World War II and Korean War vets are dying at a rate of more than 1,000 a day, according to some estimates.

The surviving veterans each have their own tale to tell before they, too, are gone.

Veterans like H. Dale Tucker, 78, Warsaw, who received wings and a certificate from General Chen Hsing-Ling, commander-in-chief of Chinese Air Force, Republic of China. He received the wings and certificate in the late 1980s for his U.S. Air Force service in World War II.

"I went to a pilot convention in Little Rock, Ark., and met this Chinese general with the Air Force and I told him I'd like to get back to the 'Hump.' And he said, 'We'll see what we can do.' And I didn't hear back from him for a long time. In fact, Dorotha (my wife) passed away and I got a letter from him that he had a heart attack on the way back and he'd been sick. So then we made arrangements to go back over there. What a red carpet they rolled out for me in Taiwan!" said Tucker Monday.

The Hump is the mountain range between India and China.

Tucker's duty in the armed services began more or less on his 20th birthday. He said, "I was on my way to Blythe, Calif., on my birthday in 1942. That's where I was out teaching cadets to fly."

Tucker learned to fly before he went to California, he said. "I graduated from Beaver Dam High School. And Dad thought I ought to go to college so he sent me to Purdue and I took the money and learned to fly. I got along real well until the grades came out, then I was in trouble. That ended my education. Then I joined the service because I had a license and I got a direct commission."

He spent two years teaching cadets how to fly, then went into Air Transport Command. He ferried airplanes for a while from California to New York and then was sent to school, being sent to Florida, Missouri and Tennessee. From there, he went to India and served in the China-Burma theater.

"I flew from a little town called Debragar," said Tucker. "Man, I tell you, I didn't like India. Their sanitation is absolutely horrible. I don't think it's any better today. ... When I first got off the airplane, I about threw up. You never smelled such a stench in your life."

The military sent him to Cabua, the Army-Air Force base. "That was the taking-off place from there into China. (We) flew over Burma into Kunming. ... We flew supplies over. I flew small arms, ammunition, but mostly gasoline."

The 100-octane gas in 55-gallon drums was taken into Chungking to the B-29 base there. The B-29s were hitting Japan from there, Tucker said, and that took a lot of gas.

"I tell you, we were just busy. One airplane right after another. Fifteen-minute separation out over the Hump. Every 15 minutes there was an airplane going into China," he said.

"I had an experience one day when I was flying, and I still remember it quite vividly," he said. "Early in the morning, the sun was just coming up and we were heading eastward ... and I was getting sleepy. It was a beautiful sunrise and there was an overcast. We were flying above it. And I was just about half asleep and I happened to look out to my left and there sat a Jap Zero right on my wing tip. I thought, 'Oh, my goodness, I'm shot down.' I dove for the clouds and I looked out and he was right with me. ... I climbed back up to altitude and he just sat there and gave me the thumbs up." When the two planes got close to Kunming, Allied aircraft arrived and that was the end of the enemy plane.

He said the whole event was quite concerning.

"That was interesting. Roosevelt said war is hell. It wasn't for me, I enjoyed flying so much. I had an absolute ball flying," said Tucker. "It was tough flying, it was rough flying and the weather was horrible but I still love to fly.

"You can't be a pilot and fly and look down on this Earth and be an atheist. You know there has to be a Supreme Being to make this Earth. Some of the (most) beautiful sunrises and sunsets I've ever seen in my life were over that Hump," he said. "It's just absolutely beautiful."

A flight over the Hump took 2-1/2 hours. There were two courses pilots could take over the Hump - the Charlie course and the Abel course. "We went over the Abel course, which was the lower part, and came back over the higher course. Then we went around Mt. Everest because we couldn't get over it," he said.

Sometimes, he said, there was only a 500-foot separation above and below planes. "That's how thick it was over there," said Tucker. "I read someplace where ... in one month, the pilots flew more tonnage over the Hump than the Lido Road and the Burma Road produced over there during the whole war."

After the war, he bought an airplane and taught people to fly. He flew for Frank Saemann for a few years and then ran for sheriff. He had a real estate business in Warsaw and served on various boards, including the Warsaw School board and the YMCA board.

Tucker ran for mayor and was elected, only to be defeated by 21 votes in his bid for re-election. Tucker filed for a recount and the courts approved the recount, only for it to be appealed by his opponent, Mike Hodges, to the Supreme Court, who ruled against Tucker. Tucker didn't appeal.

Tucker ran for state representative and lieutenant governor in the following years.

His biggest concern isn't the passing of all the WWII veterans or facing death himself, he said. "We don't have any patriotism taught in schools. I would venture to guess if you ask the kids in high school what is the Battle of the Bulge, what's Iwo Jima, what's the Bataan Death March, I think less than 10 percent could tell you what (they are)." [[In-content Ad]]