DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do it justice. Now, there are stories that start quiet — a small town, a unit of men, a November morning in 1940 — and then the world reaches out and grabs hold of them in ways nobody could have seen coming. This is one of those stories.
Battery F, 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, 36th Division, Texas National Guard. Sixty-three men mobilized right here in Jack County, November 1940, called up for active duty. Could have been routine.
Could have come and gone like a training exercise. But it didn't. By November 1941, they sailed out of San Francisco.
And they were at sea — somewhere on the open Pacific — when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The world had just changed underneath them, and they were riding the water when it happened. They went to defend Java.
And in March of 1942, the unit was captured. What came next was three and a half years. Three and a half years as prisoners scattered across many parts of Asia.
They performed forced labor for the Japanese. The marker doesn't dress it up, and neither will I — it calls it what it was: untold hardships and starvation. Of the original sixty-three men, eight died.
Most of those deaths came while building the Burma-Siam Railway. The survivors returned after the Japanese surrender. Sixty-three men left Jack County.
Fifty-five came home. That marker's been standing since 1968, and those numbers haven't changed. Fifty-five.
Eight. Three and a half years. You hold those in your mind a while.
What the marker says
Battery F, 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, 36th Division, Texas National Guard mobilized here November 1940, for active duty. Sailed from San Francisco, November 1941, was at sea when Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Went to defend Java where unit was captured March 1942. Prisoners in many parts of Asia for three and one-half years. Performed forced labor for Japanese, suffering untold hardships and starvation. 8 of original 63 died. Most deaths occurred building Burma-Siam Railway. Survivors returned after Japanese surrender. (1968)