Edmund Read Dabney Jr. was born December 24, 1910 in Montgomery county, Tennessee, son of Edmund Read Dabney and Mary Elizabeth Donelson. The family lived in Montgomery county, where his father was engaged in farming. He had one older sister, Elizabeth. He was a graduate of Clarksville High School.

He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1936 and was stationed at Luke Field in Hawaii. In a letter to his parents in February 1937 he described the view of the Hawaiian Islands from a bomber flying at 15,000 feet, as the “highest and most beautiful flight.” After three years, he re-enlisted. In July 1939 he was a Private First Class, stationed at Moffett Field, California. In March 1940 he made Corporal, and was attached to the 21st Pursuit Squadron at Moffett Field, as an air mechanic. In April 1940 he attended a technical school at Chanute Field, Illinois in controller pitch and automatic propeller work. His mother died in June 1940, and his father died a year later, in July 1941.

In November 1941, Staff Sergeant Edmund Dabney was in the Philippines with the 21st Pursuit Squadron, 24th Pursuit Group. After the April 9, 1942 surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the island of Luzon, he was one of over 75,000 Filipino and American troops forced to walk the 65-mile “Bataan Death March,” to prison camps. He was confined to War Prison Camp 1 in the Philippines for two years, enduring horrific and unimaginable conditions and brutality. When Americans advanced in the reconquest of the Philippines, prisoners of war were loaded onto prison ships by the Japanese and en route to an undisclosed location. He was on the Japanese transport the Arisan Maru, which sailed from Manila on October 11, 1944 with 1775 POW’s aboard. On October 24th the ship was hit by torpedoes from an American submarine in the Bashi Channel of the South China Sea. Five prisoners escaped in a small boat, and four others were retained by the Japanese. All others were reported lost. In February 1945 he was declared as killed in action on October 24, 1944.

His name is on the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, Manila, the Philippines.

A memorial stone is in Greenwood Cemetery, Clarksville, Montgomery county, Tennessee.

References:

The Leaf Chronicle, Clarksville, TN: Feb. 11, 1937; July 8, 1939; Mar. 20, 1940; Apr. 8, 1940; Sept. 23, 1942; June 23, 1945

Faces of Valor, V.1, Kiwanis Club of Clarksville’s Memories of Service and Sacrifice

NARA. U.S., World War II and Korean Conflict Veterans Interred Overseas

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/113310190/edmund-read-dabney

1920; Census Place: Civil District 3, Montgomery, Tennessee; Page: 5A; Enumeration District: 136

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bataan-death-march

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org/. This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen on Fold3.

Edmund R Dabney, Jr