Walter Dixon; Waynesville, MO 2014 Veteran of the year
Someone sent us a link from the Waynesville Daily Guide about their Veterans’ Day events starring Walter Dixon who they claimed was a Korean War POW. We checked the DPMO website and couldn’t find him, so we became suspicious.
Dixon is a a veteran of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. He was captured and reported killed in action (KIA) on May 18, 1951, one day before his scheduled return to the United States. The mixup occurred because Walter gave his field jacket containing letters from his wife to a wounded soldier who was subsequently killed and identified as Walter.
He was held as a prisoner of war (POW) for 30 months.
At the time of the peace talks, Dixon was incarcerated in a turnip cellar at the prison camp. He had been sentenced to life for escape attempts, building a radio and other violations. As the talks progressed his sentence was commuted to 10 years. All charges were dropped and he was released in Operation Big Switch in September 1953.
We decided to hold off until we could check further. Mary said that DPMO’s records for the Korean War are notoriously inaccurate. So, Mary checked for us, and sure enough, he was a POW from May, 1951 – Sept. 1953. A pleasant surprise for us for a change. Waynesville is indeed lucky to have this hero as their Veteran of the Year.
Category: Real Soldiers
Building a radio. In a POW camp. I don’t even… I mean, where do you start?
Just watch out for the radio detector truck
😉
I was chased by the German radio detection van in Wildelecken in 1992.
The remote control cars and trucks the p.x sold came with the wrong radio gear in them. The 76 mghtz radio in the toy car is the same frequency as their emergency broadcast system. Those small transmitters jammed up the mega antennas across the valley on the Krossburg monastery. I didn’t get caught put that was the end of my new toy.
I was at Wildflecken in the early 80s. I miss the jagerschnitel at the Waffenkammer and at Margret’s and, of course, the beer at the Kreuzberg Monastery.
That’s the spelling I was looking for.
“Top Of The Rock” to you,Jonn.
Photos to follow at some point.
P.S never try out for the Five Liter club!
Five liter club? On my best day, I couldn’t have done that & wouldn’t like to have tried.
I got blitzed once at a German bar in Wood Haven, Illinois, on two liters of Dortmunder Union beer. I stopped in for a couple while waiting to pick up my wife from work.
They bet me I couldn’t handle German beer. They were right. I don’t know if the worst part of the experience was catching hell from my wife or listening to her grinding gears all the way home.
She probably still can’t drive a stick shift.
I have played off and on with crystal radios for years.
Iron ore, old razor blades, pencil lead can all be used to make a radio.
Coming up with an ear piece and wire for the antenna can be a challenge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio
Give it a try one day, they are fun to play with.
That’s awesome! is that a skill they specifically taught/teach? I remember my dad had some sort of FM that showed evasion/escape/boobytrap techniques but I don’t remember anything about foxhole radios.
Razor blade radios fascinated me as a high school physics student, but I never got around to trying out the theory. My question was where did they get the earphones?
http://www.bizarrelabs.com/foxhole.htm
The ingenuity of some of the prisoners was astonishing. Read “The Colditz Story”, “The Great Escape”, “The Longest Tunnel” etc.
Roy,
In WW2, the Germans wanted their prisoners of war treated well so they generally treated the Allied officers well (EM, not so much). That meant that the officers usually got their Red Cross packages and that meant that they had stuff to trade. The officers traded with the guards. It might be tough to trade for an entire transmitter and receiver but it wasn’t so tough to trade for a specific transmitter tube or other component and they were successful at trading for complete shortwave receivers.
Second, in many cases handling prisoner mail was beneath the Germans so prisoners handled mail for other prisoners while the Germans watched — or were distracted. Lots of stuff was mailed to prisoners (including radio parts) and the mail guys got really good at sorting out the packages containing contraband from the others. This meant that the Germans rarely inspected packages that they were not supposed to inspect.
Third there were specific British officers who were trained in some codes that could be done with only pencil and paper. The are low- bandwidth but the Brits believe that none of these codes were detected during the war, the use of codes was very good for morale, and some useful information was sent.
I have a couple of books about these activities, the primary author in this area is MRD Foote, a British SOE officer during WW2.
These techniques did not work with the Japanese during WW2 or with the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. I bet Walter Dixon’s story about building a radio in a camp is jaw-dropping.
Please recall the American EM who memorized the name, birthdate and home town for every prisoner in the Hanoi Hilton and was released early because the NVA thought him foolish and worthless. That man made a huge difference for a lot of people. Someone posted a note about him on TAH a few months ago.
Thanks all! Now I have some stuff to read and some experiments to do with my kids!
Lucky to be alive …
Thank God!
What a blessing that it turned out to be true.
God bless you, Mr. Dixon, and thanks for serving.
Glad you held off, and even more happy that he was found to be a true hero. I enjoy reading these stroies so much more than those of the outright fakes and embellishers.
God Bless Mr. Dixon and all those like him.
Best I can tell, the DPMO POW list for Korea isn’t inaccurate as much as it is mislabled.
The “accounted for” list from Korea only lists 282 names – far fewer than the number of POWs who returned alive from Korea. In fact, it is not a complete “accounted for” list like the one from Vietnam. Best I can tell, that list only lists the remains that have been returned/recovered and identified – every name has a date for “remains returned”. Those who returned alive as POWs from Korea do NOT appear to be listed.
The Korea “unaccounted for” list, in contrast, appears to be the same as Vietnam. Both MIAs and POWs from Korea whose remains were never returned/recovered are listed there.
If DPMO maintains a comprehensive list of returned/escaped POWs from Korea, I can’t find it on their site.
It’s good to know that this guy is legit. We see all too many fakes here at TAH. It’s always great to see one that instead turns out to be 100% legit.
Feeling guilty here. I assumed the title was sarcasm and settled in for the take down, which is really a sad state of affairs.
No reason to feel guilty, Susan. We see so many fakes these days that suspicion is normal.
Just find joy in knowing that this guy wasn’t fake.
Jaw dropped 10 minutes ago. Mouth remains in the full-open position. Amazing.
God Bless this three-war vet and POW survivor…
Held prisoner by the NorKs for over 2 years and he STAYED in the Army long enough to serve in VN? I don’t know if that’s impressive or insane or equal parts of both. Kudos to him, either way.
Again, it is a sad statement of current affairs that the moment we read stories of these veterans, the very first inclination is doubt, and the rush to send the story and pictures to various ‘verifying’ websites.
Then the moment of relief and ecstatic as we find that indeed the claims are true.
I can’t fathom the hell this man went through, nor do I want to try.
BZ to you, sir.