By Jeff Watson
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Every September, a flood of memories wash over an elite corps of men—survivors of the Bataan Death March. Powerful emotion grabs them because it was in that blessed month that the Bataan POWs were finally freed.

Jesse Miller knew that sweet taste of freedom.

Born in Gillette, Wyo., Jesse joined the Army Air Corp in 1940. Promptly assigned to Clark Air Field in the Philippines, Jesse began to take his first steps as a man on that tragic island.

Rising to Crew Chief, Miller gave 110 percent to his work as an aircraft mechanic; when off duty, he purposed to let neither boredom, nor boyishness, ruin his example to the men.

In one of the providences of life, the young Chief met up with an ex-patriot family. Brimming with hospitality, the Brooks family became Jesse's home away from home.

Spiritual Character
Having planted an acorn of faith as a teenager, Jesse found himself hoping that his true character would grow into a small oak in Philippine soil. Fortunately for the young mechanic, "Dad and Mom Brooks" taught him how to meditate on a single line of scripture to focus his mind; they also taught him how to pray, so that he felt renewed, not depleted.

No one but God could have known that Jesse would soon need these skills to survive one of the war's worst tragedies.

Captured as a POW, Chief Miller battled starvation, brutality, and slavery for three and a half long years. He, along with tens of thousands of American and Filipino troops, trudged over 50 miles of dusty roads in the tropical sun.

Hundreds were shot, beheaded, or run through with bayonets because they could not keep up or because they asked for more water.

Besides reaching out to the men around him, Miller reached back to the simple disciplines of meditation and prayer. What he had learned from the Brooks helped save him from lashing out at his captors and from falling out of line to get it over with.