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Raymond's Long March Into History

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By STEVE OTTO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 10, 2008

Steve Raymond told me about a year ago that he never expected to live this long, by at least a half century.

He died peacefully Sunday at the age of 92, one of just a handful of survivors of one of history's more tragic events, the Bataan Death March.

His story, like so many others, is not so much about war as it is the human spirit. It is a story about absolute good and unbelievable evil and the many shades in between.

Raymond was one of us, maybe even more so. He grew up on Anna Maria Island across from Bradenton back before it had been discovered by developers as a potential island paradise. His parents lived on a small barge, and Raymond pretty much had the island with its less than two dozen souls to himself. He would later say that it was growing up in that isolated area that helped him make it through his ordeal.

Most of us, although history is no longer an emphasis in our schools, have heard about those early days of World War II. Raymond was in the Philippines, serving as a clerk in the Army Air Forces. He would be among the 76,000 Americans and Filipinos captured after holding out for 14 weeks on the Bataan Peninsula.

By the time the Japanese overwhelmed the Americans he was down 25 pounds from his normal 150 pounds and living off anything available, including dogs, cats and monkeys.

So he was already emaciated, not to mention shoeless, when he was led off on what would be a 65-mile march of horror in tem peratures that would rise above the 100-degree mark. The forced march would take five days. He recalls being fed twice over the entire march, each time a small cup of rice.

March Ends, Suffering Doesn't

The end of the march was only the beginning of the suffering as the men who had survived the ordeal were crammed into boxcars and moved to a prison camp deeper into the Philippines. It would become a routine of beatings with sticks and fists and a diet of rice gravy with an occasional rodent or fiddler crab if they were lucky to catch one when the guards weren't looking.

As the war closed in on the Japanese, Raymond was moved to Japan. By then he had suffered from beriberi and skin diseases that caused blisters to break out over his body. His teeth began to fall out, and he suffered night blindness.

It would not be until September 1945, when an American bomber flew over the camp and dropped a parachute with supplies, that he truly believed that after 41 months in captivity, he might one day come home.

Quiet In The Mayhem

I met Raymond more than 30 years ago when I was a sportswriter and he was the quiet guy sitting in a corner editing newspaper copy while smoking a pipe. A newsroom can be a loud and profane place, especially back in those days of typewriters and smoking and even an occasional bottle hidden in a desk, but Raymond was not a part of any of that, just quietly going about his work.

Eventually he and his wife, Marie, retired to Lecanto.

Two years ago, with the help of Mike Pride, the editor of the Concord (New Hampshire) Monitor, Raymond published his story in a book he called "Too Dead to Die." I have only touched on the horrors of those who went through this incredible ordeal. The book will only make you shake your head in wonder that men could not only survive but return to a world with some sense of normalcy.

Raymond, an American hero, will be buried in a ceremony that includes a Purple Heart honor guard at 11 a.m. on Sept. 24 at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell.

Keyword, Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's blog.

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