| Show THEY WERE E E ff C b t L 1 0 WHITE Y TIb STORY STOR Rv so FAR The story of theIr part In ta the battle batuc to for the Philip Is being told by font of the five naval M Motor of leers ce who are all ill that t Is left of are arc T Torpedo float Boat Squadron 3 S. The They ant John Bun eie y now Commander squadron aron commander R n. n an and t fl B D. Kelly Belly second command ln ln command Ensigns Enslen E E. E Anthony Akers and George Georce Cox Cot lr Jt r After Alter Pe Pearl l Harbor orders Kelly to take toke three of set let the boats to te nata Bataan an where they op headquarters Kelly has haa a badly i Lashed fi beer but doesn't dare due take time to g co to the hospItal as things are g fast Durin During the first bl big blK air uld the Pi PT boats shot down three Jap dIve uve bombers Kelly Is speaking CHAPTER in III When Bulkeley y got b back lck he took one look at me and ordered me to toe the e hospital at Corregidor But when We got there they told us that beautiful ful big modern thousand one-thousand-bed hosPital hospItal hospital hos- hos Pital had been abandoned There it was I dont don't know J. how much it had cost as useless to us as a Buddhist monastery The patients had all I been moved down into one hundred beds in one of the tunnels in the Rock I wasn't so delirious that I Ic c couldn't figure out why Because with no aircraft or anti antiaircraft anti protection protection protection pro pro- that big expensive topside hospital was just an unprotected tar tar- get The next I remember was down downin in the tunnel In the army hospital hospit ll under Corregidor the army doctor asking me what treatment Id I'd had hadas as he cut the shirt off oil my back back It it wouldn't come off over my hand any more But the thing that impressed me even most most even then was then was the army nurses There were fourteen of them themon on th the Rock and remember I hadn't talked to a white woman since we sailed from rom the States States- Heretofore I hadn't paid much attention to women women women wom wom- en but somehow the war and everything every thing made a a big difference Or maybe mabe It was Peggy herself because she was a very cute kid A brunette about medium height and very trim but mostly it was her green eyes ees I guess and a cute way she had of telling you very firmly what you had to do so that you grinned but Just the same you did it She started right in bossing me around while she helped cut of off my shirt The liThe whole army was listening in said Bulkeley Bulkeley- liD Don on Bell that Manila radio announcer who they say was shot by the Japs the first day they entered the city was al always always always al- al ways encouraging And even more so 20 was from the American west coast telling us we wouldn't be forgotten that the people knew we were putting up a m magnificent fight tight It came at eleven at night Bulkeley went on I had my three boats o out t there by 1130 Funny thing that old ship h had ld been heen an aircraft carrier in the battle of Jutland first Jutland-first first boat ever to launch a plane in actual battle She survives the whole German Imperial fleet and more than twenty years la later r ends up on an American mine halfway round the world When we got there survivors were so thick we didn't have to zigzag zigzag zigzag zig zig- zag to pick them up just up-just just went straight ahead and ande we e got all we could handle although there were cries coming out of the darkness all around Finally our shoulders got gotso gotso gotso so weak pulling them up the sea ladder ladder ladder lad lad- der that we couldn't lift them So Sowed Sowed Sowed wed we'd throw lines out Into the d dark dark- It was like casting for trout trout and and haul them back with a l dozen people hanging on Wed We'd just pull them on In scraping ln-scraping scraping off a few e ears and now and then a nose and plenty of skin on the side of our boat but boat but they were drowning every minute and it was as the only way Our boat m managed managed man man- ln- ln aged to rescue as m many as Had Hadem Hadem Hadem em em lying and standing every place But the queerest thing came at atthe atthe atthe the end The cries out in the d darkness darkness dark dark- ness had almost stopped and we wei were i rr re cruising for the crumbs when donl out over the w water lter I heard so e c whistling a tune I couldn't be bec c reit lIt it- But we changed course an presently C came alongside an In aviator avi avi- ator Hed He'd been blown blown way out there along with three life lie belts Hed He'd put one of them under his feet another under his head like a pillow and the third under his behind Had his hish h hands comfort comfortably folded on his stomach He thanked us said he couldn't swim so hed he'd been whistling j lust just to kill time until someone C came along Asked d If it there was anything he could do That guy had plenty guts Six of the survivors died before could land them-exposure them and we burns bringing them into They beg began ln hospital before dawn said Kel Kel- my gay y 1 r iv Y One of them was a Filipino boy y who'd been second engineer Hed He'd been burned all over except where here his shorts had been and he screamed reamed horribly when they sprayed prayed his bis burns bums They'd put him himin himin himIn in In the still stiff w wagon lgon but an army doctor doctor doctor doc doc- tor tor felt his pulse and said sold Hell mans man's not dead so they sent that him him here It hurt so bad to touch him when they had to turn him for s f raying Praying that he finally persuaded the e nurses to lift him by the hair on his bis head bead Meanwhile gloomy talk was getting get get- ting ne me worried about the whole picture pic pie and the next d day lY the skipper t ture re liege er came in to see me me- me said u R. R B. B Kelly sent him over on courier duty He was looking lookIng looking look look- ing pretty grim When I l asked him about these rumors concerning the theair theair theair air corps he said it had practically llly been annihilated annihIlated we we only had six P PAO's left and that was why everything everything every every- thing was going to hell The Japs had wiped out Clark and Nichols Fields and also Iba except for a few scattered planes Also they had got seven of the navys navy's fourteen clipped clipped them of off neatly when they had landed for g gas lS One of ot them had been the navy plane which hit Colin CoHn Kellys Kelly's battleship before he finally got It Yet I couldn't see how they had done It until a few tew days later when they began moving patients from tram the Manila hospital it was the forerunner forerunner fore tore runner of evacuation although we didn't guess that yet into dor In the Cot on my left was a Texas kid a pilot from Clark Field On the other side was an Ohio pilot from Iba Texas was pretty sick so the first night I shot the breeze with the Ohio boy He said hed he'd been shot down the second day of the war His squadron had been circling looking for Jap planes which the listening devices had picked up out at sea heading in from the direction of Formosa They'd been up all morning were almost out of gas so decided to land and refuel The first plane came In all right but the second overshot the field His plane was the third and he said as he put his wheels on the ground a load of bombs crashed down out of the clouds onto the oth- oth i it Jf a 5 a r t ti ti t ap wt t tice ice Our coastal batteries were having hav have having ing to fall Call back er end of the field Of course he poured the soup into her and took off oft He tried to gain altitude and headed for Nichols Field when suddenly suddenly suddenly sud sud- denly a flight of J Jap lp fighters popped out of the clouds He turned and he headed right for the center of It It but when he pressed the button hutton only one of his six guns would work work- the rest were jammed He said dont don't ask him why why ask ask the guys who designed them or installed them or serviced them His job was just to press the button and hed he'd done that There he was with two Zeros on his tail taU filling him full of holes holes holes- they were explosive bullets too he had gashes all over where hed he'd been nicked He said ald he dived into a ane ne nearby near cloud and managed to shake them but then his motor began began began be be- gan to sputter sputter had had ld been almost out of gas when the attack started and the Jap bullets in his t tanks h had ld spilled the rest So he headed her nose down out of the cloud and as luck would have it spotted an emergency emergency emergency emer emer- gency field But his wing tip hit a tree and ond the plane cr cracked up tip mashing in all aU the bones on the right side of his face Hed He'd spent a week In a native hospital hospit ll on a bamboo bunk without the bones set and now he could only mumble to me out of the left corner of his mouth The next day Tex on the other side told me his story He was also a fighter pilot and his squadron had hild I been at Cl Clark Field flying Field flying all morn- morn Ing They'd come down to gas the planes and the pilots were sitting around on the wings or In their cockpits cockpits cockpits cock cock- pits waiting for orders to t take off when suddenly there was a big b bang and the pl plane lne he hc was sitting in seemed to jump about forty feet inthe Inthe In Inthe the air and then back backwith backwith backwith with its wings folded over the cockpit cockpit cock cock- pit pit- The Japs had popped out of a cloud and let them have it lIe He cr crawled out unscratched but he heS S said lid for tor h half hah lU an hour everything W was lS in the wildest confusion the contusion the Japs circling above blowing those grounded planes around like popcorn popcorn popcorn pop pop- corn in to a hot bot skillet The dope on the listening devices seemed to be he said that they had picked up the Japs a hundred miles at se sea l followed them in all aU right but then lost when they were fifteen miles off the CO coast But somebody decided the J Japs I must be heading for tor Baguio Bacula and i they were sitting there all gassed up waiting word to t take off and Intercept the Japs before they got gotto gotto gotto to Baguio Whereas as a matter of fact the J Japs were perched in a cloud right over ver their own field W waiting to let them have ItHe ItHe ItHe It He said after alter the bombing they'd managed to piece together out of at the wreckage about ten per pcr cent of the planes they'd originally h had ld A week later hed he'd cracked up landing on a soft spot on the field field field-a a bomb crater that hadn't been properly filled filled and and here he was The liThe next time the skipper here dropped in on me mc he said that was the dope he was getting that getting that we had only six P left Soon it got down to two we c called em cm the Ph Phantom and the Lone Ranger And I said My God what's going to happen happe to us I told him I didn't know said Bulkeley but that Id I'd been talking to the Admiral ll who'd said th that lt we couldn't possibly hope to hold the Philippine Islands blands that Singapore and Hong Kong would fall too unless unless unless un un- less help arrived arrived and and soon And probably the Dutch E East Indies Well that floored me said Kel Kel- ly So So I asked him how they were going to use the wouldn't wouldn't they let us go out on any offensive missions He s said lid hed he'd been trying to get the Admiral to let him go to Lingayen Gulf Gull on a raid Eighty Jap transports were up there l landing landIng land land- Ing troops and our cO coastal ll batterIes batteries batteries batter batter- ies were having to fall back because of J Jap lp air superiority superiority Tap Jap fighters diving on the batteries and machine- machine gunning them until no one could take it Then I asked the skipper how the infantry was holding Not worth wortha a damn he said The strafing Is Just cutting them to ribbons Not only that but the Japs are landing tanks tanks tanks-a a hell of a lot of automatic weapons which are arc just what we need and haven't got got- By the time he left I was as low as he was That night Peggy who W was lS on night duty got a few minutes off about one o'clock to come in and shoot the breeze with me Shed She'd been picking up a l lot of stuff and she said a bunch of our tank-corps tank boys had just been brought in She told me what they'd been telling her and finally said she guessed it wouldn't hurt if I went in and lay down for hall half an hour on an empty bunk next to them so I could hear hearit it myself walked two hundred kilometers kilometers kilometers kilo kilo- meters b barefoot Four of them had been sent in to head off offa a J Jap lP l landing near B they they were to go ahead of four columns of infantry and pave the way for retaking a little fishing village held by a small Jap force The boys said their major had assured them the Japs had nothing bigger than caliber 50 machine guns of of course their armor would stop that So they started on in when all of a sudden sudden Barn I The Japs had waited until they got within good goodr r range and then opened up with an antitank tank gun which knocked the fhe he doors off of the lead t tank and then because the road was too narrow for forthe forthe forthe the rest to turn around on an they knocked the treads off all the others others others oth oth- ers except one Well then what did you do I asked the kids Fired about two hundred rounds of caliber 50 and four rounds of 37 millimeter cannon fl Which way were you rou shooting Every which way You see sec it all happened so fast we couldn't tell where the J Jap lp fire was coming from At the end of five minutes three of those tasks tanks ended up IP rn lethe the rice paddy they paddy they were fourteen fourteen- ton light t tanks two tanks two of them with the doors blown off and in hi one of these the Jap m machine gun fire had cut the legs off the lieutenant 1 Jr command The others were riddled with holes Our tank W was lS the only one that w wasn't hurt II So what did you do II Tried to turn it around and get the hell out of there But the rO road ld was too narrow and then the t tank got stuck in reverse and ended up upon upon upon on Its side in the rice p paddy Wh What lt did the Int infantry do R Ran ln like rabbits they have any guns Only rifles not rifles not a machine gunIn gun gunIn gunin In the crowd Maybe they didn't have anything else to give them but anyway lY the major said all they would find up there was rifles riDes and If it there were any Jap machine guns the tanks would deal with that So there they were being cut to ribbons ribbons rib rIb- bons by concealed m machine gun fire and nothing else to do but get for cover II all aU this this sending sending those tanks into a trap without scouting ahe ahead seem ahead seem ld-seem seem like a d fool damn maneuver maneuver ma ma- to you I asked him Well the kid s said the major and the lieutenant h had ld worked out the same maneuver at armored school back in the States It had worked there they thought it was pretty good So I asked the kid why bethought he be thought it hadn't worked this time II M Maybe lybe because the Japs were too clever in hiding biding their tank anti-tank guns and too good shots They knocked the treads and doors doon off most of the tanks before they had bad time to do anything And then unlike unlike unlike un un- un- un like the roads back in the States these were narrow na native tive roads with v rice paddies on both sides sides- you couldn't m maneuver maneuver I 10 TO lIE HE CONTINUED l |
