Pvt. Billie Maurice Neal

Parents: William P. Neal & Lora Genevieve Peek-Neal

Inducted:

    - U. S. Army

        - 2 March 1941 - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Training: 

    - Fort Knox, Kentucky

    - Camp Polk, Louisiana

Units:

    - 753rd Tank Battalion

        - volunteered to join the 192nd Tank Battalion and replace a National Guardsman

           released from federal service

    - 192nd Tank Battalion 

Overseas Duty: 

    - Philippine Islands

        - arrived on Thanksgiving Day, 1941 

Engagements: 

    - Battle of Luzon

        - lived through Japanese attack of Clark Airfield

        - attack took place just ten hours after attack on Pearl Harbor 

    - Battle of Bataan

        - Agloloma and Anyasas Rivers Area

              - Wounded: 2 February 1942

                   - Awarded: Purple Heart

Prisoner of War: 

    - 9 April 1942

        - Death March

            - Mariveles - POWs start march at southern tip of Bataan
            - POWs ran past Japanesee 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

POW Camps: 

    - Philippine Islands: 

        - Camp O'Donnell

            - unfinished Filipino training base
            - Japanese put camp into use as POW Camp
            - only one water spiget for entire camp
            - as many as 50 POWs died each day

Died: 26 May 1942

    -  dysentery 

Burial:

    - 22 October 1948 - Ft. Gibson National Cemetery - Gibson, Oklahoma

        - Plot:  3  1533-B

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