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Show P"" C THEY WERE CsS WHITE W.N.U.FEATURES torpedo tubes, and four 50-caliber machine guns firing In pairs from each side. As for armor, well, there's a story on that. The first time we tangled with the Japs one of our machine-gunners kept crouching down behind the shield which rose just under the noses of his guns. When It was over we asked him why he hadn't stood up to fire. " 'Hell, he said. 'I didn't want to get nicked. I was crouching down behind that armor.' Then we had to tell him that shield was -lnch plywoodkeeps ply-woodkeeps spray out of your eyes, but it can't stop anything the Japs might tend. There isn't an ounce of armor steel on the boat we're little eggshells, designed to roar In, let fly a Sunday punch, and then get the hell out, tigging to dodge the shells but again I'm getting ahead. "We went out to the islands last fall. I was commanding officer of the squadron I'd picked every officer offi-cer and man in the outfit from volunteerstold vol-unteerstold them we were heading for trouble. So they piled us and our six boats on a tanker. In late sum- 'It'i a hell of a time to declare war,' and rolled over." "The message said I was to come on down to the Commandantla," continued Bulkeley. "It's an old thick-walled Spanish building, and when I got there, Admiral Rockwell, Rock-well, who was in command at Ca-vfte, Ca-vfte, and Captain Ray, his chief of staff, were already dressed. Dawn was Just beginning to break over Manila Bay, and the Admiral was watching the sky. They ought to be here any minute,' he saia. And then he told me to prepare my six boats for war stations. They were going to send us over to Bataan at the naval base In Marlvelet Harbor, Just opposite Corregidor." "I was prepared for the war," said Kelly, the squadron's second in command, com-mand, a tall blond lieutenant with quick blue eyes. "I'd heard about the secret operation orders what the fleet would do under any of three eventualities, so the night before be-fore I'd gone over to the Army and Navy Club at Manila and put aboard the thickest charcoal-broiled filet mignon I could buy there, plus French fries and a big tomato with Roquefort dressing, finishing off with brandy and a cigar. I figured I'd at least have them to remember. "We spent that first day fully manned, anticipating a bombing attack. at-tack. Five of the boats were dispersed dis-persed along the shore about a hundred hun-dred yards apart the sixth was patrolling. pa-trolling. All day we loaded them with food cans of corned beef, Vienna Vi-enna sausage, vegetables, and canned potatoes don't laugh at that, it's better than rice canned fruit, fruit, coffee. "I saw the first planes about noon flying out over the bay. At first I thought they were ours, but after about a minute our shore batteries opened up. They were coming over at 20,000 and of course immediately we shoved all our boats off and out into the bay. But we heard nothing noth-ing drop. It was probably Just a reconnaissance raid feeling us out. "Of course there were all kinds of rumors that Zamboanga and Davao, down in the southern archipelago, archi-pelago, had been taken. Also that our navy patrol planes had gone up to Northern Luzon to intercept Jap transports gathering off Aparri there. We even heard our aircraft tenders had been surprised and taken, tak-en, but that one proved false. Yet that morning, nothing was sure. "About three o'clock orders came from Squadron Commander Bulkeley Bulke-ley to send three boats, under my command, over to Mariveles on Ba- FOREWORD This story was told ma largely ta the officers' quarters of the Motor Torpedo Tor-pedo Boat lUtlon at Melville, Rhode Island, by four young officers of MTB Squadron 3, who were all that was left of the squadron which proudly sailed for the Philippines last sum-mer. sum-mer. A fifth officer. Lieutenant Hen-ry Hen-ry J. Brantlngham, has since arrived ar-rived from Australia. These men had been singled out from the multitude for return to America because General MacArtmir believed that tha MTB's had proved their worth In warfare, and hoped that these officers could bring back to America their actual battle experience, expe-rience, by which trainees could benefit. bene-fit. Their Squadron Commander, Lieutenant Lieu-tenant John Bulkeley (now Lieutenant-Commander) ef course needs no IntroducUon, as he Is already a national na-tional hero for his part In bringing MacArthur out of Bataan. But because be-cause the navy was then keeping him so busy fulfilling his obligations as a national hero, Bulkeley had to delegate to Lieutenant Robert Boiling Boi-ling Kelly a major part of the task of rounding out the narrative. I think . the reader will agree that the choice was wise, for Lieutenant Kelly, In addlUon to being a brave and competent naval officer, has a sense of narrative and a keen eye for significant sig-nificant detail, two attributes which may never help him In battle but which were of great value to this book. Ensigns Anthony Akers and George E. Cox, Jr., also contributed much vivid detail. As a result, I found when I had finished that I had not Just the adventure ad-venture story of a single squadron, but In the background the whole tragic trag-ic panorama of the Philippine campaignAmerica's cam-paignAmerica's little Dunkirk. We are a democracy, running a war. If our mistakes are concealed from us, they can never be corrected. Facts are frequently and properly withheld in a war, because the enemy would take advantage of our weaknesses weak-nesses If he knew them. But this story now can safely be told because the sad chapter Is ended. The Japanese Japa-nese know Just how Inadequate our equipment was, because they destroyed de-stroyed or captured practically all of It. I have been wandering In and out of wars since 1939, and many times before have I seen the sad young men come out of battle come with the whistle of flying steel and the rumble of falling walls still In their ears, come out to the fat, well fed cities behind the lines, where the complacent citizens always choose from the newsstands those papers whose headlines proclaim every skirmish skir-mish as a magnificent victory. And through those plump cities he sad young men back from battle wander as strangers in a strange land, talking a grim language of real-Ism real-Ism which the smug citizenry doesn't understand, trying to tell of a tragedy which few enjoy hearing. These four sad young men differ from those I have talked to in Europe Eu-rope only in that they are Americans, and the tragedy they bear witness to Is our own failure, and the smugness smug-ness they struggle against is our own complacency. waff taan and report to the submarine tender there for food, water, and torpedoes, and to remain on the ready available to go out and attack at-tack anything he ordered us to. By five o'clock we cast off. We had some passengers to deliver at Corregidor, Cor-regidor, so it was eight and plenty dark before we were outside the mine fields, feeling our way into Mariveles. We thought we knew those mine fields, but in pitch-darkness, with the mine-field lights turned off and of course no lights on our boats now, it was something else again. "At this point the army took over. They heard the roar of our motors and thought it was Jap planes. Searchlights began winking on all over Bataan, feeling up into the sky for planes our motors were echoing against the mountains on Bataan, so they couldn't tell where the noise was coming from. Every artillery post for twenty-six kilometers around went on the alert, and for a few minutes it was a question whether we were going to be blown to hell by a mine or by one of our own shore batteries. "But finally we snaked through, tied up alongside our sub tender, and then its skipper delivered a piece of nasty news. Told us he had orders to get under way Just before daylight, out to sea didn't know just where they were sending him maybe south, maybe the Dutch East Indies, anyway, he wouldn't be back. "So then the fun began. There we were no base, rations for only ten days, and a big problem in how we were to live ourselves and what in hell we would do with the boats when the planes came over. In addition ad-dition to which, we were almost flat out of gas. and what would we do for fuel to fight this war? "Pretty soon we began finding some of the answers. For instance just around the coast from Mariveles Mari-veles in Sisiman Cove was a native village practically abandoned except ex-cept for a few families about twenty twen-ty nipa huts in alL We moved in and took over. A nipa hut is a little lit-tle contraption single room with thatched roof and sides up off the ground four or five feet on bamboo stilts. Under it the natives keep their pigs and chickens. The floor is split bamboo, and never very tight, so the crumbs and small pieces of garbage dropped on it can sift down into the pigs and chickens. In one corner of the hut is a sandbox, and on this sand they build a fire for cooking. There never is a chimneythe chim-neythe smoke just goes out the windows or through the floor cracks. no BE CONTINUED) "They expect you to stay there until you're killed or captured." mer, we snuck through the Panama Canal one night, and were steaming up Manila Bay In the early fall. "On my way back here last week, I had a few hours in Honolulu, and the boys were still talking about how they'd been surprised on December De-cember 7. I don't know why they should have been, because they got the same warning we did in Manila. That war was maybe days, perhaps even only hours, away. The only thing that surprised us was that it was Pearl Harbor that got the first attack, not us. "We'd been following the negotiations. negotia-tions. We knew we needed sixty more days to put the islands in shape for decent defense. We needed need-ed planes and tanks. Most impor tant of all, at least half the Filipino army had never had a uniform on until a few weeks before the fighting started. They needed training, and Washington knew this just as well as we did, and of course didn't want war. "But now for a little geography. Here's Manila Bay a big beautiful harbor twenty miles across. At the far end Is the city of Manila, and if you were suddenly put down there, you'd think you were in Los Angeles, until you noticed the faces of the people. At the mouth of Manila Bay, the upper lip is Bataan Peninsula and the lower one is Batangas, with the Rock Corregidor Island a hard little pill between the two lips. And we are stationed at Cavite, the big American naval base on the lower side of the bay, about halfway between be-tween Manila and the harbor's mouth. "We're under orders of Admiral Hart, who is Commander in Chief of the Far Eastern fleet, based there. Only how long will we stay? Because as war drew close, rumors began to fly. If it came soon, we might be getting out because we didn't have air superiority. The Japs could run down from Formosa and bag our little Asiatic fleet, so maybe we'd be pulling out for the southern islands, waiting for aircraft carriers which would bring fighters to protect pro-tect us. 'The night of December 8 we were all asleep in the officers' quarters at Cavite," Bulkeley went on, "when my telephone rang about three in the morning and I first learned the Japs had struck at Pearl Harbor." "When they shook me, I didn't believe it," said Ensign Akers. He's a tall, dark silent Texan. "I was sure they were kidding. I just said. CHAPTER I "You don't understand," said the young naval officer, "we were expendable." ex-pendable." He was very earnest as he lolled on the bunk in the officers' quarters of the torpedo station at Newport, along with the other three officers who had also just got out of the Philippines. I admitted I didn't understand. "Well, it's like. this. Suppose you're a sergeant machine-gunner, and your army is retreating and the enemy advancing. The captain takes you to a machine gun covering the road. 'You're to stay here and hold this position,' he tells you. 'For how long?' you ask. 'Never mind,' he answers, 'just hold it.' Then you know you're expendable. In a war, anything can be expendable money or gasoline or equipment or most usually men. They are expending you and that machine gun to get time. They don't expect to see either ei-ther one again. They expect you to stay there and spray that road with steel until you're killed or captured, holding up the enemy for a few minutes min-utes or even a precious quarter of an hour. "You know the situation that those few minutes gained are worth the life of a man to your army. So you don't mind it until you come back here where people waste hours and days and sometimes weeks, when you've seen your friends give their lives to save minutes-r" "Look, never mind about that," said Lieutenant John Bulkeley, the senior officer. "People don't like to hear about that I've learned that In the week I've been back. Let's start at the beginning. And first a word about us. "We four are what is left of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron three. Last fall there were six little boats and about a dozen men to a boat Each one is a plywood speedboat seventy feet long and twenty feet wide, powered pow-ered by three Packard motors which can send her roaring over the top of the water about as fast as a Packard Pack-ard automobile ever gets a chance to travel on a highway. So fast in fact that those motors have to be changed every few hundred hours. They should be, but what happens to that pretty theory in a war is another an-other story we lost every spare motor mo-tor when our bases were bombed, and some of those in the boats had to do quadruple their allotted term before the boats were lost but that's getting ahead of the story. "Each boat is armed with four |