Bataan To Pyongyang Poem by Michael Pruchnicki

I knew a couple of guys who spent their youth
in POW camps on Bataan and in Japan
enlisted men serving in a peacetime Army

captured in the last months of 1941
and death-marched to hell-on-earth
in the Phillippines and the Empire

I met them in a paradise outside Frisco
called the Presidio where we served
together in a coast artillery battalion

We parted ways after that assigned
to infantry and engineer units in Japan
as part of the Army of Occupation

Korea brought us together at the Naktong
north of Waegwon in South Korea
I am the sole survivor of that battle

Sometimes I think Americans do not
realize the sacrifices necessary
to maintain a republic!