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Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
It never went off. Isn't that something? Well that's a story in itself. That was
probably your most memorable moment in your whole experience?
Well, I guess it would be one of them, but there was several of them. I had gotten
another souvenir that I wanted to keep, but I already had a big load with that
machine gun, but I had a saber, and that night I had shot an officer and he was
still holding to it. But I shot it in two, and I carried that thing for the longest, and
finally I just threw it away because I couldn't carry it any longer. At that time at
Balete Pass, I was on the machine gun, and we were attacked pretty heavy, and
somebody tapped me on the shoulder, and it was our general-Dusty Dalton was
his name, and he was a one star general. He was over the whole thing. He tapped
me on the shoulder and says, "You're doing a good job, soldier," and he went on.
He didn't go far until a sniper shot him right between the eyes. Well, when they
declared the war was over and we came back the same way, engineers had
already come up there and started a monument in his honor. A couple of years
ago, there was a missionary couple that visited our church from over there in the
Philippines. He made some remark in his sermon about Tarlack Luzon,
Philippines. Well, that was familiar, so after it was over I got to talking with him,
and I told him that's where I went through some of the worst fighting. I said,
"The best I remember there was a little old highway up there called Highway 6,"
and he said, "Yeah, Tarlack now has a population of about 35,000, and that little
highway you're talking about is a four-lane highway." He said, "I could see the
signs of war." I said, "Up there at Balete Pass, do you remember seeing a
monument?", and he said, "Yeah, it had a fella named Dalton on it." That
missionary's folks are here in Hardin. He thought that was something, too. I
asked him if he could get a map of that area, and he did, and he sent me a great
big map from over there. I can just pinpoint everything on there.
Talking about the machine gun and stuff, how was it? What was the quality of
the equipment? Was it top-notch quality?
Top-notch quality.
Interviewer: I guess you pretty much mastered that.
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