Yalobusha County Has Strong Tradition Of Service To Country
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VFW District 10 Commander Mickell Dunn was the speaker at Monday’s Memorial Day ceremony held at VFW Post 4100. Dunn shared that 87 soldiers from Yalobusha County have been killed in combat.
WATER VALLEY – Eighty-seven soldiers from Yalobusha County have served and died in wars past. Their memories along with millions of others were honored Monday as dozens gathered at the VFW post for the annual Memorial Day observance.
VFW Post 4100 Quartermaster Mickell Dunn read the names of each war casualty etched in the war memorial at Railroad Park.
“These are the names of soldiers who served and died in wars passed. You may know some of these or you may not,” Dunn said.
A career Army veteran, Dunn then posted a question to the crowd.
“You may ask what significance does some country boy from Yalobusha County have on your life as an American?” Dunn asked. “I served from Dec. 11, 1985, until December, 2009. It was almost 40 years ago when I first went in, some of this stuff is fixing to be declassified so I can share it with you now.”
Dunn explained when he joined the Army, he had no aspirations of being a hero.
“But one thing I could do, I could shoot,” he said.
Dunn shared that he honed his skills as a youngster shooting squirrels, aiming for the head to keep from messing up the meat. And as one of five brothers, he had another admission.
“I ate a lot of squirrels,” he explained. “I practiced and honed my skills to shoot those little devils. And when I went in the Army, the first time I was on the firing range somebody noticed that. I was put in a specialized unit.”
Dunn then fast-forwarded December, 1989, sharing information from an online article from the U.S. Department of State reporting that President George H.W. Bush dispatched over 20,000 troops to invade Panama to arrests its head of state, Manuel Noriega. Bush had become opposed to Noriega’s continued leadership of Panama, and the goal was to restore the democratically elected government of Guillermo Endara and arrest Noriega on drug trafficking charges.
“In the months leading up to this invasion, my phone would ring at two or three o’clock in the morning,” Dunn continued.
After each call, Dunn would call other service members in his team, kiss his wife goodbye and disappear for months at a time.
“Some of that was because of this,” Dunn continued about the situation in Panama.
Dunn returned to the article that explained the Bush administration implemented economic sanctions and increased local troop levels in the months leading up to the invasion.
“I was one of those local troops,” he added.
On Dec. 15, 1989, the Panamanian legislature declared that a state of war existed with the United States on December 15 due to the escalating tension between the countries.
“A U.S. Serviceman was killed in Panama the following day,” Dunn said, again citing the article. “Out of all the information that is on the internet, that is the only line that I could find that pertains to a person I personally knew. I knew him, I was there when all this took place.”
Code-named Operation Just Cause, the battle lasted five days before Noriega was captured and Endara regained his presidency.
Dunn also shared about another incident two years earlier, September, 1978, when a Nicaraguan Army General was assassinated.
“I was on the ground in Nicaragua the day that happened. I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger but I was many other times. Our country does things that they don’t want the people to know. I can tell you how it happens,” Dunn said.
Dunn returned to his military days and the middle-of-the-night phone calls.
“When my phone rang, I got to the post,” he added.
There he would turn in exchange his fatigues for a pair that had no markings, and turn in his dog tags, ID cards and other identifying information.
“And 18 hours from the time my phone rang, I would be somewhere crawling through the weeds looking for somebody. Just a small, no-name country boy from Yalobusha County.”
