April 2, 2020
By Steve Brawner
© 2020 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
We’re possibly engaged in World War III, so this might be a good time to recall World War II, and what was required to win it from people like Malvern’s Cletis Overton.
Cletis was serving as a U.S. Army aircraft mechanic in the Philippines in December 1941 when Japan attacked that country along with Pearl Harbor. For months, he and his fellow soldiers retreated until there was nowhere to go, and they were captured and forced to walk 60 miles in what became known as the Bataan Death March. From there he endured a series of prison camps marked by forced labor, limited food, malaria and dysentery.
Eventually the tide of the war reversed. As American forces closed in on the weakening Japanese strongholds, he and his 750 fellow prisoners were herded into the sweltering hold of a cargo ship, where they survived on a cupful of rice and a few swallows of water twice a day. Two five-gallon barrels served as toilet facilities. They were transferred to another ship, the Shinyo Maru, for transport to Japan, but near the coast of the Philippines the ship was sunk by an American submarine that was unaware of its cargo. That torpedo resulted in the deaths of 668 Americans. Cletis swam to shore and eventually made it home. When his mother, Virgie, saw him approach, she prayed a beautiful thanksgiving prayer and then cooked him fried chicken, his favorite meal. Continue reading Fighting World War III against a virus