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There has fallen to my proud lot the task of writing about “Bud” Eichlin—a good roommate, a close friend, and a brave soldier.</div>
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Bud and his twin sister, Dorothy, now Mrs. Carl A. McMackin of Westfield, New Jersey, were born 18 June 1917 in Easton, Pennsylvania. His father was a high school teacher and later a college professor. Bud had an unusually happy youth. He was popular, a good athlete, a fine student, and was the recipient of a medal presented by the American Legion as the outstanding boy in his class. He loved the outdoors and spent his vacations at his parents’ home in the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania, enjoying his favorite sport, swimming. This idyllic boyhood came to an end in 1934 with Bud’s graduation from high school. In the fall of that year Bud enrolled in Lafayette College, where he spent one year, and on 1 July 1935 Bud or “Ike” (as he would be called at West Point) entered the Military Academy.</div>
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Ike settled happily into the relaxed atmosphere which was peculiar to “K” Company in the late 1930’s. Never was he bedazzled by the gold braid and stars which attracted many other cadets. Cadet rank he viewed as so much ephemeral tinsel, not worthy of serious effort. He was on the plebe football team, and as a yearling he was on the “B” Squad track team. Like ninety percent of us, he was your ordinary, run-of-the-mill cadet.</div>
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He was a first-rate “roomie.” Kind and friendly by nature, he was relaxed, cheerful, “unflappable,” and cooperative. He would take an extra turn at room orderly if one of his roommates got close on demerits. He would drag an unattractive girl friend of your O.A.O. and not carp on it for the rest of your stay at the Academy. He held strong convictions and beliefs, but never sought to force them on his friends. He was a fine man to live with.</div>
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One of my persistent memories of Ike was his efforts to gain entrance into the Air Corps. He suffered from some mild eye defect which he felt would incapacitate him for flight service. Somewhere an optometrist had given him a set of exercises by which he could strengthen the muscles of his eyes. I can see him now, sitting at his desk, rolling his eyes to-and-fro, up-and-down. Unfortunately, it was to no avail. His eyes kept him out of the Air Corps, and so he chose the Infantry and selected as his first unit, the 31st Infantry, then in the Philippines. For Ike it was a fateful decision.</div>
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Manila, in 1939 and 1940, was a wonderful place for a young officer to be. Tropical, exotic, very social, a bachelor lieutenant was in great demand. For Ike it was a happy time, but behind the gaiety there loomed an ominous and growing shadow. The Japanese were aggressively on the move in Asia, and the Philippines stood in the front line of our Far Eastern bastion. In late 1940, as the threat grew, the 31st Infantry went into a concentrated training program.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div>
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Bud loved this taste of “real-soldiering.” Like many of his Academy contemporaries, this ordinary, run-of-the-mill cadet quickly revealed himself to be an exceptionally able junior officer. In so doing, however, he fell victim to his own ability. He was taken out of an Infantry company and assigned to a staff job at regimental headquarters. He disliked the duty intensely, hut his pleas to return to line duty fell on deaf ears. They needed him at headquarters, and so there he was when the war began in 1941, and the Japanese troops poured ashore at Lingayen Gulf, north of Manila.</div>
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With a war on Ike redoubled his efforts to get to a combat unit. Finally, about mid-March 1942, now a captain, he was assigned to command “L” Company, 31st Infantry, on Bataan. The company, and for that matter the whole regiment, was near collapse—vastly understrength, the men riddled with malaria and dysentery, desperately short of ammunition, food, and medicine. For Ike this was a period of little rest as his company moved here and there trying to plug holes in the crumbling American defenses. A friend of Ike’s, also a POW, wrote Bud’s parents after the war that in the POW camps he had talked to several survivors of “L” Company. They all praised Ike’s handling of the company and his leadership. The survivors said that by the force of his character Ike held the company together until the surrender.</div>
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For Ike the supreme test—the Japanese POW camps—was now at hand. He made the infamous “Death March” to Camp O’Donnell. As a result of the march and his bouts with malaria and amoebic dysentery he lost seventy pounds. When the enemy closed O’Donnell in June 1942, they sent Ike to Cabanatuan, another camp. Here he entered the Japanese hospital where he almost died, but with fortitude and resolution he recovered. Even then, life was very hard. There was no medicine, and the food was grossly inadequate.</div>
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In September 1943 the Japanese began to evacuate some of the POW’s to Japan This movement continued through 1944 into 1945. The Japanese kept postponing Bud’s evacuation due to his history of amoebic dysentery. Finally, late in December 1944, the final detachment of prisoners was shipped to Japan. Here accounts become hazy. Ike was on board two Japanese POW ships, the <em>“Oryoku Maru”</em> and the <em>“Enoura Maru,”</em> both of which were either bombed or torpedoed, one on 15 December 1944 and the other 9 January 1945. He was then transferred to the <em>“Brazil Maru,”</em> another POW ship, where he died on 27 January 1945 from a recurrence of dysentery and lack of food and water. His body was committed to the China Sea.</div>
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After the war a classmate who went through Ike’s ordeal with him wrote, “Ike remained the splendid officer and gentleman he was all through...” The officer who talked to the survivors of “L” Company about Ike wrote in a letter to his parents the following: “It is almost impossible to describe conditions as they existed in the early days of O’Donnell and Cabanatuan. Ike never departed for one instant from his West Point motto or the principles of righteousness. He was a soldier and a man all the way through.”</div>
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These last two sentences are Ike’s memorial, the epitaph of a gallant soldier and a true son of West Point. To Ike we say, “Well done! Be thou at peace.”</div>
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<em>—A Roommate</em></div>