George Bernard Case
Master Gunnery Sergeant George B. Case served with How Company, Second Battalion, 4th Marines
He was captured at Corregidor and died following a beating at Cabanatuan Camp #3, 30 May 1942.
Branch
Marine Corps Regular
Service Number 107257
Current Status
Remains not recovered.
Pursuit Category
This case is under Active Pursuit by the DPAA.
Capsule History
Pre-War Life
Birth
April 11, 1898
at New Haven, CT
Parents
Herman William Case
Marie Agnes (McCarthy) Case
Education
Details unknown
Occupation & Employer
Professional Marine
Service Life
Entered Service
January 18, 1918
at New York, NY
Home Of Record
106 Mechanic Street
New Haven, CT
Next Of Kin
Father, Mr. Herman W. Case
Military Specialty
Platoon Leader
Primary Unit
H/2/4th Marines
Campaigns Served
Aisne / Belleau Wood (wounded)
St. Mihiel
Meuse-Argonne / Blanc Mont Ridge (wounded)
Philippines / Corregidor
Individual Decorations
Purple Heart with two Gold Stars
Prisoner of War Medal
Additional Service Details
Case served with the 47th Company, 5th Marines in World War I.
Loss And Burial
Circumstances Of Loss
Master Gunnery Sergeant George Case, a combat-wounded veteran of the Great War, Yangtze River patrols, and numerous overseas deployments, served as a platoon leader in the 4th Marines during the campaign for the Philippine Islands. He was captured at Corregidor when the garrison surrendered on 6 May 1942, and held at Old Bilibid Prison.
On 27 May, Case was part of a large group of prisoners forced onto a train and shuttled from Bilibid to the barrio of Cabanatuan. From there, they faced a 23 kilometer march to a new facility dubbed “Camp #3.” The guards were strict and the weather hot, but the march itself was not as strenuous as it might have been. “The pace was absurdly slow, with frequent rest stops,” noted Sergeant Major Charles R. Jackson. “Most of us were hard and tough, and most were young; dysentery, pellagra, beriberi, scurvy, malaria, and malnutrition had hardly laid their blighting hands upon us then… To trained infantrymen, the march was a picnic.”
Case was tough, but he was no longer young and the strains of combat and captivity took their toll.
In the same squad with me marched Master Gunnery Sergeant George B. Case, a veteran of World War I and the 2d Division of those days, a companion in the same battalion of the 4th Marines in Bataan and on Corregidor. He had come through unwounded but with a severe case of unchecked malaria. I could see that the heat was beginning to affect George. He was often urged to fall out; others had done so and no one had been shot. Case refused, saying, “Maybe not yet, but who can tell what will happen to those fellows on the trucks after we get in? The Japanese are an unpredictable race....”
George Case refused to take a chance, and on his arrival in camp he went out of his head. A Japanese officer thought Case’s clutching grasp to support himself on “Old Pick,” a Marine quartermaster sergeant named [Ray Wood] Pickering, was an attempt to start a fight, and he ordered his guards to use their rifle butts and slug him down. It might not have hurt a healthy man very badly, but for Case it was fatal.
One hour later he was dead, for we had no American doctors with us. We buried him that afternoon. “Old Pick” gave him his blanket, with the letters USMC on it, for a burial shroud. That blanket could have bought a great deal of food. But Old Pick has been his close friend…. It was so nice of him to have given George that blanket to be buried in, the kind act of a true Marine.
“Master Guns” Case died on 30 May 1942, from a combination of “exhaustion and shock.” He was one of the first three Americans to die at Camp #3. Dozens more would follow before the camp was closed in October 1942.
Burial Information or Disposition
Case was buried in the Camp #3 Cemetery shortly after he died. He was on the end of the first row; by 31 May 1942, seven men were buried there, including four who were executed by a firing squad for attempting an escape. This row was inside the camp area; as the death toll grew, additional burials took place elsewhere. When the cemetery was closed in October 1942, it contained 68 marked graves.
…[the men] were buried not in the regular cemetery [at Camp #3] but on a hill about 1/2 mile away…. I cannot say whether anyone ever put up a marker on their burial place or not.Brown was shipped to Korea in October of 1942; to the best of his knowledge, the unmarked graves were still in their original positions.
Liberated POWs told of the executions, and two sailors stationed at Manila volunteered to take another AGRS expedition to the site – for, although “we did not know their identities… we could still remember where their bodies were buried.” The sailors, Donald Cochrane and Arthur Boehme, led the way down the Provincial Road from Cabanatuan towards Bongabon, crossed the Pampanga River, and turned off the road to the left before reaching the stock farm where they labored in captivity.
There in a neat row, AGRS found six graves. Subsequent laboratory work returned the identities of the four executed soldiers – Frederick Lee, Wesley Jordan, Hugh Wellman, and William R. Benson – as well as Chief Storekeeper George Huxtable and Private Peter A. Simpson, Jr.
Available documentation suggests that George Case’s grave – the last one in the row – was not found by the AGRS team. He may still lie in the grave outside on Bongabon, or he may be buried in Manila as an unknown.
Memorials
Next Of Kin Address
Address of father, Mr. Herman W. Case.
Location Of Loss
Approximate location of the burial site, between Palayan and Bongabon.
