It is fitting that banners bearing our nation's flag and a phrase about freedom honor Paul R. Cornwall's memory.  This is his story.
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Paul Revere Cornwall - a 1938 graduate of West Point and newly-minted Second Lieutenant in the Coast Artillery Corps - arrived at Fort Monroe in that same year to begin his military career.

From 1938 to 1939, Lieutenant Cornwall was assigned at Fort Monroe to the coast artillery as part of its harbor defenses sector, where his mission was to train troops.

In 1939, Lieutenant Cornwall served as an instructor at the West Point Preparatory School at Fort Monroe.

In the same year, he met a young Phoebus native - Frances Ann Shumate - who was working as a clerk in the quartermaster's office at the Fort.

They were married on May 25, 1940 at the Chapel of the Centurian on Fort Monroe, and left the following month for Lieutenant Cornwall's new posting at Fort Mills on Corregidor Island in the Philippines' Manila Bay.

Less than a year later - in response to the worsening situation in the Pacific - Frances Cornwall was evacuated from the Philippines with other dependents. 

By September, 1941 Frances Cornwall was back in Phoebus at work as a clerk typist in the area engineer's office at Fort Monroe. 

By November 27, 1941 - the day when the Philippines went on full alert - Lieutenant Cornwall had already been promoted to captain and placed in command of Battery D of the 60th Coast Artillery Regiment at Fort Mills.  No one had long to wait. 

On December 7, 1941 Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.  On December 8, 1941 war was declared.  And the same day, bombs began falling on the Philippines.

For Americans and the Filipinos fighting with them - their numbers and supplies dwindling by the day - the battle for the Philippines was marked by nearly constant aerial and artillery attacks, and it would only be a matter of time before Japan would complete its conquest of the islands.

Yet fight the American and Philippine troops did, among them Captain Cornwall, who earned the Silver Star for gallantry in action on Corregidor on April 12, 1942:

"When a battery position was subjected to heavy Japanese artillery and aerial bombardment, several men were wounded and buildings and ammunition set afire.  With no thought to personal safety, Captain Cornwall, 60th Coast Artillery (Anti-Aircraft) Regiment, voluntarily went to the aid of the wounded, although enemy artillery shells continued to fall in the area.  He then effectively extinguished fires in the building and piles of ammunition and restored the battery to tactical readiness.

For his outstanding courage, clear thinking under fire, and inspiring leadership, Captain Cornwall fully exemplified the gallant spirit of the dauntless defenders of Corregidor."

But by May 6, 1942 - with only three days of water remaining and the outcome apparent -  it was Corregidor's unfortunate turn to surrender unconditionally, and Captain Cornwall became a Japanese prisoner of war.

From May, 1942 until December, 1944, Captain Cornwall joined in a hellish odyssey in the Philippines that was marked by marches to prisons and prisoner of war camps, forced labor and inhumane conditions, starvation and disease, and beatings and executions.

Yet the odyssey was not over.

In December, 1944 Captain Cornwall and 1,618 other prisoners were loaded aboard the Oryoku Maru for transport to Japan as slave labor.  Locked in holds, hundreds on that vessel died from dehydration, starvation, or when the vessel was strafed and sunk.

Fewer than 450 men remained alive by the time they were loaded on other ships and reached Japan.  And of that number, slightly more than 300 lived to be liberated in Manchuria or Korea in September, 1945.

Captain Cornwall was one.

By now promoted and returned to the United States in 1946, Major Cornwall was reunited with Frances, and began a second military career as a member of the newly-created United States Air Force in 1947.

After serving in a variety of capacities at the Pentagon and bases throughout the country, Paul Cornwall retired as a colonel in August, 1962.  

By now living in Florida - where Colonel Cornwall's last assignments was a chief of the procurement office for the Air Force Missile Test Center - his wife Frances began buying properties in Cocoa Beach as well as Hampton.

It was to Hampton that Frances returned following Colonel Cornwall's death in March, 1991 at the age of 77.

Frances Cornwall survived her husband by 13 years, and died in Hampton at the age of 87 in November, 2004.

Frances and Paul Cornwall are buried in Arlington National Cemetery.