This is Jockel Podcast number one thirty nine with echo Charles and me Jockel

Willink. Good evening echo. Good evening. I lived a while on Corregador Isle that

sun-baked God cursed land where bomb and shell made life a hell with death on

every hand. I got the thirst there of the cursed with no water to be had. I heard

men scream in hellish dreams and watched my friends go mad. To his no-man's fault

the water salt or that the food is gone. The guns are manned by men full-dammed

facing each new dawn. And when our bones blend with the stones you'll hair the

parrots cry. The men who owned these splintered bones were not afraid to die.

And that is a poem written on the back of a scrap of paper post marked prisoner of

war mail March 1943. The note was addressed to James D. Culp US Navy gunners

made first class via his wife from the Red Cross while he was in a prisoner of war

camp in Osaka, Japan. And the author is unknown so it wasn't written by James D. Culp

it was sent to James D. Culp the author is unknown but is assumed to be one of

Culp's fellow prisoners that was captured on the Philippine island of Craigdor.

And the fall of the Philippines in World War II resulted in an absolutely horrific

event that resulted in the deaths of thousands of American and Filipino

service members. And there's not any great records of how many actually died in

this terrible situation but throughout the prisoner of war camps of the Japanese

in World War II the death rate was about 40 percent it was a nightmare. And this

is this is about the baton death march. And we've heard a little bit about what the

Japanese did to prisoners of war in World War II. We read the forgotten Highlander

by Alistar U-Cart and that was podcast number 12. And he didn't talk about the baton

...