CHAPTER TWO

Chapter II

I found myself standing before a very attractive little lady who looked as if she were deathly afraid of anything and everything. I explained to her why I was there and that I really did not know what my own plans were. It was lmost impossible to believe that this frail little woman had started just ahead of the Japanese landings in louthern Luzan, with her children, trying to reach her husband who was a civilian engineer with the American forces on Bataan. As she passed through village after village, mass hysteria became more apparent until the roads and trails were filled with fleeing, terrified people. Somewhere she and her children had become separated, and it was as if the great throngs had swallowed them up. She had spent days searching for them and many times had almost been captured by the Japanese by being too close to their advance. She now asked if she might take her chances of getting out of Manila with me.

While we were waiting for some opportunity to escape Manila, I called the constabulary to come and make an orderly issue of all the food in the cold storage plant. While this was being done, another American came to the plant also looking for a means of escape. There were several vehicles parked at the plant used for deliveries and various activities. He found a truck with the keys in it and asked the girl if she would like to go with him. She looked at me with some hesitation, and I told her that there was a possibility that he might get through; but feeling that the chances were remote, I did not join them. The cold storage plant was built beside the Pasig River, and there were two large barges tied up there that I was told contained several hundred small arms. I got the constabulary to help me to set charges in each barge that would guarantee their sinking. I took my army .45 and went throughout the cold storage plant and fired at gauges, valves or controls of any kind that would assure the inability of the Japanese to utilize the plant. I also went to each vehicle and punctured all their tires; the distributors, the carburetors and anything I found to prevent the vehicle from being useful.

As I finished, a truck swung into the parking area and since it was already after sundown, I didn’t recognize my two friends until the truck stopped and they got out. It seemed they had gotten to the edge of town and had run into the Japanese and had only gotten away by running into wounded civilians a block or two before they actually ran into the Japanese. We were having a discussion as to what to do next, and a Philippino who had been helping me suggested that thee might be a boat at the yacht club at Manila Bay. He flagged down someone, and he carried us to this yacht club. What we saw there would have broken the hearts of boat lovers. Someone had taken eaxes and completely destroyed all of the boats. We were searching without hope of finding anything we would use when all at once, we came upon a 22ft. sailboat with a six hundred pount lead keep that had been drydocked for cleaning and repairs. It mattered little to any of us that we had never sailed a boat in our lives and didn’t know the first thing about what to do. We asked for and received help from some passing Philippinos and put the boat into the water. At least we had sense enough to put in a couple of oars, and two of us rowed while the girl experimented with the sail. But for some reason, that saild never puffed out there like we thought sails should. We rowed for what felt lik hours, and we looked back; and it seemed as if we were almost as close to the shore as we were when we started. Renewed activity and rifle fire from the yacht club made us realize that we had gotten away just in time, and we were thankful that night had fallen and we were not, evidently, easy to see.

It was thirty miles across Manila Bay to Bataan, and that’s a voyage I’ll never forget. After experimenting several times, we finally go the sailed to where it would occasionally catch a gust of wind. Several times during the night Japanese planes came to see what we were, and each time we were afraid they would machine-gun our boat, and it would sink. We would slip out of the boat into the water and hold onto the edge of the boat. What good this would do, we never stopped to think because none of us could swim, and added to our danger; the water was full of shark. But I had found out a long time before that, that if you’re frightened, it helps to do something even if it’s wrong. We came to a point in our voyage where it was as close to go to Corregidor as it was to Bataan. We knew that Corregidor would be a safe refuge. We were not sure that Bataan was still in the hands of the Americans, but the girl’s husband and my company were there somewhere; and after discussing all the possibilities, we decided to continue to Bataan. Just before dawn we made an effort to land but were fired at, and the fact that we were yelling identification in English didn’t seem to matter. We decided that the safest thing was to pull away from shore and lay there until after daylight. When it became light enough to see, one of the first things we recognized was an American in Air Corp coveralls. Believe me, this was a welcome sight! We abandoned our boat and made our way ashore.

There is only one expression that I have ever heard that explains my feeling toward this wonderfully brave little woman that I was saying good-bye to and that was, “Someone you could ride the river with.” While the fellow that came with us carried her to locate her usband, I reported to the Commanding General of Bataan Operations and told him of my experiences and the destruction at the cold storage plant. He gave me two pounds of coffee and sent me back to my company. That may sound awfully small to most of you, but on Bataan it was better than a silver star. I reported to my commanding officer and all at once realized that I had not slept in forty-eight hours. The Captain suggested that I get some rest and save my explanations until afterward. I found Mac resting cozily in the midst of a truckload of new supplies that seemed to belong to a situation that had happened a lifetime before.

It wasn’t many days until I began to get caught up in the routine of camp life and to feel that the war again was passing me by. As time went on, I began to fear this feeling because in each instance, it was culminated by brutal evidence of war at its worst.

We were sitting around one afternoon and began to hear that high dreadful hum of many bombers.As they went over, the earth shook with the rumble of high explosives. The sky was lit with the brightness of a million lamps by the incendiary bombs. When we had given the fires time enough to subside, we went down the mountain to see what had happened to Marvelis; and there I saw a picture that was burned into my memory forever. There was not a buildingor a structure of any kind that was not completely demolished by either fire or explosion, with the exception of the statue of a small child in the middle of the plaza with his arms outstretched and his head thrown back in a futile intrigue for mercy.

Several days later we were called together and told that the Commanding General had ordered all units that were not in combat such as air corp, field artillery, chemical warfare and others be infiltrated into the fighting units on Bataan. Our group was assigned to B Company 31^st Infantry. Much has been said about the lack of food while we were prisoners of war but very little about the fact that our men were fighting on such rations as one can of milk and one can of tomatoes for eight men for twenty-four hours. To try to relieve this situation, foragers were appointed for each company. I was appointed for mine, and I did whatever was necessary to get any additional food for the men in my company. It was of particular interest to us to hear of a water buffalo being slain because ein most instances we could boil the head and add the brains to our menu. Other things we ate included iguana tails, cashew fruit, and anything else we could find running around loose. One of the most unusual experiences I had was the result of this need for food. One of our boys killed a monkey, and one of the others stole a gallon can of peaches from the general’s tent. We only had some very primitive tools to prepare our monkey and after we skinned him, we boiled him in a five gallon oil can. Now even though it’s filling, I wouldn’t recommend peaches and monkey! I know my good Christian mother would not have me believe in evolution, but, thank God she did not see that monkey that we ate after we had skinned him.

During this particular period our troops were getting weaker and the constant rumors that were being fed from the powers that be, that help was on its way, were so obviously untrue that all of them had gotten to the place where they accepted them as moral propaganda. All of our troops tried to bivouac under a mango grove so as not to be spotted by “photo Joe.” Photo Joe was a small Japanese bi-plane that circle Bataan continuously flying low so that he could spot targets for the fighters to strafe and the bombers to bomb. The combat was limited to patrol activity and an occasional infiltration of the Japanese through American lines. We began to hear of buildup of Japanese troops in an imminent bonsai attack.

One morning before dawn a messenger came to each company and all military personnel were requested to meet at a specified area immediately. A team of field officers stood in the back of a truck, and the leader addressed the division. He informed us that he had been in direct contact with General McArthur in Australia and that twenty-five fighters were on their way, that four ship loads of fresh troops were nearing the island, that the Japanese army had moved in eighty thousand new Japanese troops and that before they had a chance to become organized; we were going to attack. At a half an hour before time, our field artillery was to open up with a continuous salvo with the fighter planes in action and the new troops behind us and that we were not going to stop until we pushed them into Manila Bay. For the first time since the war began, our morale was sky high; and each one of us felt that we could whip our weight in wild cats. We assembled in our waiting pattern and kept waiting for the field artillery. Well we finally heard it, but it was theirs, not ours. We started on our attack, and we ran into the so called “disorganized” Japanese Army a half an hour before we were supposed to have been one. Eighteen hundred men and three days later, we had never seen an airplane or a single new troop. We had been lied to again.