Remembering Douglas Eugene Dickey, USMC: "Reaching the Finest and Most Noble Heights"

Take a closer look at one of America's unsung heroes in the remarkable new biography, . While conducting a study of 294 marines who have been awarded the Medal of Honor from the American Civil War to the present, author Terence W. Barrett, PhD, stumbled across the story of Private First Class Douglas E. Dickey. Beginning with the brief biographies he could find via newspaper articles and website searches, Barrett slowly started to piece together the extraordinary life and death of a young marine from Ohio. Through an examination of Dickey's unfathomable heroism, in which he threw himself on a live enemy grenade in order to protect his fellow marines, Barrett raises important questions about the nature of bravery itself. What drives certain people to act against the seemingly natural instinct of survival? Could such a counterintuitive action be a different kind of natural instinct instead? Or is it always a conscious decision, a choice made in a split second that has permanent and unalterable consequences? Lovers of military history will enjoy learning more about this exceptional hero, as well as the psychology behind human courage, in this fascinating biography.