“I did just about everything,” a crinkly 85 yr-old smile, with sparkles in his eyes and flirtatious chuckling, PFC Dewey Muirhead shares his enlistment history with all those with a willing ear and an accepting heart. Everyone with about an hour’s worth of down time would enjoy the stories this WWII Veteran has to share.

“I started out as a PFC (Private 1st Class) and discharged as a PFC,” said Dewey. “But I had fun doing it!” Promoted and demoted over five times, he explained how he loved his work, enjoyed his buddies and loved having fun.

Dewey belonged to the 8th Air Force during WWII. He was enlisted during 1942-1945 and volunteered to be a gunner on the B17 aircraft.

“We flew two missions to Germany,” he said. “Franklin, Germany and Cologne, Germany where I was a gunner on a B17.”

While stationed in England, Dewey was on base with Capt Clark Gable who was an 8th Navigator on a B17 aircraft. “He flew planes,” said Dewey. “But I wasn’t on one of his planes.”

“He used to drive truck in Seminole,” he said of Gable. “Did you know that?”

Dewey remembers his time in New York and traveling on the Queen Elizabeth. “That must’ve been back in May of ‘43. We went on to Scotland that May and I spent 26 months overseas.”

Chuckling, while his wife, Inez, reminded him of certain points he had not gotten to yet, he told of switching to the 1061st MP Co. of the 548th Air Force.

“Inez was a WWII bride,” Dewey said. “I married her up back in 1942 before I went off. Prettiest little thing you ever saw. Been married 65 years now.”

He tells of other missions he was in.

“I remember we were headed to Berlin when the motor went out on our plane,” Dewey said. “We had to turn around and go back to Franklin. Never did get to Berlin that time.”

When the war was over, Dewey said everyone was given a 30-day “sick leave” and sent back to the states.

Shipped to Ft Chaffee, Arkansas, then on to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, he said he was lined up and headed to Japan when the Atomic Bomb was dropped.

“They were tired of us and sent us home,” he said. “I went to Amarillo where I was discharged in 1945.”