Escape From Davao (28 page)

“I understand that you three have an enjoyable situation with your plowing—good food and so forth.

Lieutenant Dobervich and Lieutenant Hawkins, you are suspended from the plowing detail until further notice. Captain Shofner, since you had nothing to do with this offense you wil receive no punishment.”

Realizing the consequences of the sentence, Dobervich immediately entered an appeal.

“But sir, we’ve taken four months to learn plowing. If you put new men in our place they won’t get any work done. Why not give us some other punishment that won’t interfere with the farming?”

“I realize al those things,” replied Nelson. “Possibly after you have had time to redeem yourselves, you wil be al owed to return to the plowing detail. This is more of a gesture to pacify the Japanese should they learn about this thing.”

Nelson’s words revealed that the antique command hierarchy that had been present in other prison camps, one that preferred appeasement of the Japanese to leading men and providing a strong representation for them to their captors, was in effect in Dapecol. There was nothing they could do. The incompetent “Committee of Colonels,” as one Dapecol POW mockingly referred to the prisoners’

leadership, was the highest court.

“At any normal time this would have been no punishment at al ,” Hawkins would say of those ominous events on that fateful Ides of March, “but now, when our plans were nearing their climax, it was the most undesirable blow we could have received.”

Nonsense—that was Melvyn McCoy’s response. They had worked too hard, for too long to see their plans ruined by such a trivial incident. McCoy promised to discuss the matter with Nelson, whom he considered a friend. The Marines also approached Lt. Col. Pol y Humber, the chief American agricultural supervisor.

Sympathetic, Humber promised to intercede on their behalf, too. “Just wait about a week or two,” he reassured them. “I’l talk to the colonel and I’m sure he’l come around.”

Two weeks would be cutting it extremely close, but that time frame would permit Dobervich and Hawkins to participate in the escape. Unfortunately, they would not be able to assist in the shuttling of equipment, a residual effect that would have major ramifications. The POWs knew that they could not expect to just walk past the sentries, their clothes bulging with gear, so they had decided to smuggle their supplies out of the compound prior to the escape and cache the items at a concealed location. After careful consideration, they settled on a dense thicket located in a neglected banana grove between the plowers’ shack and the jungle. The Japanese rarely patrol ed the area, so the chance of their gear being discovered was minimal.

On March 17, as Dobervich and Hawkins reported for work on a pigpen construction project, the others commenced their clandestine labors. Each escapee was largely responsible for smuggling his own gear out of the compound, a process not too difficult given the fact that the Japanese had become accustomed to seeing the prisoners departing for work details with musette bags, blankets, and shelter halves, which they used for comfort during rest periods. But after several days, a predictable problem surfaced: the amount of gear brought out by the coffee pickers was too great and there was no way to safely transport it to the makeshift supply depot near the plowers’ shack on the other side of the camp.

Too great a burden had been placed on the shoulders of Grashio and Shofner. It became apparent that they would not be able to complete the undertaking by March 28, or what Shofner had begun to refer to as

“E-Day.”

For McCoy and Mel nik, the problem threw a wet blanket on the party thrown by West Point graduates to celebrate Founders Day, the academy’s birthday, on March 21. With Japanese permission, the West Pointers had gathered with Annapolis alums near the coffee patch to share food, songs, speeches, and memories. The highlight was the recitation of fake telegrams that had been “delivered” to Dapecol to honor the occasion. There were messages from FDR, Adm. Chester Nimitz, even Joseph Stalin. The telegram “received” from General Hap Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, produced the most guffaws.

It read: “Have air superiority over Kansas. Don’t give up. Help is on the way.”

As reverent as they were to tradition, there were more pressing matters at hand; McCoy and Mel nik quietly excused themselves. After much deliberation, it was Ed Dyess, exhibiting his characteristic derring-do, who final y came up with a risky, eleventh-hour resolution.

“Shof, you and Sam just handle the equipment for yourselves, Hawk, Mike and Leo,” he announced at conference on the evening of the 23. “I think I can handle it the rest of the way.”

SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 1943

Davao Penal Colony

On some level, it had to feel oddly familiar. With the late morning sun reflecting a brassy shimmer off the pilot’s wings pinned to his threadbare khaki shirt, Dyess climbed onto his bul cart. The only instruments to check were the crucifix and Saint Christopher medal hanging from his neck. In lieu of an ignition switch, he tugged Betsy’s reins and the carabao clopped forward, pul ing him once again toward great peril and what would perhaps be the most important mission of his life.

Whether he knew it or not, every act of goodwil he had performed over the previous months had been for this mission. Every cigarette, every friendly wave, every sack of star apples he had given to the guards would be redeemed in the next hour. In one bold stroke, Dyess planned to pack his bul cart with half of the escape party’s gear at the coffee patch, then transport the load across the breadth of the penal colony, past numerous guardhouses and sentry posts, to the plowers’ shack, where Shofner and Grashio would offload the supplies. If he was caught, there would be no bailing out, no living to fly and fight another day. Failure meant certain death.

While the coffee pickers crouched in the weeds, Steve Mel nik perspired nervously, literal y sweating every facet of the mission. Final y, McCoy poked his head through the bushes: “Here he comes!”

With a “whoa, Betsy,” Dyess eased the cart to a complete stop. McCoy, Mel nik, Marshal , and Spielman sprang from the brush with their gear, covering it with saplings—which would be declared as fence posts should the Japanese inquire—and fruit, which would also shield the contraband cargo from prying or alert eyes.

“Need any help?” inquired Mel nik as Dyess returned to his primitive cockpit.

“It’s a lonesome mission. I’d welcome company.”

Once Mel nik settled atop the heaped freight, Dyess maneuvered down a feeder path that bled into a secondary road bisecting the camp. They had bounced along for several hundred yards when the first of three sentry posts along the route appeared on the hazy, heatwave-warped horizon. Seeing the sentry stir inside his hut, Mel nik’s mind raced.
“Was he alert or dozing? Would he suspect two PWs riding a
cart? What would he do if he discovered equipment under the fruit? What would I do?”
Swiveling his neck, Dyess interrupted Mel nik’s train of thought.

“I’ve flown this route fifty times,” he explained. “Each trip is different. Some sentries always stop me for fruit; others never do. You just can’t tel .”

After what seemed like an eternity, the cart slowly crawled abreast of the sentry post. Mel nik made frighteningly fleeting eye contact with the guard, then quickly turned his head and swal owed a deep breath. The lethargic guard, likely recognizing Dyess, did not move. Five yards separated them from the sentry post. Then ten. Soon, the shack disappeared in the distance. “I exhaled and went limp,” recal ed Mel nik.

Betsy plodded forward with leisurely indifference, pul ing the creaking cart and its passengers past gun emplacements and beneath guard towers in which sentries with binoculars scanned the jungle prison.

The cart moved in slow motion, as if fighting against the torrid tide of heat and humidity inches at a time.

For once, Mel nik welcomed the oppressive heat. “I found solace in the steam bath atmosphere,” he said.

“It would make the sentries less attentive.”

Thankful y, that was the case with the second sentry post; the guard had fal en asleep and they passed by with ease. Dyess whistled with optimism.

“One more to go,” he chirped.

Mel nik could not believe their luck when the drowsy soldier at the final sentry post waved them by without even a cursory examination—nor what transpired next. To his astonishment, Dyess jerked the cart to a stop and jumped to the ground. Mel nik watched apprehensively as Dyess “stretched luxuriously and saluted the sentry” and then pointed to the cigarette between his lips. Rummaging for matches, the guard, obviously familiar with Dyess, obliged. Dyess exchanged an
arrigato
—“thank you”—for a nod and slight bow.

Minutes after the surreal event, Mel nik stil could not believe what he had witnessed. He stared at Dyess, puffing contentedly as he steered toward the banana groves, and remembered his Kipling, albeit in a paraphrase,
“You’re a braver man than I am, Gunga Din.”

Dyess’s celebratory bravado was premature. They arrived at the rendezvous point to find Grashio and Shofner waiting as planned, as wel as a guard—perhaps the only one in the camp that Dyess did not know—posted only a few yards up the road. “There was nothing to do but start unloading,” said Dyess.

“Any funny business then would have been

fatal.”

Dyess maneuvered the cart between the guard’s line of sight and the edge of the road. He and Mel nik unloaded the poles from the side

of the cart facing the guard while Grashio and Shofner hurriedly carried the contraband cargo off the other side. In order to shield the gear from the rains and the Japanese, it would be stored in five-gal on gasoline cans that Grashio had acquired from the Japanese kitchen and covered with banana leaves.

Returning to the coffee patch as the workday drew to a close, Mel nik said “silent good-byes” to the men whom he had spent the past few months working and stealing food with, men whom he knew he might never see again. He sensed questions in one prisoner’s eyes, a friend he had known since Corregidor

—“I was grateful that he did not ask them.”

Pop Abrina, feeling similarly sentimental, pul ed both McCoy and Mel nik aside and placed some pesos in their hands, a parting gift from Juan Acenas.

“My wife and I prayed for you last night,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

“My God, Pop!” said McCoy. “Did you tel her about us going?”

“She knows I’ve helped you,” he said, nodding. “When I couldn’t sleep last night, she asked what was wrong. I told her I was afraid somebody would find your supplies in the coffee patch. So she got down on her knees and prayed!”

When the column marched back to the compound, Abrina paused at the lane leading to his house.

McCoy and Mel nik turned to see the middle-aged Filipino standing in the twilight waving goodbye, his fingers forming the V for Victory sign.

As the countdown entered its final hours, the emotional, yet constrained farewel s seemed to be the most difficult problems remaining. Dobervich and Hawkins were relieved to learn that their sentence had been commuted thanks to the efforts of McCoy and their high-ranking friends. Only a few additional items—the most important of which was the quart bottle containing nearly 1,000 quinine tablets that Dyess had pilfered from the pharmacy—needed to be cached, but Shofner had presumably completed that task in the afternoon.

As the last of the conspiring POWs passed through the gates of the main compound that evening, most were confident that the only thing standing between them and their freedom was time. Yet for al their meticulous planning, they had overlooked one important thing. Incredibly, they had forgotten about their universal y despised archenemy.

Visibly shaken, Shofner and Grashio returned to Bay Ten that evening and col apsed next to Hawkins.

“What’s the matter?” Hawkins asked Shofner. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Shofner, his mouth bloody and swol en, had almost seen his own. As usual, Lieutenant Hozumi’s timing had been near-perfect. At noon, the officer, Simon Legree, and two guards had strutted into the plowers’

shack for a surprise inspection—just barely missing Dyess’s delivery.

“[Hozumi] caught us with our pants down,” said Shofner.

Heavy rains the night before had postponed the plowing, so the plowers had been sitting around enjoying bananas when Hozumi surprised them. Flying into a rage, he ordered the POWs to attention and instructed his cohorts to rummage for contraband food. He then went down the line slapping the prisoners. “Dogs!” he shrieked. “You steal fruit! Is

the fruit of the Japanese empire!” Hozumi saved his ful fury for Shofner, the senior officer. The Marine was powerless to do anything but absorb the

blows.

“I stood like a post, staring at the horizon across the top of his head. His hand whacked across my face, bringing a trickle of blood. Anger and frustration boiled inside me, but from the corner of my eye I could see a guard with rifle ready, waiting for my slightest move. Hozumi already had his hand on that meatcleaver of his.”

Hozumi continued to work Shofner over, but the latter’s attention was subconsciously riveted on the guard ransacking the prisoners’ belongings. He opened Shofner’s musette bag, which contained the bottle of quinine pil s that he had not yet stashed. “My heart took a nosedive,” Shofner would say. The guard reached inside and after several excruciating seconds, moved on. He had surely touched the bottle, but he had not been looking for medicine and likely would not have comprehended the presence of the pil s anyway. “His orders had been to search for food,” Shofner would later reason, and with the Japanese, “orders are orders.”