b. 19/06/1893b. 19/06/1893 Middlesbrough, Yorkshire. d. 06/08/1945 West Bridgford, Nottingham.
DATE OF AM ACTION: 26/06/1917 Catterick, Yorkshire.
Thomas was one of two sons and three children of Thomas Johnstone and Catherine Jane Dickson (nee Atkinson). On leaving school, he became a draper’s assistant in Marton, North Riding, Yorkshire. He then enlisted with the Yorkshire Regiment at the outbreak of World War I, and spent alot of war on home service, hence why he was in Catterick in June 1917. In 1923, he married Edna Meredith in Middlesbrough. Sadly, the marriage ended in divorce. He remarried in 1940 to Catherine, and she became stepmother to his six children. Due to his age at the start of World War II, he joined the Royal Army Pay Corps as a Cashier. He died on 6th August 1945 aged 52 in Nottingham.
AM CITATION:
On the 26th June, 1917, Lieutenant (then Second Lieutenant) Dickson was instructing a man in throwing live bombs. One of the bombs failed to clear the parapet and fell back into the breastwork. Lieutenant Dickson told the man to run to safety, and himself did so. On reaching shelter he found that the man had not followed. He at once ran back into the breastwork, and saw the man crouching in a corner on the far side of the bomb. He ran past the bomb, seized the man, and dragged him back past the bomb into’ safety just before the bomb exploded. Had not Lieutenant Dickson delibsrately returned into the danger zone, the man would almost certainly have been killed.
BURIAL LOCATION: RADCLIFFE ON TRENT CEMETERY, RADCLIFFE ON TRENT, NOTTS.
Sec. B. Grave 197L
LOCATION OF MEDAL: UNKNOWN.
Acknowledgement:
Mick McCann – Image of Dickson’s Grave in Radcliffe on Trent, Nottinghamshire.