Private
2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment
Private Stephen Jeffrey Dixon, born 6th September 1963, served with 11 platoon, D Company, 2 PARA.
18 year old Private Stephen Dixon was killed by shellfire as D Company began to take the school house after A and B Companies had secured Darwin Hill and Boca House.
Pte Dixon is buried at All Saints Church, Basildon.
Image & information courtesy of www.paradata.org.uk
Photograph courtesy of Bob Hilton
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I knew Steve very well and was responsible for encouraging him to join the Army. I was a paper boy in the area for the local paper in the ‘70s and got to know Steve well. He didn’t know what he wanted to do when he left school and as I was working my own way towards an RAF flying career, we talked a lot about him ‘getting a trade in the army’ which he eventually did. His close neighbour Andy Berry did the same and both ended up in the same company (B) in the Falklands. Andy came home alive, but Steve didn’t. He is buried at the church in Vange where my parents were married.
Steve was a really nice guy and exuded charm. He would have found a good job, a nice girl and had a happy life if it wasn’t for a shell splinter from a random Argentine bomb. Steve’s parents were lovely and were left broken by his loss.
One anecdote I remember of Steve’s family was that his grandfather ‘walked off the deck into the water’ on the Ark Royal as it slipped beneath the waves in WW2.
I’m so pleased that there is now a place on the Falklands with Steve’s name, Dixon Arm. Part of a great gesture to the fallen.
Bob Davy
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Family and friends are encouraged to contribute.
We will add information to this memorial as we receive it.
If you have a photo, an anecdote, or simply to say you remember him, we will be very pleased to hear from you, so please contact the SAMA82 office at [email protected]
In 2022, as part of the 40th Anniversary commemorations, geographical features were identified and named after the fallen of 1982. DIXON ARM is a narrow arm off the upper reaches of Swan Inlet, East Falkland.
It is in position
51° 51′ 48.77″ S, 058° 32′ 20.43″ W
