Bataan Death March POW honoured

Antipodean Andy · Jun 2, 2008

Prisoner of War Honored - todaysthv.com | KTHV | Little Rock, AR

Imagine being held against your will for three years with little food, no medical attention, and loss of hope as others died around you everyday. For one of the veterans honored in Beebe Sunday, it was a real-life nightmare.

"I was sixteen and a half when I enlisted," says Silas Legrow.

The eighty-five year old was a soldier in world war two. He wanted to help defend the world from the Japanese. But two years after joined the fighting, he found himself in need of help. Leggrow says, "I was a prisoner of war for thirty-nine months. I was captured in the Philippine Islands."

Legrow was one of thousands of Americans forced to walk the 70 mile, Bataan Death March. Nearly seven hundred Americans died, but equally as horrifying were the condition in which they lived. Legrow says, "Our big problem was what we had to put up with. Malnutrition, typhoid fever, yellow jaundice, beriberi, you name it and we had it and no medicine to follow up. And malaria."

Legrow says the only thing that kept him alive were thoughts of home. Legrow adds, "You've got to have will-power when you become a prisoner of war. You've got to always have that want. If anybody goes home, I'm going home."

At a luncheon at V.F.W. Post 7769 in Beebe, Legrow and his fellow comrades were honored for defending freedom. Keynote speaker, former Sergeant Bill Taylor says those who fought are heroes. "They are so much appreciated. And the debt that we own them will never be repaid."

Legrow says as long as he lives all World War II veterans will be remembered. Legrow adds, "I'll never forget any of those troops regardless of where they were in World War II."

Silas Legrow was released from the POW Camp in Manchuria, China in 1944.
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