Howard Joseph DICKSON

Howard Joseph DICKSON Update Details

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DICKSON, Howard Joseph

Service Number:	NX125074
Enlisted:	30 July 1942
Last Rank:	Warrant Officer Class 2
Last Unit:	2nd/6th Independent Company / Cavalry Commando Squadron
Born:	Parkes, New South Wales, Australia, 21 November 1906
Home Town:	Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales
Schooling:	Not yet discovered
Occupation:	Advertising salesman
Died:	Accidental (Drowning), New Guinea, 27 January 1945, aged 38 years
Cemetery:	No known grave - "Known Unto God" Port Moresby War Memorial, Port Moresby Memorial, Port Moresby, Papua, Papua New Guinea Panel 6
Memorials:	Australian Commando Memorial, Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, Port Moresby (Bomana) Memorial

World War 2 Service

30 Jul 1942:	Enlisted Warrant Officer Class 2
30 Jul 1942:	Enlisted Australian Military Forces (WW2) , Warrant Officer Class 2, NX125074
27 Jan 1945:	Involvement Warrant Officer Class 2, NX125074, 2nd/6th Independent Company / Cavalry Commando Squadron

Help us honour Howard Joseph Dickson's service by contributing information, stories, and images so that they can be preserved for future generations.

Biography contributed by Don Tate

Howard Dickson was 35 when he joined the Australian Army to 'do his bit' during World War 2.
He was assigned to the Australian Army Catering Corps, and was attached to a commando unit operating within the 6th Division in New Guinea during the Australian offensive against the Japanese entrenched in Wewak.
In late January 1945 in the final months of the war, as one brigade of the 6th Division pushed inland, WO2 Dickson died when he and 40 others were swept away in a flood as they crossed the Danmap River.
An earlier cloudburst in the Toricelli Mountains had sent a 5-metre wall of water, some 100metres wide, crashing down on the men without warning.
12 of the men - including WO2 Dickson - drowned, while others were rescued from as far away as seven kilometres downstream. The incident was severe enough to halt the advance for some time. (SOURCE: Australian Army in World War 2 (Mark Johnson, p. 30)
Howard Dickson's death was reported in the National Advocate (Bathurst) with the headline 12 Aussies Drown on Monday 27th August 1945; and in the Singleton Argus with the headline, Australians Drowned in Cloudburst on the same day.
Although his body was never recovered, Howard Dickson is commemorated on the Port Moresby War Memorial.

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War Memorial
Australia