New Mexico: Guard team wins annual Bataan Memorial March

National Guard, Jun 1999

The New Mexico Army National Guard "Roadrunners" won the overall team championship at the 1999 Bataan Memorial Death March April 19 at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.

About 2,400 marchers entered the grueling 25-mile trek over hilly terrain at elevations from 4,100 to 5,300 feet. Participants included active-duty, Guard, Reserve, ROTC and foreign military teams.

The 11 th annual race honors the more than 36,000 U.S. and Filipino soldiers forced to march the length of the Bataan Peninsula to prison camps in April 1942. The captives were starved and beaten by their Japanese captors. Thousands perished along the way. Among those seized were 1,826 members of the New Mexico Guard. Fewer than 900 returned to New Mexico in September 1945.

The Roadrunners completed the course in record time at 4:09:07, enabling them to win a third straight National Guard Light title, which is the march without rucksacks.

Most of the seven-member Roadrunner team, like Maj. Michael Schwartz, lives in Santa Fe. Schwartz, the team's leader, had an uncle who died in the 1942 march.

"As long as I'm in good health, I will continue to commemorate the ordeal that took place more 50 years ago," he said. "I don't ever want to forget what happened, nor do I want our younger generation to forget."

Other Guard team winners included the Missouri Army National Guard Ridgerunners (Female Military Light), the Missouri Bears (Coed Military Light) and Team 1 of the Nebraska Army Guard's 134th Long-Range Surveillance Detachment (National Guard Heavy, 35-pound rucksacks).