How Marine POWs Hung Tough

By Gregory J. W. Urwin | World War II  | 3 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

The Marine Corps has never been in the business of producing saints, and those of its sons captured in World War II knew moments of weakness and selfishness. Marine officers refused to dispense with certain nonessential privileges of rank, demanding exemption from heavy labor and orderlies to serve them. They had their food cooked separately, and many enlisted men were sure that their superiors received larger and more nutritious servings. The lower ranks argued among themselves over the distribution of their own food and other issues, many of them trivial. Sometimes these disagreements escalated from shouting matches to fistfights. When an NCO from Wake complained that he was losing control of some of the men in his barracks, Major Devereux barked, “You pick up a pick handle and use it, and don’t forget I said that, because you have to maintain discipline.”

These minor lapses prove that marines were human, but they do not diminish the moral triumph that the Marine Corps’ POWs won behind barbed wire. By sticking together and helping each other, they came home with their lives, their dignity, and an enduring sense of brotherhood. Cpl. Robert Brown spoke for more than just the Wake marines when he observed: “I don’t know of any other unit cohesion that works as well as this did. In the very bitterest days we had, this group got through by…one of the greatest cases of friendship the world has ever known.”

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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