4 brothers part of Friday’s Honor Flight
Published 11:57 pm Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Not every family can say that all of their siblings served in the military, but the Doziers can.
Hailing from Dozier, five boys and a girl, they all answered the call.
Five joined the Air Force and one was drafted into the Army.
On Friday, JR, Noel, Addison and Sam will take part in the annual Covington Region Honor Flight, where they will fly with other veterans and guardians to Washington, D.C., to see the World War II, Korea and Vietnam memorials and other sites.
JR, now 90, is the lone Army veteran, and was drafted at 29.
“I was in the Army,” he said. “I guess that made me the black sheep.”
JR said he never went to war, but was drafted.
“In 1945 they sent me to Fort McClellan, but I was turned down,” he said. “I didn’t hear from the draft board for nine years. They put me in the Army, and I went to Fort Jackson to basic training and then to Fort Bliss for two weeks. I then went to Fort Lee to quartermaster school and then on the Camp Stewart. We called it Swamp Stewart.”
JR said Korea had just ended and Vietnam had not begun yet.
Noel, 87, said he and their brother, Tommy, enlisted in 1950.
“Tommy and I enlisted at the same time,” he said. “We went to Andalusia to take a little ole test. I passed and he didn’t. We caught a bus and went to Montgomery. They talked us in to going to Maxwell. We had to take the test over. I passed it and Tommy failed. It. He liked to have had a stroke.”
Noel said Tommy was told he could go to the Post Office and take the test over, but he wasn’t to let them know he had just failed it.
“He passed it,” Noel said. “I went ahead and processed at Maxwell. I had to clear the base at Maxwell. By the time I got done, they said you can wait on Tommy, but you’re not supposed to. I left Maxwell 12 hours before he did.”
Noel went to Lackland Air Force Base and Tommy did, too, but Tommy was sent to Sheppard Air Force Base.
“When I went overseas, I went by his place and saw him for a couple of hours,” Noel said. “I was over there in Korea, and he came by and saw me. I didn’t even know he was anywhere around until he walked into the tent.”
Noel did two tours of duty in Korea and went to Germany as well.
The second time, he had a 5-month-old son, at home.
During Noel’s second tour, brother, Sam, now 82, was also there.
“I had about two or three months left on my tour,” Sam said. “I thought about extending it, but Noel told me to go ahead and go home. So, I did.”
Noel said during his first tour he saw fighting, but they were far enough behind the lines.
“The base I was at has been in Communist hands three different times,” he said. “It was pretty bad. The farther up toward the parallel you got the worse it got, but most of my duty was good, except for being away from home.”
Noel said he worked in the extinguisher shop when he got there.
“The Air Force now isn’t how it was when we were in,” Sam said. “We were just support. I was in communications. I ran the central office the last six months I was there,” he said. “We had a place called the Little Pentagon. It was made just like the real Pentagon. Not that it means anything, but I installed the first pay phone from K55 (Osan Air Force Base) to California.”
Little brother, Addison, affectionately known to family as PeeWee because he’s “the runt,” joined the Air Force in 1961.
“I was four years active duty, and I lacked one day spending one year in the states. I spent 15 months in Okinawa and 13 months in Crete,” he said. “I was in intelligence.”
Addison said he went to the Philippines when he was in Okinawa.
“I had the opportunity to go to Thailand, but I would had to of extended my tour for another nine months,” he said. “Lo and behold in three months, I got ordered to a consecutive tour in Crete. In my career field, they didn’t need me in the States.”
Addison said when he left the States on leave before his tour began, he flew from Montgomery to Atlanta with their sister, Janelle, who was an Air Force nurse.
“I was going to Crete and she was going to Japan,” he said. “The tour in Crete was good. What made it so good was the people. It was so much better than Okinawa. Both of them were islands and there really wasn’t anywhere to go.”
Addison said he could have traveled to Israel to the Holy Land, but chose not to because so many people were getting sick.
“Our systems aren’t geared toward their type of food,” he said. “So, I said, ‘I don’t want to do that.’”
Addison said he took six years off and then joined the Air National Guard, where he spent 23 years.
“I was lucky enough to get a technician job,” he said.
Addison wasn’t the only one who joined the Air Guard – Sam and Noel also retired from there.
The tours of duty were pretty much the first time the Doziers had left Dozier.
“We were all going into the military,” Sam said. “We had a guy in Dozier who was on the draft board. We got in the Air Force before he had a chance to get us.”
Noel had been in basic training for three weeks when he received his draft notice.
Addison said there were no jobs in the area then.
“I spent a year in Oklahoma with my sister before I joined,” he said. “She got transferred to Craig Air Force Base. Back then, you couldn’t get a good job without a college education, and there wasn’t any money for that.”
Addison said he went to Lackland and then eventually to Keesler Air Force Base.
“I had to have security clearance to go to Keesler,” he said. “So they put me on casual status and put me in charge of all their goof ups.”
The brothers say they are looking forward to Friday’s trip to see the sites and to spend time together.