Two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese overran the Philippines, American and Filipino forces retreated into the mountainous jungles of the Bataan peninsula. Eventually, in April 1942, some 78,000 of them surrendered. Unprepared for the scale of their victory, the Japanese decided forcibly to march the PoWs to camps via a railhead 75 miles away at San Fernando.
Brown had not eaten for four days as he began the march, and soon slipped to the back of the column, only to be stabbed by a guard.
“He jabbed me in the ass with the bayonet, and yelled: 'Speedo’. Well, that got me going pretty good,” Brown recalled. “I never was at the back of the line again.”
On the second day, Brown and his exhausted comrades spent 21 hours marching 30 miles. On day three the grave digging started. One American soldier who had fallen into a coma was tipped into a shallow trench dug by the captives, who were then ordered by the Japanese to fill it in.
“As the earth began falling about the American,” according to one account, “he revived and tried to climb out. His fingers gripped the edge of the grave. He hoisted himself to a standing position.” At bayonet point, a Filipino prisoner was forced to stand over the American with a shovel, which he then smashed down on his stricken comrade’s head. The man fell backwards into the grave, and the burial detail filled it up.
A week later, at the end of the murderous 75-mile trek in temperatures of 90ºF, Brown and another 12,000 American prisoners were put on trains for the three-hour journey to a PoW enclosure at Camp O’Donnell, a former US Air Force facility. At least 600 Americans and 6,000 Filipinos had perished along the way, and another 1,000 Americans and 16,000 Filipinos died over the following six weeks.
'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
