Page 82 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2018- Online Magazine
P. 82
Booth Dyess A Sixteen-Year-Old Sees
the World
by Katherine McLamore and Larry A. Williams
out on foot to locate that’s for me. I want to see the
his own troops. This world.” There was only one
was just one incident small problem: he was just 16
for Jerold Booth Dyess years old. He told the recruiter
during the Korean that he was “17 and would turn
War. 18 in a couple of months.” He
was allowed to join if he could
Jerold was born on obtain his father’s signature.
the family farm near
Cone, Texas on July
6, 1930 to O.R. (Jack)
and Vergie Dyess. He
grew up hunting and
fishing and working
hard, like most
young men during
the Depression Era.
His family moved
to Melrose and Ft.
Sumner, New Mexico;
then to Colorado
and finally to Smyer,
is heart raced, and he
tried to quiet and slow Texas, where Booth attended
Hhis breathing, as he school until the 11th grade.
stood up all night between the When he and his cousin saw
an Army poster in 1946 that
panels of the lookout post wall, His father said no, so Booth
while listening to his enemies read, “Join the Army and see “forged his signature and left
the world,” Booth said, “Boy,
laugh and talk just inches away. home.” His cousin also signed
This young American soldier’s up.
feet filled with blood; his legs
threatened to buckle after Dyess, who enlisted in Lubbock,
took his basic training at Ft. Ord
many hours of holding himself
upright. He didn’t know how in California. He was then sent
to New Jersey for six weeks and
long he could physically do this
or if he would be discovered; then on to Salzburg, Germany.
It was here that he was taught
however, after the enemy finally
fell asleep and awoke at dawn, the use of various weapons,
including a 75mm recoilless
he heard them shuffling about
and then leave the building for rifle (which caused him some
hearing loss) and even the new
good. Only then was he able
to ease himself out and pull M46 Patton Tank, named after
WWII General George S. Patton.
himself together enough to set
82 Lubbock Senior Link
