Silence of a Soldier

by William J. Duggan

It was 1942. The fight for the Philippines was over. Japan was the victor. American POW's sat beneath the burning April sun in the fields of Mariveles. Bub Merrill looked out to sea to see an outline of American held Corregidor, tantalizingly close, just three miles away across the bay, but orders had come down not to try the swim. Most of them were too weak to make it anyway. So began the Bataan Death March. At the point of a bayonet, 75,000 U.S. and Filipino POW's carried sacks of rice...