Purple Heart, Red Cross, and Green Arrows

Chapter 1: Left for Dead

Summary:

Oliver Queen, a US marine, miraculously survives brutality in the Death March. Severely wounded, he is awakened by excruciating pain - physical and otherwise.

April 12, 1942

Several miles from Orion, Bataan, The Philippines

The sound of crickets wakes him at last. The first thing he feels is pain. Excruciating pain. But he doesn't know where it is coming from, and he doesn't remember what happened. He is in shock. All he knows is that he has never felt so much agony in his life - even as a soldier who had survived the rigors of boot camp and infantry training, has seen action more than once in China, and has been fighting a losing battle with his American and Filipino comrades against the invading Japanese forces for the last three months. He is a marine, and he is supposed to be tough. He is. But the agony he feels the moment he regains consciousness is too much for any man to bear. He wishes no one else was there to hear him cry and call out the name of his mother and... his girl. He whispers a prayer to the God that he had been taught to believe in since he was a boy, and then he passes out again.

Oliver Queen lies in prone position in the middle of a parched rice field in the dead of night. There are other soldiers, mostly Filipinos, scattered a few meters away along the road, but those are no longer bodies. They are corpses.

When the Battle of Bataan was lost three days ago, American and Filipino troops under Commander Maj. Gen. King surrendered to the Japanese army under the command of Col. Nakayama. The Japanese had already taken Manila last December and forced the Philippine president and his family, other key Filipino and American government and military leaders first to evacuate to Corregidor Island and then to flee the country, and just a month ago, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the United States Army Forces in the Far East, had left Corregidor for Mindanao where he and his compatriots were flown to Australia, with the promise to return to liberate the Philippine islands from Japanese occupation. The 4th Marine Regiment, which Oliver and his fellow marines belonged to, had been moved to Corregidor Island weeks ago, but his battalion was sent to reinforce the fast-depleting USAFFE troops left in the Bataan Peninsula that were valiantly fighting hard against the relentless barrage and bombings by the advancing Japanese troops. He and his closest friends and brothers-at-arms, Privates John Diggle and Thomas Merlyn, were among the 75,000 Filipino and American soldiers that became prisoners of war in the hands of the Japanese imperial army.

The Japanese had underestimated the number of prisoners that had surrendered, and there were not enough trucks to transport three times the expected number of American and Filipino soldiers to the camps in Central Luzon. The very next day, Oliver, Tommy, and John learned that they were all going on a 65-mile trek in groups of about 100 prisoners at a time from Mariveles, the town where all prisoners had been rounded up, to San Fernando, Pampanga where they were supposed to be transported by rail to the prison camp in Capas, Tarlac. They were part of the third group of a hundred men that left Mariveles on foot, after they were all ordered to turn over their weapons and personal possessions.

During the shakedown, they were made to empty their pockets, pulling them wrong side out, and to lay all items on the ground in front of them. The Japanese were taking jewelry, watches, and other valuable personal effects, slapping and hitting those that tried to resist or withhold things that they considered hard to part with. One Japanese guard even knocked a prisoner's tooth out for gold fillings.

They were a hundred men, so it took the Japanese guards some time to get to all of them. Oliver and his friends were sitting down on the ground towards the end of the long line of prisoners when they noticed the commotion up ahead. The Japanese guards had singled out an American officer, a Filipino officer, and three Filipino soldiers. Those prisoners were brought to a nearby rice shack near some trees. A couple of minutes later, shots were heard and only the Japanese guards returned to resume the shakedown. As word spread down the line of prisoners, Oliver and his friends learned that the prisoners who had been executed were found to have been in possession of Japanese money and souvenirs. They surmised that the Japanese must have seen it as an occasion to exact vengeance on their white enemies that had subdued some of their comrades during the Battle of Bataan and taken their valuables and belongings.