By Christi Mays
With 35-pound rucksacks slung on their backs and dressed in full camo combat gear and boots, five UMHB Army ROTC cadets trekked a treacherous 26.2-miles to participate in the Bataan Memorial Death March at White Sands Missile Range in Las Cruces, NM, during their spring break.
The memorial march honors an estimated 10,000 Filipinos and American soldiers who died after they surrendered to the Japanese during World War II and were forced to march 65 miles to confinement camps throughout the Philippines.
“I was intrigued with the story around the whole event and felt a calling to partake to remember the fallen soldiers of that day,” said Abraham Ceballos, a sophomore computer science major from Georgetown. “The whole event is to remember the soldiers of Bataan who took part in the actual march in World War II, and it felt special to me to go through this challenge because I had a distant family member in that march.”
