‘Heading overseas’ - Country music legend Leroy Van Dyke drafted into U.S. Army in Korean War (Part 1 of 2)

Leroy Van Dyke is pictured when graduating the eighth grade from a one-room country school in Pettis County in 1943. He went on to graduate with an agriculture degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia before being drafted into the U.S. Army. Courtesy of Gladys Van Dyke

Editor’s note: This is the first of two articles highlighting the military experiences of performing artist Leroy Van Dyke
 
By Jeremy P. Ämick
 
The music career of Leroy Van Dyke might have never happened were it not for his service in the Korean War. While traveling along a dusty trail in a U.S. Army jeep sometime in late 1953, he began to hear in his mind the music and lyrics for a catchy tune. After this incident occurred a few more times, he paused to pen the tune that would launch his successful career in country music.
 
Born on a farm in rural Pettis County in 1929, Van Dyke’s father operated 3,000 acres of farmland, which they either owned or leased, in addition to running a trucking operation. He and his four siblings, while working to assist their parents around the farm, began their formal education in local one-room schools.
 
“I graduated the eighth grade from the Lone Star School in 1943 and was the valedictorian,” Van Dyke said. “But then again, there were only two of us in the graduating class,” he chuckled.
 
When he was about thirteen years old, Van Dyke was helping his father haul corn on a 1934 International truck, at which time he was asked what he wanted to do for a living when he grew up. He initially remarked that he wanted to be a farmer and raise cattle, to which his father responded, “There might be something that you would like better that would be better for you.”
 
Van Dyke said, “My father then asked me if I could do anything I wanted to for a living, what would it be. I told him that I wanted to sing for a living … and thought he would think that I was crazy. But he was supportive, because he was a good singer and appreciated those that could sing. He said that I had something special in my voice.”
         
Their family belonged to the congregation of the local Pleasant Hill Methodist Church, which is one of the places where Van Dyke found his voice and interest in singing. He also found opportunities to perform while attending high school at Smith-Cotton in Sedalia.
 
“Back at that time, they always kind of frowned upon those coming from the one-room schools,” Van Dyke recalled. “But three of us from my first-grade class took the first, third and fourth academic spots in our class when we graduated from Smith-Cotton in 1947 (with Van Dyke securing the third position)." 
 
Following his high school graduation, he remained on the farm for the next year, never really considering going on to college. Yet after visiting his older brother at the engineering school at the University of Missouri—Columbia, and hearing that one of his close friends, Eldon Leiter, planned to enroll there, his educational direction soon shifted.
 
“I decided that if Eldon was going to college, I would also go but only planned on staying for two years to get an agricultural certificate,” he explained. “Plans change, of course, and I ended up staying for four years,” he grinned.
 
The first two years came with the requirement that all male students participate in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, thus receiving their indoctrination to the military experience.
 
“There was one time when they were teaching us to drive 2-1/2-ton trucks in ROTC, and I was riding with an ROTC instructor who was raking through the gears. He suggested that I drive and was surprised how quickly I picked it up, but he did not know that those 2-1/2-ton trucks had the same motor and transmission as the ones my dad used in his trucking business, and I had been driving them since I was 12 years old.”  
 
While in college, Van Dyke was an editor and contributor to the agriculture page for the Columbia Missourian. In the spring of 1952, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture with dual majors in animal science and journalism. Within “about 20 minutes” of his graduation, Van Dyke jokingly remarked, he received his draft notice for military service. He soon boarded a bus along with other area inductees, and was sent to Camp Crowder in Neosho, Missouri, to receive uniforms, inoculations and undergo aptitude testing. A few days later, he was sent to Camp Chaffee in western Arkansas for several weeks of basic military training.
 
“Back at Camp Crowder, I had taken a typing test and ended up typing about 60 words a minute because I had taught myself while in college,” he said. “Because of that, when our unit was out in the mud and nasty conditions doing training, I was often in the battery supply room working as a clerk.”
 
During the latter part of their training cycle, Van Dyke followed the suggestion of one of the cadre that he consider the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC). At the time, several of the trainees had orders for Korea; however, he received instructions to report to CIC school at Fort Holabird—a former U.S. Army post in Baltimore, Maryland.
 
Those accepted into the CIC program had to meet specific requirements, which included being at least 22 years of age, possessing no police record, achieving certain scores on their aptitude tests and having a college degree. Throughout the nearly seven months of training, Van Dyke and his classmates received instruction on writing reports, methods of interrogation and recognition of potential criminal activities, all of which helped instill them with the tools to combat subversive activities such as espionage and treason.
 
“They also gave us a thirty-day immersion in the Japanese language and by July of 1953, I was on a plane and heading overseas,” he said. “We had a 10-day stay in Japan, then flew to my assignment in Korea.”
 
Van Dyke would soon discover that the next year would not only be filled with opportunities to serve his country in a unique military role, but offered opportunities to develop and refine the performance skills that later elevated him to country music stardom.  
 
Jeremy P. Ämick writes on behalf of the Missouri National Guard Hall of Fame 

---

After being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1953, Van Dyke completed his initial training at Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, and was then sent to Fort Holabird, Maryland, for specialized training with the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps. Courtesy of Gladys Van Dyke