美国国家公共电台 NPR Declared Dead At War, He Returned Alive To Find His World Had Moved On Without Him

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Now it's time for StoryCorps' Military Voices Initiative¹, conversations between veterans and their families. Today we hear from 90-year-old Walter Dixon, a veteran of three wars. He returned home from World War II, got married right before he shipped off to Korea at the Army's 38th Infantry². He tells the story about what it's like to be declared dead on the battlefield and then return home alive. He came to StoryCorps with his son, Russ Dixon.

RUSS DIXON: Can you tell me about how you got captured in...

WALTER DIXON: I was away from my unit, probably a half a mile. And there was five guys, and they got hit by an artillery³ round. One of 'em's legs were both broken. So I took my field jacket and wrapped it around his legs to hold them together. I went back up to my machine gun, and that's when I got caught. When I captured those guys in that hole with my field jacket there, they just got blown all to heck. My jacket, it had letters from my wife in its pockets. So they assumed that that was me. And I'm sure that's why they reported me dead instead of captured.

R DIXON: How was the conditions in the POW camp? I know you said you ate some rats.

W DIXON: Yeah. Course, we had to burn wood to stay warm. And so we'd go on wood details, and I started to make better headway. And this guard hollered for me to halt, but I didn't. So he come and he struck me with his bayonet. Kind of a rough time right there. I escaped five times, but I never made it. When the war was over, I went in a hospital there for a few days. Then I went to Fort⁴ Hood⁵, Texas.

R DIXON: You were alive, but yet they reported you killed. So what did you say when you found out that your first wife was remarried and had a baby?

W DIXON: I said, well, good luck. Ain't much you can say. I can't blame her. I was dead. And then she found out I was alive. The only obvious thing to do was divorce one of us. And she made her decision. Anger don't do you any good on something like that. You can't do nothing about it. You just got to handle it the best way you know how.

R DIXON: Why did you stay in the military after that experience?

W DIXON: It was my life. After you go through all of that, you ain't scared of nothing. I went back to Korea, and then I went to Vietnam from there.

R DIXON: Well, I tell a lot of people about your seven Purple Hearts and all that, and I brag⁶ about it just about every day. So how do you hope to be remembered?

W DIXON: I don't really care.

R DIXON: (Laughter).

W DIXON: I can remember me. No. I don't have any wants or needs of memory. I just enjoyed my military service, and I'd do it again. And I'm proud of it.

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SIMON: That was Walter Dixon speaking with his son, Russ Dixon, at StoryCorps in Waynesville, MO. There's a bit more to this story. When Walter was declared dead, a woman named Aldine May Fenton wrote his obituary⁷ for the local newspaper. He wound up marrying her. They had three children, including Russ Dixon. This interview will be archived along with hundreds of thousands of others at the Library of Congress.