Clemson man relives Bataan Death March

CLEMSON – War has a way of changing people, hardening them, sometimes for the worst.

Ben Skardon's wartime experience had just the opposite effect. And yet, the ordeal he endured was enough to embitter anyone.

Today, in the desert of southern New Mexico, Skardon, 97, is marking the 73rd anniversary of that great ordeal – the infamous Bataan Death March – by taking part in a re-enactment of sorts.

The annual event, which drew more than 6,000 marchers last year, including a handful of survivors like Skardon, takes place in New Mexico each year because that state lost more veterans in that episode of World War II than any other, Skardon says.

He feels close to the past there, close to those who were lost.

About 25 of his friends and relatives who call themselves "Ben's Brigade" are joining him in an 8.5-mile walk to commemorate the tortuous 80-mile journey he and thousands of others made through the steaming jungles of the Philippines toward disease-ridden prison camps in 1942.

It will be the eighth time he has made this pilgrimage to White Sands Missile Range for the memorial march. He has completed the 8.5-mile trek each time. As he approaches the century mark in his life, the walk is getting harder each year, he says.

He intends to make it again. They'll have to pick him up off the ground and put him in the van before he'll quit, he says.

"People ask, why do I do it?" Skardon said in an interview at his home in a quiet, wooded neighborhood in Clemson. "I have to. I feel connected out there."

During periods of silence as he makes the walk, his mind goes back to that time so many years ago across the Pacific. In the desert air, memories of the two buddies who cared for him while he was close to death flood his heart.

Two buddies, fellow Clemson graduates, who didn't make it home.

He tells himself he must keep walking, just like then.

"The way I think, if you fall or have to stop because of blisters, you get bayoneted," he said.

It's not anger or bitterness that keeps him going. He has made peace with the Japanese people. It's overflowing devotion. It's love of country, love of those he served with, and appreciation for little acts of kindness that now seem as big as the desert sky.

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On this day 73 years ago, Skardon, a retired Clemson University English professor, was confined to a bamboo cot in a makeshift Army hospital in the Philippine jungle, sick with malaria.

He had spent the previous three months fighting the Japanese, who were pushing the American and Filipino troops relentlessly southward into the Bataan peninsula.

Skardon had gone to Clemson when it was a military college, and he had always had a desire to serve in the Army.

He had been thrilled with being assigned to the Philippines.

"I had visions of ladies in grass skirts, and people climbing coconut trees," he said.

He arrived there in late October, 1941. The Japanese had not yet bombed Pearl Harbor.

"Six weeks later, we were at war," he said.

After the surprise attack on the U.S. fleet in Hawaii, the Japanese went on the offensive in the Philippines.

Skardon was given command of Company A of the 92nd Infantry Regiment of the Philippine Army, a battalion of Filipino recruits on the Bataan peninsula.

He couldn't speak their language and was able to communicate only with Filipino officers who would relay his orders.

His troops, armed with 1898 vintage rifles left over from the Spanish-American War, were poorly equipped to defend their country against the Japanese war machine.

After weeks of fighting, the American forces had their backs to the sea. With the U.S. fleet decimated at Pearl Harbor, the reinforcements Gen. Douglas MacArthur had hoped for would not be arriving.

Supplies were running perilously low, and the American-led forces, facing disease and starvation, were forced to surrender on April 9, 1942.

Skardon became a prisoner of war.

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What came next has been described as one of the worst atrocities of World War II.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 of the 75,000 soldiers who made what came to be called the Bataan Death March died along the way, according to the U.S. Army's official account, although it says the actual number will never be known.

"As the emaciated men proceeded north up the highway in the blistering heat, the Japanese guards summarily shot or bayoneted any man who fell, attempted to escape, or stopped to quench his thirst at a roadside spigot or puddle," it says.

Skardon was in one of the first groups to make the march.

Once, while he and several other soldiers had stopped and dropped their trousers to defecate, a Japanese guard bayoneted the man next to him, he recalls.

He quickly ran, pulling up his pants as he went, and got back in line.

"From then on, I realized this is going to be a matter of survival," he said.

He learned to avoid making eye contact with the Japanese and to walk in the middle of the column.

During the eight-day march from Marivelles Point to San Fernando, the prisoners were given nothing to eat but a little boiled rice.

Skardon kept up his strength as best he could by sucking occasionally from a can of Eagle brand condensed milk that he concealed in his sock.

He survived the march, but the worst was yet to come.

******

Skardon and the remaining soldiers were packed into boxcars and hauled like cattle another 35 miles to Camp O'Donnell, a former Philippine installation that the Japanese had turned into a POW camp.

He was imprisoned in the same camp where he had been a commander.

Designed for 10,000 troops, the camp was crammed with 60,000 men, with poor sanitation, little food and no medical treatment, according to the U.S. Army account. Prisoners began to die at a rate of 400 a day.

To ease the congestion, the Japanese decided to move some of the prisoners to a nearby work camp called Cabanatuan.

There, Skardon contracted beriberi, a disease caused by malnutrition that causes extreme pain, especially in the feet.

"The pain was so intense, it felt like an icepick was being stuck up from the bottom of your feet," Skardon recalls.

He couldn't eat or swallow. He was close to being sent to what the soldiers called "Zero Ward." No one ever returned from Zero Ward.

It was during this time that his old Clemson cadet friends, Henry Leitner and Otis Morgan, saved his life, Skardon says.

They spoon fed him. They massaged his feet for hours.

"They would take me piggyback to the latrine," Skardon said.

When it seemed that death was only hours away, Morgan convinced Skardon to try to trade his gold Clemson ring to the guards for some food.

That ring made all the difference. With it, they acquired a chicken and some potted meat. They boiled the chicken, even scraping out the marrow to consume.

"Nothing edible remained," Skardon said.

After that, he began to feel better and soon was able to go to work in the vegetable gardens.

*****

Eventually, the Japanese decided to move their prisoners to Japan.

Their fate on the ships that were to take them there was even worse than in the camps. As they were crowded elbow-to-elbow into the holds. A soldier next to Skardon died. Rigor mortis was setting in before anyone even knew he was dead.

More dangers awaited in the days ahead. American bombers, not realizing that the ships were carrying U.S. prisoners, bombed the ship carrying Skardon.

He remembers jumping off it as it sank into the "sapphire bluish green" of the South China Sea. He made it into a lifeboat but was recaptured by the Japanese and put into another ship.

It went down, too.

It took a hellish 45 days in three ships before Skardon and his comrades arrived in Japan on Jan. 30, 1945.

He was in Manchuria when Soviet troops liberated the area, and his nightmare finally ended.

*****

Skardon didn't talk about his wartime experiences much for decades after that. According to his nephew, Hooper Skardon of Greenville, it wasn't until about 20 years ago that he started opening up about it.

But there's no question, he said, that what his uncle experienced changed his life.

"I think it has strengthened his faith and made him more appreciative of life," he said, "because there were so many people that just gave up.

"He has personally told me that if somebody just said 'I can't do it anymore,' within several days they would die. And he never ever gave up.

"He's a very strong person."

Skardon says the experience, the great compassion of his friends and the inhumanity of the Japanese guards gave him a greater appreciation for relationships with people.

"They mean a lot more," he said. "Little things become big things."

His values changed – from being a hard-nosed "gravel-pounder" to a "more humane" state of being.

"I realized that things that make you happy genuinely are the things that count," he says. "I realize more and more that little favors that you used to take for granted, now become …"

He pauses, trying to compose himself.

He thinks of the "piles" of dead people he saw during the war. And of the sacrifices and kindness of his two friends, both killed later in the war.

"I learned to weep by just pure emotion," he says.

*****

When he gets to the eight-mile marker on his walk today, if the cellphone connection is working well enough, Skardon plans to make a FaceTime call to Clemson President Jim Clements.

Next to faith, family and country, Clemson is closest to his heart.

Clements said he and other alumni will be marching with Skardon in spirit.

"Col. Skardon has been an inspiration to thousands of Clemson students, both as a teacher and a role model for duty, service and sacrifice for country," Clements said.

"I'm proud to be an honorary member of Ben's Brigade."