Jess Ralph Nickols

West Point, 1968

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Richard Ortega on January 16, 2006:

I knew Jess during the two years we spent as undergraduates at William and Mary (1962-1964). He was surely one of the most intelligent people I ever met, and his knowledge of military history was (considering his age) impressively vast. I remember sitting around the dorm nights and listening to his descriptions of the Battle of Stalingrad--vivid descriptions culled from his voluminous reading. Both then and now, I could hardly imagine him as anything but a career soldier, and after two years at William and Mary he came to the same conclusion and joined the Corps of Cadets. I do not know what happened to him after leaving West Point, but I was saddened to learn that he died in 1997. I remember with great fondness his intelligence, his dry wit, and his habit of smoking his Gauloise cigarettes down to the last quarter inch. From whatever cause he died, he died too soon. In my 58 years of life I have met few men who were his equal.

admin