Escape From Davao (42 page)

GHQ, however, made an exception for Dyess, who, in a long interview before his departure, had impressed Fertig with the idea that “The Aid” could be delivered by air. In McCoy’s and Mel nik’s absence, he and Boelens had scouted sites for potential airfields that could be used by the Al ies during the retaking of the Philippines. Fertig wanted Dyess to explain his theories in person at GHQ and on June 15

radioed MacArthur to recommend that he be added to the evacuation list. However transparent Fertig’s motives, Whitney agreed and Dyess was ordered to evacuate with the others in early July, according to a message received from GHQ on June 21. Dyess, already back in Medina, presumably knew nothing of these developments. If his behavior on Bataan was any indication, he probably would not react favorably to the order. But Dyess would have little choice. He had already ignored one evacuation order on Bataan; two instances of insubordination would not have been looked upon kindly by his superiors.

For McCoy, who considered himself the group’s shepherd, this was proving a difficult, unexpected quandary. He knew that someone had to get out and tel their story. He also knew that he could arrange to bring the others out only if he was successful in getting to Australia himself. Nonetheless, he found the idea of leaving the others behind moral y repulsive. With little other recourse, he composed a letter to the other members of the escape party in which he explained the situation and requested their immediate input. In view of the rumors of looming Japanese attacks, he hoped that they would stil be in Medina—or alive, for that matter—if and when his letter arrived.

Shofner knocked on the door of the room that Jack Hawkins shared with Mike Dobervich. A groggy Hawkins could tel by the look on his friend’s face—the tel -tale way he pursed his lips—that Shofner was angry.

“What’s the matter?” asked Hawkins.

“I’ve got a letter from McCoy. Just came in by launch … Fertig didn’t send our messages,” growled Shofner, “and wait ’til you hear the rest!”

By the time they finished McCoy’s missive, Hawkins and Dobervich shared Shofner’s indignation. The fact that Fertig could not even have forwarded their names to American authorities so that their families would know that they were alive was “downright distressing.”

“If you say so, we’l give up our transportation, rejoin you, and we’l carry out our original plan,” McCoy signed off his letter. “If you prefer to have us go now by submarine, we’l do our utmost to see that al of you get back later.”

“Maybe we should go over and try to force the issue with Fertig,” suggested Shofner.

“I believe McCoy would have suggested that if he thought it would do any good,” said Dobervich.

“You’re probably right. Maybe it would be just as wel to sit tight here … and wait for McCoy to handle things. Once he gets with the Navy in Australia, I’m sure he can make arrangements for us. You know Mac. He won’t forget us, and he won’t give up.”

The news was typical “stragedy,” a Bataan buzzword that combined strategy with tragedy, in the judgment of the escapees. They almost expected such developments. “Shifty,” lamented Sam Grashio upon hearing the news, “it looks like we have the enemy right where they want us.”

This “stragedy” meant that they would have to keep moving, albeit in different directions, toward decidedly separate fates. Grashio, the Marines, Marshal , and Spielman would retreat east to Daan-Lungsod and the new 110th Division headquarters. Dyess would reluctantly journey westward to Jimenez, the ral ying point for the sub extraction party agreed upon by GHQ and the expedition’s leader, Parsons.

On the 15th of June, Dyess, McClish, and Ensign Iliff Richardson, an emissary from Leyte guerril a commander Col. Ruperto Kangleon, accompanied by twenty-odd troops, put out on the diesel-powered launch
Rosalia
. Both McClish and Kangleon, facing imminent attack, were seeking Fertig’s help.

But Fertig was in trouble, too. The recent flurry of radio traffic regarding the secret submarine rendezvous had attracted the attention of Japanese radio operators aboard naval RDFs—radio detection finders—that had formed a floating picket around Mindanao. Signals, recal ed Al ison Ind, beamed from ship to ship, from one vessel bobbing quietly in the Mindanao Sea, just off the island of Bohol, to another anchored near Leyte, in the Surigao Sea. Within no time, these electronic eavesdroppers would triangulate the locations of the guerril a radio stations. “Japanese Naval Air Operations would be glad to hear of this ‘fix,’ ” Ind

wrote.

Early on the morning of June 26, Misamis City was bombed, precursory action to a multi-pronged invasion involving landings in the north along the coast of Misamis Occidental and in Pagadian Bay, fifty miles to the south in Zamboanga Province. The Japanese, once content to rule Mindanao’s coastal cities while strip-mining the island of its resources, now seemed intent on conquering Fertig’s fiefdom.

A combination of luck and foresight had kept Fertig one step ahead of the Japanese—he had escaped to Corregidor just before Bataan fel and had left for Mindanao on one of the final flights from the Rock on April 29, 1942—so where he and his mobile headquarters went, so did the others. It was a mad blur of perspiration, packing, and profanity. Documents were incinerated, aerials were taken down, wires coiled, and radio sets strapped to the backs of guerril as for hasty flight. Leo Boelens, recovering from malaria, would slip out of Misamis City on a sloop just forty minutes before the arrival of the Japanese landing craft. Going to bed ful y clothed and ready for another quick flight, Boelens would write in his diary,

“Wonder about Ed.”

McCoy and Mel nik, biting their nails as exploding bombs could be heard from the direction of the nearby town of Aurora, also wondered if Dyess would arrive in time. Both Charley Smith and Chick Parsons had already reported in to Fertig’s latest headquarters approximately six miles west of Bonifacio, the latter on July 1 after narrowly escaping through the backyard of the Casa Ozamis as Japanese soldiers splintered the front door with an ax.

Dyess would fol ow in Parsons’s footsteps. According to Richardson, the
Rosalia
was making about six knots, “going along with a good, smooth gush” off Jimenez at 0400 on June 26 when a searchlight from a Japanese landing barge splashed a bright, bluish green light across the vessel. “It was an awful feeling,” Dyess would say, “like men must feel in a police show-up. There was no place on that damn boat where we could get out of the glare.” Richardson ran the
Rosalia
onto the beach and the passengers sloshed through the knee-deep water and melted inland. They were working their way through some rice paddies at dawn when a woman, much like a Filipino Paul Revere, came running down the road to alert them. “Hapons!” she cried. “Hapons coming!” They crouched silently in the underbrush as an enemy column passed by. The soldiers were so close that you could hear the sound of their equipment clinking as they marched. “They padded past us like figures in a dream,” recal ed Richardson.

It was therefore necessary to take an elongated detour around Jimenez and, after a forced march of several days through the jungle, a weary Dyess final y staggered into Fertig’s mobile command post at 1700 on Friday, July 2.

There would be little time, though, for him to rest. A date with a submarine awaited.

Should Be Told

Westward we came across the smiling waves,

West to the outpost of our country’s might …

Eastward we go and home, so few—so few—

Wrapped in their beds of clay our comrades sleep …

SATURDAY, JULY 3–FRIDAY, JULY 9, 1943

Zamboanga Province, Mindanao

The raindrops pattered, then ran in rivulets off the eaves of the thatch roof, much in the same way that Ed Dyess’s scattered thoughts connected and poured through his pencil. There was so much to say, so much to write on this steamy Mindanao morning, yet so little time.

Dear Sammy—

I just arrived here and “got the dope.” By the time you receive this things will be “all off” or I’ll
be long gone. Sam, you know I wouldn’t go if I didn’t think it was best for us all; Leo and I have
talked the situation over. With me there I am sure we can be together again soon; however, if
I stay none of us will have a prayer.

It had taken Dyess time, plus the help of Boelens, to understand that he had to go. Someone had to tel the story of the escape and speak for the thousands who had perished, as wel as the thousands stil suffering in captivity. His was to be that voice. Dyess, though, was the last one to realize it. As those drawn into Dyess’s orbit would attest, his magnetic aura had become increasingly powerful since the escape. The proof? Even the not easily impressed Father Edward Haggerty had been captivated by Dyess. Wrote Haggerty: “And al who heard him thought as one: ‘Here is a man to put the plight of our prisoners before the public.’ ” Stil , Dyess felt the need to explain his actions to those, like Grashio, who knew him best.

It is not a run out boy,
because you and Leo are closer to me than brothers. It gives me a
helluva empty feeling to say farewell, but believe me it won’t be for long; I wish it could have
been otherwise, but mother fate stepped in. I’ll see that your wife, folks & uncle are notified,
but it won’t be long before you can tell them yourself. I don’t feel right without having you along
Sam, & I’ll never be satisfied until we are flying together “knocking sparks out of
[
the
]
flaming
assholes.” May the “pickins” always be good.

Your Bud & Pal,

Ed

Entering Fertig’s mobile headquarters, Dyess and Boelens found the others—Fertig, Smith, McCoy, and Mel nik—sweating the details of the submarine rendezvous. An extraction from Jimenez or Misamis would have been ideal, but the Japanese presence scotched that. They had then planned to travel south by truck to Pagadian City, a distance of no more than fifteen miles, for a rendezvous near Pagadian Bay, but reports of increased Japanese activity in the south now rendered that alternative useless, too.

Neither the humidity nor the stress of the situation seemed to affect Chick Parsons. Shortly after his arrival at Fertig’s temporary headquarters, a radio message was received at AIB in Brisbane. The Q-10

code, once deciphered, revealed that Parsons, as per his persona and reputation, was prepared for such eventualities.

ARRIVE HQ TODAY FROM NORTH. WARN SUB COMMANDER SITES ONE AND TWO

FOR MEETING NORTH COAST IN HANDS ENEMY SITE THREE NOT FEASI BLE.

RECOMMEND MEETING ONE HOUR BEFORE SUNSET NINTH VICINITY NORTHEAST

COAST OLUTANGA ISLAND FROM SAME LAUNCH THAT MET SUB. IF POSSIBLE THIS

MEETING SHOULD BE ARRANGED SPECIFICALLY TO AVOID ENDANGERING

SECURITY. AREA SECURE AT PRESENT NO AIR OR SEA PATROLS. PORTABLE

TRANSMITTER MALANGAS WILL WARN IF SUDDEN CHANGES. MORE TOMORROW.

Parsons’s plan required an intense hike to Margosatubig, a five-day trip spanning some sixty-five miles, on the Igat Bay inlet. After mapping out a route that would take advantage of his knowledge of the labyrinthine network of trails, Parsons added a cushion of an extra day since they would be traveling over some difficult terrain, much of which was mountainous and marked with the familiar “UNEXPLORED” on maps. And that looked to be the easy part.

Upon reaching Margosatubig, they would sail to the rendezvous point, approximately five miles into the heart of Dumanquilas Bay, a smal body of water more than forty miles east of Pagadian City and just northeast of Oluntanga island. When Fertig’s finger indicated the point about where the pickup would occur, Mel nik was stunned.

“Out there?”

“That’s how it is,” said Fertig. “But you’l have the advantage of knowing when and where the sub is coming, which the Japs won’t. To reduce the time you’l be on the water, I’m sending you out in the
General Fertig.
” That ship was a fast, sixty-foot, steam-powered launch that had formerly been the property of a lumber company.

Although Fertig got in the last word in his rivalry with McCoy and Mel nik, Parsons had the final say in regards to the expedition. Because he preferred to travel light—he favored a uniform of shorts, tennis shoes, and a Navy officer’s cap and rarely, if ever, carried a weapon—the others would, too. The group

—five Americans, an armed escort composed of Lt. Roberto de Jesus and five soldiers from F

Company, 2nd Battalion, 115th Regiment, a unit based in southern Zamboanga, plus guides and porters furnished by Fertig—would carry no food, little baggage, and only a Thompson submachine gun and some pistols. Parsons knew he could count on Filipino generosity to feed them and that it would be wise to avoid entanglements with the Japanese. It would be his knowledge of the land and its people, as wel as his ingenuity, that would give the group a fighting chance.

The expedition commenced at 1000; they would not have to wait long to see Parsons in action. They had hiked for only a few hours when they happened upon a river with a burned-out bridge. An excel ent swimmer, Parsons disrobed and plunged into the water to begin assembling the remnants of the smoldering timbers into a pontoon bridge. As the others fol owed Parsons into the water, the Filipinos were both impressed and frightened by their leader’s bravado. One approached McCoy. “Sir,” he cautioned, “there are many crocodiles in this river.” McCoy immediately ordered the guerril a carrying the tommy gun to stand guard over the operation. Only when the group had successful y crossed did McCoy decide to tel Parsons about the crocodiles. “His skin is natural y dark,” wrote McCoy, “but he turned pale.”