Frazier, Raymond "Doc"

This interview is with Raymond “Doc” Frazier. Raymond’s daughter, Gloria, was present for the interview her voice is present periodically throughout the audio. The interview was recorded at Raymond Frazier’s house in Tucson, Arizona on October 22nd, 2018.  Part 1 of 2 covers the following themes: 

b. 1931 

  • Childhood in Tennessee. Poverty and sharecropping. Music. Cash crops and food. 

  • The Great Depression. 

  • Joining US Army in 1947.  

  • Basic training and boxing. 

  • Stationed on Guam in the late 1940s. 

  • Outbreak of the Korean War. Attempt to get deployed to Korea. 

  • First combat experience in Korea. Relations with the South Koreans. 

  • Getting captured by the Chinese Army in May, 1951. Imprisonment, propaganda, and resistance. Survival as a POW.  

  • Burning Chinese military buildings, being court martialled and tortured. 

  • Life in a labor camp. 

  • Role as a medic for fellow prisoners. 

  • Escape attempts. 

  • Forms of torture that Frazier witnessed. 

  • Pastimes while interred.  

  • Release and experience of returning to the United States. 

  • Learning to talk about war experiences decades later. 

This interview is with Raymond “Doc” Frazier. Raymond’s daughter, Gloria, was present for the interview her voice is present periodically throughout the audio. The interview was recorded at Raymond Frazier’s house in Tucson, Arizona on October 29th, 2018.  Part 2 of 2 covers the following themes: 

  • Returning to military service as a recruiter in the mid-1950s.  

  • Reenlistment in military intelligence and assignment to Eritrea and Ethiopia in the late 1950s. 

  • Hunting, travels, and Haile Selassie. 

  • Getting speared in the chest. 

  • Observations upon life in 1950s Ethiopia. 

  • Return to Kentucky. 

  • Assignment in Turkey during 1960. Incursion into the Soviet Union and observations of Turkish life. 

  • Training troops for swamp and jungle warfare in Fort Polk, Louisiana during the early 1960s. 

  • Frazier’s first tour of duty in the Vietnam War. 

  • Return to US and training troops. Differences in training between Vietnam and Korea. 

  • Second tour in Vietnam. Getting moved into Special Forces. 

  • Return to the United States and the realities of warfare. 

  • Training troops in US until Army retirement in 1970. 

  • Starting a private detective agency in Tennessee. Working for commercial clients, theft, strikebreaking. 

  • Move to Tucson in 2006. 

PeopleAengus Anderson