The Gazette-Enterprise

SEGUIN — For some of us, Independence Day is more important than for others.

And Saturday, when Seguin’s annual July Fourth parade goes past Mayor Betty Ann Matthies’ reviewing stand at Central Park, one of them will be sitting there, enjoying the parade — former U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Dan Buzzo.

Buzzo, a San Antonio native, is now 88 years old, and nobody could argue the former oilman and Amazon River guide has seen the world and lived a very full life.

But back in 1942, it all nearly came to naught for the forward observer with the first Texas military unit to ever see combat on foreign soil.

One of the very first to see action in World War II and the most decorated military unit in the history of the Lone Star state, Buzzo’s unit, the second battalion of the 131st Field Artillery, was surrendered and captured at Java on March 8, 1942.

Buzzo’s unit left Pearl Harbor as “Pacific Task Force 1” about a week before the Japanese Navy bombed the U.S. Navy’s Pacific fleet headquarters.

“We thought we were going to the Philippine Islands,” Buzzo recalled Thursday. “Nobody aboard ship knew our destination. It was changed in mid-stream and we were sent to Australia.”

After a week in Brisbane, the unit went to Java on Jan. 11, 1942.

While the Texans felt a kinship with the Australians, who Buzzo said were brave troops, they were far less enamored of the Dutch.

“As we were going in, the Dutch were coming out,” he recalled. “We thought the fighting must really be something.”

The Aussies, he said, were tough — and proud.

“They were the toughest of the bunch, and the most like the Texans,” Buzzo said. “We had a great mutual respect for and camaraderie with the Australians.”

Not so the Dutch, he said.

“The Dutch surrendered unconditionally, and we were part of the ‘unconditionally,’” Buzzo said. For more than two years, no one knew what became of the unit, and it became known in the Texas news media as the “lost battalion.” Of some 900 men taken prisoner at Java, about 670 were shipped to Burma to work on the railway made famous in the book and the movie, “The Bridge Over the River Kwai.” The railroad, 268 miles, was surveyed by British engineers before the war who said it couldn’t be built.

The Japanese did not share their point of view, and they took advantage of the available labor source to try to get the railroad built from Burma to Siam — now Thailand.

The conditions were inhuman, and the prisoners were expected to work 18- and 20-hour days on a food ration of a handful of rice under the supervision of sadistic Korean guards. More than 160 died in the POW camps — 133 of them working on the railroad.

“If there were bugs in the rice, that was protein, we didn’t throw them out,” he said. “These guys were starved.”

During the six-month monsoon season, men worked in water and muck that sometimes rose to their necks. The malnutrition, malaria and other tropical diseases took lives, as did the tropical ulcers that ate flesh to the bone.

“Your feet were always wet and they would get pretty soft,” Buzzo said.

There were no medicines and while POW doctors would attempt procedures that included amputations, there were no anesthetics, either — except for knocking the men unconscious and then holding them down in case they came to in the middle of a procedure.

“We called it ‘fourcaine,’” Buzzo recalled. “If two men couldn’t hold you, maybe four could. Actually, it generally took eight of us to hold someone down, and they’d do an amputation with a meat saw from the kitchen.”

The ulcers, which putrefied flesh and exposed bones, were often scraped clean with spoons. Maggots would be put into the wounds to help clean them out, he said.

“When one of those maggots bit into a nerve, you would hear the men scream in the middle of the night,” he said.

When the war ended, Buzzo and the other survivors were sent home to recover.

Buzzo said he didn’t really know why he survived when others didn’t — he certainly wasn’t one of the strongest men there.

“I think a sense of humor helped,” he said. “Today, I say I could do 10 years in prison standing on my head compared to that experience.”

Today, Buzzo said, American soldiers are again giving their lives and their freedom — a U.S. soldier has been captured in Afghanistan this week.

On the Fourth of July, Buzzo said, he’d be thinking of them, and silently thanking them for their service.

And, of course, seeing Seguin’s parade.

“I’ve seen it from the sidewalk before and I’ve enjoyed it,” Buzzo said. “The Fourth is pretty important to me, and I like to see the parade here. I’ve lived all over the world, but I’ve always enjoyed returning to Seguin.”

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