CHAPTER THREE

Chapter III

The next three days and nights were a nightmare to all of us. Never have so few fought so valiantly against so many. The Japanese had brought in eighty thousand seasoned troops from Northern China in order to crush us by sheer numbers. We began with eighteen hundred American troops and within the three day period; there was only two or three hundred tired, sleepless, hungry, battle- weary men. During that three day period, there were so many acts of heroism; it would take a book to describe them all. The Japanese soldiers were fanatics in their attacks. For instance, one of our boys was guarding a road with a machine gun, and about forty or fifty Japs came out of the jungle into the road screaming as they ran headlong into the face of the machine gun. When the last man fell, he was eight feet from the point of the gun.

No one will ever know how many Japanese were accounted for in those three days. I know in one instance we placed machine guns and mortars on the mountains on each side of a valley and drew the Japanese into the valley and closed off retreat by firing rapid salvos of field artillery in back of them. We then opened up with machine guns and mortars in front and on both sides. After that it took them four hours to remove their dead and wounded.

But after three days of hill to hill fighting, hunger, fatigue, and overwhelming odds took their toll. What few remained of us were informed that surrender was imminent, and we were given the choice of becoming prisoners of war or going into the mountains to try to avoid capture. There were sixteen of us who decided that we would try to take the freedom route. We were gathered in a mango grove where it was generally decided we would have a better chance if we divided up into small groups. A Col. Dunham, a Lt. Flynn and I decided to go together. We divided what few possessions we had in case we became separated. In the distance we could hear the roar of many bombers, and we wondered what Photo Joe had spotted this time. All at once we began to hear the terrifying sound of falling bombs. To the persons who have never heard a falling bomb or incoming artillery shells, no matter how far away they hit; they sound like they’re aimed directly at you. So until a bomb actually hits its target, you’r enot sure just where it will land. I had often heard that you don’t hear the bomb that gets you, but this is not true. Col. Dunham had enough time to say, “Hit the dirt boys.” I was sitting between him and Lt. Flynn. As we rolled over on our stomachs, I was completely protected on both sides by both of them with the exception of my left leg which was still up in the air. Col. Dunham and Lt. Flynn were both killed, and I received shrapnel in my left knee and thigh. Strangely enough, I felt no pain but just a tug at my khaki trousers as if I had hung them on a briar. There wasn’t a man in our group that was not either killed or wounded. I was told to go out to a trail not far away and wait for a medical corpman to come by and carry me to a field hospital at Little Baguio. I hopped over there and found several men there waiting for the same purpose. We waited what seemed to me for hours. Philippino’s began to pass with their few possessions in bundles saying they were running from the Japanese, and sometime late that afternoon, we began to hear far away on the mountain, but entirely too close for us, occasionally, Japanese yelling at each other. We had heard that the Japanese were taking no prisoners, particularly wounded prisoners. I was deathly afraid that I would be caught without any means to protect myself. I told the other that they could stay there if they wished, but I was going to try to make it on my own. One of the men who from outward appearances didn’t seem to be wounded offered to go along. I started off hopping, and I would estimate we had gone about a quarter of a mile, and he had fallen behind. I stopped to wait on him and instead of catching up, he sat down on a log. I went back to see what his problem was, and I noticed that blood was running from the corners of his mouth. Before I could ask him what his trouble was, he fell over on his face; and there was a hold in the small of his back that I could have put my fist through. Only God and determination could have kept this man alive as long as he was.

I would like to be able to say that this night and its fantastic journey was the result of grit and determination; but if I did, it would be wrong. I was driven on by sheer terror. The field hospital was about six kilometers from where I was wounded, and it took me all night to get there. I would have sworn I walked but the doctors say that I couldn’t have because of the shrapnel in my knee joint. Maybe I did! Maybe my fear made me oblivious to any pain. All I can remember is that I felt many times that I could go no further, and that I would have to sit down and rest. I would sit there awhile, and I would hear the Japanese tanks and the soldiers, and this would make me get up and start again. I can remember my pantsleg getting so bloody that I stopped and cut if off with a messkit knife I had.

About daylight I made it to the front of the field hospital in Little Baquio. I was carried in and laid on a wooden table where doctors began to dig schrapnel from my leg. While this was taking place, the air raid warning was set off and the doctors all ran for their foxholes. When the all clear was sounded, the corpmen came and taking it for granted that they were finished with me, carried me to a bunk. I had no more than gotten settled than the Japanese took over the hospital. This was how far I stayed ahead of them all night.

Thank God that we had a hospital commander who had enough nerve and feeling of responsibility to make an effort to protect his patients and his hospital. Col. Duckworth, of course, knew the Japanese were closing in and he dressed himself in his full military uniform and waited at the entrance of his hospital. When the first tank pulled up, he marched up to meet it; and when the officer got out, the Colonel saluted and said, “I have come to surrender my hospital.” He carried the Japanese ranking commanders on a tour of the hospital; and for the rest of the time we were at Little Baquio, I never saw another Japanese in the hospital.

The next day after our surrender, my knee began to pain me; and as time went on it became increasingly worse. After some time, the corpman carried me back to the doctor, and they found another piece of schrapnel in my knee joint about the size of a small marble. By this time infection had begun to develop and my knee was red and swollen. Without regard to the infection, I was placed in a body cast with my left leg completely covered.

During this period of time, Corregador had resisted all efforts of the Japanese to impregnate them. The Japanese artillery had set up their guns behind our hospital to bombard Corregador. This resulted in Corregador not being able to retaliate because of the fear of hitting us. The story of the battle of Corregador and the escape of McArther [sic] is a metter of history of which I was not a part of.

Corregador finally fell and stories began to infiltrate as to what was to happen to us. By this time it didn’t matter a great deal to me, my leg had swollen over the cast and fever had endowed me with the lethargy of someone who has no interest in life at all. Finally, all patients who could walk or crawl were herded into a group, and so began the most horrorfying experience ever brought to the attention of the American people, the Philippine Death March. The Japanese started them off to Camp O’Donnel that was many miles away. No one will ever know how many died or were killed on the way, but their trail could be followed by the dead left beside the road. Absolutely no one was allowed to fall behind; if he did, he was shot and rolled aside. The likelihood of this happening was increased by the fact that practically all prisoners were weakened by dysentery and malaria fever.

I was fortunate enough to be able to walk at all, and a very few of us were carried by truck to Bilibid, and old condemned prison inside the city of Manila. The only thing you could say good about this place was that as a prison, the security was excellent. It was surrounded by a twenty-foot wall approximately two feet thick with electric wiring around the top and bottom which carried twenty- three thousand volts of electricity. The buildings were all low and long, all with no petitions, made of stone with iron rings still on the wall where prisoners used to be chained. We had no beds except the concrete floor. We had a few American doctors who were also prisoners, but no medicines at all. For one year I laid on my back. I had three large bedsores that were to the bone. I had gangrene, dysentery, dingy fever, malaria fever, pellagra, dry beri- beri, wet beri- beri, sinusitis and weighed seventy- two pounds. Needless to say, I was beyond worrying about my condition. My condition deteriorated, if possible. The Japanese did not believe in wasting effort and time on anyone that would not be productive in the future. There was a small room in the end of one of the buildings where they put patients that they thought trying to save was wasted effort and left them to die without further attention. I was dragged into this room’ and for two days, I laid wanting to sream out that I was alive, but unable to make a sound, or to get out form under some dying person whose feces was ll over me, and not being able to move, or to tell the many that died with their little grunts and groans and dying noises to shut up, but not being able to do so. During these two days, it never occurred to me that I was part of this scene. The third morning an American doctor came to the door and saw that my eyes were still open and that I was alive. He had me moved back into the ward and started feeding me burned charcoal and water. My dysentery began to get better. I was picked up later and transferred back to a building where no daily medical attention was available. One day a Navy Corpman came through our building and saw me lying there with my leg grown over that cast. He was furious; he cut off the cast with a mess kit knife and lanced my leg. He must have drained a half gallon of green pus. He cut a place in back of my leg and took a piece of small rubber hose an after niching it, ran it through my leg so that the wounds would drain. Gradually I began to heal. During the year that I lay, I had forgotten how to walk. This corpman would come by each morning and get me up and make me try to walk. I would beg him to please leave me alone an djust let me lay and he would curse me and say that I wasn’t worth anything to anybody anyways. This would just make me mad enough to get up and start again. I have been so thankful to this man that I owe so much.

I made me a pair of crutches and became quite adept until I could use my leg. After I began to get around, it was an education to watch the veneer wash off people little by little. A boy who was tried for murder before he was sixteen years old and was an enforcer for a gangster in New York shared his last bit of food with me. The Japanese were giving eight cans of milk for twelve hundred prisoners in order to say they were feeding milk to their prisoners. The milk was being divided among the worst patients. We discovered that a Catholic chaplain was trading the patients out of the milk. The day came when I threw my crutches away and what had been unusual daily experiences became the ordinary.