Salute to this brave southern American! Never forget what the inhumane, sadistic Yankees did to this poor young man and many others like him. Lieutenant John Willis (JW) Dodds was brutally mutilated and tortured to death at his own father's home by Lincoln's Yankee invaders. The hateful trolls want to simply ignore and forget these atrocities, but the real atrocity is to forget. The following details are not for the faint-of-heart... -RJ
Lt. J.W. Dodds, CSA, August 20, 1843-March 9, 1864, Captured and brutally murdered. He was a constant member of the Baptist Church, a dutiful and affectionate brother and a gallant soldier. So reads his tombstone at Unity Baptist Church on Hwy 22A between Middlefork Village and Jacks Creek. He was an officer in Co. F., Newsome's 18th Cavalry, and had returned home on furlough. Most of the men in the 18th were either relatives or neighbors and young Willis Dodds was bright, brave and a favorite among the troops. A dispatch of Gen. Forrest reads "Pvt. Silas Hodges . . . states that he saw the body of Lt. Dodds very soon after his murder, and that it was horribly mutilated, the face having been skinned, the nose cut off, the under jaw disjointed, the privates cut off, and the body otherwise barbarously lacerated and most wantonly injured, and that his death was brought about by the most inhuman process of torture."
