Saluting Joe Dickerson
2011-11-11 - by
This Veterans Day, I salute my stepfather, Joe Dickerson of Murfreesboro, N.C.
Joe was a country kid who had never been farther than Richmond when the Army shipped him to England to train for D-Day. He was in the first wave at Omaha Beach. His regiment – 116th Infantry, 29th Division – lost more than 800 officers and men.
Did you find it horrifying to watch Saving Private Ryan, especially the D-Day scene? That was Joe.
Joe fought across France and Belgium for four months, through the hedgerows, St. Lo and Cherbourg. He was wounded five times, finally so badly they shipped him home for months of recovery and rehab. He was awarded a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.
Joe’s a quiet, modest man. In an unpublished memoir that he dictated, here’s how he described one combat action the morning after D-Day:
“After we got up the hill and started to advance, there were a lot of Germans dug into trenches. We had to get them out of the trenches, and we had a little hand-to-hand fighting there and that was where I got my first Purple Heart. I got a little cut on the hand. It wasn’t much, and I got a patch over it and went back to fighting.”
Hold up. You want to say, “Joe, pardon me. ‘A little hand-to-hand fighting’? ‘A little cut on the hand’? ‘It wasn’t much’?”
After the war, Joe became a successful merchant. He and my father were close friends. My father helped him write the memoir.
Joe was left a widower after his wife died. My father died in 2005. Joe and my mother Becky began seeing each other. They got married two years ago. Now they spend a lot of time travelling around the country and the world. They are very happy together.
So Joe is doubly a hero to me: for what he did 67 years ago and for how good he is to my mother today.
I salute him and all veterans.
Posted in General
Saluting Joe Dickerson
2011-11-11/
This Veterans Day, I salute my stepfather, Joe Dickerson of Murfreesboro, N.C.
Joe was a country kid who had never been farther than Richmond when the Army shipped him to England to train for D-Day. He was in the first wave at Omaha Beach. His regiment – 116th Infantry, 29th Division – lost more than 800 officers and men.
Did you find it horrifying to watch Saving Private Ryan, especially the D-Day scene? That was Joe.
Joe fought across France and Belgium for four months, through the hedgerows, St. Lo and Cherbourg. He was wounded five times, finally so badly they shipped him home for months of recovery and rehab. He was awarded a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.
Joe’s a quiet, modest man. In an unpublished memoir that he dictated, here’s how he described one combat action the morning after D-Day:
“After we got up the hill and started to advance, there were a lot of Germans dug into trenches. We had to get them out of the trenches, and we had a little hand-to-hand fighting there and that was where I got my first Purple Heart. I got a little cut on the hand. It wasn’t much, and I got a patch over it and went back to fighting.”
Hold up. You want to say, “Joe, pardon me. ‘A little hand-to-hand fighting’? ‘A little cut on the hand’? ‘It wasn’t much’?”
After the war, Joe became a successful merchant. He and my father were close friends. My father helped him write the memoir.
Joe was left a widower after his wife died. My father died in 2005. Joe and my mother Becky began seeing each other. They got married two years ago. Now they spend a lot of time travelling around the country and the world. They are very happy together.
So Joe is doubly a hero to me: for what he did 67 years ago and for how good he is to my mother today.
I salute him and all veterans.
Posted in General