Latest news with #VoicesofVeterans
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Yahoo
Voices of Veterans: SP5 George Padilla shares his story of service in the US Army during the Vietnam War
May 9—AUSTIN — Today, Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dawn Buckingham, M.D., is proud to introduce the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, they highlight the service of Information Specialist 5 (SP5) George Padilla who served in in the United States Army. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas in the shadow of Big Tex and the Texas State Fair, Padilla said he went to North Dallas High School, graduating in May 1963 before attending college. "The first college I attended was the University of Texas at Arlington where I was a pre-law major and participated in debates there before transferring to North Texas State University, which of course is now known as the University of North Texas (UNT), where I was a radio and television broadcast announcer." While he was attending UNT, Padilla said he was in the vicinity of where President John F. Kennedy (JFK) was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. "I was there on the corner of Industrial and Commerce Streets sitting in my 1960 white Chevrolet Impala watching the motorcade race up the on ramp onto the freeway. I had gotten there seconds after he had been killed, yeah, I was there," he said about that day. "That day is as vivid as yesterday, if I was to get off the phone right now, it still comes back, I know exactly what happened." Padilla left the university to get married and said that's when Uncle Sam sent him a letter he has yet to forget that told him he had been drafted. "It said 'Greetings, you are now in the U.S. Service, please report to the following location,' so I dropped out of college, got my draft notice and went and talked to my friendly recruiter at 1100 Commerce here in Dallas and he says 'Gosh boy, you've been to college, sign here for an extra year and we will guarantee you will not go to Vietnam, which is a common conversation for many in Texas during that time." Padilla said he reported to boot camp at Fort Polk in Louisiana, now known as Fort Johnson, in November 1967 as Third Squad Leader in Company D. Padilla said he learned quickly about the real world when he was in Louisiana. "I gravitated from academia to the reality of the real world, it took me out of my comfort zone," Padilla explained about boot camp life. "It taught me physically how to maneuver against another opponent since I was one of the shortest guys in the military, I learned how to defend myself quickly." After boot camp, Padilla was sent to Korea and believes he was sent there after the USS Pueblo was captured off the coast of North Korea in January 1968. A lot of people, he said, from Fort Polk were sent to Korea instead of Vietnam for that reason. "Since my college background was in radio and television broadcasting, I finagled my way out of a company morning report clerk job with the 2nd Aviation Battalion and I ended up in Public Information Office for a 15 minute interview," Padilla said. "I told them about my experience in high school and college, the debate teams, and he just told me I was hired and they would have my orders transferred in one week." While in Korea, Padilla interviewed soldiers and sent their recordings back to the States to be played on their hometown radio shows for families to hear. While all of it gave him more action in the field, something he acknowledged wasn't the case as a morning report clerk, it also afforded him the chance to interview Bob Hope during one of his tours. "The big highlight for me was just interviewing G.I.'s. My regular job was called 'Radio Hometown Interview.' I would interview from five to 50 soldiers in a 30 day period and I would package that up, send to it to Washington D.C., and they would disperse it to the hometown of the G.I. to be played on their local radio station," Padilla told the GLO. "Other than that, the other highlight was interviewing Bob Hope in December 1968, rubbing elbows with Ann Margaret, Penelope Plummer and Miss World at that time." Click here to listen to SP5 George Padilla tell his story.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Voices of Veterans: Colonel John Zink shares his story of service in the United States Air Force, Army Air Corps
May 2—AUSTIN — Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dr. Dawn Buckingham announced the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program May 2. This week, they highlight the service of Colonel John Zink who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps and U.S. Air Force. Zink, the son of a World War I Veteran, decided to join the military after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. He went into the service in June 1942 while attending flight school. Even though Zink had never ridden in an airplane before flight school, his love of aircraft began as a young child. "Well, as far back as I can remember, I was always interested in airplanes. One of the car dealers in my county had a Stenson Reliant. He used to land it in my neighbor's pasture field, and every time he did, I'd run down there and drool over the airplane — I guess that's the right term — and I always wanted to fly." Like his peers, Zink felt that joining the military at this pivotal moment for America was the "right thing to do." He also recognized that the emergency circumstances created by Pearl Harbor's bombing would allow him to fly in the military without attending college. When discussing his first flight, Zink said he had two feelings. "Number one was I'm gonna do it, and the other one was, I'm sort of scared to do it. And I guess the joy overtook the other one." Zink graduated with the rank of second lieutenant and was extremely pleased to go on to fly fighter aircraft, specifically the Lockheed P-38 Lighting. Zink described this historic fighter, saying, "A P-38 was a twin-engine fighter plane built by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. It was designed in the late 1930s by Kelly Johnson and his engineering staff. Kelly was the head of engineering at Lockheed in those days. And first flew in late 1940 [...] The first ones were probably delivered to the Air Force in mid-1941 in very small quantities. And then, when the war broke out, the contracts were increased." At an Air Force base in Rabaul, near the Solomon Islands, Zink recalled that the Japanese had six airfields with over 400 planes. He was a part of the 13th Air Force, and they were to cover 24 Douglass SBD Dauntless dive bombers and 24 Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers on a dive-bombing mission. "We had 16 P-38s on the mission, and as they started the dive-bombing run why, the Japanese fighters attacked from above. We don't know exactly how high they were, but we were about 16,000, so they were probably 20,000. There was a thin deck of cloud above us, and we couldn't see 'em. And so, we followed the dive bombers down, and as we went down, I saw several P-38s crash in the water." Zink also described the dangers of compressibility that afflicted the P-38 and how one pilot was rescued after being shot down during that mission. "As you gain speed in a P-38, the lift point would move back on the wing, and if it got to a certain point, it would actually blank out the elevator, and you couldn't pull out of the dive. Whether these airplanes got into compressibility or actually were shot down, we'll never know for sure, but we did see three of 'em go down in real tight formation and hit the water [...] there were 16 P-38s — 8 of them shot down or lost. We picked up one pilot seven days later, and, by the way, he's 90 some years old and still living. We escorted the bombers back out off the target, and then we headed home." Zink spoke about the difficulty of losing friends and people he had attended flying school with and how combat was a rough experience as they fought the numerous Japanese forces. However, as they learned, Zink said, "We became more mature [and] gained experience from the mistakes that we made. We stopped losing airplanes, losing our fighters to the Japanese fighters. One of the things we've always been very proud of is that we never lost a bomber we were escorting to the Japanese fighters." The P-38 pilots flew several bombing missions themselves, and Zink recalled being proud of the accuracy of their bombing with relatively little experience. He flew missions near northwest New Guinea, the Celebes, the East Indies, and Borneo for nine months. Zink recalled participating in long-range missions that cover over a 700-mile radius. He flew an incredible 157 missions over the Pacific Ocean while being deployed for 20 months. Though he was discharged and needed rest due to combat fatigue, Zink's military career did not end after his service during World War II. He would also make an impact during the Korean War as a top-notch pilot. Click here to listen to Colonel John Zink tell his story.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Voices of Veterans: Major John McFall shares his story of service in the US Army, Texas National Guard
Apr. 11—AUSTIN — Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dawn Buckingham, M.D., is proud to introduce the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, they highlight the service of Major John McFall who served in the U.S. Army and the Texas National Guard. Born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, McFall said he joined the U.S. Army in September 1943, following his membership to the religious order, Brother of the Christian Schools in the Catholic Church. While he joined the Army, his first two choices wouldn't take him because of an unknown vision problem. "I decided I'd leave the order and I came home to where my mother lived, and the war was going on, and I thought that I was really healthy and everything, and so I went down to try to enlist in the Marines and they wouldn't take me because I had a bad eye, and I went to the Navy and they wouldn't take me because I had a bad eye," McFall explained. "I found out that I was born with a congenital cataract in my right eye and I didn't know that at the time." McFall said he figured he would give it one last chance and went to volunteer for the U.S. Army and if he didn't get accepted, he would go back to college. As fate would have it, they took him and, as a result, McFall would be part of some of bigger battles throughout Europe, Rome and Southern France. "I figured well, I'll get into something, even I could get into military intelligence or something that would really be good, you know, for the Army and it wouldn't be too much danger to me, although I wasn't really concerned about that too much. I didn't want to get killed, of course," he said when asked about his initial thoughts on joining up. "I kind of spoke French and being a Catholic brother and all, I was really good at Latin and I had a little Spanish, and I thought maybe I, the Army could make use of some of my language like interrogating prisoners of war or something. I was fairly optimistic about it." McFall said once he joined, he was sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas before being sent, almost immediately, to Camp Blanding, Florida where he received basic training as a rifleman, a position within the Army that requires good eyesight but something McFall knew he didn't have. "I couldn't fire a rifle with my right eye because I couldn't see the sight, but they let me fire left handed down in basic training," McFall said. "It was 13 weeks and I was a pinup corporal. They put, I was a recruit or a private, but I was a squad — they made me a squad leader and they gave me corporal stripes to wear around and I had the charge of a squad in basic training." McFall said after his 13 weeks of basic training, he quickly was sent overseas because, at that time, things were starting to heat up for the for Army. Once he arrived, he remembered his first duty assignment well. "There were 36 of us came in as replacements to one company of Company E, the 141st Infantry of the 36th Infantry Division which had really been clobbered at Casino, and probably lost half their regimental personnel in the Division in two attempts to cross the Rapido River," McFall recalled. "So there was a massive replacements came into this company and so I, there was one opening in the mortars and I said I wanted the mortars. So I was a crewman on a 60 millimeter mortar in the rifle company of an infantry regiment." McFall said the first combat he saw as part of the 36th Division, which was 13,000 men, when they were sent to the Anzio Beachhead, located roughly 17 miles south of Anzio, Rome. "The Germans didn't know it was coming or anything like that and when they found out, the way they found out about it was when the Americans and English unloaded and got there. But Hitler sent a whole bunch of Panzer divisions down there to contain the Anzio beachhead because he didn't want Rome to fall," McFall explained. "Rome was the big, would be the first big, you know, capital that would fall to our troops." McFall added they lost a lot of men along the way and recalled a moment the Germans tried their best to stop his unit, firing artillery shells as they crossed a field. "I heard it come in, so I hit the ground, and I put my head down and I put my arms around my helmet so that my face would be kind of protected as much as possible. I was just lying on top of the ground and this shell came in and I thought it was gonna hit me right in the head, but it went right over me and hit my buddy — well it hit between me and my buddy who was on the ground behind me, and it really hurt him bad," McFall explained, adding he did everything he could to help him before he was sent to a hospital in North Africa but later, he said, died because of that attack by the Germans. Click here to listen to Maj. John McFall tell his story.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Voices of Veterans: Captain Claude Platte shares his story of service in the US Army Air Corps during WWII
Apr. 4—AUSTIN — Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dr. Dawn Buckingham on April 4 introduced the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, they highlight the service of Tuskegee Airman Captain Claude Platte, who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. Born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Platte grew up in a time of segregation and recalled as a child what that was like and what went through his curious young mind. "One of the main things I remember that encouraged me was in a situation where there were colored signs and white signs and black fountains and white fountains and I had been taught that when I saw a colored sign that is where I was supposed to be or drink water," he explained. "One day I saw a little white boy drinking out of the colored fountain-the black fountain, his father scolded him, but doing so, I became curious. Why couldn't I drink out of the white fountain? And what was wrong? When no one was looking, I decided that I would drink out of the white fountain. And when I did, my biggest shock and surprise was — the water was the same, there was no difference." Platte said he decided he wanted to learn how to fly when he was young and never forgot the moment that influenced him the most, standing out front of his boyhood home as an aircraft flew by. "I saw an airplane hovering very low and I could see the pilot flying over and it dawned on me that I could go and see the other side of the area, outside the segregated area, or even go all over the world if I wanted to see what it looked like so I decided this is what I wanted to do, is fly," he explained. It was the moment that changed the course of Platte's life, sending him in a direction that allowed him to be a teacher of men, to pilots that too had that dream of flying for their country. After graduating from I.M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth, Platte left Texas for Tuskegee, Alabama. "When I arrived at Tuskegee my biggest shock when I got there was, Tuskegee had the only VA hospital for Negroes in the country; they were all manned by black doctors and white nurses and so forth. The other thing that was very interesting was Dr. George Washington Carver was there. Because of George Washington Carver and the peanut, I got an opportunity to see people like President Roosevelt, Lena Horn, Joe Lewis and all these VIP people that come through Tuskegee on tour so to speak," he recalled, adding meeting those people encouraged him to go farther than he had ever imagined. Platte said even though he was still interested in flying he enrolled in, what was known at the time, as Mechanical Industries because he wanted to be an engineer. It wasn't until about 1939 when President Roosevelt enlisted the Army Air Corps and the War Department to organize better security for the United States. "They in return got six black colleges to take part in the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) and Tuskegee was one of them," Platte recalled. "In that program that's where I was able to earn my private license, a commercial license, and a flight instructor's license." Platte would, as an instructor, go on to train more than 300 black pilots. When asked why he would decide to train others than live out his boyhood dream of flying, he said he didn't look at it as a decision, rather a chance to do something incredible. "It wasn't a decision. I felt that I had an opportunity to be an instructor. But the same thing may happen to me, I might decide to be a cadet and I may not make I better take what I got and enjoy that while I could," Platte said. Platte also formed the DFW Tuskegee Airmen Chapter in May 2005 to help educate people at home. In 2007, he, along with his fellow surviving airmen, received the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush. Click here to listen to Captain Platte tell his story.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Voices of Veterans: Capt. Mary Dale shares her story of service in the US Army
Mar. 28—AUSTIN — Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dr. Dawn Buckingham introduced the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, they highlight the service of Captain Mary Dale who served in the U.S. Army. Mrs. Dale is the current Vice Chair of the Texas Veterans Commission (TVC). She is also an attorney at Deitch Law Offices in Austin, Texas, and a member of the State Bar of Texas, all federal Texas Districts, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. Before serving Texas' Veterans community with TVC and serving in the U.S. Army, Mrs. Dale was a high school graduate looking to make a difference for the country she loved. "I was just out of high school. I wanted to be in a job that was honorable. I was very patriotic. I actually applied to the police academy out of high school." Even though she did well on the entrance test, the academy required applicants to be 21 to be considered. In 1989, Mrs. Dale was still in her first year of college when she passed by the Army Recruiting Center and decided to drop in. She learned she could serve her country and pay for college by joining the military. Mrs. Dale's father served in the Army Reserves and several of her uncles and family members served on active duty. Her mother was worried when she joined up, a reaction she understands better now as a mother herself. However, she was determined to serve her nation and would not be stopped from pursuing her dreams. Mrs. Dale served four years in the Army Reserves and four years on active duty. She served as a Legal Specialist in a JAG unit in the Army Reserves and as an Ordinance Officer during her active duty. As a Legal Specialist, she would help compile various legal documents like wills and estate planning documents for Military Members who deployed to the first Gulf War. While training to become a Legal Specialist in the Army Reserves, she met her husband, Tony Dale, the current Executive Secretary of the Texas Veterans Land Board (VLB). In 1993, she transferred to Ohio State University to be with Tony and join the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). She graduated in 1993 and was assigned to a maintenance unit as an Ordinance Officer. Her initial responsibilities were to ensure the unit was ready to be deployed, but they eventually expanded to ensuring the entire division was prepared for deployment. When Mrs. Dale was deployed to Kuwait in 1994, she was the highest-ranking Logistics Officer on the ground. After the U.S. entered a ceasefire agreement, the soldiers were to perform peacekeeping missions on a 30-day rotating basis. However, she described a breakdown in the agreement that changed everything: "While I was there, Sadam crossed into [Kuwait] and broke the treaty, and we turned into a combat operation, Operation Desert Strike, and we ended up being there for six months." She discussed how the swift transition from a short peacekeeping mission to a more extended combat mission felt and how she stepped up to the situation. "My first thought was, 'We have a lot to do' because we did not necessarily have the resources or the people we needed to be in a combat operation. So, I went into work mode. You do the math and realize, oh, I'm not going to make it home for Halloween or Thanksgiving. Hopefully, I'll be home by Christmas. That unknown was a little unsettling [...] We always knew it could happen, so it wasn't a lot of shock; it was more ensuring that my family and my parents and husband knew what was going on." While Mrs. Dale determinedly took on this altered mission and was unsurprised by the events, it was still stressful to suddenly be immersed in a combat operation. "There wasn't much sleep, so I slept when I could. We were doing LOGPACs [logistics packages] pretty much daily. Thank goodness we did get backfilled with the entire battalion versus the small group of peacekeeping folks that we had, so that was helpful. I was tired because it was so busy, but I was so focused on what needed to happen that I didn't worry or stress too much. When I did, I relied on my faith. I went to church, found my group of friends, and we prayed together and all that good stuff: focus and faith." Keeping in touch with her family was crucial for Mrs. Dale, and she always found ways to contact them, usually by sending letters. However, she remembered a special time when her husband Tony was at a National Training Center and could speak with her on the phone. Mrs. Dale also recalled a unique event on Thanksgiving Day while she was deployed in Kuwait. "The Secretary of the Army came out on his plane, and all of a sudden, all these turkeys arrived. We actually got to eat a real, hot Thanksgiving meal. That definitely helped morale." When asked about the challenges she faced as a woman in the military, Mrs. Dale discussed her experiences with culture clashes and the difficulties of so few female officers being present. "It wasn't difficult with the unit I was in because we knew each other. They knew me, and I knew them [...] It was definitely much more challenging to work with what they called 'third-world nationals' at the time. Folks who would come in from other countries, not from Kuwait [...], and their culture was not to take orders from a woman. That was probably the most challenging part. The other thing was that there were not a lot of other female officers I could bond with. One of the challenges was finding my people to talk to, to de-stress with." Mrs. Dale left the Army in 1997 and took many vital lessons away from her time in the military. She treasures the friends she made and tries to keep in touch with them by seeing them every few months. She said she learned that at 20 years old, she was not, in fact, "invincible." While laughing at her young hubris, she said, "I have a huge respect for enjoying life and perspective because not only do you not want to take things for granted, but every day you're not sitting in 130 degrees or being shot at or threatened, that's pretty cool. So, I try not to sweat the small stuff." Click here to listen to Captain Mary Dale tell her story.
