“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.
This was originally written in 2023. It says what I want to say in 2024.
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.
Every American war after 1812 has been a war of empire, fought for conquest of land and treasure and power by the elite using the blood of our citizens. The heroism of our troops is nothing compared to the shame of wars fought for the wrong reasons. Others spell this out better than I can. https://cgpodcast.substack.com/p/dispatch-007-memorial-day-is-a-fraud
The more we drift from being a Republic to being a Democracy, the more we’ll see war.
There are many similar consequences of slipping from a Republic to being a Democracy, and we’re suffering those as well. :-/
When I think of young men like that these days, I am filled with both sadness and anger. The anger part has been growing over the years. So many young men in the prime of their lives, cut down as pawns in the games played by Them.
Exactly. And, sadly, we’re not close to being done.
It’s impossible to reconcile the death of so many American military personnel over the past 50 years with the diminishing returns to America accomplished in the various countries where they died, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan to Niger to Syria and all the rest. The reflection needed on Memorial Day needs to go beyond respect for their sacrifice to anger at the misuse and waste of our most precious and dwindling resource – people willing to die for their country.
Sadly, this misuse is not only set to continue, but probably escalate in the very near future. John’s article talks about our officer serving and dying in the Philippines. Here’s an article I read recently about how US Marines are currently training there for the probable coming war with China.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/china-taiwan-military/2024/05/26/id/1166249/
“…China would have to expend an awful lot of resources to figure out where we are and what we’re doing…you’re constantly forcing [China] to look for you…every sensor China tasks to look for a Marine Corps littoral regiment is a sensor that isn’t tasked on another target…Putting a “tremendous tax” on Chinese military intelligence will keep them guessing…You want them to go on wild-goose chases…”
Deploying US Marines as decoys that play hide-and-seek is a somewhat different role than they played on the beaches of Okinawa and Iwo Jima. I’m not sure this new approach gonna result in either lower casualties or victory.
I am sure there’s sadly gonna be new people to remember on future Memorial Days.
Thanks for sharing his story, John (I am sure you did last year as well; sadly I failed to recall it).
To Ricky’s point, we have had a foreign policy for far too long that has diminishing “returns” (if you want to call international politics that) but the deaths still come. It is seldom if ever anymore the class that starts those conflicts or nudges them along is in the same group that is seeing their children buried.
All respect to those who paid the ultimate price. But indeed, it really just needs to stop. It is just another symbol of how we say we value “life”, but have it thrown away on the most fleeting of things, power and politics.
There are so many individuals that we could trace. I picked this one.
I agree, and sadly worry that you’ll be correct. And we most often lose the best and bravest.
On September 17, 1862, two armies clashed outside the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, near Antietam Creek. M ore men died that day, on each side, than in twenty years of fighting in Afghanistan. The butcher’s bill for that single day exceeded the combined total of the last 50 years of conflicts our nation has embroiled itself in.
Take a moment to remember them. No matter which side you retroactively support, every one of them died fighting for a cause they believed in.
And more importantly, in fealty to their country. “Between our loved home and the war’s desolation.”
“…between their loved homes and the war’s desolation.”
Not merely sincere, but honourable.
Amen.
‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ (John 15:13)
I also honor America’s war-dead — almost all of them men — and I take comfort in Christ’s words above, that He will weigh their transgressions less severely due to fulfilling the very sacrifice He cherished and does still.
I served USAF ’71-’71, brother also USAF entered ’71, dad officer USN and saw action, grandma WAC wartime, uncle POW early in war against Japan. Not much left of him when he got ‘home’.
Which brings me to America, she who is not fit for such brave and honorable men, and never was. I will take those men away from her so she may use them no more for her wicked and selfish purposes. Got a Big Yellow Taxi with plenty of legroom. It don’t run on gas.
“she who is not fit for such brave and honorable men, and never was”
Do not help the damnable traitors get away with their offence:
Since today is a day for remembrance, I’l remind you:
1. Identify a respected institution.
2.. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect”
~ Iowahawk/Burge’s Law
Codex’s codicil: Once the skinsuit is maggoty and stinking convince everyone it was always rotten.
Never forget.
Dunno who you are but please stop reminding me of things and teaching me things and etc. I neither want nor need your instruction and guidance.
This particular grave really touched me. Such a story.
You need to do some Research before you write anything about History . Your remarks about MacArthur are incorrect and also reveal your biased opinion of him. I suggest reading Manchester’s Biography. And then I expect you to admit your errors and apologize
Publicly for smearing him. I will await your reply before “high-tailing” it. For starters,Roosevelt ordered him to leave
Roosevelt also ordered him to “Clear the camps!” in 1932.
I haven’t read Manchester’s biography of him, and at nearly 800 pages, probably won’t. It dates to 1978, and omits facts he couldn’t have known, such as MacArthur taking the equivalent of $7.3 million (2023 dollars) from the president of the Philippines. Ike rejected a much smaller payment offer.
In reality, Dougout Doug (his own troops called him that) should probably have been replaced after the debacle of 1942, but instead was awarded a participation Medal of Honor.
Certainly, I respect him, because he was one of the most important figures of 20th century, an excellent administrator of postwar Japan, and on balance probably did more good than harm, but I don’t idolize him. For the brilliance of Inchon, he also had his ego lead to a Chosin.
Not only the war dead need to be remembered on Memorial Day…
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/Suicides
Thanks for that.
Terrence Popp and his engineer Toxic Male have been active and effective in this area for years, but they are pretty much alone.
Vets must help each other because New Amerika sees its vets as toxic males, deplorables, insurrectionists etc. After the males have been of use, of course!
You are right on, Ricky.
Gentlemen,
If anyone thinks this can be fixed without war. I believe you are in denial or out of your mind.
There will be war.