My Hitch in Hell Page 6
After waiting all day for orders as to where our next battle would be, I contacted my good friend Lew. With his help, we obtained a jeep and driver and drove the few miles back to our last battlefield. There, not more than twenty feet from the road, was a flag of the rising sun. About four feet wide and three feet long, it looked brand-new, without a mark on it. Then, about two feet from the flag, we found a sniper’s rifle, which came apart in the middle, thus allowing the carrier to move about without the disturbance associated with a full-scale rifle. We hurriedly picked up the two items, jumped into the jeep, and headed for our bivouac area, singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
That afternoon, after our little mission, I went to the Canopus, found my new friend, and negotiated dinner that night for Lew and me and dinner the next night for my whole tank crew, all four of us. The first night we had roast beef, all the trimmings and chocolate cake with ice cream. The following night we had the special fried chicken, once again with all the trimmings, and cherry pie à la mode.
I was able to obtain enough Japanese items to have dinner aboard ship three more times. In fact, the last time was just a week before the surrender of Bataan. On the day we surrendered in April, the crew of the Canopus set sail for Corregidor and halfway there scuttled the ship. Along with the ship went forty cherry pies. (I met the ship’s baker at one of our POW reunions, and he told me it was one of the saddest days of his life when he had to scuttle those pies.) An old saying goes, “The Navy eats well.” How true, how true.
February and March were periods of extremely high and very unusual fatalities. Lt. Edward G. Winger, a most courageous and warm individual, became the victim of the enemy’s first use of oil and flamethrowers. Lieutenant Winger was blinded by this terrible new weapon and jammed his tank between two large trees, where it had to be abandoned.
In another tragedy, after running directly into one of those flamethrowers, a tank caught fire, burning the crew. The Japanese, instead of allowing the men to come out and surrender, dug foxholes all around the tank and threw the dirt and sand directly into the tank through the top turret entrance. By burying the men in the tank, the Japanese were able to plan a surprise attack on our rescue tank and crew.
The Japanese hid in holes beneath the tank, and as soon as our rescue effort started, they began firing at us. Luckily, being under the tank did not allow them clean shots, and the rescue team was able to reboard the tank. Within minutes the team eliminated the small Japanese contingent under it. After towing the tank back to the bivouac area, we were able to give our buddies a decent burial. Two had died from burns, and two were suffocated by the dirt and sand.
By the end of March, our daily food ration seldom contained as much as eight hundred calories. So many men were sick with dengue fever and malaria that we had to set up emergency dispensaries in the field because many of the sick could not be moved to the base hospital.
Our tank company had been constantly working either on the front lines or in the forward position, and we were always far from our rear echelon and kitchens. Our food, what little there was, was cold, bland, and more geared to the Filipino than to the Caucasian taste. In fact, besides our contingent of fighting men, our forces on Bataan were also feeding the approximately twenty-eight thousand Filipino civilians who had fled the advancing Japanese army and followed us into Bataan, hoping for safety and food. Although these civilians came of their own free will, they still had to be fed, and the food came from our already meager supply.
It was not just the lack of food that disturbed us. An additional concern was the fact that our entire battalion was issued only ten gallons of gas per day for all purposes except going into battle.
By April 1, one thousand men a day entered our hospital wards with one or more disabling sicknesses. Two days later, our medics estimated that between 75 percent and 80 percent of our frontline troops were ill. Coincidentally, on this date the Japanese carried out the biggest attack of the war. April 3 was the anniversary of the ascension to the throne of Emperor Jimmu, the first occupant of the Imperial throne, and it was important to the Japanese that the all-out offensive start on this momentous day.
At 9:00 in the morning at our last outpost—the last line of defense along the Orion-Bagac line—U.S. observers noted more than nineteen artillery batteries, ten mortar batteries, and countless tanks, all ready to strike. Within minutes the assault began. The artillery barrage was fortified by aerial bombardment of our front lines, and the Japanese tanks advanced slowly but surely into the center of our troops. The enemy’s objective was to capture Mount Samat, only a few kilometers from the rear of our front line. With a ground force numbering close to thirty thousand men, and with sixty twin-engine bombers constantly bombarding our front lines, the enemy achieved its goal.
Company B had to take over more and more of the beach defense as the Filipinos’ ineffectiveness increased and the enemy’s activities and threats became more intense. Gasoline was once again in short supply. In fact, 92-octane gas, the lowest rating gas that the tanks could use for safe operation, was no longer available. Putting gas with an octane rating of 85 into our tanks meant that we could not be sure how our engines would respond under extreme circumstances. Also, because we were no longer in direct combat with Japanese armored vehicles, our ordnance department converted our 37mm armor-piercing shells into high-explosive shells.
We defenders on Bataan were killed or wounded at an alarming rate. The dispirited U.S. and Filipino troops were tired, sick, and starving. Continued resistance was virtually impossible. Each nightfall we survivors counted our losses and began to appreciate our luck—lucky is how we felt—to be alive. We all knew the war was slowly coming to an end for us.
During the next few days, fighting was ineffectual in spite of the casualties inflicted on the enemy. On April 7, with our orders to hold the line at all costs, the Japanese infantry charged our position in such large numbers that they literally used their dead and dying soldiers as stepping-stones to cross the imaginary front line.
According to the Shinto religion, the Japanese believed that the emperor was a god, or a divine being, and that if a soldier died for the emperor, the solider would enjoy an afterlife of eternal bliss. During this deadly battle, we realized that the Japanese soldiers were not fighting just to defeat us but were fighting in order to die for the emperor, a concept that was difficult for us to accept. In contrast to the Japanese, the Germans, who indeed wanted to win, also wanted to live. The Germans fought as bravely and as well as the Japanese, but this fanatical willingness to die was rarely witnessed by those Americans fighting the German soldiers.
The continued firing of our machine guns caused the barrels to become so red-hot they could no longer fire, forcing us to retreat yet another few hundred yards. It was another day of being pushed back another half a kilometer, and not many kilometers were left. The handwriting was on the wall: this slaughter could not go on much longer. Our tanks were bombed on and off the trails; we were severely punished without an opportunity to fight back. Our stamina was gone, our food was gone, our health was deteriorating, and our ammunition and gas had just about run out. We were helpless. The Filipino soldiers, who could try to slip back into their barrios and resume a more normal life, were in fact moving toward the line of least resistance, or the road leading out of Bataan.
After four months of fighting the enemy, of being on short rations, and of surviving everything from malaria to gunshot wounds with little or no medical treatment, we heard the news: the Japanese had finally cracked our last defense. We were now only about two miles from the water’s edge with no place to go and without the means to fight. We were going to surrender. No, we did not surrender as individuals, but instead we were surrendered as an entire army by our commanding officer. Fighting for another day would only mean thousands more would die. Surrender was the only way to save as many men and women as possible.
We troops felt let down, even betrayed. If we had been supplied with enough ammuni
tion and guns, troops and equipment, and food and medical supplies, we believed that we would have been able to repel the Japanese. Instead, we were facing a degrading surrender and the brutality that was surely to go along with it.
We were scared and wondered what was going to happen to us. At 6:40 on the evening of April 8, 1942, Gen. Edward E King acknowledged the situation as very critical. Apparently, he knew our battle on Bataan was coming to a fast, bloody, and dangerous end. General King paced back and forth at Bataan forces headquarters, his mind only on the event that he alone knew would put all of his fighting forces in great danger. But it had to be done, and he had to do it: he must face the enemy and surrender.
General King sent the following message to the commanders of the tank units:
You will make plans, to be communicated to company commanders only, and be prepared to destroy within one hour after receipt by radio, or other means, of the code word CRASH, all tanks and combat vehicles, arms, ammunition, gas and radios, reserving sufficient trucks to move our forces to the rear echelons as soon as everything is accomplished.
By 10:30 that night, General King made an announcement to the three general officers present. He said that further resistance would result in the massacre of the six thousand sick and wounded and the twenty-eight thousand Filipino refugees now congested in and around the front lines. General King believed that fighting on was useless and that the forces could hold out, at the longest, one more day. At midnight General King, with eyes puffed from holding back the tears, declared that the following morning at daybreak he was going to take a white flag across the front line on Bataan. That, he said, was his responsibility.
When our tank commander asked if any help was on the way, General King said sadly, “No”—nothing now and nothing in the future. All of this was unknown to most of the men on Bataan, but we did know that we could not go on, that the situation was hopeless. Then, at ten minutes to midnight on April 8, ordnance was instructed to begin destroying all equipment and supplies under their jurisdiction. That night and into the morning I had the radio in our tank tuned to General King’s command post frequency, and at 7:00 in the morning, we heard the words, loud and clear: “CRASH, CRASH, CRASH.”
I passed the message on to Capt. Robert S. Sorensen. He just gulped down a sob of distress and ordered us to destroy everything in sight. We did what we were supposed to do. First, we lined up the tanks one behind the other and then fired rounds of 37mm shells from one tank into the engine and body of the tank in front. Then we threw away our guns and ammunition. We were “naked” soldiers at the mercy of the enemy. That was what the Japanese had ordered, and General King had no choice but to agree to their terms.
There was not a dry eye among us. Our world had collapsed, we were beaten, and we had lost the war for the United States. God, how could we live with ourselves again after a defeat like this? We let our country, our families, and our friends down. We felt like cowards. I failed Laura. I had told her I would be home soon and asked her to wait till I returned before telling her family about us. I felt my being there would ease the verbal abuse she was sure to get from her father. I worried, What was she going to do now? How would she take this news when she heard about it? Would she think I was a coward? All I could think about was Laura.
The more I thought about my beloved wife the more I was determined to get home in one piece. My initial plan was not to get involved in any unnecessary actions or confrontations with the Japanese. In addition, not knowing the Japanese, I decided that after being taken prisoner I would neither rush to be first to do anything nor be the last one to respond to their wishes. I reasoned that being first might result in my doing something wrong and being last could signify I was a laggard. The goal I established for myself was to live and to get home all in one piece. Everything I did from that day forward had to lead to my accomplishing that primary goal. I wanted to be back with Laura, to hold her in my arms, and to tell her how much I missed her. I had to get back. That was all there was to it.
As soon as we finished destroying all of our equipment, we went back to our bivouac area for further instructions. Our commanding officer, Captain Sorensen, told us that we had a few options available. First, we could take off for Corregidor, which meant we would have to find a boat that would take us, and once there we would have to face the possibility of the eventual surrender of that fortress. Second, we could try to escape into the jungle and hope that we would be able to survive without being captured. Finally, we could all stay together and surrender as a unit. Captain Sorensen then said, “We fought together; let’s surrender together.” I chose to surrender with the men from Company B. I started out with these men, and I wanted to be with them at the climax of our war effort.
In Western civilizations, capture has always been viewed as being better than death, and surrender was looked upon as one of the misfortunes of war. True, luck does play a large part in survival, and our bad luck was that we were being captured by people from a civilization that believed death was preferable to surrender.
CHAPTER 3
THE FALL OF BATAAN
On April 8, at about nine o’clock in the evening, the ground began to shake. Our legs felt like rubber stilts as we started to rock back and forth. Without realizing it, we were in the middle of a most unusual phenomenon for the Philippines—an earthquake. Every man felt the earth tremble, as if God was telling us, “I’m unhappy with what is happening.” The explosions from destroying all our equipment, guns, and ammunition were overshadowed by the devastating effects of nature. To many of us it was the last straw of defeat, like the coming of the end of the world. All we wanted to know was, How much more pain—not just the physical, but the mental pain of anxiety, frustration, and uncertainty—could we be expected to endure?
At 9:30 the following morning, all hell broke loose once again, but this time it was man-made. Japanese planes rained bombs all over Bataan. After the planes dropped their bomb loads, they then began a systematic strafing of all of the men, remaining equipment, and installations they were able to locate.
We all ran scared. We were on a battlefield with no way to defend ourselves. Oh God, we thought, this is the end and what a way to have to go. Is this what General King bargained for? It couldn’t be! What was going wrong? What happened to our supposed surrender? That was the question on the mind of every American and Filipino on Bataan that hour. We were being annihilated; it was the beginning of the Bataan massacre.
As the bombs started to drop, a few of my buddies and I looked for a safe haven, any place to get out of the way of the flying shrapnel. Not too far away we saw a very primitive Filipino baking oven that native women used to bake breads and babinkas, a sweet cake. The oven was nothing more than a mound of dirt and hardened clay about four feet high and six feet in diameter. It had a small opening at one end that three of us were able to climb into. Once inside we cursed the Japanese for not honoring the surrender, and we vowed to get even for this attack. After about fifteen minutes, the bombing stopped. We were ready to leave our shelter when we heard a blast of gunfire, followed by hundreds of other shots coming from the Japanese planes circling over Bataan. This strafing continued for another twenty-five minutes, while those of us in the shelter wondered what was going on. We also wondered where our other friends were. Did they find shelter from the Zeros’ barrage of bombs and bullets?
Finally, after another hour or so, we decided to come out and see what had happened. We found huge bomb craters within ten feet of where we had taken shelter. Then we noticed that within one hundred feet of our oven there were dozens of other ovens just like ours. As we began hollering the names of some of our friends, other fellows started to emerge from their hiding places. All in all, about thirty of us had taken refuge in the ovens. We gathered in a circle and began discussing what was going on and what we were going to do. We realized for the first time the possibility of our not being taken prisoner but instead of our being slaughtered like animals.
G
ood common sense would have dictated some form of strategy, but fear of the unknown once again overwhelmed us. What was going to happen? Were we going to be taken prisoner and then killed, or would we never be taken prisoner, just killed in this field? Emotions ran high. With wide-open eyes, goose bumps in spite of the high temperature, and voices now only a whisper, as if someone close by was listening, we planned our next move. We decided that if the bombing and strafing continued past noon we would all head for Mariveles, a bustling barrio on the water’s edge and only three miles from the island fortress of Corregidor. From there we would try to obtain a boat to take us to Corregidor or one of the other thousand islands surrounding Bataan. We were not going to stick around and be slaughtered. We would make a run for safety.
At noon, however, the bombing and strafing stopped just as quickly as it started. We did not know why or what was happening. Years later we found out that the Japanese high command would not accept General King’s surrender of only Bataan; they wanted the surrender of all of the Philippines, including the garrison on Corregidor. General King explained that the fortress island of Corregidor was under the command of General Wainwright, and King did not have authority over Corregidor’s men. After much waiting, the surrender of just Bataan was finally accepted.
On April 9, 1942, General MacArthur, from his headquarters in Australia, paid tribute to the defenders of Bataan.
No army has ever done so much with so little. Nothing became it more than in its last hour of trial and agony. To the weeping mothers of its dead, I only say that the sacrifice and halo of Jesus of Nazareth has descended upon their sons and that God will take them unto Himself.
This tribute was not heard by the defenders of Bataan. Instead it was heard by their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts, who were anxiously awaiting word about the fate of their loved ones. The anxiety and the untold heartache that the folks at home had to endure during those last days of fighting on Bataan are another story all its own.