Authors: John D. Lukacs
Tags: #History, #General, #Military, #Biological & Chemical Warfare, #United States
Dyess concurred. “We had no way of knowing how much swamp remained to be conquered. Our shoes were fal ing apart. Our legs and bodies had been slashed severely by the sword grass. Infections would start swiftly. Another day like this one would finish us off.”
Not stopping to eat, they agreed, had been a critical mistake. An inventory of their stocks showed that they had forty-two cans of corned beef and fish and a kilo of rice, enough food to last for at least two, perhaps even three days. “Engines won’t run without fuel,” said
Dyess.
That, however, was where the consensus ended. Jumarong suggested returning to the vicinity of Dapecol to locate the original trail. There were murmurs of agreement, which McCoy immediately moved to silence.
“Look at the map,” he reasoned, pointing out that they were only two or three miles from the railroad. “If we keep on that compass course we are bound to get out tomorrow, or the next day at the very latest.”
“And if we don’t get out by then, then what?” Mel nik asked.
“Let’s don’t even think about it.”
But Mel nik had thought about it. He announced he was going back to Dapecol. He’d take his chances with the Japanese. Maybe the ruthless heat, the water, and the cogon had taken their tol . Maybe the legends were true; if the swamp did not kil you, it would drive you mad.
At first glance, Mel nik’s statement suggested cowardice. But perhaps he was the only one courageous enough to voice an opinion that others might have shared, but were afraid to say, that this whole quixotic emprise had been a bad idea, that they had been fools to attempt an escape.
“You know what would happen to us,” said Hawkins, trying to appeal directly to Mel nik’s capacity to reason. “Nobody could go back, and
live.”
Then, speaking like a lawyer before a jury, he made an impassioned plea to the others: “They wil torture any or al of us if he does that, and kil us if we ever get there.”
But Mel nik was not thinking about it. He was going. Several seconds of uncomfortable silence passed.
And then that silence was broken.
“No,” boomed the clearly agitated voice of Shofner, “you are not.”
Until now, the escape party had operated democratical y. But now, with the union dangerously close to fracturing, there were too many disparate voices. With the senior officer, McCoy, physical y unable to command, and Dyess’s powerful personality drained by his dreadful condition, someone had to take charge. At this critical juncture, Shofner probably could not help but be reminded of the maxims of his coach and mentor, Robert Neyland. One, in particular: “If the line goes forward, the team wins; if the line comes backward the team loses.”
Jumarong had proffered the suggestion, so his departure was probable. It was unlikely that de la Cruz would abandon his friend. Should Mel nik be permitted to leave, Marshal and Spielman would, in al likelihood, accompany him. Sapped of the manpower of their youngest and strongest members, the remainder of the escape party would certainly perish in the swamp, but recapture was a more realistic fate. Even if Mel nik should make it back to Dapecol, he would likely be tortured until he divulged the whereabouts of the others. Shofner saw the situation with unmistakable clarity: this team could not retreat. Mel nik could not be al owed to secede from the group—and thereby cause its distintegration—under any circumstances.
“You can’t stop me,” retorted Mel nik, defiantly.
Shofner then literal y rose to the chal enge, his erect posture and build, though decimated by months of disease and hunger, stil quite formidable.
“The hel I can’t,” he bel owed. “Just give me the opportunity.”
“You don’t have any weapons,” countered a dubious Mel nik.
“I’l kil you with my own two hands,” promised Shofner, curling his giant hands into fists as if presenting weapons for inspection prior to a duel.
There was little doubt that Shofner, sufficiently riled, would have done just that—had they not at that very moment heard violent thrashing sounds coming from a thicket no more than fifty feet away. Marshal doused the fire and they jumped from the platform, half-nude, into the swamp, their bolos drawn. With bated breath, they crouched silently in the waist-high water.
“What could it be?” whispered Dobervich.
“There couldn’t be any Japs in this place,” reasoned Hawkins.
Jumarong leapt back onto the log, jabbering in Tagalog and motioning madly for the others to fol ow.
Ben de la Cruz translated: “Come on! It’s crocodiles.”
“We literal y flew back to the platform,” recal ed Hawkins.
Crocodiles. Sam Grashio sighed. “Nobody had even thought about
them
when we were struggling waist deep in the water and sword grass. With our luck so far, we should have stepped on a couple.”
But their luck was about to change. The echo of gunfire was perhaps the most bizarre harbinger of good fortune imaginable. It was about 1800 hours when they heard the first shots. “By now we were so jumpy that the shooting shook us to the marrow of our bones,” wrote Grashio.
The unexpected, unearthly clatter—rifle shots and the staccato tattoo of machine gun fire—was unquestionably that of a smal battle. But where? And between whom? Jumping to their feet in unison, they stared silently at each other while trying to determine the direction of the gunfire, as wel as the different types of weapons involved, skil s that al soldiers who had spent time on or near a battlefield possessed. Shofner immediately recognized the distinctive crack of a Browning Automatic Rifle, or BAR.
Another weapon sounded familiar to Dyess.
“That’s a Nip burp gun. Ran into them on Bataan. Wonder what they’re shooting at?”
“It’s the Japs al right,” added Spielman after a tel tale thump. “Hear that knee mortar?”
With each exchange of shots came a corresponding exchange of whispers: How far away was this firefight? Did the Japanese have a fix on their position? McCoy attempted to al eviate the tense situation with his dry sense of humor, one, of course, flavored with logic.
“Those guys can’t be firing at us. No one knows where we are, not even ourselves.”
Suddenly, the sky was set aflame with an eerie red aura.
“They must have set a house or vil age on fire with that mortar,” said Marshal .
Judging by the direction of the shots and explosions, which were now fading in both volume and intensity, they deduced that the battle was being fought near the supposed location of the railroad. “We could only hazard a guess on distance,” explained Mel nik. “The reflective surface of the water complicated the problem.” Shofner thought the fight—and thus the railroad—could not be more than three miles away, perhaps even as close as one mile. As the fiery, orange-red glow danced skyward, Hawkins reached for the compass. The needle pointed due north; they looked at each other knowingly.
“That way is out,” said Dobervich. “Japs or no Japs.”
• • •
Sandwiched between Shofner and Grashio on the giant common bunk, Dyess was in a contemplative mood. There was something he needed to do, needed to say. He had never before assigned a task that he himself would not do, nor had he ever shied away from addressing his men, but he felt as though he was not the individual for this job. He nudged Shofner.
“Don’t you think Sam ought to lead us in a little prayer?”
“I sure do think he ought to, Ed.”
Dyess explained that he thought Grashio was probably the most religious of the group and therefore it would be appropriate that he led them in a prayer. Since there were no objections, Grashio dropped to his knees and began to recite the “Memorare,” a prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary that the Catholic nuns at Saint Aloysius school in Spokane had taught him. It had always been his favorite, and it seemed almost tailor-made for their current situation. He recited one sentence at a time and the other supplicants replied in kind:
Remember, oh most gracious Virgin Mary, never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection or sought your intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence I fly unto you oh Virgin of Virgins my mother. To you I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. Oh mother of the word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy and kindness, hear and answer me. Amen.
When Grashio finished, it was as if everything they had experienced, both physical agony and mental anguish, had disappeared. The heated confrontations, their aching limbs, the swol en, throbbing wasp stings, the fear and doubt—al vanished.
Yet it was not so much an absolution as it was a message. They had been slowly staggering toward inevitable col apse, dissolution, and death. And now, they had been shown, seemingly by some otherworldly phenomenon, a path—as wel as the courage and strength to fol ow it. “I felt easier and more optimistic than I had since the start of the escape,” recal ed Dyess. Hawkins experienced a similar sensation. “That prayer drove anxiety and trepidation from my mind and left me with a feeling of peaceful calm and security.”
To a man, the effect of Grashio’s words was instantaneous, calming and curative. None of them would ever be able to explain just what had happened that night on the log. But Grashio knew.
“I thought a miracle had occurred,” he would say. “I felt now that God would save us.”
Thus hunger, thirst, fatigue, combine to drain
All feeling from our hearts. The endless glare,
The brutal heat, anesthetize the mind …
TUESDAY, APRIL 6–MONDAY, APRIL 12, 1943
Davao Province
Melvyn McCoy did not know if it had been an intervention of the divine or quinine variety, but he was nevertheless thankful to have awakened with none of the symptoms of the malady that had plagued him the previous day. The others, dressing and bustling with renewed vigor, shared McCoy’s enthusiasm.
Recharged by nearly eleven hours of sleep and a breakfast of oatmeal and tea, they sprang off the log at 0830.
The scene in the swamp was much the same—yet different. Their faces were red and puffy from mosquito bites, the mud stil clutched at their feet, the water lapped their midsections, and the razor-sharp cogon mercilessly lacerated their bodies. Even so, “the sword grass looked less dreadful than the day before,” noted Grashio. It was optimistic depth perception. The going was no easier, but the despondency that had made each step the previous day so laboriously difficult was absent.
On they pushed, slashing cogon with assured, mechanical efficiency, sloshing through the swamp water, wiping their brows, swigging from their canteens, oblivious to the swarming insects and stifling heat, the minutes running into hours, morning becoming afternoon.
Every few hundred yards, the column would halt and, after motioning for silence, Jumarong would cup a hand to one ear. The Americans looked at each other quizzical y.
“He is listening for the cock crow,” de la Cruz explained. “Wherever there are Filipino people you wil hear the crow of the fighting cocks. The sound wil travel for a long way.”
The sounds of civilization eluded their ears, but another sign was visible: the swamp water seemed to be receding. When they halted for lunch at noon, it was hip-level. Each successive hour saw the water level drop; their spirits, correspondingly, soared. They also encountered sparser, smal er thickets of cogon, which enabled them to progress at a rate of roughly 500 yards an hour. They were soon joyful y splashing through ankle-high water. Final y, at 1400 hours, they exited the swamp and flopped onto the muddy jungle floor, leeches be damned. While they caught their breath, Jumarong loped into the brush.
He returned fifteen minutes later with a grin on his face and some excited words: he had found a trail.
Forty-five minutes of effortless hiking brought them to an embankment perhaps five feet above the level path. The railroad, the goal that at times had seemed impossible to find, was within reach. Confident that the area was clear, McCoy gave the signal.
“Okay,” he whispered, “Everybody up.”
It was an oddly anticlimactic triumph. The railroad was little more than “two ribbons of rusty steel piercing the jungle and al but overwhelmed by it,” recal ed Shofner. Dazedly, they kicked around the rotting wood ties until someone let out an exclamation. There were footprints. Dozens of them. They were made by split-toed shoes with hobnail heels—Japanese footprints. Dyess had seen similar prints on Bataan. These shoes, he pointed out, not only provided Japanese soldiers with excel ent footing on difficult terrain, they also made climbing trees a cinch for snipers. “The thing that jarred us,” said Dyess,
“was that the prints were
fresh.”
The startling evidence sent them into a copse of trees for a conference. There were lots of questions
—Were the Japanese ahead of them or behind them? Did they patrol the railroad? If so, how often, and by foot, by locomotive, or both? Where were the guerril as and civilians Acenas had spoken of? Spielman volunteered to scout ahead for intel igence, and with McCoy’s blessing he, Jumarong, and de la Cruz left while the others prepared a camp in a clearing approximately 500 yards from the railroad. The scouting party returned at 1730 and Spielman reported on his findings—or lack thereof.
“No Japs, nobody,” he said, shaking his head, “but we did find some deserted shacks about three kilometers north of here.”