The Short Life of Dale Lynch Buffington

Dale with his mother, Cora

The Short Life of Dale Lynch Buffington 

written by his older brother, R Virgil Buffington.

 Dale was born on a little farm one mile east of Albion, Iowa, January 12, 1924. He was dad, completed like our dad with brown eyes. I think being that he looked like my dad he was favored above everything. As a result he got pretty unruly and dad couldn’t control him. They would really fight and bang one another around as he got older.

 We moved off that farm into town in 1925. Dale developed a fiery temper like my dad when he was pretty small but dad still almost made him worse by letting him do as he pleased. Dale did become very good hearted and would do things for other people.

 When Dale was 3 years old all of a sudden Dad said, “We are moving to Minnesota on our granddad Lynch’s old homestead.” In February 1927 Dad loaded everything we owned in a boxcar including a team of horses. He rode in the boxcar also to Minn. It was a hard trip taking three days in February to get about 200 miles.

 Our mother and sister Maurine, Dale and I rode a passenger train to Dodge Center, Minn. We were picked up by the Grays with a team of horses. Dad and his boxcar came into Claremont and he was met by Bob Gray, my cousin. The boxcar was parked on the siding to be unloaded in the next few days.

 The boxcar was unloaded with the help of Bob Gray and a team and sled. Being in February it was quite a job. Our Mother, Maurine and Dale  stayed at the Gray’s (my mother’s sister’s family) until we got the house so we could live in it. It was in bad shape, no one had lived there for about three years. The barn was in equally bad shape.

 It was a real struggle for both our dad and mother. They had little money and little to farm with. At times I still wonder how they ever survived the struggle. Our mother’s determination was a big part of it.

 After a short time Maurine and I started country school (one room for all eight grades) which was a lot different than the town where we had been going to in Iowa. I was in the 5th grade and Maurine was in the 3rd. Dale was 3 years old at that time.

 Dad got a few cattle and pigs after getting some feed around for them. I think he got 4 milk cows some way. Going up to Minnesota with none of the essentials for farming and no income had to be a trial that is still hard to imagine as I have thought about it through the years. No fuel for heat or cooking. We used wood for all our fuel, for cooking as well as heat. We borrowed wood from the Gray’s until we could get to the woods to do our own.

 After about two years Dale started to school and was kind of unruly in school and didn’t listen to the teacher very well. She got irked with him when he wouldn’t stay in his seat. One time she took him by the hand and put him back in his seat 3 times. The third time she shook him. He had developed a fiery temper and hit her in the eye. Then she really shook him. The teacher ended up with a black eye from the first grader and I witnessed it all and really was a little embarrassed and didn’t know what to do or say.

 In the spring of 1929 Dale was seven years old and we had sheep in the apple orchard also a Crobby buck, if you went in the orchard you had to watch out for him or he would give you a good butt. Dale heard us talking about beating on that buck. One day Dale got a stick and crawled over the pen. he said “I’m going to train him” the buck took a charge at him and really knocked him down. Dale got up and the buck knocked him down again. I told him to get out of there or he would get hurt. He still said that he was going to train him. Dale got up again and the buck charged again. This time Dale lay down and the buck tripped over him and landed right on top of him. He was glad to get out of there then.

Shortly before the buck incident, Gene Buffington came from Wisconsin with his wife and family to stay for a long time. Bob Buffington was about Dale’s age so they played together a lot. Someone had given me some duck eggs to hatch. I put about a dozen under an old setting hen she hatched all of them and as taking care of them. I wasn’t paying attention to what those kids were doing until I saw that they had some of those little ducks in a pail and were running water on them. When I checked to see what they were doing they were holding some of the little ducks under water and had drowned five of them. I was so mad at them that I wanted to drown those little brats.

 When I was about 15 and driving the old model T Ned Mc Martin and I decided to go fishing at Clear Lake in Waseca. Dad said I could take the old Ford if we took Dale along. I didn’t want to take him but it was the only way we could go. We got an old tent and some bait and went to Waseca. We got a boat and they furnished cane poles with the boat. We didn’t have much luck there so we decided to go to Faribault because we knew of several lakes there. It was quite a trip from Dodge Center for us kids.

 We got to Faribault and most of the time we didn’t know what lake we were on. I know we were on French Lake and Cedar. Dale was about 8 years old then and was not suppose to tell anyone that we were in Faribault. He couldn’t keep it and told other kids and Dad found out and was pretty mad but didn’t say much as long as no one drowned. We didn’t have life jackets. We were probably lucky. We did have a good time fishing.

 Dale went on in country school and became very good friends of John Connel Mc Martin. He was a son of Lours Mc Martin that was being raised by the Roy Mc Martin family. They went on through the grades and then started to high school in Dodge Center. By that time the ones that wanted to go to high school from the district were being taken to Dodge Center by car.

 In the meantime we had moved from the Lynch farm in 1936 to a farm owned by an insurance company in Owatonna. It was a mile east of the old one room school, District 39 that we all attended from the 1st to the 8th grade. Dale was 13 years old by then.

 Dale and Dad didn’t get along well at all as Dale got older. They were always fighting and I mean really hitting one another. One time they got in an argument by the windmill and while my dad was sharpening a scythe with a big stone with a handle, he hit Dale behind the ear with that stone and cut a gash in his head. Dale was pretty tough and though it didn’t hurt him very much he lay on the ground pretending he was dead. Dad walked around him and poked at him and Dale just laid still. He said he could hardly keep from laughing. Finally dad got so worried he went up to the house and got our mother. She came down there and saw Dale lying on the ground and she flew all over dad for hitting him. Dad must have finally thought he was faking it, so he went over to the water tank and took a five gallon pail of water and poured it in his face. Dale said he had to wake up or drown. It was really funny the way Dale told it to me.

 When Dale was about 13 years old, we both had been trapping animals for their fur, skunks, fox and mink. We never had much luck but Dale did catch a big skunk in a trap and decided to skin it. He wasn’t as careful as he should have been about the stink bag and he got the smell all over him. He went in the house and what a stench. They had to bury his clothes. Our dad was sleeping when Dale went in the house. To remember the look on his face when he came out of the bedroom still makes me laugh.

 Dale played football in high school but during his sophomore year he contracted bright's disease and missed a lot of school and didn’t get all of his credits that year so it put him behind so he had to take an extra year to finish his grade as a senior.

 When Dale went back to school after being ill for some time, some of the kids decided to buy some limburger cheese. That stuff smells really bad. One of them got the idea to spread it on the heat registers all over the school. The smell got so bad they had to let school out. Dale was in on it but claimed he didn’t put it on the heat registers however he got the blame for it. No one would tell who did it. They went to the stores to find out who bought the cheese but the store clerks wouldn’t tell them anything. Dale got most of the blame, but always said he didn’t do it.

 In 1940 when Dale was 16 he decided to go to the Golden Gloves boxing match in Rochester. He and the Sund boys came over to the farm that Marv and I had. some of the neighbor boys and we started training Dale for the boxing match. Sixteen was the youngest you could be to get in the Golden Gloves. We moved furniture out of the setting room. Jim Sund decided he was going to take part in the matches also.

 We had a good time training both Sund and Dale. Dale could really hit hard with his right fist. I boxed with him quite a bit, being bigger and older I didn’t always protect myself very well and Dale caught me with that right fist and got my lip and nearly knocked me out. After that i didn’t take it so easy on him.

 It finally came time to go to Rochester, Dale seemed eager to go. We got there and Dale was fighting a guy that was 22 years old and from Rochester. They got in the ring and they introduced the guy from Rochester first, the crowd cheered and whooped it up. Dale was introduced as being from Dodge Center. The crowd began to boo him and just kept it up. I think that got Dale upset to get booed like that when he was only 16 years old.

 They assigned a guy from Rochester to be in his corner. I think it would have been better if I had been in his corner. The fight started and at first Dale did well, he nailed the guy with that right a couple of times and it really shook him. The crowd kept booing Dale and I think it got to him. He lost the decision, but he did great for a young kid. Some said that it wasn’t fair that he had to face a 22 year old but that didn’t count, it was only weight that counted.

 In 1941 I came home from California at Christmas and Dale was in the middle of his last school year. When I was ready to go back he wanted to quit school and go back with me. The war was on and Dale wasn’t 18 yet. I told him to stay in school and then come out there but he wouldn’t listen. He said if I wouldn’t take him he would hitch hike. I didn’t want him to do that so I agreed to take him. I already had five to go without Dale in a 1941 Ford two door. That meant three in the front and three in back along with their luggage. The car was really loaded.

 When we started there wasn’t much snow in Minn. but when we got to Iowa they had about the worst snowstorm ever. Some streets were still blocked in Des Moines. We got out of Des Moines and out in the country. The roads were still blocked. One lane traffic, cars couldn’t  get by one another. We sat out in the country for about three hours waiting for them to clear the road of snow and stalled cars and busses. It was a mess. Then the roads were slippery. We got started and kept driving except to stop for gas and a bit to eat.

 We got to California and delivered the passengers. Dale stayed in our apartment in Hollywood. The next day I took him down to Long Beach to stay with Mary and Warren.

 Dale wasn't’ 18 so he couldn’t get in an aircraft factory so he took a job setting pins in a Long Beach bowling alley on the pier by the water front. That was really hard work but he stuck it out till he was able to get a job at the new Douglas plant in Long Beach. He stayed with Mary and Warren all the time he worked there. He did great at Douglas in six months he was a lead man with about 12 workers under him, putting glass in B-17s. That was a Boeing plane but Douglas was building it too.

 Since the war was on Dale was drafted. He went in the service as an air corp gunner.

 Our dad rented more land and hoped to keep him on the farm but the draft board wouldn’t allow it, though another neighbor did get his son deferred with less land and work than dad had.

390th BG, 568th Squadron, 1944, England

Source: Find A Grave Memorial, from 390th.org website. May, 1944, he and his crew transferred to England.

Dale was assigned to the ball turret on the belly of a B-17 which is about the most dangerous place in the plane. They got their crew together and flew their bomber to England arriving there in February of 1944. Shortly after that they started flying missions over Germany. There were 10 crew members on his plane. They encountered a lot of flak from ground fire and also German fighters as at the time the German forces were still strong. After they had gone on a few missions they were assigned to a flight that was called the shuttle run, where they flew across Germany dropping their bombs and landing in Russia. The first thing they were asked in Russia was how many women they wanted to sleep with. Their commander wouldn’t allow that. The next day they loaded up with bombs and flew either to Italy or back to England dropping bombs on the way. Dale’s plane made the trip to Russia twice. They saw planes shot down and Dale became very nervous. The last letter I got from him I could hardly read. They had been on their 28 or 29th mission and he said they had to do 35.

 They were overdue to get shot down. The very next mission they were shot down. It was shortly after the invasion of Europe in June. He had been in England less than two months.

 We got a notice that he was missing in action, but we didn’t know what had happened to him, if he was alive or not for quite a while. It really bothered all of us but especially our mother.

 We finally got word that Dale was a prisoner of war in Germany. He was in that prison camp for about eleven months, until Germany surrendered. He said the worst part was very little food and guards coming around telling them they had orders to shoot all the prisoners.

 Dale bailed out of the plane at 25,000 feet and he said all ten got out but they never were able to find the pilot. They thought the German youth probably captured him and may have hung him.

 Dale said a plane zoomed through their formation like a flash, just before they were shot down. It was the first jet fighter plane that they had ever seen. After they had to drop out of formation, the German fighters riddled their plane full of holes. When the order came to bail out Dale had previously told the crew they were to be sure to get him out of the ball turret because he couldn’t get out by himself. They grabbed hold of him and pulled him out, slapped a parachute on him and shoved him out of the plane first.

 Since they were so high when they had to bail out lack of oxygen caused him to black out temporarily as he came to his senses he realized that there was a German Fighter plane circling him. It had been reported that sometimes German fighters would shoot the parachutes full of holes on the way down however this plane finally left.

 He had never used a parachute before and hit the ground very hard and was stunned, and had a sprained ankle, when he opened his eyes he was looking into the barrel of a shotgun an older civilian was going to kill him. It happened a German soldier saw him come down and forced the civilian to leave him alone. It was well known that German youth and older citizens did kill some airmen when they landed but the German military sometimes protected them if they saw them come down.

 While he was a prisoner he said they were so starved from lack of food, when he got home his weight had dropped to well under 100 pounds. Near the end of the war the prisoners would be marched one direction away from the American troops and maybe the next day be marched the other direction away from the Russians advancing from the other way. One day they saw a chicken in a yard, he caught it and carried it under his arm till they stopped, then they built a fire and cooked the chicken. Finally a fighter airplane flew over, the American pilot threw out a note telling the German guards to let those guys go or they would be hung. Dale said that scared the guards to much they did let them go.

 Dale said later he saw a German officer with a little 22 automatic pistol a special officer’s gun. He asked him if he could have it. The officer said no, so Dale borrowed a gun from another prisoner and jammed it into the officer's ribs “Give me your gun.” I think David (his son) has it now. Dale carried it in his car for a long time.

 When he came home he was put in a nice hotel on Miami Beach for some time to gain back some of the weight he had lost before he came home to see his family. When he got back home he seemed very nervous and hyper. He had quite a bit of money saved from being a prisoner for so long and he started spending in on wine and women and having a good time.

 I came home at Christmas in 1945 and he and I decided to try farming. Our dad said he would sell his farm stuff to us and we could rent the farm. We got a loan and paid our dad. We didn’t get along that well so decided to go on my own alone. Dale and dad tried farming but that didn’t work either. So Dale went down to Hormel’s packing plant in Austin, Minn. and went to work. He didn’t like that either, so he and Arden Crane started building rubber tired farm wagons in Dodge Center. They didn’t have much luck selling the wagons, so they quit that.

 Dale then went to Minneapolis and started working with Mary Gunnufson in the car battery business. They had a new way to build long lasting batteries.
  While in Minneapolis he met Rose in a bowling alley and later brought her down to our place on the farm. She seemed rather quiet as I remember then. Dale followed Mary to Chicago for the battery business. He didn’t stay long as he came back to Minneapolis to see Rose. Shortly after that he was going to marry her. He didn’t tell me she had two cute little girls until after they were married. He wanted to bring them to Dodge Center to live. He knew that Eunice and I had an old house in Dodge Center that Eunice and her sister Wilma had together. I had bought Wilma’s share and in the meantime I had gotten a G. I. loan and bought a larger house across the street from the canning factory office. So we agreed to sell Dale the house that Eunice and Wilma had owned. Dale got a loan from the bank and paid us for the house and they moved in.

Dale and his son, David

 They seemed happy there and Dale started working for a contractor that was welding tanks for Standard oil co. At first they worked near home but then they got a job at Worthington, Minn. and they were gone several days at a time. Sometimes two weeks at a time. Dale seemed to like the job pretty well but Rose was unhappy that he was gone so much.

 Eunice and I had been living in the house we bought, but we moved back to the farm. We had a lot of snow in 1951 and at New Year's Eve we had to pull the car out with the Ford tractor so we could meet Dale and Rose down at Maroo’s Tavern in Dodge Center. We had a good time there and I told Dale I thought he should quit his job and get a job in Rochester so he could be at home more as Rose didn’t like him being away so much. He said he would think about it, but he could make more money at what he was doing. His little son David wasn’t a year old at that time. Dale went back to Worthington right after New Years 1951 and about 3 days later we got a call that Dale had been hurt from a fall. We all went to Worthington right away. I had to be pulled out with a tractor because of a snowstorm and it blew snow all the way to Worthington.

 They had Dale in the hospital and he seemed to be in pain although he was not conscious. I told the doctor that we should take him to Rochester to the hospital there. The doctor there wouldn’t let hm be moved. He said he will be better by morning. I didn’t agree but had no choice.

  The next morning we were there early and I could see that Dale was much weaker. The doctor came in, took a look at him and said to get him to Rochester. By the time they got an ambulance ready it was after noon. I felt then we had waited too long.
 We called ahead and they had the top brain surgeon waiting for him at St Mary’s Hospital. We got there and the surgeon examined him and said he was too weak to stand the surgery but he would operate if we wanted him to. We decided to leave it up to the doctor. He said if he doesn’t live through the night he couldn’t stand the surgery. He had hit his head on some pipes when he fell.

 We stayed by his bed that night but I could see he was getting weaker all the time. He was baptized as he took his last breaths. About 7:30 or 8 pm he gasped and died. We were all at his bedside when he died. I stood there never feeling as helpless in my life as I couldn’t do anything for him. It was the worst thing that ever happened to stand there and watch him die after all he had been through. I felt like it should have been me instead of him.

 From autopsy they said a vertebra in his neck was broken, plus bad brain damage. We wondered if he would have been crippled for life had he lived. He also showed serious heart problems that most likely were caused by War stress and being in prisoner of war camp. That could have caused him to black out on the ladder. He was working alone and no one saw him fall. It was very slippery on the tank and ladder that he was on. The two guys that worked with him were goofing off. That was illegal even back then to work alone in dangerous work like that and under those working conditions. His case would have been grounds for a big lawsuit now. It wasn’t happening back then.

 Dale had a military funeral that was very sad on a cold day in January a few days before his 27th birthday. He was buried at the Dodge Center Cemetery. Rose felt so bad it was hard to get her to leave the cemetery. She kept saying, “We can’t leave him here.” His death was awful, a terrible blow to mom after going through the war and finally getting him back, and to the rest of the family also. Maurine said it seemed like he was calling us to stay there with him. We had lost our dad just a year and a half earlier. This left Rose, David (still under a year old) and the girls, Diane and Melody (they were still so very young also) in a bad way. I tried t help them and did for a while, but I had all I could do with my own family and trying to run a 480 acre farm, so that I couldn’t do what I would like to have done for them. Without inheriting a farm, it is nearly impossible to make it financially. The veterans administration said I couldn’t make it.

 I had been looking forward to Dale being my fishing buddy as time went by, but it was not meant to be.

R. Virgil Buffington

 Several years after Dale died, while going through some of Mother’s belongings that I stored in an old building that leaked, Dale’s Air Medal was found. We thought he also had three oak leaf clusters, but they weren’t there or was his Purple heart and medals that he should have had.

 When I was in the hospital in Rochester, David came in to see me and I gave him the Air Medal. It had been wet from the roof leaking in that old building and wasn’t in the best of shape.

 I also sent in some money to have Dale’s name and mine put on the WWII memorial. I received two certificates of appreciation with both of our names on them. I wanted one with just Dale’s name on it but they didn't’ send it. I sent on to David telling him what to do to get one with just Dale’s name on it. I don’t know if he ever sent for it or not. I framed the one I have.

Cora and Earl Buffington with their first child, R Virgil the author of this story