Nisswa American Legion
Post History
This page is a work in progress, please viist often as we add more details.
Our first entry details the life and service of PFC. Bille Brown
Pfc. Billie Elwin Brown
Born: 21 January 1917 - Lake Hubert, Minnesota
Parents: William H. Brown & Lois O. Edwards-Brown
Siblings: 3 sisters, 2 brothers
- Brother: Alpheus Brown - also a member of A Company
Hometown: Lake Edwards, Minnesota
- living with his two brothers
Occupation: farmhand
Inducted:
- U.S. Army
- 10 February 1941 - Brainerd, Minnesota
Training:
- Fort Lewis, Washington
Units:
- 194th Tank Battalion
Overseas Duty:
- Ship: U.S.S. President Coolidge
- Boarded: Monday - 8 September 1941 - 3:00 P.M.
- Sailed: 9:00 P.M. - same day
- Arrived: Honolulu, Hawaii - Saturday - 13 September 1941 - 7:00 A.M.
- Sailed: 5:00 P.M. - same day
- Arrived: Manila - Friday - 26 September 1941
- disembark ship - 3:00 P.M.
- taken by bus to Fort Stostenburg
- Philippines
- lived in tents until barracks completed - 15 November 1941
Engagements:
- Battle of Luzon
- 8 December 1941 - 6 January 1942
- Battle of Bataan
- 7 January 1942 - 9 April 1942
- March 1942
- two tanks were bogged down in mud
- the tankers were working to get them out
- Japanese Regiment entered the area
- Lt. Col. Miller ordered tanks and artillery to fire at point blank range
- Miller ran from tank to tank directing fire
- wiped out Japanese regiment
Prisoner of War:
- 9 April 1942
- Death March
- Mariveles - POWs start march at southern tip of
Bataan
- POWs ran past Japanese artillery firing at Corregidor
- Americans on Corregidor returned fire
- San Fernando - POWs put into small wooden boxcars
- each boxcar could hold eight horses or forty men
- 100 POWs packed into each car
- POWs who died remained standing
- Capas - dead fell to floor as living left boxcars
- POWs walked last ten miles to Camp O'Donnell
- Reported POW: 23 January 1943
POW Camps:
- Philippine Islands:
- Camp O'Donnell
- unfinished Filipino training base
- Japanese put camp into use as POW Camp
- only one water spigot for entire camp
- as many as 50 POWs died each day
- Japanese opened new POW camp to lower death rate
- Cabanatuan #1
Died:
- Monday - 7 September 1942 - cerebral malaria
- Approximate time of death: 9:45 AM
Buried: Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery
Reburied:
- November 1949 - Lake Edward Cemetery - Nisswa, Crow Wing County, Minnesota
This infomation used with permission from a great website resource:
Battan Commerative Research Project