Capt. Sadler: More of the story

Judy Gambill was surprised when she picked up Sunday's paper and started reading about her uncle.

It had been a long time, after all, since he was a newsmaker.

James Sadler was a World War II veteran who escaped the Bataan Death March but did not escape the war.

Gambill did not know about the letter he'd written to Santa Claus when he was 7 years old in 1913, which was the reason I brought his memory to life on Christmas Day in that newspaper column.

But Gambill knew the rest of Sadler's story, and so she got in touch to see if I wanted to learn more about him.

I did.

This is what she told me:

James "Jimmy" Sadler was the only son of Thomas and Eleanor Sadler.

He joined the military in the early 1930s as a member of the 111th Cavalry.

He was an accomplished horseman and captain of the cavalry's polo team.

It took her Uncle Jimmy a long time to find a horse that would fit him in the military, she said, because he was 6-foot-7 inches tall.

But once they found each other, "He loved his horse," she said. "He hated to give up his horse," when the Cavalry became the Coast Artillery about 1940.

Gambill, 76, of Clovis, is one of Sadler's five nieces; the last one living.

She is the daughter of Martha Smith, who was one of Sadler's sisters.

"My mother's nickname for him was Buddy," she said. "They were very close."

Gambill still has the letter her dad, Sgt. J.M. Smith, wrote to her mom on Feb. 22, 1942. It's the same letter on which Capt. Sadler added his own message at the bottom.

Both men expressed optimism they'd return to their loved one in Clovis, but neither did.

Smith died in a prisoner of war camp after surviving the Bataan Death March.

Sadler escaped the march because he was leading other soldiers down a mountain - possibly in hopes of getting help for about 80,000 troops who'd been stranded for months without supplies - when he was captured and placed on a ship bound for Japan.

Newspaper accounts about the battle on the Bataan Peninsula initially listed Capt. Sadler as one of the lucky few who had escaped.

But he was not lucky.

Gambill said family members were told he was placed on a "hell ship;" it was called that because of the cruelty shown the prisoners as they were hauled away to work in Japanese factories or in mines.

The first hell ship Sadler boarded was torpedoed by U.S. forces, unaware it contained American and Filipino prisoners.

Gambill said the family later learned that Sadler had somehow survived that attack, only to be picked up by another hell ship.

That second ship was also blown apart by Americans or their allies and that's when Sadler died, probably early in 1943 when he would have been 37.

Gambill also knows a lot of stories about her dad and her uncles Burney and Clark Smith, who were all with Sadler at Bataan.

She was too young to remember her dad or Uncle Burney, who also died in a prison camp, but she came to know her Uncle Clark well, before his death in 1991.

Once she was in Albuquerque and met a man who knew Clark from the war.

"Clark saved my life," the man reported.

Clark worked in a prison infirmary and stole medicine for him whenever he could, the man said.

Gambill describes herself as the "family archivist."

Her Uncle Clark didn't like talking about his time in the military, but Gambill doesn't mind sharing what she's been able to learn about her family's history.

"I think it's important," she said. "This generation today has no idea what they went through."

David Stevens is editor for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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