This evening I was thumbing through the 1942 souvenir booklet that included the picture of my dad as a 21-year-old soldier. He grew up in a small town in western Illinois, a town whose city limits sign said "Pop. 895" in the years when my grandparents lived there. In that booklet are salutes to 88 members of the armed forces who were serving as of mid-1942. Eighty-eight! The booklet is dedicated to two townsmen who were stationed in the Philippines when that nation fell.
When the war struck on December 7th, Duane and Bill had already been in the Philippines for a year. And there they stayed. As members of the Air Corps they played an important part in the heroic defense of Bataan. When Bataan fell at last, Bill and Duane reached Corregidor. And there they still were, right up to the final day of fighting. Where they are now, nobody knows. But what they have done, the world will long remember.Bill Soland, who had turned 21 on Pearl Harbor Day, was liberated at Bilibid in 1945. He died at age 85, in 2005. Read his obituary, please. Duane P. George died in prison and is buried at Manila.