Pvt. Claude W. Herron

Parents: Claude & Virginia Herron

Siblings: 1 sister, 4 brothers

Hometown: Casper, Wyoming

Enlisted: Wyoming National Guard

Inducted:

    - U. S. Army

        - 24 February 1941 - Casper, Wyoming

Training: 

    - Fort Lewis, Washington

Units: 

    - 194th Tank Battalion

Overseas Duty: 

    - Philippine Islands

Engagements: 

    - Battle of Luzon

        - 8 December 1941 - 6 January 1942 

    - Battle of Bataan

        - 7 January 1942 - 9 April 1942

Prisoner of War: 

    - 9 April 1942

        - Death March

            - started march at Mariveles on the southern tip of Bataan

            - POWs ran past Japanese artillery firing on Corregidor

                - American guns on Corregidor returned fire - shells land among POWs
            - San Fernando - POWs packed into small wooden boxcars

                - boxcars could hold eight horses or forty men

                - 100 men put into each boxcar

                - those who died remained standing
            - Capas - POWs leave boxcars - dead fall out of cars
            - walk last ten miles to Camp O'Donnell 

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:

    - 9 July 1942 - dysentery

        - approximate time of death: 3:00 AM

Buried:

    - Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery 

        - after the war, his remains could not be positively identified

        - buried as an "Unknown" at the new American cemetery

Memorial:

        - Tablets of the Missing -  American Military Cemetery - Manila, Philippine Islands

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