The Book
Valley of the Shadow
An Account of American POWs of the Japanese
Ordered to the Philippine Islands in 1940, Galbraith was Battery A Commander, 24th Field Artillery (Philippine Scouts). In November 1940 he was assigned as Assistant G-4, USAFFE, in Bataan, under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Following MacArthur’s departure from the Philippines the following year, Col. Galbraith assumed the G-4 Chief of Staff Logistics position under Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright, commanding the renamed USFIP. On the afternoon of 8 April 1942, he was ordered by General Wainwright to Bataan to confer with General King and other senior officers to report the impending collapse of Bataan to the USFIP Command on Corregidor. He brought army nurses with him to Corregidor, thus avoiding their capture. On May 6, 1942, he was one of three American officers sent into the field to locate remaining US commanders. Galbraith was sent to northern Luzon to locate remaining US guerrilla forces there, without which Japanese General Masaharu Homma would not accept the surrender of Corregidor. For this action he was later awarded Distinguished Service Medal. This operation resulted in the conversion of “captives” at Navy Beach, Corregidor to “Prisoner of War” status. In September, 1945, Wainwright, Galbraith and other senior American Prisoners of War were liberated in Manchuria by the OSS and Russian Army, to the latter of which he was appointed Liaison Officer. His awards were the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star with “V”, and the Purple Heart with O.L.C.s