife and I both, could not stand the smoke. It was wreaked with smoke, but yeah the American Legion was one I and I enjoyed it but I just couldn’t stand the, the room was filled with smoke.
PC: Well I understand. Okay, so you went on after the war you went into shoes, did you, what did you do after shoes?
RW: Well what do you mean? After the war or after shoes?
PC: After shoes.
RW: Okay well, I was in shoes for forty-three years so do you think so maybe I
PC: No I guess that was your entire thing.
RW: But no, not all shoes. I spent twelve years as an auditor in shoes with Kinney’s Shoes. I was an auditor and what I did, I’d go around auditing all of their shoe stores. Matter of fact, Kinney’s shoes, course Kinney’s shoes is not here anymore, they’ve closed the doors on all Kinney’s. However, they had started Footlocker. They also started Lady Footlocker. They also started Kids Footlocker, Chaps was part of Kinney’s shoes, so after I left or retired, I didn’t leave after, I retired, almost all the Kinney’s shoes stores [unintelligible] the sporting goods.
PC: Okay so
RW: But I spent most of my time going around state-to-state, up into Canada, auditing a lot of the corporate stores
PC: How did your military experience your thinking about war and the military?
RW: Well, my military experience made me feel, course this has been a long time since I was in the, there was nothing happening, but I feel very firm about the fact if you have to be in war, and I feel like the only reason that you are in war, is to keep your country safe, and I felt that way when I was in Korea. Like the situation that’s going on now, you know, I don’t like for the young kids to go get killed, that I don’t approve of at all. However, I don’t want us to stop what were doing and then have those people that were fighting on another soil come into our soil. That I don’t want and I just feel that way and, you know, with being with an army background, sometimes wars have to be fought to keep other people like that were fighting today out of our country
PC: Okay, so, but how did your military experience influence your professional life after
RW: Well, again, I was doing, I was in the shoe business before I went into the service and when I went into the service and came out, actually, I had a job that I knew how to sell shoes and I had a lot of friends in the shoes business and I had a lot of people who wanted me to come back into the shoe business, but at the time Kinney’s shoes was a vastly growing corporation. They were opening probably a hundred stores a year. They got up to almost fourteen, fifteen hundred stores before they stopped expanding and so that’s what really made my decision to go back into shoes because I had enjoyed it at the time I was in it the first time
PC: So that’s about it. Is there anything else you want to add before we finish?
RW: I don’t know what else I would like, I said, I made some notes here [unintelligible] but getting out of the army, I did get an honorable discharge and they always want to know what accomplishments you made. I got a medal for sharp shooting with a carbine rifle. Other than that, you know, you just, one thingron, it was quite interesting, something you would probably never experience, I got on a military ship in Washington state, Seattle, Washington. Lived on that boat. Well, I got on with probably another two thousand soldiers, lived on that ship for a month. I slept on a hammock in the bay of the ship and that was a gruesome experience, but anyway it was an experience. It was an enlightening, a good experience.
PC: All right I’ll turn this off
RW: Okay
[Shows photographs]
RW: Let’s see. That was me, that was me, no [unintelligible] today. That was my 30-ton crane. There was some of my raunchy buddies, I mean my cohorts. Some more of my crane. By the way, we also got R and R. We went to Japan for, lets see, I went for a month and enjoyed it. That’s what the quonset huts looked like. Kind of messed it up there but most, lot of the guys lived in tents
PC: But you were in kind of a building?
RW: Yeah, I was in a building. this was another kind of the open field. That’s what it looked like over there in Korea. There I was in Fort Leonard Wood. This was one of my buddies I met over there in Japan. He was over there for R and R. Here some more. This must have been, yeah, this was the lumberyard. We also had a ten ton crane but it never left the lumberyard. The only reason mine left it was on account of it had wheels. That’s one of the little Korean guys. That’s how open it looked up there
PC: So you were kind of on a hill?
RW: Yeah, sort of. You can see in the background, they had big fences in the back
PC: Those are the watchtowers?
RW: Yeah, had to have those, but that was pretty much all of it
PC: These are cool
RW: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Big experience, good experience
PC: It’s great that you still have these too
RW: Yeah I was fortunate, real fortunate.
[00:53:27]
