In a three-room cabin clinging to the
side of Powell Mountain in Cracker's Neck, Va., Bessie Dickenson sat at
her quilting one night last week while her husband, Van Buren
Dickenson, gaunt and sick at 72, listened to the radio. Suddenly Dave
called out: “Bessie, listen to this. It says one of those boys has
changed his mind and is coming home. I just know it's Ed.” Said Bessie:
“I just know it's Ed too, Dave.” Later she mused, “Of course, I'll bet
every mother listening thought the same thing. But we went to bed with
the feeling. Then later in the night Keith and Thelma Marrs came
a-pounding and honking, trying to wake us up … and they told us they
had heard Ed's name on the radio and he was coming back. We was shore
happy.” Just a few hours before, their son, Corporal Edward S. Dickenson, 23,
with the loose-jointed amble of a mountain man, had passed through a
gauntlet of curious eyes at Panmunjom, to be handed over to the U.N.
command. Taken prisoner Nov. 5. 1950, he was the first of 23 American
P.W.s who, having previously refused repatriation, had changed his
mind. Sitting down at a table with India's Lieut. Colonel Ujjal Singh
and U.S. Marine Major Edward Mackel, Dickenson ostentatiously drew from
his pocket two packs of cigarettes—Lucky Strikes and a Chinese brand.
He offered a Lucky to Colonel Singh and, when the Indian declined, with
conscious deliberation Dickenson crumpled the Chinese cigarettes into a
small wad. He lit a Lucky, inhaled deeply, and said quietly: “It feels
great to be in the hands of Americans again.” “That Ain't Ed.” The radio bulletins were enough to keep Ed's kin up all
night, talking and laughing. Then they got a shock when Ed's half
brother, Grover Dickenson, trudged in with a copy of the Roanoke Times.
The newspaper carried on its front page a picture of Ed. Bessie took
one look at the picture and began to cry. “That ain't my boy,” she
said. “Eddie was a purty boy, and look at him now. If that's him, he
ain't got no teeth. I just know it ain't him.” Dave Dickenson came in
from the yard and peered over her shoulder. “That ain't Ed,” he said
sadly. “That ain't my boy.” The picture was blurred, and the boy was older, but the young folks
convinced Bessie and Dave that it was Ed, all right. Soon the cabin was
filled with kinsmen, neighbors, children and newsmen. Then Jim
Dickenson, another son of Dave Dickenson's first marriage, burst upon
the scene, glared at reporters and photographers and demanded: “When
are you going to Hollywood, Pop? . . . You'll bring Ed nothing but harm
by talking to all these folks and having your picture took.” Bessie
protested: “Don't listen to him, Dave.” But Dave Dickenson was old and
tired. “Bessie.” he said, “the whole thing's got me tore up. I'm easy
wrecked, and I can't stand it.”
