World War II
During the battle, food supplies became so scarce that soldiers became hunters in an effort to stay alive. Even though American and Filipino forces would be victorious in early battles, they could not hold on and Bataan fell on April 8, 1942. Lawrence was among the 15,000 Americans who surrendered with 60,000 Filipinos and were forced into the Bataan Death March. He survived the march and would spend the rest of the war as a prisoner of war.
Lawrence was discharged from the US Army in 1948 after the end of World War II. He would earn the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Mexican Border Service Medal, the World War I Victory Medal, the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the American Defense of the Pacific medal.
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Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“Ah! the best righteousness of our man-of-war world seems but an unrealized ideal, after all; and those maxims which, in the hope of bringing about a Millennium, we busily teach to the heathen, we Christians ourselves disregard.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rime;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)