Dillon Duncan Brooke (June 30, 1915-May 25, 1944)

7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division

By Angela Hubbart and Sarah Bousfield

Early Life

Dillon Duncan Brooke was born in Kendall, Florida on June 30, 1915, to Dillon Duncan Brooke Sr. and Pearl Brooke (née Melton). Dillon’s parents and grandparents were born and raised in Florida, making Dillon and his siblings at least third-generation Floridians. Dillon and Pearl likely met and married in Volusia County, FL, where Brooke, Sr. managed a fruit farm in a rural, unincorporated area.¹ Not long before Dillion’s birth, his parents moved to Dade County, FL in 1913, likely so that Brooke Sr. could find better employment opportunities.² This seems to have been the case, as Brooke’s father, also known as “D.D.,” supported his family by working as a Dade County Road Supervisor.³ Once settled in Dade County, Brooke shared the home his parents owned with three brothers, Lester (Emory) (1906), Elton (1912), and Clarence (1920), as well as four sisters, Mildred (1907), Lena (1909), Geneva (1914), and Virginia (1919). Virginia, the youngest, passed away in 1920.⁴

Miami Times Article Detailing the Death of Brooke’s Father

As a road supervisor, Brooke Sr. managed convict labor. He worked in a system that exploited poor, often black men, convicted of petty crimes, including vagrancy. In other words, men convicted of being unemployed could end up in a chain gang doing the incredibly difficult and dangerous work of building roads.⁵ Even as a manager, Brooke Sr. was not immune to the dangers of road construction work. On October 31, 1924, while supervising prisoners blasting a temporary ditch, a stick of dynamite exploded in Brooke Sr.’s hand. According to an article published by the Miami Herald on November 1, 1924, pictured here, three of the convicts working under Brooke Sr. attempted to save his life by transporting him to the hospital, but unfortunately, he died en route.⁶

Brooke Sr.’s death caused great hardship for the family including Brooke Jr., only nine years old at the time of his father’s death. The family lost a great deal, as Brooke Sr. had been the sole breadwinner. Brooke's mother Pearl, who had seven children, made ends meet and kept the family home, probably by relying on the income of her oldest sons and the rent she had from taking in boarders.⁷ By 1935, Brooke, at the age of nineteen, still lived with his mother and worked as a laborer, finding whatever employment he could at the height of the Great Depression.⁸ By 1940, Brooke worked as a carpenter for the Witters Construction Company in Miami, FL, though by the time he enlisted in the military in 1941, he worked in the trucking business.⁹

Military Life

On October 16, 1940, over sixteen million American men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five registered for the nation’s first peacetime draft. This included Dillon, twenty-five, and his brothers Clarence, Elton, and Emory.¹⁰ After registering for the draft, Brooke enlisted in the Army on March 1, 1941, at Camp Blanding, near Starke, FL before the US entered the war as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.¹¹ In August 1940, the US government federalized Camp Blanding as a training base for National Guard and active Army Infantry Divisions as Brooke trained during the early days of the base. Despite being a brand-new training facility, the camp lacked many of the recreational opportunities and amenities that soldiers enjoyed in later years. By May of 1941, then-Senator Harry S. Truman questioned the location of Camp Blanding, detailing the swamp-like conditions of the camp in a congressional committee. Nevertheless, the Army expanded its base in northeastern Florida. By the war’s end over 745,000 personnel served at Camp Blanding. Much of this occurred when, in June 1943, the Army designated the base as an Infantry Replacement Training Center (IRTC) that supplied replacements to Army units during the bloodiest years of the war.¹²

Brooke joined the 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division (ID).¹³ The “Fighting Third” earned the nickname the “Rock of the Marne,” during the Second Battle of Marne in 1918. Holding on near the town of Chateau Thierry, Gen. Joseph Dickman sent a message to the French leadership. “Nous resterons là!” or “We’re staying there!” made clear to French Allies that the 3rd ID would hold the line on the Marne River; it remains the 3rd ID motto.¹⁴ After the US entered World War II, the 3rd ID continued this legacy of excellence. The 3rd ID is the only American division to have fought the Nazis on every possible front – North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany – suffering more casualties than any other division.¹⁵

Following training, Brooke and the 7th Infantry regiment along with the entire 3rd ID deployed to Morocco in North Africa as part of the massive amphibious landing known as Operation Torch.¹⁶ Part of over 100,000 troops brought in on hundreds of ships, the 3rd ID landed near Casablanca on November 8, 1942, on the first day of the coordinated Allied operation. After three days of fighting, the 3rd ID captured parts of French Morocco and prepared to storm Casablanca. After a brief naval attack, France’s Vichy regime surrendered to Allied forces rather than face an all-out attack on the city. Moreover, the French forces there agreed to fight with the Allies, a decision which inspired Hitler to invade all of occupied France and send more troops to North Africa.¹⁷

Brooke, the 7th Infantry, and the 3rd ID spent the rest of 1942 and early 1943 guarding Allied gains in Morocco against any possible Spanish or German attack and preparing for the Allies’ next massive amphibious landing in Sicily. The 3rd ID did move across Algeria by truck to participate in the Tunisian campaign, but by the time it arrived in May 1943, the German Afrika Korps had already surrendered. The success of the North African Campaign for the Allied forces, the first major joint offensive of the British and US forces, pushed the German and Italian troops out of North Africa and opened up another front against the Axis Powers in southern Europe.¹⁸

After training for two months, Brooke and the 3rd ID took part in an amphibious assault on the southern shores of the island of Sicily on July 10, 1943. The invasion, known as Operation Husky saw the 3rd ID fight its way north across the island to the city of Palermo, making it there ahead of American tank and armored car divisions.¹⁹ Moving east, the 7th Infantry became the first Allied unit to reach the city of Messina on August 17, 1943, ending the Sicilian campaign as Axis forces retreated out of Sicily.²⁰

Miami Herald Article Announcing Pvt. Brooke’s Death in Italy

A few weeks later, Allied forces invaded mainland Italy at the city of Salerno in September 1943 with Brooke, the 7th Infantry, and the 3rd ID participating as reinforcements. This allowed British forces to enter Naples in southwestern Italy. The British fought German troops, as the Italians had deposed Musolini in July 1943, and by September, following secret negotiations with American and British military leaders, joined the Allies. After being unable to penetrate the German defensive positions across mainland Italy at the Gustav line, the Allies decided they would attempt to go around it. In late January 1944, the 3rd ID assisted in the assault on Anzio, known as Operation Shingle, part of the larger Battle of Monte Cassino in Southern Italy. The Allies hoped that if they could capture the beach town and the areas around it, their forces could push toward Rome above the Gustave line.²¹ In a grueling four-month fight, the 3rd ID held on to its position against German and Italian forces before breaking out of Anzio and making the Allied march northeast to Rome possible.²² On the day the Allies achieved the final breakthrough, an artillery shell hit Private First Class Dillon Brooke. According to his medical report, shrapnel injured him in his thorax and he succumbed from his wounds on May 25, 1944, at the age of twenty-eight.²³ Allied forces liberated Rome on June 4, 1944.²⁴ An article published in the Miami Herald in July 1944, seen here, announced that Brooke had died in Italy.

Legacy

While initially reported as missing in action, by early July 1944, the Army notified his mother Pearl that Dillon had indeed been killed in action (KIA) on the Italian front. In an article published in the Miami Herald on November 5, 1944, Dade County officials prepared to commemorate more than 100 area Veterans who died during the war, including Brooke, by adding their names to a plaque for Armistice Day exercises at Bayfront Park in Miami on November 11. Dillon Brooke was unmarried and had no children, but he left a powerful military legacy that continued to be carried by his three brothers and fellow World War II Veterans Emory and Elton, who both served in the Army, and Clarence, who served in the Navy.²⁵ Initially interred in Nettuno Cemetery near Anzio, Italy, his mother requested his body be returned to the US, as is the right of any Gold Star family in the US since World War I. On August 17, 1948, Brooke was reinterred at St. Augustine National Cemetery in Florida. He rests among his fellow Veterans in Section C, Site 187.²⁶

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