Ear1y on a brilliant, summer Sunday morning,
my wife Lynn and I turned onto Rural Route 381 and drove into South Carolina
between endless cotton fields. With a certain foreboding, we headed for
the little mill town of McColl.
My thoughts drifted back to when I was young and had gone
to war. I was a sergeant in Manilla in 1945, and a Filipino brought
me a gold ring. He asked me to return it to the family of the American
soldier who had slipped it to him, at great risk, early in the war.
The G. I. Had been in a column of weary prisoners of war being marched,
and if they fell out, executed by their Japanese guards. This was
the Bataan death march.
The ring bore a gold crest circled with “McColl High School”
and “1940” divided on each side. (That was my graduating year too).
Inside the ring were the initials MLJ.
Back in New York after the war I found only one McColl,
in South Carolina And MLJ had been Mantie Lee Jackson, Jr., whom every
one called “ML”. I exchanged letters with the Jackson family.
I felt deeply that I had to take the ring to the Jacksons
myself; mailing it seemed harsh and irreverent. But as the years raced
by many things got in the way. I helped rear a family, reported from around
the world, divorced arid remarried and later became seriously ill. Yet
I repeatedly experienced surges of guilt because I had not delivered ML’s
ring.
Then, this August, , my wife and I decided to fly to a
wedding in Charlotte, N.C. This seemed, at last, the time to complete my
unfinished duty. More than that, I was now 74 and did not want to die without
returning the ring.
I talked on the phone with ML’s sister, Mildred, and her
husband Zeb Vance Sanders, and with one of ML’s high school friends, Bill
Sligh. I learned that ML was born April 24, 1923. (He was just 15 days
older than I). He got top marks and played football in high school. Bill
Sligh remembered boxing him — and seeing stars!
Right after graduation, ML enlisted and was assigned to
the 27th Bombardment Group of the Army Air Corps. The group arrived in
Manila two weeks before Dec. 7, 1941. When the Japanese invade the Philippines,
ML helped defend the Bataan Peninsula in Manila Bay. His company fought
until April 9, then it could fight no more.
The Japanese rounded up the soldiers - and marched them
with senseless cruelty to a camp 85 miles north. Thousands of Americans
and Filipinos died.
ML survived the march and nearly three years in Japanese
prison camps. He was 1 of 1,800 P. O. W’s jammed into the old freighter
Arisan Maru and shipped to Japan. On Oct. 24, 1944, the American submarine
U.S.S. Snook torpedoed the freighter. All but 10 prisoners died — including
ML.
On that recent Sunday morning as my wife and I drove up
North Church Street in McColl, I spotted a smiling man standing before
a modest yellow house with a welcoming porch. Zeb Sanders waved us into
the driveway. The family gathered in the livingroom included Mildred and
ML’s brothers Gene and David. I worried that after all these years they
would be angry with me. But they greeted us with handshakes and hugs.
Zeb called me Brother Bob and I called him Brother Zeb.
We were shown snapshots of ML as a boy and a framed photograph
of him in uniform, and we a1o saw his Purple Heart medal awarded to him
posthumously. I thought I had been blessed with 53 more years of
life than he.
Mildred asked me to present the ring to the family on
steps of ML’s high school. In front of the large, red-brick building, I
saw a few words about ML. I told them that I never knew him, but we all
knew what he represented - something wonderful about our country. And I
handed the ring to Mildred, who was weeping. The family then passed the
ring around lovingly, talking to ML.
Afterward, we drove to the Old Beaverdam Cemetery. ML’s
brother Gene was still furious over the local legend that in the War between
the States Sherman had marched his troops through this cemetery. We stood
at the stone the family had placed for ML. His parents lie nearby; his
father had been gassed in combat in World War I. Even if ML’s bones were
not at Old Beaverdam, he was in his place with the simple granite headstone
and now the ring I returned to his family.
We went back to Mildred and Zeb’s house for a heaping
Sunday dinner of ham, peas, congealed salad and lots of iced tea. But first
we stood together in the kitchen and Zeb led us in a prayer thank-ing God
for this food and this day. At that moment, all the years faded and we
were young men again and World War II seemed very near.
