Warren Louis Gardipe was born 12 February 1921 in St. Ignatius, Missoula county, Montana to Joseph Donald and Agnes M. (Ladderoute); he was the eldest of four children. Warren was a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes. He enlisted in the Army in October 1940.

Private Warren Louis Gardipe (service number 19018935) was assigned to the 33rd Quartermaster Corps providing food, vehicle repair and burial of the dead. They also did parachute packing, rigging and sling loading along with shower, laundry and clothing repair. The Quartermasters on Bataan threshed meager rice crops, slaughtered native cattle, built fish traps, refined salt from sea water, and built coffee roasters from old oil drums until the withdrawal of troops on 12 December 1941, leaving the quartermasters stranded with no relief forthcoming. They fought with other American forces and the Filipino military for four months before surrender to the Japanese on 9 April 1942, due mostly to starvation and disease. Those who endured the Bataan Death March included Pvt. Warren Gardipe who later succumbed to dysentery and malaria on 3 May 1942 as a POW of the Japanese. He rests in the Sait Ignatius Catholic Cemetery, Montana

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

SOURCES: Find-a-Grave; FamilySearch.org; Ancestry.com; Wikipedia

Warren L Cardipe