ALS adds another to its Wall of Heroes

Airman Thomas Trower, 27th Fighter Wing Public Affairs

In 1941 New Mexico, like many other states, was subject to a military draft.

Mr. Lee Roach, born on Nov. 27, 1918, was from Fields, N.M., about 40 miles northwest of Clovis.

Mr. Roach was drafted into the 200th Coastal Artillery on April 3, 1941. There was no way for him to know what was in store for him on the eve of World War II.

His military service began in El Paso, Texas where he trained for four months. He was told he was leaving, but did not know his destination. He ended up in the Philippines, where he was stationed at a camp next to Clark Field.

He was working on the runway when the war started and never returned to his tent. He was sent immediately into combat. He used his 50 caliber machine gun to try to fend off the Japanese dive bombers. His unit moved positions about every two weeks in order to cover all of the land they were tasked to protect, said Mr. Roach.

The Americans were outnumbered 10 to one, Mr. Roach said. Their unit moved in the dark of night in order to avoid the dive bombers.

“We had to dig holes about eight feet in diameter and four and a half feet high to protect us from the strafing,” Mr. Roach said. This was especially hard since many times once they dug four feet down, they struck water.

According to Mr. Roach, his unit was captured and put into a wire cage and driven about 10 miles, where they joined other POWs in the Bataan Death March.

“It wasn’t the march that was hard, it was that you didn’t have any food or water for about three days and three nights,” Mr. Roach said. “If you could get a little water then you’d be just fine.”

Mr. Roach had two duties at the POW camp; he carried water from a small river to the camp and worked on the burial detail. “We buried anywhere from 50 to 75 per day on burial detail,” he said. “We’d dig a hole about 18 inches deep and we’d put about 10 people in each grave,” he said.

Afterwards, he was moved to Nichols Field, where he built runways for a year and a half.

“They had 750 of us -LESS-THAN-0040-Americans-GREATER-THAN-0040- locked in a freighter hull. That’s a lot of people for 18 days and nights,” Mr. Roach said.

After being locked in the freighter hull, he was moved to Japan, where they forced him to carry 205 pound sacks of rice off of cargo ships and load them into boxcars.

The POWs were fed rotten food and if the water wasn’t boiled then the prisoners chanced contracting malaria, he recalled. “I was sick as a dog there for a while,” Mr. Roach said. “I didn’t know if I was gonna make it.”

When his battery was freed, only 900 of the 1800 who originally deployed came back alive. “Many were killed by wounds and some by exhaustion, but most of them died from malaria,” Mr. Roach said.

When Mr. Roach arrived home, he tried several different jobs as a civilian. None of them worked out quite right, so he decided to go back to the military as a civilian.

Mr. Roach began working for Cannon as a civil engineer. He worked 26 years at Cannon before he retired and settled into a less hectic life with his wife Una. They have been married 59 years and have two sons.

Mr. Roach was inducted into the Cannon Airman Leadership School’s Wall of Heroes on Sept. 29. The Wall of Heroes program began in June 2004 and honors the services of local heroes.

There are eight ALS classes each year, and each class chooses a local hero to add to the Wall of Heroes to provide role models of outstanding military service in combat as an example to the ALS students. Many of these heroes were POWs during World War II. Mr. Roach was honored for the journey that lead him through the Phillipines and Japan.

Mr. Roach said he has never met as many people who want to help each other as he has in the Clovis area. Mr. Roach still lives in the area where he stays active with Cannon and the

community.