By CHUCK CRUMBO - Staff Writer
Guy Wright was a strapping six-footer from New Mexico who dropped out of high school and lied his way into the Army.
Just 15 years old, Wright was sent to boot camp in the Philippines. Thirteen days later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Five months later, Wright was captured at Corregidor.
Wright spent most of the next 40 months in Japanese slave-labor camps. He was beaten and starved, and forced to work - 16 hours a day, seven days a week -building runways and bridges, even burying his comrades. "Hope and faith were the only things that kept me going."
Wright, a Summit resident, will be among about 75 former prisoners of war who gather today to celebrate their 60th year of freedom. The event, sponsored by the S.C. Ex-Prisoners of War, runs through Sunday.
The gathering is held annually, but this year is even more special because the number of ex-POWs is dwindling. About 1,300 World War II veterans die each day. "There's not too many of us around anymore," said Bill Pebley, S.C. commander of the group.
About 110,000 U.S. troops were taken prisoner by Germany and Japan during World War II. Today, about half are alive, including some 600 in South Carolina. Their average age is 83 1/2.
Six decades ago, their chances of survival depended, in part, on their captors. About 35 percent of those the Japanese captured died, compared to less than 1 percent of those held by the Germans, according to historian Stephen E. Ambrose.
ÔEND OF THE LINEÕ
The 79-year-old Wright considers himself lucky.
His unit was part of a 70,000-man force that surrendered April 9, 1942, in the Philippines.
Wright and three others slipped away, avoiding the infamous "Bataan Death March" - a 60-mile forced march in intense heat with almost no food and water. As many as 11,000 prisoners died.
Meanwhile, Wright's squad joined up with the 4th Marine Regiment at Corregidor. But that island fell three weeks later. "That was the end of the line," he said.
After 20 days, Wright said he and the other U.S. troops were moved to a former seaplane base that had been converted into a prison camp. There, about 13,000 men were crammed into an open concrete area, he said.
Only two water lines were available for the prisoners, who would stand in line all day for a drink. Some days they were lucky. Other days, they went without water, Wright said.
Food consisted of rice, some milk, canned fish and whatever animals the troops could steal and butcher - just enough to prevent them from starving.
Being healthy enough to work, Wright was forced to labor.
"You were better off being away from the camp, sitting down in all that misery," hesaid.
There were benefits, though. Wright was paid a penny a day and fed some extra rice, vegetables and a biscuit. Still, Wright, who weighed 165 pounds when he joined the Army, dropped to 106 pounds.
Communication with the outside world was virtually non-existent. It took the Army 1 1/2 years to tell Wright's family he had been captured.
Later, he received a letter from his mother, in Albuquerque, N.M. A medal of St. Anthony, the patron saint of the lost and starving, that had been taped on the page was missing. Wright suspects Japanese censors removed it.
A HISTORY LESSON
Pebley and Tom Grove, both 80, were prisoners of the Germans. Both tell of being marched at gunpoint and nearly starved to death in prison camps.
Pebley, a mortarman, reached the front on Nov. 1, 1944. About a month later, his unit surrendered at Wingen-Sur-Mer, France.
Grove was a machine-gunner when he was captured Jan. 8, 1945, during fierce house-to-house fighting in Belgium. "We were at the crossroads of the German army and surrounded."
Grove and a buddy decided to surrender after two other U.S. soldiers were gunned down, trying to flee a two-story house where they had taken cover. "Oh, my God, I'm a prisoner of war," Grove thought to himself.
Grove, who lives in West Columbia, remembers a forced march through 1 1/2 feet of snow to an area where other POWs were being gathered.
Plotting to escape, he worked his way toward the rear of the column. He changed his mind when he saw two GIs, who had fallen out of line, being beaten by German guards.
Grove and Pebley were shipped to German POW camps on 40-and-8 railroad cars. The cars were named such because they could hold either 40 men or eight horses.
Usually 60 to 100 men were squeezed into a car. The waste facility might be a bucket or a soldierÕs helmet. The prisoners could only stand, further compounding their misery.
In the camps, the soldiers were fed a slice of moldy black bread and something they called "green hornet soup." The color came from the maggots, on top of the soup, that were stained green by the beet tops. Most of the GIs ate the soup, figuring the maggots offered at least some protein.
Sardines turned out to be a treat for Pebley, of Little Mountain. "Before I went into the Army, I couldn't stand to eat sardines. But, when you're hungry, man, they were delicious."
Grove, who weighed just 120 pounds when he joined the Army, lost 30 pounds before he was freed on Easter Sunday, 1945.
Pebley, who is 6 foot, 1 inch, lost nearly 50 pounds in five months of captivity, dropping to 136 pounds from 184.
All three men believe it is important to tell their stories.
"People should know what war is really like," said Grove, a retired Baptist pastor. He promised to serve God if he got out of the POW camp alive.
Wright said not enough about World War II - especially the plight of POWs - is being taught today. "This is history, and the story needs to be told."
Reach Crumbo at (803) 771-8503 or ccrumbo@thestate.com