Roy A. Brinkley Korean War Collection

Born: April 20, 1928, in Osceola, Arkansas

Korean War Service: 179th Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, U.S. Army, 1952

Image on left: Roy A. Brinkley posed next to sign for the Aid Station of the 2nd Battalion, 179th Infantry Regiment, unidentified location, Korea, ca. 1952.
Location in Collection: Box 3, Item 47.


Roy Arvid Brinkley, Jr. was born in Osceola, Arkansas in 1928. He served in the National Guard while attending Mississippi State University until his unit was mobilized in 1950. Brinkley served in the Korean War for six months with the 45th Infantry Division working at a Battalion Aid Station and later as Assistant Preventive Medicine Officer at Division Headquarters. He returned to the United States in October of 1952 on emergency leave after the death of his parents in a car accident. Brinkley, now a retired physician, currently lives in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Headquarters of the Korean Army and KMAG (Korean Military Advisory Group), Seoul, South Korea, ca. 1952
Location in Collection: Box 5, Item 13

Soldiers carrying wounded man on stretcher to waiting H-13 Sioux helicopter, unidentified location, ca. 1952.
Location in Collection: Box 3, Item 64
The Brinkley Collection is comprised of five boxes. It contains numerous documents related to Brinkley’s Korean War service including issues of “45th Division News,” the only U.S. Army newsletter printed completely in Korea. Brinkley was interviewed on October 16, 2008; an audio and video copy of the interview is included in the collection. The collection contains 195 photographs, many of them color.

The complete finding aid can be accessed here. The audio version of the oral history interview with Roy Brinkley is available here. Photographs available online are here and documents are here.

Contributed by Stephanie Bayless, Manuscripts Department