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Local gets purple heart for actions in Korea
Published March 27, 2008
SAN ANTONIO — If he’d realized everyone would make such a big deal of it, Seguin resident Sam Dunlap probably wouldn’t have let his son, Sean, put him in for a Purple Heart he’d earned almost 56 years ago in a rocky valley in what today is North Korea.
But Wednesday afternoon in San Antonio, Dunlap got his medal for being wounded in action on May 5, 1952, just north of what is now the de-militarized zone or DMZ, just above the 38th Parallel.
And when he did, he was surprised to see half a dozen television cameras, reporters from several radio stations and from a couple of newspapers there to see U.S. Senator John Cornyn pin the medal with the purple ribbon and the likeness of George Washington to his suit jacket.
He also got three other medals: the Army Commendation Medal, the Good Conduct Medal and the Korea Campaign ribbon.
“I don’t feel like a hero of any kind, and I wish there wasn’t such a ‘to-do’ about it,” Dunlap said Wednesday just before being introduced to Cornyn, R-San Antonio. “I just did my job, and a lot of other guys who did the same thing sacrificed a lot more than I did.”
But the Korean War was all about sacrifice, which makes it understandable if Dunlap doesn’t value his own contribution as much as that of others.
Dunlap, who later went to Texas A&M and then on to a career at a lumber company and then a business that later became part of Boeing, was an army infantryman and a corporal who became a platoon leader — a post normally held by a lieutenant — the hard way.
He was the last, most-senior man standing.
“Everybody else was killed,” Dunlap said.
Now, he said, he’s not happy that while other men are laying down their lives in Iraq, some are complaining about casualty rates that would have been considered light in World War II or in Korea, with 4,000 dead and 30,000 injured over five years, and using them as an excuse to call for an end to the fighting.
“I get tired of hearing all this whining people are doing now,” he said.
After Dunlap took mortar and small-arms fragments in a clash with North Korean and Chinese troops, he was evacuated to a field hospital later popularized by a famous TV series and then on to a medical center at Pusan.
One day, they took Dunlap’s crutches from him and sent him back to his unit, the 35th Infantry Regiment.
“When I got out of the hospital, I went right up to the line,” Dunlap recalled.
But he could barely stand, much less walk or run, and he was assigned to a headquarters unit before being sent back to the states after spending around a year overseas.
After A&M, he lived in the Orange and the Dallas areas and a few years ago retired to Seguin.
“My wife and I both loved South Texas, and we moved to Seguin,” Dunlap said. “I love it here more than any other place in the world.”
Before Cornyn pinned the medals on Dunlap’s chest, he took a moment to talk with Dunlap and his family privately.
“You’re the guy who called my office,” Cornyn told Dunlap’s son, Sean. “Thank you for letting us know so we could take care of this.”
The younger Dunlap acknowledged Cornyn’s aid on the matter.
“I thought he deserved this and it was about time and I thank you for your help,” he said.
“Your family is proud of you, Sam,” Cornyn said, pinning on the first of four medals. “I join them and the people of the State of Texas in thanking you for what you did for your state and your country.”
The elder Dunlap didn’t know what had happened to his Purple Heart all those years ago.
He recalled being told he’d get one, but then never heard anything about it — or that he was entitled to other medals, as well.
And Sean Dunlap only knew about the Purple Heart and not all the other medals.
Cornyn’s office discovered what the problem had been all those years ago.
The North Koreans and the Chinese overran the regimental headquarters of the 35th Infantry, and its records were destroyed.
Sean Dunlap wasn’t as much help as he would have liked to have been, because, he said, he’s never heard the full story himself.
“When this all happened, the people at Senator Cornyn’s office asked me about all this stuff, but I didn’t know what to tell him,” Dunlap said. “My father never talks about any of this.”
“And I didn’t know it was going to turn into this kind of a big deal,” he said mostly to his son, who lives with him. “He takes good care of me.”
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