WWII
Narrative for book, "Appalachia: Spirit Triumphant"
by B.  L.  Dotson-Lewis

I was wide awake before 6 am. That was unheard of for me - the night owl. The narrative for World War II placed in my head sometime during the night was so different from what I had planned for this section. This narrative, as planned, would be statistics of Appalachian warriors serving in our military with numbers underlined and bolded of how many killed in bloody battles. I wanted to prove a disportionate number of soldiers from our mountains served in comparison with other regions in the United States. I was ready to furnish details on how they were drafted or several names of those who were so overcome with the feeling of patriotic duty they joined up, at times with as many as four brothers already serving. I wanted to report data on number of soldiers returning home crippled or who were able to enter the workforce. There would be columns listing types of jobs created for veterans or if they were given priority in hiring. Based on my research for this planned narrative, I did find out many veterans returned to the southern Appalachian coalfields to begin their lifelong occupation of working in the coalmines, like their fathers and grandfathers before them.

Also, I would definitely highlight the West Virginia Legislative House Bill 4078 enacted 2000 awarding high diplomas to veterans who had left school to fight for our freedom and were honorably discharged. This bit of legislation comes 60 years late for some. I served as coordinator for our program and we had 21 veterans at our first ceremony. Some were in their late eighties. When they marched across the stage in caps and gowns with great fanfare, it represented one battle won, achieving high school graduation status. That material was certainly worthy of putting in the narrative. I had already collected oral histories from those veterans and several are included in this book.

My intention was to hunt and search for bits and pieces of World War II history from other family stories, not my own, to serve as a proper opening for the WW II oral history section of this book. But the story was there and would not go away.

The saga was seldom discussed by my family members, but always there. When people spoke of him, it was in a whisper - my uncle Roy Dotson. One of my grandmother's young sons, dead; hit by a sliver of 88 German mortar shrapnel while in a foxhole, tearing his young body apart and left in a pool of blood high on a mountain, somewhere in Germany. He was killed during WWII, leaving behind, a young wife, Lucy Baker, a son, Randal and a daughter, Reeble, their twin babies.

I only know general details of the battles that took place during the bloodiest war in the history of our times resulting in deaths of approximately 413, 000 US soldiers. That information comes from war stories, movies and books My own family doesn't know many of the details of this death. The facts they do know; he entered the US Army as a private. He was a member of the 253rd Infantry Battalion, 63rd Division and seven short months later on March 2, 1945, he died. He was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously.

The family doesn't know the names of the soldiers responsible for bringing him down after he marched up that mountain and lowered himself into a foxhole. He sacrificed his life for the freedom of others, and the untimely death of this young soldier has been blamed on an entire nation and more specifically on our own Commander-in-Chief at that time, our 31st President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by my grandmother, sealing family politics for decades.

Reports have it, news of his death came by way of his comrade, the solider sharing the foxhole. who returned Roy's, blood stained New-Testament to a member of the family along with a letter describing the details of his last hours. There in the center of the Bible was a hole where the shrapnel had entered ending his young life. A cousin tells me the pages of the little Bible were stuck together with Roy's own blood. The Bible fit in his left pocket on the shirt of his Army uniform.

I can only imagine the solemn death ceremony that should have followed. The long trip from Grundy, Virginia to Jim Fork. The winding road with hairpin curves and then, upon arrival, the difficulty in getting the flag draped coffin up the steep hill to my grandmother's and grandfather's big house. Soldiers in full uniform, carrying the remains carefully across the wraparound porch and into the guest hall. A room reserved for important visitors. Then, after the coffin is stabilized on its foundation, the gathering of the six remaining brothers, 2 sisters, a wife with a baby in each arm and my grandmother and grandfather to honor one of my grandmother's baby boys. Then, when dusk set in, the all night wake attended by 100s of family and friends bringing in food and singing in low voices "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and 'I will Meet You in the Morning." And finally, the laying to rest in the family burial grounds with the long, poignant wale of taps rising and falling up and down the vales of the hollow.

But the proper death ceremony did not happen. The details of his burial are a mystery even today. Some say because of my grandmother's anger at the United States Government, she refused to have his body returned. He was dead. They had killed him. They say that she told the family if they were made to observe the customary, "closed coffin" mandate set down at that time, how would they know if it were her Roy or just another broken, torn, dead soldier? According to some, his body, like thousands of others, was placed in a burial ground for United States Military in Epimal, France. Some say he was burial near Remagen because of the war time table and the close proximity of the town. Others simply state he is buried in Arlington National Ceremony, Washington, DC. Irregardless, he was deprived of the close family burial ceremony that my grandmother would have wonted for her war hero. His body placed unceremoniously in a grave with a small white cross at his head.

(My grandfather, joined my uncle Roy in his eternal home a few short months later).
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Private - 253rd Infantry 63rd March 2, 1945 - Epimal, France (purple heart)
Date of birth, December 10, 1918 Ira, Buchanan Co, VA

death - March 2, 1945 Remagen, Germany
posted June June 24, 2003