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Show iisrU THEY WERE C OPENEDABLlLN-rr WHITE W.N.U.FEATURES 'Well,' she said, and she sounded sound-ed a little mad, 'what is this, anyway?' any-way?' " 'I guess it's good-by, Peggy, I said. "Then there was a long silence, and when she spoke again I almost thought it was someone else, her voice was so changed. Where are you going?' she asked, very low. 'Can you tell me?' " 'No,' I said. " 'Can you tell me If you're coming com-ing back?' " 'No,' I said. 'I can't tell you that.' " 'Then I guess it's really good-by,' good-by,' she said, and her voice sounded sound-ed flat and a long way off. 'But it's been awfully nice, hasn't it?' " Listen, Peggy, I've written you a letter ' only just then I heard the connection break. It seemed a couple of generals wanted to talk to each other. It was quite a while before I got it back again, and they told me she had waited fifteen minutes and had then gone. I've always hoped what the generals had to say to each other was important. "Of course we weren't engaged. I didn't have a picture of her. In fact, the only thing I had was a few lines she'd scribbled on a piece of paper a few weeks before. We'd been idly talking about how we hoped to get out of the islands, and agreed, half in joke, that whichever of us got out first would write the family .of the other one of those reassuring re-assuring letters about how wonderful wonder-ful life was on Bataan and how well and happy the other one had looked. ! "So, half in joke, she'd scratched the address of her married sister in San Francisco on the back of an I old envelope. This I still had, and ! I intended to write her, and send it f - p v I , l V. 1 --N Jf . . 5 r fry A" i r -v s - ! J, Vr ? . K 11 . , x V THE STORY 80 FAR: The itory of their part In the battle for the Philippines Philip-pines la being told by four of the five naval officers who are all that Is left of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3. They are I.leut. John lulkeley (now Lieutenant Lieuten-ant Commander), squadron commander; I.leut. R. B. Kelly, second-in-command: and Ensigns Anthony Akers and George E. Cox, Jr. Manila had fallen and our naval base at Cavlte had been wiped out, wheo the VI boats took their final crack at the Japs off Bataan. March first General MacArthur took a ride in one of the boats, and everyone knew something was up, because the Philippines Philip-pines couldn't hold out much longer. Lieut. Kelly Is speaking. CHAPTER IX "On March 10 Bulkeley made his usual trip to see MacArthur; this time he brought along all his plans and charts for the trip. The General went over and approved them, and also told Admiral Rockwell and his chief of staff that they were going along, which was the first they had known of the trip they had thought we were going to China. There was also an ominous bit of news some big Jap formation was reported coming com-ing down the west coast of Luzon In our direction. If it was true, it could only be the convoy bringing General Yamashita and his reinforcements. rein-forcements. General MacArthur told Bulkeley we might be leaving very soon, and to come back the next day. "That would be the eleventh of March. Bulkeley went over early in the morning and returned to us at noon. He called in not only me but the other officers, Akers, Cox, and Schumacher, and for the first time showed them copies of our secret orders or-ders and the charts he had worked out for our route. He made the point that we should all keep together, to-gether, but if one broke down, the rest would go on, leaving it to make its way the best it could." "If we met the enemy, we were to avoid them if possible. But if they gave chase and were gaining on us so that an attack was necessary, nec-essary, the 41 boat, in which he would carry the General, his wife, and his son, would turn and run, and my boat, since I was second in command, would lead the attack to give the others time to escape. "The last thing he told us was that we were leaving that very night He left us hard at work on last-minute preparations but would return soon to complete his own. "We didn't tell the men what we were up to or where we were leaving leav-ing Corregidor," continued Lieutenant Lieuten-ant Kelly, but they got their orders to dump that landing-force equipment, equip-ment, to load all spare parts on the boats, move the crew's mess gear back into the ship's galley, and pile the decks with drums of gas. "And while we were doing it, who should walk in but Nat Floyd of the New York Times, exactly the last guy in the world we wanted to see. Sure, we liked him. He said he'd been up to the lines with the army, and then on a hunch, no particular reason, thought he'd drop in on us and see if we had any news. "Then Bulkeley and I went into a huddle. Here Nat was. And bound to get suspicious of the activity. After we'd gone, the story would be almost sure to get out " 'He's a pretty nice guy,' I said. 'Don't suppose we could take him with us, do you?' " 'Well,' said Bulkeley. 'I've got to go along now. But if Nat should happen to stow away in the lazaret and we didn't find him until we were out to sea, why then the story certainly cer-tainly wouldn't get out, would it?' "And do you know, that's just what happened. But in the meantime mean-time there were other things on my mind. Mostly it was how I was going go-ing to get hold of Peggy. There was no telephone at the hospital. She'd said she would phone me sometime between six and seven o'clock today about that date of ours on the fifteenth. "But there was a lot of traffic over the signal-corps field telephone, and she might not get to use it until un-til almost seven. And I was due to pick up my passengers and be gone forever by 6:30 tonight And . I'd never get to say how much I liked her and what a swell, brave kid she was, and good-by. "So I sat down and tried to write it in a letter, which I could leave at Corregidor on my way out, and which she would get when she got back from duty in the lines, and then at least would understand. "I had just finished it about 2:30 and put it in my pocket when they came paging me for a telephone call on that signal-corps phone. It was Peggy her duty hours had been changed, and she was afraid if she waited until seven to call I might be out on patrol, and she might miss me. She just wanted to tell me she'd been able to fix everything for our date on the fifteenth, and was that date all right with me, could I make it? " 'No,' I said. The phone was on the wall in the Philippine army shack, and the shack was crowded with soldiers in addition to all the guys probably listening in on the line. "Well, she said, maybe she could change it for the sixteenth, if that would be better for me. " 'It wouldn't be any better," I said. 'Noihicg would be any bet- tPT.' much speed until the carbon was burned out. "As you know, we'd Intended to make a good speed, but I found my boat wouldn't quite do it. Pretty soon we were lagging fifty yards behind, then, after a while, two hundred. hun-dred. The Admiral didn't mention this for some time. But finally he said: " 'Don't you think we're getting a little far apart?' " 'We'll close in gradually,' I said. And I tried to, but finally we were so far behind Bulkeley's flagship we couldn't see it with the naked eye. "I sent a whispered message to the engine room, ordering them to disconnect the throttle, and to push , the carburetors up with their hands as far as they would go. We now had on every possible ounce of power, pow-er, but the Admiral still wasn't satisfied. sat-isfied. " 'We're closing pretty slowly,' he complained. "Privately, I doubted that we were closing at all, but I only said, 'No use pushing her too hard, sir.' "But about five minutes later we really were closing. Bulkeley, noticing no-ticing we were pretty far behind, had reduced his speed. But, with my throttle disconnected, I couldn't reduce mine, and it took me about a minute to get a message down there telling the engineers to take their hands oft the carburetor levers lev-ers and reconnect them with the controls on the bridge. During this minute we not only gained on Bulkeley's Bulke-ley's boat, but overtook it and went roaring madly past. "In the darkness I could see the Admiral had squared around and was giving me a doubtful look. I could tell he thought he was riding with a madman, and I decided he would worry less if I told him the truth that our maximum speed in this boat was something under forty for-ty knots. Any Japanese destroyer could easily make this maximum of ours, as the Admiral very well knew. But all he said was 'My God!' very softly to himself. "It happened that we were just passing an island. The Admiral glanced over. " 'How far are we from shore, Kelly?' " 'About four miles, sir.' " 'Looks farther than that to me. Take a bow-and-beam bearing." " 'Aye, aye, sir," I said. But of course I didn't have any instruments. instru-ments. So, making the 45-degree angle with two fingers, I sighted along them to a point ahead. When we came just abeam of this point, since we knew our own speed, it would give us roughly our distance from shore very roughly. The Admiral Ad-miral noticed me sighting along my fingers. " 'Don't you have a pelorus?" he said, sharply. " 'No, sir," I said. " 'H-m-m . I suppose the flagship flag-ship has better means?" " 'No, sir," I said. 'They don't." " 'How in hell do you navigate?" " 'By guess and by God, sir," I said. " 'My God!" said the Admiral, and this time he didn't say it so softly. 'I hope," he added wistfully, 'that we get there." "At four o'clock in the morning, my engines suddenly stopped," recalled re-called Lieutenant Kelly. "I knew the strainers were clogged with wax and rust, and it would take half an hour to clean them, which I explained to the Admiral, who was watching watch-ing the other three boats disappear over the horizon. " 'What time will we get to the rendezvous?' "I made a fast mental calculation. 'About 8:30, sir." "Dawn, as we both knew, would come at seven, and with it if the mainland had seen that island signal sig-nal fire Japanese planes, looking for us. " 'That's an hour and a half later than I like to be out," said the Admiral. Ad-miral. Our plans, of course, called for running only at night, and laying lay-ing up by day in the Cuyo Island group, with a general rendezvous in a harbor of one of the central islands is-lands for our start at sunset "There are thirty or forty islands in the Cuyo group, and just before dawn we began to make out the first ones tiny mounds on the horizon hori-zon ahead and around us. The flagship flag-ship had the only detailed chart of them; all I had was a large-sized map of the Philippines, and on this the Cuyos looked like a cluster of some forty-odd flyspecks. "When the Admiral asked how in the world we without navigation instruments in-struments or chart expected to make a proper landfall on the particular par-ticular flyspeck that we all had selected se-lected as rendezvous, I explained we had provided for that; I knew its general location, and from Bulkeley's Bulke-ley's chart I had drawn a pencil sketch of this island. But again he was skeptical. "It was eight o'clock (no planes as yet) before we saw what we thought might be the right one; as we drew nearer, the Admiral agreed that the hills and cove were exactly like my sketch, but when we entered en-tered the cove, it was empty. We circled the island no sign of the other three boats. " 'My God,' said the Admiral, 'what's happened to the General? We arrive, limping in late, and the others aren't here! Where can they be?' (TO BE COXTIXUED) " 'Then I guess it's really good-by,' she said." out by the plane which took Mac-Arthur, Mac-Arthur, telling her what a swell girl her kid sister was. "Kelly's 34 boat was right on time," said Bulkeley. "We in the 41 boat picked up our passengers at Corregidor and met him and the other two boys at the turning light just outside the mine field at seven o'clock to the minute. We had twenty twen-ty passengers in all in our four boats. With me in the 41 boat were General and Mrs. MacArthur, their little boy, and his nurse and a few generals. Kelly in the 34 boat had, to start with, Admiral Rockwell, two colonels, and an army aviation captain. When one of the other boats later broke down, Kelly picked up a few more generals. "But rank made no difference. Washington had ordered MacArthur to bring out the most valuable of his men, and so they were all specialists spe-cialists there was even a staff sergeant, ser-geant, who was a technician, along with us, while thirty-odd generals were left behind on Bataan. "We started out single file, my boat as flagship setting the pace for the other three. First we went fifty miles straight out to sea in the deepening twilight. We'd hoped to get out unnoticed, but suddenly we saw a light glimmer and glow on one of the Japanese islands. It was a signal fire-warning to the mainland that they'd seen us pass. If they had seen it on Luzon, that meant trouble for us maybe bombers bomb-ers at dawn, maybe destroyers later on in the day. By eleven o'clock we made out the outline of Apo Island Is-land against the stars (there was no moon) and checked our navigation, naviga-tion, which we were doing entirely by compass and chart. MacArthur and General Sutherland were pleased with the way it was going." "I can't say that Admiral Rockwell Rock-well was," said Kelly "maybe because be-cause he knew more about the sea than the generals did. I hadn't wanted to worry him. so I hadn't mentioned the fact that ours was the only one of the four boats which hadn't been overhauled, and was so full of carbon that we couldn't make |