Dear Editor:
Plant City lost a genuine World War II hero last week with the passing of Terry Dykes (1924 to 2013).
Terry served aboard the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier, when it was badly damaged by Japanese dive-bombers in April 1942, in the Coral Sea, and again in June 1942, at the Battle of Midway.
Terry’s legs were severely wounded by a bomb that exploded near the gun turret to which Terry had been assigned. A Navy medic gave Terry six grams of morphine and left him to die, because the medic did not think Terry would live. The ship was a flaming inferno, but a couple of officers found Terry and pulled him to the flight deck of the badly listing ship.
Terry eventually fell off the ship into rough seas, where he was picked up by a boat from another Navy ship. The Yorktown sank the next day, and Terry was sent to hospitals in Hawaii, San Diego and Bremerton, Wash. One doctor wanted to amputate Terry’s right leg, but Terry told him that he had “walked out of Georgia before the war and he was going to walk back to Georgia at the end of the war.”
After a long period of recuperation, Terry was sent to the USS Whiteplains, another aircraft carrier, in the Western Pacific, where he was embarked until the end of the war.
I interviewed Terry June 6, 2009, and I would be happy to email that interview to any friends or family who would like a fuller explanation of Terry’s service during the war. Terry told me at that interview that a day did not go by that he did not think of the horrific experience that he had at the Battle of Midway, and there was no doubt in his mind that God had saved him from certain death.
Allan Gehring
Plant City
