“If words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.”—Ronald Reagan
AA gun at Corregidor.
Last year when The Mrs. was putting flowers on the graves of her relatives, my job was to drive the car while she located the locations. It was her first year when she actively did that for all of her relatives. Her mother had done that previously, but since my mother-in-law passed, that duty of remembering the family had fallen to The Mrs.
I saw one gravesite in particular, and I decided to research it. It stuck out, because it was the grave of a United States Army officer who died in May of 1942. I was curious.
Thankfully, there was at least some information about this officer online. He had been born elsewhere, but went to high school here in Modern Mayberry. His particulars weren’t all that unusual for a young man in the 1930s: he loved baseball, he graduated, went to college, got a degree, got a job, and got married.
While in college, he was in ROTC, so he graduated as a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Reserve. I think even in the mid-1930s people could see the writing on the wall that there was the real possibility of war, so I imagine a core group of people with officer training was just what they wanted on the shelf.
His life was, I imagine, the same as millions of lives in that quasi-Depressionary era. He and his wife welcomed a baby into the world 1940, but by early 1941 the young officer had been drafted back into the Army. He was sent, half a world away, to Manila. I’m sure he told his wife as they shipped him off that his job, thankfully, was to be in the rear with the gear. It would be other people that would really be in the crosshairs of the enemy. Besides, it would be crazy of the Japanese to make a strike at Manilla. That would mean war!
He was at the airfield in Manilla on December 8, 1941, when the Japanese attacked. The planes he was supposed to serve hadn’t arrived. The troops that were supposed to protect the airfield hadn’t arrived. Yet his Company had. On Christmas Eve, 1941, his group was given the task of demolishing the airstrip and leaving nothing the Japanese could make use of.
This is generally not a good sign.
Then, every man in his Company was given a rifle and told they were now members of the Provisional Air Corps Infantry.
This is an even worse sign.
Our young officer and his troops were then ordered to join the defense of Bataan. Bataan is a peninsula that forms the northern part of the entrance to Manila Harbor. To really control Manila and use it as a base, you have to control Bataan. The original allied plans had called for falling back to Bataan and holding out, but MacArthur had thought that defeatist, and planned on a more active defense.
When the Japanese attacked, there weren’t enough supplies for MacArthur’s plan, so they fell back to Bataan, where there also weren’t enough supplies for the defense of Bataan because they stopped shipping those because MacArthur had changed his mind.
The Japanese general who would later be fired because it took him too long to defeat the combined American-Filipino army at Bataan also noted that the Americans had numerical superiority, and in his opinion, could have retaken Manila. I’m not sure that going through this exercise made me think more highly of MacArthur . . . .
If you’re not familiar with the Battle of Bataan, it took over three months, and ended up the largest U.S. Army surrender since the Civil War. Over 76,000 troops were captured.
To my knowledge, there is no written record of the Provisional Air Corps Infantry during the Battle of Bataan, though there is a record that on March 4, the 1st Lieutenant was promoted to Captain, just before MacArthur high-tailed it out of the Philippines to safety in Australia.
The troops at Bataan were officially surrendered on April 9, 1942. But in this case, the Provisional Air Corps Infantry was not part of the surrender, and was ordered to the island of Corregidor. Over 20% of the men of the Company had already been lost.
Corregidor was an island that resembled a battleship – at the time of the Japanese invasion, it was bristling with coastal defense guns, mortars, anti-aircraft guns, and minefields. Now that Bataan was taken, the last thing required to control Manilla Bay was that the island forts fall. Corregidor was, by far, the biggest of these.
The Navy ran the guns, but the defense of the beach was the responsibility of the 4th Marine Regiment, along with a ragtag group of other orphan units, including at least one Company from the Provisional Air Corps Infantry and a young Captain from Modern Mayberry, who were sent into the foxholes with the Marines to guard the beaches since they had combat experience from Bataan.
Sometime in early May, the young Captain was in one of those foxholes with several Marines, and a Japanese artillery shell hit, killing them all. Even the very date this happened isn’t clear, and his family wouldn’t even hear of his death until a year later.
I don’t know what this young officer from Modern Mayberry did during his time in battle on Bataan and Corregidor – it’s nearly certain that no one alive does.
His wife later remarried, half a decade after finding out her husband was dead. His son still bears the name of a father he never knew, if he’s still living.
There is a white cross in a field in Manilla, surrounded by green grass that is regularly cut, where it is said, his body lies. The marker here in Modern Mayberry is only for remembrance, to let people like me know he lived.
And, I saw it, and learned his story, and every year around this time, I tell a few people from Modern Mayberry who haven’t heard about him. The Mrs. plans to put some flowers out for him, but even if she doesn’t, I’ll spend some time thinking about him.
The D-Day landing craft we fought the wrong enemy memes are a few days away.
Look how China will do ya, no respect for what the USA did in WWII.
Still have Grampa’s USMC dog tags and B&W photo in uniform by PC station, Pappy with Special Forces logo garrison hat and 101st arm patch is in the family scrapbook.
The next neighborhood over placed flags at the end of every driveway.
Local boys placed them and saluted me in BDU’s, I said my father served not I and he would say you’re welcome, now get out of the road a car is coming.
The wrong enemy, indeed.
We didn’t fight the wrong enemy, we just gave up on the principles we stood for. Not their error.
May God bless all who served keep and comfort them may his grace and mercy be upon them, may his love abide in their hearts and minds that they shall have peace, especially those who showed the greatest love of all
ps I had a college professor who was on the Bataan death march on a certain anniversary he told a story in class truly amazing.
John 15:13. Amen.
Amen. Well said.
It is tragic to think how we have allowed Them to squander and dishonor the sacrifice of such men.
Some of the J6 political prisoners were denied bail due to their military service. In New Amerika, no good goes unpunished.
Yep
It is.
John – – Thank you.
We veterans only ask that America not waste our blood on frivolous forays where US interests are not significant.
And also, that our sacrifices will not be forgotten.
Your poignant story reflects both of those points.
I thank you for your genuine sentiments snd efforts to preserve one soldier’s memory.
BTW MacArthur was ordered to leave Corregidor.
Thank you. I think about him very often.
MacArthur? The more I read about him, the less I like him.
Thanks for the research and the story, John.
To paraphrase something I heard from Sgt. Johnny “Joey” Jones USMC-Ret on Fox, if you want to honor these men, be an American worth dying for.
If only I could be so. I try to work at being that man.
Very well done. Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you for this story. I also will spend some time thinking about him. As I will of our family doctor from my youth, who was on Bataan, made the Death March, and survived to come home to a long career of medical service. And of my adoptive father, who received a Bronze Star for valor as an assistant beachmaster on Bloody Omaha. And of Daniel Vernor Borah, who possibly could have been saved but wasn’t when he was shot down in Quang Tri province. And of so many others who deserved better, but did what they could for what they thought was right.
So many. Too many. I hope we prove them proud.
Hope the Cap found a better place. Which is almost anywhere but here.
As for Memorial Day, I’ll just copy over the comment I posted at Breitbart this morning:
‘I served during wartime. My brother, dad, uncle, and grandmother served during wartime. My uncle was captured by the Japanese early in WW2. They destroyed him and sent him home a vegetable.
‘I regret the service of my family and I regret my own service. I would have left the country in 1971 if I knew it was going to turn into a totalitarian feminist/woke hellhole of a nation.
‘I see the graveyards are full of MEN (not ‘oppressed’ women) who passed away defending a nation that HATES them because of ‘toxic masculinity’, a nation that makes war on truth, fatherhood, manhood, brotherhood, and family.
‘Never again.’
We have changed, and very, very far from the better.
Mr. Wilder…first time commenter…long time reader. Your unique and flawless compositions are amongst the best these tines offer. Thank you. So please excuse my hack writing as I share the the bronzestory of my paternal grandfather Pvt Kermit Dale Kuhn.
Grandpa was a typical high school aged American male from a little West Virginia town near the Maryland Pennsylvania borders. He was a star student and gifted 3 sport athelete. He, along with many other German blooded Americans from that part of Appalachia, was drafted against his will A FULL YEAR BEFORE PEARL HARBOR and sent down south to spend the next 4 years at Benning, Gordon and then Camp Claiborne in Louisiana. During this time he had met my grandmother in Atlanta and married her. He had time to see his first child born, my aunt, but never got to see his second before being shipped off to Europe with the 369th combat engineers as a combat medic.
On Feb 27th 1945 his unit was where it had been ordered to halt a month before, at a bridge crossing the Ruhr river so the soviets could take Berlin.
On the other side of the bridge the Germas decided to open up a barrage of 88’s. After the first barrage stopped, grandpa got to 10 men and saved 7 of them before another barrage opened up and he took one almost dead nut. He was awarded the bronze star and buried in Margratten Holland.
I got his medic kit…flag…and name.
Ive known and talked with many many ww2 vets. Not one was drafted before Pearl. Not one.y
My dad was born May 3rd 1945. He finally made it to Europe to visit his dad he never got to meet in 2016 then passed himself 2020.
Every Memorial day I visit the graves of veterans near me to set out flags…say hello….let them know they arent forgotten.
Thank you for this article Mr Wilder.
http://archive.wvculture.org/history/wvmemory/vets/kuhnkermit/kuhnkermit.html
Thank you for sharing. Kermit Kuhn was a hero of the bravest sort, and we shall remember them, together.
I learned only this year of my great grandfathers death in the POW camp in Chicago (Forty Acres of Hell) , from a combination of starvation, Cholera, and pneumonia. Not much I could add to that, except the shame I now feel, having served in the Yankee army in VN and elsewhere. I wouldn’t serve or die for this country if they got down on their knees and begged me, and it was do or die for America. Am I bitter? How bitter was his diseased and miserable death, and burial in Lake Michigan, because it was easier to throw the dead in there? Hell, no, I ain’t fergitten. I’ll remember him, because he deserved at least human treatment, and died like a dog instead. And I’ll remember the ones who did it to him.
The question I have, is what will we create from here? My kin fought with yours, though none met that fate.
John, you honor him by your writing. Thank you.
Thank you. I don’t know him, but I do wish him peace. And remembrance.
“Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged
Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die
Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.”
…
“Identify a respected institution
Kill it
Gut it
Wear its carcasse as a skin suit, demanding respect.”
…
“Once the skin suit is stinking and crawling with maggots, claim it was always rotten.”
…
Let honored memory inspire partisan courage. Ca ira.
If we remember them, they will never die.
Very well said, John.
Thank you.
Applause
It all belongs to the Captain.
Three eyewitnesses I knew who survived Bataan, told me that MacArthur filled the ship with his personal possessions rather than evacuating American civilians when he bailed. One was a Catholic nurse who was later tortured by the Japanese by being laid on a mat suspended just an inch or so above bamboo shoots that quickly grew and penetrated into her skin. Once they had grown into her, she was raised up above the shoots and the process repeated. She needed assisted living for decades after the war and carried the scars to her deathbed. Another escaped and was rescued by a PT boat. The third endured the Bataan Death March. When America finally began to retake the Philippines, MacArthur ordered bomber pilots not to damage the San Miguel brewery that he had financial interests in. Not exactly the stellar image we’ve been led to believe in.
There’s more, though I won’t bring it up here. And no kin of mine fought in the Pacific, so, it’s not personal.
Thank you.
Dad graduated from Castle Heights Military Academy in 1938. 1941-42 was really hard on the class of 1938. Half a dozen of his classmates where in the death march and a couple survived it to tell stories. Dad had gone on to college ultimately going to Europe in Italy and Normandy on D-Day. His survivors guilt was enormous. God bless them all.
Indeed. Even those that came back were impacted.
Great writing. Really thought provoking and needs to be said.
I mow a large cemetery way out in the middle of nowhere and one of the stones for a guy says POW CORREGIDOR. Some country boy that survived and lived to the 1980s. At least he made it home. The life he must have experienced.
Another stone I reflect on as I go about mowing is one for another country boy of nineteen that has on it Killed Vietnam in 1968.
Yes. Stories that shouldn’t end there . . .