| Scope and content |
Colonel Lilly served with the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe during World War I. Subsequently he was assigned to various stateside posts and to the Panama Canal Zone before being sent to the Philippines in 1940. Colonel Lilly was involved in engagements with the Japanese on Luzon and was captured there when U.S. forces surrendered in 1942. He survived the Bataan death march. Between 1942 and 1945 he was a P.O.W. held in the Philippines, Formosa, Korea, and Manchuria. After the war he served in several stateside commands and in Paris before retiring in 1953. Much of this interview concerns the 1942 to 1945 period. |
| General note | Interviewer: Donald R. Lennon. Interview date: April 6, 1976 and October 6, 1976. |
| Access restriction | No access restrictions. |
| Cite as |
Edmund Jones Lilly, Jr., Oral History Interview (#OH0032), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA. |
| Terms of use | Repository does not own copyright to the oral history collection. Permission to cite, reproduce, or broadcast must be obtained from both the repository and the participants in the oral history, or their heirs. |
| Acquisitions source |
Joyner- Gift of Edmund Jones Lilly, Jr. |
| Biographical note | Colonel Edmund Jones Lilly, Jr. (b. 1894), is a native of Fayetteville, N.C. After graduating from the University of North Carolina (1915), he taught school before entering officers training school at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. He was commissioned (1917) as a second lieutenant in the field artillery reserves. As a member of the American Expeditionary Forces, he saw duty in France during W.W.I. Lilly subsequently commanded a machine gun company in Panama and headed the ROTC program at Georgia Tech, where he remained until 1940. In 1940, he was sent to the Philippines where he initially served as officer in charge of both the American and Filipino schools. Lilly became battalion commander of the 57th Infantry Philippine Scouts, executive officer of the regiment, and regimental commander. In April 1942, the U.S. Army in the Philippines was forced to surrender to the Japanese. Col. Lilly was a participant in the infamous Bataan Death March, and he remained a P.O.W. for the next three years. In the years after World War II, he served in France as the inspector general of the American Graves Registration Plan (1947-1950). He returned to the States in 1950 and was assigned to the Inspector General section at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he served until his retirement in 1953. |
