"The first time it happened, said Major Gunn, "I didn't
 
know what was up. A Filipino had keeled over--he had been stumbling
 
for hours--and the Japs dragged him to a ditch about a hundred yards
 
from the road. I was taken out of the line and escorted to where
 
the Japs had placed this unconscious Filipino in the ditch. One
 
of the Japs handed me a shovel. Another jabbed a bayonet into my
 
side and gave an order in Japanese. I did not understand. A Jap
 
grabbed the shovel out of my hands and demonstrated by throwing a
 
few shovelsful of earth on the Filipino. Then he handed me the
 
shovel. God!...It doesn't help to tell myself that the Filipino,
 
and others later, were already more dead than alive....The worst
 
time was once when a Filipino with about six inches of earth over
 
him suddenly regained consciousness and clawed his way out until
 
he was almost sitting upright. Then I learned to what lengths a man
 
will go, McCoy, to hang onto his own life. The bayonets began
 
to prod me in the side, and I was forced to bash the Filipino over
 
the head with the shovel and then finish burying him."
 
     Major Gunn told this story to me several times, and he
 
never told it with an excuse for his own conduct. It was unspoken
 
between us that a man already crazed by thirst and hunger, and
 
already at the point of exhaustion, is not a rational being; auto-
 
matic reflexes alone will cause him to hang onto his existence
 
with all the remaining life that is in him.
 
     Often, after talking about the death march from Bataan
 
to O'Donnell, Gunn would pause for awhile and then say, "Those
 
                                                  -33-