|
Post by The Phantom on Oct 25, 2014 6:37:50 GMT 8
The battle lines across the north Luzon plains......early on as Gen Wainwright's troops hold open a path into Bataan for the Southern force trying to get into Bataan before the Japanese coming down from the north can close the excape route... " By 11:00 pm that night, Christmas Eve, while the 26th Calvary was fighting another delaying action, all units reached the D2 line behind the Agno River....."
"Christmas day was not a particularly eventful day otherwise, just an ordinary day of war in which almost everything went as planned. Yet men died on that bright, sunny, holy day,some of them before General Wainwright's eyes. Lt. Henry Lee lost a friend and he wrote of the loss, and the losses of so many others, in a poem he called ....
"Incomplete Epitaph".
"The waiting hearts to whom his heart belonged Know that he died one dusty Christmas Day "In Action' the laconic message ran And "In the Philippines." They knew no more His body Knew no hallowed resting place He slept alone and lonely, as men sleep- As many men have slept-in many lands Since first the hairy clansmen came to hunt Their rival clans with spear and axe and knife And take by force the gear they did not own He is a name among 10 million names A yellowed card filed in some dusty file A faded signature on faded notes A cherished pain burned on a few quick hearts The ageless tragedy of youth and war"
I had not read this before......
|
|