Lost Battalion

The Second Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, left Camp Bowie by train on November 10, 1941, and sailed from San Francisco on the transport Republic. The men were at sea west of Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and the convoy turned for Brisbane. A Dutch ship took them to Surabaya, Java, where they landed on January 11, 1942, the day the Japanese invasion began, and served as ground crew for the Nineteenth Bombardment Group. Left behind when the flyers went to Australia, it got its name. As prisoners the men labored on the Burma railway.

What the plaque says

To the memory of those honored members of the Lost Battalion, native sons, members of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, 36th Infantry Division. On March 3, 1942, these gallant men were taken prisoner by the Japanese on Java, held captive for three and one half years. The living members were released September 2, 1945. To these valiant men living and dead we offer our humble gratitude, August 1951.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 0.3 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Kell House Museum — 0.4 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 12 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 18 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Texas Governor James V. Allred — steps away
• Joseph Hudson Barwise — steps away
• First County Officials — steps away
• Charlye Ola Farris — steps away