Saturday, June 27, 2015

An Interview With Charles Dulin

On 6/18/15 I interviewed Charles Dulin, a WWII vet born in 1923.  I always like to say that 1923 was an unlucky year to be born.  If you were born in 1923, you would have been 18 in 1941; the year when Japan attacked the US and when Germany attacked the USSR.  While WWII technically started earlier, it was 1941 when things got really big.  Charles was in both the luckiest and unluckiest position that a soldier born in 1923 could be in.

Unlike other vets, he never left the US.  He was an "Attached Unassigned" which meant that he had no particular assignment.  He served for 3 years and remained a private for all 3 of those years.  He spent his time doing the jobs that nobody else really wanted to do.  He usually worked with planes, refueling and fixing them up.  Sometimes he would fly them/fly in them, but that didn't happen quite as often.

His story was rather interesting to listen to mainly because of how odd it was.  He was originally in training to be a meteorologist, but he was kicked out of meteorology school.  After that, the army never really assigned him to do anything so he remained a private for the rest of his time in the service.  He still performed his service though and he used the GI bill to get a Master's Degree in chemistry, so it wasn't all for nothing though.  Even if his story wasn't quite as exciting, it was still neat to document.

--Elijah

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