Escape From Davao (32 page)

Unable immediately to implicate Abrina, Hozumi stormed out, leaving a promise. “[The Japanese]

threatened me and my family to be shot to death should [they] find later on that I was responsible for the escape,” Abrina would write.

While the fuming Japanese plotted to recapture the runaways, the POWs huddled together, discussing everything from the meaning of the escape to the significance of its timing. There were, of course, the unavoidable rumors: MacArthur had landed in Mindanao; Davao Province was in revolt; gueril as were preparing to attack Dapecol and liberate the prisoners. Natural y, the prisoners debated the import of the escape as it pertained to them. Some, such as Army Lt. Col. John H. McGee, who had been organizing an escape party of his own, grudgingly admired the escapees’ enterprise and courage. Yet others bitterly resented what they believed to be a selfish act because of the consequences it would bring down upon those left behind. Proof that the escape polarized the prisoners is found in a conversation overheard by Lawton that evening.

“Those dirty bastards,” said one incensed POW, “don’t they know they might get a bunch of us kil ed?”

“Wait a minute,” someone replied, “the book says that it is the duty of a prisoner of war to escape if he can.”

Came back another: “That’s true. But the guy who wrote the book didn’t consider that we might be captured by barbarians who refuse to abide by the Geneva Convention rules.”

“Yeah, and another thing. He assumed the prisoners would be within a reachable distance of our lines.

Those guys know damn wel they can’t swim to Australia.”

Bert Bank had no idea how Dyess, Grashio, Shofner, and the others planned on reaching Al ied territory, but he prayed that his friends would make good on their escape. As for his own fate, he knew that his slim chances for survival would be nil if there should be another escape this evening, a real likelihood with so many men like himself staring at the prospect of execution. That’s why he was keeping a vigil over the others in his bay—just as they were over him.

In the wee hours of the morning, he heard some rustling noises. Bank saw the blurry outline of a man rise from a nearby bunk and begin fastening his canteen belt around his waist. Bank startled the man when he asked him if he planned to escape because, if so, Bank was going, too. No, the POW

stammered, he was just trying on his canteen belt. Bank, not buying the story, groped for his own gear.

“Wel , I put my belt on also, explaining that I was just trying on my belt,” said Bank, “and we remained up al night watching each other.”

At dawn, the entire camp stood at attention before Major Maeda. For several minutes, the portly commandant blasted the POWs with incomprehensible Japanese, and, no doubt, alcohol-tinged breath.

The English distil ate, courtesy of the interpreters, was 100 proof: “Eleven American dogs have escaped from us. YOU must pay.”

The words were fol owed by the sound of the boots of several squads of ful y equipped soldiers, led by Lieutenant Hozumi, marching through the camp’s gates. For those who had been at Cabanatuan, the movement must have seemed hauntingly familiar.

MONDAY, APRIL 5, 1943

Davao Province

Nearly two dozen trees splashed across the newly rain-swol en river, the escapees’ own Rubicon, a boundary that demarcated the jungle from the swamp. Twelve pairs of feet then traversed the wet trunks, a bridge spanning their past and, they hoped, their future. Heaving the logs into the water so that the makeshift bridge could not be used by their pursuers, they pressed forward. There was no turning back.

The escapees entered what they believed to be the swamp at approximately 1000 and quickly began to understand why the tropical quagmire had such a fearsome reputation. Each step required concentrated effort—pul ing one’s foot out of the slimy, green-brown ooze was like walking in tar. They encountered thickets of cogon, the ubiquitous sword grass that, theorized Grashio, “must have been created by Satan personal y.” The cogon reached immense heights of seven to twelve feet, and each four-inch-wide, half-inch-thick blade was “covered with sharp spines that ripped clothing and flesh impartial y.”

Jumarong and de la Cruz, slashing a path at the vanguard of the procession, were soon bleeding profusely despite the burlap wrapped around their forearms. Shofner, Dobervich, and Boelens, the strongest members of the group, shouldered the cutters’ packs so that they could hack unencumbered.

Yet no matter how violently the Filipinos swung their bolos, the cogon seemed to grow tal er and thicker, an intimidating il usion created by the rising water level. The stagnant swamp water crept higher each passing hour, “an especial y sinister progression for me,” recal ed Grashio, “as I was the shortest of the whole group.”

An occasional grassy hil ock provided a brief opportunity for rest, but these swamp oases were few and far between. It certainly seemed that the swamp was indeed an evil entity actively conspiring against them, taunting, tripping, and entangling them with submerged logs, twisted tree roots, and thorn-studded vines. “The buhuka vine, which had quenched our thirst the day before, now seemed to regret its helpfulness and became a painful hindrance,” said Dyess.

They staggered in silence. The only sounds were those of heavy, labored breathing, the burbling suction of their footsteps, and that of steel bolos slashing sword grass. The intense heat and high humidity were physical y and emotional y enervating. While they looked at the map and thought in terms of kilometers, their progress, in reality, was measured in yards. Even with de la Cruz and Jumarong cutting at ful capacity, they were averaging only 300 to 400 yards an hour. And Hawkins was growing increasingly worried that the tremendous output of energy was for naught. He had to speak up.

“Shof,” he whispered, “McCoy might be the best ship’s navigator in the Navy, but I don’t believe he’s doing much of a job here on the ground. I’d swear we’re going in circles.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“So have I,” added Dobervich, overhearing their conversation. “McCoy doesn’t watch his compass close enough. Remember the night compass march we made at Basic School, Jack? I think that’s the way we should do it now.”

“If we are circling,” said Hawkins, “it means our bones wil rot here in this swamp.”

Shofner cal ed for a caucus. According to Hawkins, McCoy “frankly admitted that his Naval training had not included anything to cover a situation such as this” and gladly turned over navigation duties to the Marines. The POWs also agreed to share cutting duty. A team of two men, it was decided, would cut for ten-minute intervals. This fair rotation would enable them to operate at peak efficiency, a necessity since the Japanese search party, which surely had set out at dawn, would have the benefit of their clearance work and thus move considerably faster through the swamp in pursuit. With time their enemy, the Marines quickly applied their training to the situation.

Taking the compass, Hawkins assumed the lead position directly behind the cutters. As they hacked forward, Hawkins remained stationary, watching until they progressed to the limit of his vision, at which time he would close up behind them, take another compass reading, and restart the process. Shofner, meanwhile, was charged with shepherding the party—which was strung out in long, serpentine fashion in the tunnel of cogon—forward while keeping an eye on Hawkins. Dobervich was tasked with keeping stragglers in front of him and also keeping himself moving, a chore with as many as three packs on his back. “We moved forward a few paces and stood, moved again and stood,” said Shofner. It was slow, monotonous progress, but progress nonetheless.

Making the mission more difficult was the fact that fol owing a straight line and adhering to the readings was practical y impossible. Obstacles consistently cropped up, necessitating numerous navigational detours. “We came to places in the jungle impossible to cut through. Sometimes we climbed over, and again we crawled under, holding our noses just above the slime and expecting to meet snakes face to face,” remembered Dyess.

Thankful y, they had not encountered any of the swamp’s rumored inhabitants—animal or human—and there was stil no sign of pursuing Japanese, but they began to encounter potential y more dangerous enemies: themselves. Shofner and Mel nik, for example, were soon at each other’s throats. Shofner felt as though Mel nik was not carrying his weight, and he had evidence: Mel nik had dropped their portable stove, Boelens’s quan can, and it had to be retrieved. And perhaps Mel nik simply did not appreciate Shofner’s motivational methods. Whatever the case, smal slights festered into major arguments. Once, when Shofner overheard Mel nik berating Dobervich, he vociferously interceded on behalf of his fel ow Marine, unperturbed by the fact that Mel nik outranked him.

“I’m the senior Marine here,” shouted Shofner. “Don’t you ever speak to another goddamn Marine here. You speak to me, you understand that, skinhead?”

By noon, several crises had only narrowly been averted and it seemed as though the group, as wel as the careful y conceived escape plan, was slowly being shredded to pieces much like their clothes, faces, arms, legs, and psyches. Although the Marines were confident that the party was now moving in a somewhat linear fashion toward its northeasternly goal, McCoy estimated that they were traveling less than fifty yards an hour. There were no visible road signs indicating positive progress, no proof that it was worth it to push one’s self a little further. One by one, they began to break down physical y and mental y.

“How does one die in the swamp?”
Mel nik asked himself.
“From exhaustion? Drowning? Or by just
quitting?”

McCoy stumbled upon an underwater obstacle and sat down in water up to his mustache, refusing to move. He had awakened with nausea and other symptoms of a forthcoming, ful -blown attack of malaria or dysentery. Final y, after a long break, he struggled back to his feet.

“We’ve got to go on,” he mumbled, “it’s only one o’clock.”

It was during these desperate hours that they learned that they needed to fight the swamp, not each other. Dyess, staggering perceptibly, was just about to surrender his gear to the water—a step to sure death—when Dobervich grabbed him.

“No, don’t do that, Ed,” warned Dobervich, hoisting the pack on to his shoulders. “You’ve got to keep your gear. Here, give it to me.”

After swinging a bolo with wild, blind rage for one cutting shift, Grashio reached a dangerous stage of delirium brought on by exhaustion, hunger, and dehydration.

“Tel McCoy to go on without me,” he told his partner, Mel nik.

“Hel , we weren’t leaving anyone,” said Marshal . Mel nik had bitten his lip open, relying on the pain and salty taste of his own blood to remain conscious. From that point forward, he and Spielman shadowed Grashio closely.

It was mid-afternoon when they final y reached a point at which no words of encouragement, no physical assistance, not even Shofner’s

indomitable spirit, could wil them any further. Marshal summoned enough energy to climb atop Spielman’s shoulders. Peering over the wal of cogon, he spied a mammoth fal en tree, perhaps eight to ten feet in diameter and nearly thirty feet long, half-submerged no more than 100 yards behind their position. “Sloshing back, we hoisted ourselves onto the trunk and flopped like lizards, bel ies up,” said Shofner.

As they lay gulping in deep breaths, too exhausted even to wave away the whining mosquitoes, Hawkins took stock of the situation. Never, not while huddling in his dugout during the worst bombardments on Corregidor nor during the darkest days in Cabanatuan, had he al owed any negative thoughts to creep into his mind. Until now. “I was afraid that the end had come for McCoy, and possibly for al of us, and I was horrified at the thought of perishing in this God-forsaken stinking swamp. I doubted that McCoy could move on the next day and I wondered if I could last through another day myself. And what if the end of another day, and another, and another should find us stil lost in that almost impenetrable prison? One by one, our food gone and strength exhausted, we would sink down into that brown slimy water and perish. I glanced downward—and shuddered.”

After several hours, their bodies responded to the rest. The log stirred to life as they began to build a sleeping platform large enough for the entire party. Then someone, in the midst of chopping saplings and vines, inadvertently struck a hornet’s nest. Leo Boelens was the first to sound the air-raid siren: “Duck!

Duck!”

The warning came too late. What seemed like a thousand angry wasps came pouring from their disturbed hive. They were large, much larger than the yel ow jackets in the States, and fanatical y aggressive. “Their stings were like stabs with a hot dagger,” remembered Grashio. Spielman, stung no fewer than a dozen times, was the hardest hit.

Frantical y abandoning the log to yelps and profanity, they dove into the water, their only defense, and stayed there submerged for nearly thirty minutes until the brutal attack was finished. Final y, Sam Grashio angrily spluttered up out of the water.

“What next?”

“The pain of the stings took our minds temporarily off our other troubles,” said Dyess. But only temporarily. After a supper of corned beef, rice, and hot tea, they stripped their saturated clothes and huddled around a smal fire. Their sul en faces told a grim tale.

“We were al visibly frightened over our circumstances,” remembered Hawkins. “Things looked real y bad and confidence in ourselves was badly shaken … the swamp was proving to be an enemy more deadly than the Japanese.”