CHAPTER FOUR

Chapter IV

Christmas morning of 1943 was a foggy, rainy dirty morning that gave no indication that it represented any special day. I wandered aimlessly up and down the compound trying to see or hear something that would indicate to me that it was Christmas. Suddenly I thought of the front gate and its view into the street, and I said to myself, “I’ll see something that will help to give me the Christmas spirit.” All I saw was a gloomy deserted street with no indication that they saw this day any differently. A Japanese guard was walking his station backward and forward in front of the prison wit his coat pulled up around his neck looking perfectly miserable. I said to myself, “I wonder if this day means anything to him and if he has a family that he would like to be back with as much as I.” On the spur of the moment, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the last package of American cigarettes that I had. I whistled at the guard and turned and walked away. As soon as I did, I thought, “You fool.” Cigarettes were two hundred dollars a package, but do you know to the first person I passed, I felt like saying, “Merry Christmas.” I then realized that I had been looking in the wrong place. The spirit comes from within, and all we have to do is to give it a chance to show itself. I was further awed by the fact that this Japanese guard was later pointed out to me as the only Christian Japanese assigned to Bilibid. God indeed works in mysterious ways.

We all began to get a little stir crazy and to look for something that would break the monotony. We heard that the Japanese ran their trucks on sugar, alcohol and gasoline mixed. The truck depot was just outside the prison wall. Someone came up with a piece of rubber hose and a three gallon can. We dug underneath this electrified wire, not thinking or really caring that the slightest miss-Q would have electrocuted us, and made it to the trucks. Everytime a Jap guard would go on the other side of the trucks, we’d jump out and siphon some of the fuel out of the thank until we thought we had enough. We scampered back under the fence, covered up our hole and proudly displayed our prize. We took cotton and tried to strain the gasoline out of the sugar alcohol. It didn’t seem to work so we said to heck with it and drank it anyway. One- armed men fought one- legged men; sick men got up and walked. One prisoner of war building was completely chaotic. The American in charge told the Japanese we were out of our minds so they locked us up and left us alone. For a week everytime I burped, I’d taste gasoline. We were afraid to smoke; we were afraid if we lit a cigarette, we’d blow up. But miracle of all miracles, we all came out of it without any lasting effects.

Now it might occur to some that if it was that easy to get out of prison that we might have escaped. The Japanese had us divided into squads of ten, and we were informed that if one of us escaped, they would shoot the other nine. We were already aware that they believed in mass punishment and our rations had been cut drastically at times for some violation that we had no control over.

One of the most unusual things that came to light was what a man will do for a cigarette. I don’t think there has ever been a hard drug that has created the desire within people that cigarettes have to certain individuals. When cigarettes became almost impossible to get and we were limited to one- half a canteen cup of rice twice a day, I have seen men trade three days complete rations for one- half a cigarette and literally starve themselves to death. We had a chaplain who called everybody together to inform us that we were Americans and should not stoop so low as to pick up cigarette butts. About that time, someone threw one away and there was a free- for- all that lasted about fifteen minutes. We would smoke a cigarette until it got so low that it burned our lips. We would then put it out and save the few strands of tobacoo. When we had enough, we would re- roll it into another cigarette. Now the best cigarette paper that we could find was a new testament that floated around from person to person. We made an agreement with the good chaplain that it was all right to tear out a page if we would all read it before we tore it out. This promise became a sacred trust, and no one ever dared use a sheet of this testament unless at first he read it.

Truckloads of prisoners began to drift in to Bilibid with storied of other camps. In Camp O’Donnell where the prisoners were taken in the Death March, American prisoners died at the rate of sixty a day, and Philippines at the rate of three hundred a day. The dead and dying exceeded the living so much that they were dragged into piles outside the buildings where they were left until doziers could excavate holes to push them off into. Dysentery seems to be the primary cause of death. We heard that some of the corpmen instead of giving the sulfa- thizol to sick Americans, traded it to the Japanese soldiers who almost all were infected with gonorrhea. The Japanese thought that all American prisoners evidently had access to sulfa-thizol so they bugged us all the time to trade them some. We decided if they wanted sulfa- thizol, we’d give them sulfa- thizol! We managed to get a little plaster of paris and a handle on a safety razor and ran off a hundred sulfa-thizol pills. For these we received one- half gallon of mongo beans. For some strange reason, we never had any repeat customers.

During the entire time at Bilibid the Japanese allowed one Red Cross package to come through. They contained a few cans of food and one carton of cigarettes. Even though this helped, it only made a small dent in our needs. From some strange source some kind of black market commissary sprang up. Either some Japanese were being paid to look the other way, or they were operating it themselves. One canteen cup of peanuts, nineteen hundred dollars; one can of corned beef, seven hundred dollars; one carton of cigarettes, two thousand dollars; one banana, seven hundred dollars. As can be seen by these prices, this food was not for the likes of us.

One day one of the prisoners came to me and wanted to read a book that was being passed around. His face was so familiar that I knew that I had known him sometime in the past. Suddenly it came to both of us about the same time. We were from the same hometown, a town of about five hundred people. We had not seen each other in many years. Needless to say, we were a comfort to each other and spent many otherwise monotonous hours reliving some of our early days.

We had begun to sense upcoming activity by some undercurrent that was unexplainable. We began to realize that some more was going to take place. Truckload after truckload of prisoners began to come into Bilibid from Palawain, Cabanatuan and other Japanese prison camps. It was apparent that Bilibid was being used as some sort of prisoner concentration to facilitate Japanese plans. All of the physically handicapped patients were loaded into trucks and transferred to a barracks at Ft. McKinley on the outskirts of Manila, evidently to make room for more newcomers.

We had no sleeping facilities except blankets which were placed side by side on the floor, and we were restricted to the building and to a very small area about twenty feet wide surrounding the building. In the next aisle to my blankets, there was an old fellow who had evidently saved his cigarettes and used them to barter with. Every meal he was completely surrounded with canteen cups while several starving men sat and looked wistfully at every bite he took. About two o’clock one morning, I was awakened by someone thrusting a canvas bag into my hands and whispering desperately for me to meet him downstairs. In my half awakened condition, I could only recognize “Blackie,” an Oklahoma Indian, who slept next to me but had no idea what I was holding or why. I was half way down the steps before the commotion upstairs made me realize that I had become involved in something that I most definitely wanted nothing to do with. I stepped into the latrine at the bottom of the steps, threw the bag into a corner and started bac upstairs. At the bottom of the steps, I met the American captain in charge of our prison group. It seemed that our old man had been relieved of his cigarettes. Each time I would look at Blackie, he would turn away; and I knew that I was going to receive no help from him. Most of the guys were glad that it had happened, and my punishment was to crack coconuts for the Japanese. This did not amount to punishment because most prisoners wanted this detail so that they might eat coconut. This episode made me realize how easily a person could become involved in some illegal activity without being fully aware of his complicity. I think I more clearly understood our judicial rule of innocence until proven guilty without a reasonable doubt.

We received a message through the prison grapevine that shocked and saddened us all. The prisoners that had been assembled at Bilibid were loaded onto a ship and added to a convoy going to Japan. When the convoy left Manila, the ship carrying the prisoners was the last ship in the convoy and was so reporter by the Philippino underground to American intelligence. Later, they changed positions and moved the ship up to the center of the convoy. American planes attacked and sank the prisoner ship killing several hundred American prisoners. How these men must have felt to see American planes for the first time in over two years and have to remain helpless while they were strafed and bombed by instrument of their own government.

After staying at Ft. McKinley for about thirty days, we were loaded up and moved north to the Japanese farm and prison camp of Cabantuan. This was a huge camp spread over about a hundred acres, fenced and guarded by watch towers uniformly spaced around the area. Here all the men still able to work, left in the Philippines, were imprisoned. Malaria, dysentery, and food deficiency diseases were taking their daily toll. We learned while prisoners that there is no such thing as bad food. Anything is good that is filling or that sustains life. We who had no special pets at home thought dog meat particularly appetizing, and we began to set traps for any dog who was unfortunate enough to be looking in our area for scraps. Whent eh 4^th Marines were stationed in Shanghai, China, they found a little pup in SooChow Creek. They adopted him, and he became quite a favorite. When they were captured, they smuggled SooChow from camp to camp; and when rations became very scarce, they would each donate a spoonful to keep SooChow alive. Now SooChow, to us, was just a little more meat on the hoof. The Marine prisoners were kept at such an alert if at two o’clock in the morning some dog howled, they would all hit the deck. Due to the protection of the Marines and the intelligence of SooChow, he managed to escape the pot.

We found the Japanese guards to be less regimented than at other camps. They were also easy to trade with and extremely cruel. I know of one case when three prisoners bribed a guard to allow them to slip out under the fence and go to a nearby village. They were late in coming back, and the guards had been changed. The three men were tied to stakes in the middle of the camp and for three days suffered beyond comprehension. Their noses were all split where the Japanese had inserted their bayonettes and lifted them through the flesh. Even after death, their bodies were continued to be abused as an example to the rest of us who might want to visit a village. Another incident I personally witnessed, even though it was strictly against Japanese orders; if you were caught, you were beat unmercifully. Some prisoners smuggled a few seeds from the farm and had hidden behind some building would plant themselves a few okra plants or whatever. I saw this prisoner picking okra with his back to the fence. A Japanese sentry in a guard tower not far away, saw him and yelled at him. He made no motion. The Japanese yelled again and he still made no motion. The sentry kneeled, aimed and shot the prisoner in the back. He climbed over the fence, walked over to the prisoner, took his foot and rolled him over and shot him through the head. In a little while a group of Japanese guards came with a litter, loaded the dead soldier on and attached a sign which stated that this was what happened when you tried to escape. It was explained to me that the reason this prisoner didn’t reply to the Jap was because he had both eardrums burst on Corregador and was completely deaf.

One of the interesting characters that I met at Cabanatuan was a Captain Hornbossle who was the oldest captain in the United States Army. He contracted leprosy while a prisoner in the Philippines and years later, I understand, was cured at the leprosarium in Louisiana. While working at the farm one day, a strange plane flew over; and it was gone so quickly that all of us only noticed that it was strange that is flew over so low. It circled and came back across and wiggled its wings, and we knew that we had just witnessed something that we thought we would never see again, an American fighter plane. Excitement and speculation was rampant. Even the Japanese started grinning instead of growling. The Japanese began to herd most of us into groups in preparation for returning us to Bilibid in Manila.

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.

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.

CHAPTER ONE

Chapter I

I woke to a typical Monday morning of shouting, showers, and profanity. McCaine came by my bunk and said, “Sergeant, I’ll meet you in the supply room.” Now this would not have been important to most people, but ability against ability and dependability against dependability, Private McCaine was the most outstanding private in the United States Army. If there was anyone who could help me trace down four missing Elgin watches, it was he. Now, let’s get this sergeant straightened out. The old man said, “You are in charge of supplies and this carries a staff rating, but at present we don’t have one available; so, you’ll just have to be ‘acting’”.

When I arrived at the supply room, Mac was already deeply engrossed in a huge pile of gas masks. I had no sooner entered than someone in the orderly room hollered, “Come here fellows and listen to this.” Several men were standing around the radio while the announcer was giving a blow by blow description of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The 1^st Sergeant asked Mac and me to return to the supply room and issue everyone a small shovel and instructed the entire company to proceed to the parade ground and dig an individual fox hole in preparation for a visit from the Japanese bombers. This entired procedure was beyond comprehension and left us all feeling as if it was a field exercise. In fact, the thought ran through my mind that in time of war accountabilities cease, and I wouldn’t have to account for those four dang Elgin watches.

Not long after we completed our fox hole, a distant hum could be heard. If anyone has ever heard hundreds of large bombers flying extremely high, they know that there is no way to explain this sound. When they were immediately over us, we began to hear low rumbles in the distance which we found out were bombs exploding on Nichol’s Filed in another suburb of Manila. As I lay on my back watching these bombers, I pulled my .45 and began to fire. They must have been at least five miles high.

After the bombing some of us went to Nichol’s Field to see the results. It was here that I first began to realize the horror and tragedy that I was becoming involved in. Incendiary bombs had been dropped amidst nepa huts surrounding Nichol’s Field; burning houses made it impossible to enter some streets. Bloody children could be seen running aimlessly and screaming for parents that they would never see again. This was not what I was always taught was war- where soldiers fought soldiers and to the victor belong the spoils. Never again would I apply romance to battle.

The news came to us that the high command in Japan had agreed to declare Manila an “open city” if the Americans would remove all combat troops from this area. Being chemical warfare and no longer using chemicals, we were shuttled to a vicouac area near Antipolo. There we camped in such a apeaceful atmosphere that again the war seemed further and further removed from us.

One day while on a hunting trip one of my comrades shot a monkey. The monkey turned out to have two babies. We carried them back to camp, and the company adopted one, and I accepted the responsibility of the other. A few days later I asked for and received a twenty-four hour pass to go into Manila. While I was there, I gave the little monkey to the first person who petted him. The day before, contrary to their agreement, the Japanese had bombed Manila; one bomb had landed on a laundry where some five or six hundred Philippinoes were working. I decided to go over and see what had happened. As I stood in the door of the large laundry rooms, I experienced an example of war that should be shown to everyone who ever had any part in a decision in declaring such. In the center of the room was a large pile of parts of bodies- torso’s, arms legs, and even a half of a head which had been hollowed out like a doll’s head by concussion. I never again allowed myself to forget what I was involved in.

When I returned to my company, we moved through Manila, through Little Baguio, through Mariveles into the mountains beyond where we again set up camp. Had it no been for the reason that we were there, our camping area would have been a beautiful place for a holiday. The overhanging trees not only provided sanctuary from Japanese planes, but lended itself to the mountain stream and the jungle green as a peaceful mockery of what cold have been. One morning we saw a procession that we thought were small children coming down the mountainside but as they came closer, we realized there were very few greyheaded children and in reality they were pygmies. After giving us an amazing demonstration fo their ability with a bow and arrow, we gave them cigarettes; and they continued on their journey.

Mack and I were awakened several nights by a lot of activity in the jungle growth not far from our tent. We decided that it must be a water buffalo. When it continued night after night, we decided to investigate. In the area where the noise was coming from, we discovered a large hold in the ground with the ground around the hole very slick indicating constant usage. Needless to say, I would have slept better from then on if Mac had not reminded me that the largest python that was ever caught was in northern Luzan.

All of our food supplies were beginning to get low, and it was decided that I would make one more trip into Manila for one more truckload of food and cigarettes. I left Mack behind to take care of things, and two other fellows went with me. Since we had not been in Manila for some time, it was decided that we would all go our separate ways and meet later on. One of the fellows agreed to take the gruck over to the warehouse and have the Philippinoes fill it up. Whether or not they were there at the appointed time, I will never know because I had let the time go by; and when I got there, no one was there. I found one of the boys, and he refused to go back until the following morning. I went to the warehouse and discovered that the other boy had come and oggten the truck and gone back without either of us. By this time you could feel an undercurrent of excitement that seemed to have gripped the city. I stopped a constabulary and asked him what was causing the excitement, and he said there were reports that the Japanese were entering the outskirts of the city. He offered to lend me civilian clothes, but I knew enough to know that under no circumstances did I want to be caught in civilian clothes. He suggested that I might contact other Americans at the cold storage plant in Manila where American food supplies were kept. I acted upon his suggestion; but when I arrived, no one was there. I was sitting on the steps of the plant wondering what to do next, and a small voice said, “Mister would you help me please?”

Dedication, Prologue

Dedication

First, I would like to dedicate this book to my wife whose love and loyalty has always been my rock to lean on and Sue, one of my nurses, whose love and care has helped to keep me alive and without whose help I probably would not have written this book. I also dedicate this book to all the Staff and Employees of DeKalb General Hospital in Smithville, Tennessee, for the dedicated care that resulted in prolonging my life without regard to the prognosis of my disease.

Prologue

For several years when I would repeat some interesting experience that I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to be involved in people have said, “Why don’t you write a book?”. This seemed ridiculous to me as my idea of an author was someone who hid himself away from society and only wrote when he was inspired.

I was too busy living and also was fully convinced that writing a book was beyond my capabilities.

In April of 1971 I discovered I had Amytrophic Lateral Sclerosis or “Lou Gherig” disease. On May 9, 1974, I was permanently attached to a respirator and during the many long days that followed, I became fascinated with the idea of writing a book.

When anyone writes about his life, there is a period from the time of his brith until he starts accepting responsibilities and contributing to tohers that is of little, if any, value to a reader. The purpose of this prologue is to cover this period of my own life. I reflect upon this period merely because some of my childhood experiences contributed to my reactions later on.

On Thanksgiving morning, November 27, 1919, I was born in Rutherford County, Tennessee. During the first few years of my life, there was a succession of movers because at theat time my father was a farmer. Just previous to school age we moved to Woodbury, a small town in Middle Tennessee, and stayed there until I finished grade sschool. In 1932 we moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where my fater was employed as a postal clerk.

The above information was given merely as a basis for a general discussion of childhood experiences that affected my later life. While I was a very small child, I either had more than all the other kids in the neighborhood, or I had nothing at all. I can remember once of hanging my sock up for Christmas and a mischievous brother had put a sweet potato in it and that was all I had until I cired, and my father went tot eh store and bought me one orange. I remember another Christmas that I received a tricycle, a wagon, and a car that I could ride in. All of my life has been this pattern to extreme happiness. This pattern as a child helped me to adjust to these extremes later on in life.

When I was about fourteen, my father ran a grocery in Nashville and one night when we checked up, he handed me the money and said he was not going home. Needless to say I was frightened to death. I became a part of what I had always heard was a “broken home”. But do you know that rather than to wind up becoming involved in illegal and immoral activity and using the “broken home syndrome” s an excuse, I think my resistance to wrong doing was strengthened, not because I was adverse to the illegality or the immorality of and act, but because I was afraid that my little mother would be hurt. My mother was born of poor, but honest parents on an inexcessible ridge in the mountains of Cannon County. She had no education and no money, but an undying idea that her familoy was a little better than anybody else in the world and “Thank God” we inherited just enough of this that we never got to where we didn’t care who we were.

My mother and I returned to Woodbury where I completed my junior and senior years of high school. I was a marginal starter on an excellent basketball team and quarterback on the first football team the school ever had. These last two years in high school were destined to be the most important days of my entire life. This is where I met the girl who later became my wife. After graduation I sold Bibles, did some farm work, started to law school and was rather aimless in everything I attempted as anyone would be who had no definite plan in their life.

I joined the service March, 1940. I went overseas in September, 1941. On the troop ship going over, we traveled at night with a complete blackout indicating that our relationship with the Japanese was more imminently dangerous than we were later led to believe. I was assigned to the 4^th Chemical Company at Fort McKindly, Manila, P.I.

No chemical warfare had been used since World War I, but small companies had been retained on the outside chance that we again might find the need for a defense against this sort of activity. The 4^th Chemical Company was a group of about forty-five men who had been assigned to give instructions in chemical warfare to the Philippine Army. Duty was light, and we only held classes four days a week.

When I turned in the night of December 8, 1941[1], worried about an inventory that I had to do in the supply room and particularly worried about accounting for four Elgin G.I. watches that had been missing for God knows how long, and impossible to trace, little did I know that morning we would embark upon a most fantastic experience that would change all of our lives.

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[1] Due to International Dateline Philippine Islands one day different than United States.

This is...

Years ago, my grandfather Hance Rogers had a friend named Tommy Harrell. They knew each other as young men in Tennessee and traveled the Virginia tidewater area selling Bibles. Harrell, being a man of the good book, was ever known in my family as Thumper Harrell. He died of Lou Gherig's disease in the 1970s, but not before writing about his experiences in World War Two.

This manuscript was given to my grandfather. My grandmother, who was mentally ill, squirreled it away somewhere in the depths of the house and we only found it again about a month ago.

It is entirely dictated to a nurse who typed it on a typewriter and I have taken it upon myself to type the entire thing up and share it.

All misspellings and grammatical errors are kept. I have done NO editing.

So...

there you go.