This account is from E. M. Flanagan’s The Los Baños Raid.
As the fall of 1944 approached, my breast milk was failing, and were all developing the stiff, aching joints of beriberi. Death lurked close now. Roy, his head pathetically larger for his shrunken little body, had scarcely enough energy left to cry. They boys, slumping against the barracks wall for support, talked weakly and endlessly about food.
By Christmas, I had all but given up hope. All real nourishment for Roy was gone. For once, not even the skipper could think of anything to say. I know now it was because he was making his big decision.
The next morning I was standing wearily in the water line, Roy in one arm and clay jug in the other, when the skipper walked up and handed me a newspaper-wrapped package. “For the wee one,” he said casually. “I’ve been saving it for him.”
It was a while can of powdered milk, saved from the one Red Cross shipment that had got through to us more than a year earlier. It was enough to make a gallon of strength—two gallons the way we diluted it. “No, Skipper,” I stammered. “You’ll need it yourself.”
“Never touch the stuff,” he said gruffly. He looked at Roy for a long moment, then turned away. In tears I called after him, “How can I ever repay you?” Half-jokingly he called back, “Just play me ‘Danny Boy’ at your next concert.”
On New Year’s Day I made a last feeble effort at giving a recital. Skipper didn’t show up to take the front-row camp chair I had reserved for him. Omitting encores, I rushed to the infirmary—too late. Hugh Williams was gone. The prison doctor said he died from acute colitis. “An all-milk diet might have saved him,” he added.
References
Flanagan, Edward M. The Los Baños Raid: The 11th Airborne Jumps at Dawn. Presidio Pr, 1986.