Escape From Davao (48 page)

The Marines’ departure would leave just three of the original American escapees on Mindanao. Leo Boelens, stil laboring on his airfield in Lanao, steadfastly refused evacuation. Spielman had made a habit of visiting the homestead of Frank McCarthy, a Spanish-American War veteran who had stayed in the Philippines to build a fortune in lumber and mining in Surigao, purportedly because of McCarthy’s stockpile of cured meats. “[McCarthy] had hams, bacon and a pretty little girl,” Paul Marshal revealed.

Her name was Lucy, and Spielman was smitten. Marshal would be the best man at their wedding that fal .

It was not a large affair, for fear of unwanted guests. “We were afraid if [the Japanese] knew about it, they would come,” remembered Lucy Spielman.

Marshal , now a captain, was CO of the 114th Infantry Regiment. Spielman, in turn, became his executive officer. The two youngest members of the escape party understood the unique opportunity they had with the guerril as. If they returned to the regular army, they would return as enlisted men. There was unfinished business, too. “Bob and I had a little grudge, shal we say it, with the Japs,” explained Marshal .

“It was payback time.”

Much to the relief of the Marines, the sub final y surfaced—“like some great sea monster from the depths,” remembered Hawkins—around 1700. More than 370 feet long and with a displacement of 2,730

tons, the USS
Narwhal
was the largest sub in the U.S. fleet, along with her sister ship, the
Nautilus.
But to many of the Americans and Filipinos waiting at Nasipit, the
Narwhal
’s sheer size and two 6-inch deck guns made her look like a battleship. None present that day would ever forget the sight of the massive vessel docking at the rickety pier. Nor would the crew of the
Narwhal
ever forget the welcome they received.

Sailors pouring out of the ship’s hatches could not believe their eyes—nor their ears. A guerril a band began belting out “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and dozens of stevedores appeared almost magical y to begin unloading the
Narwhal
’s cargo of much needed supplies. “The place was lit up by native torches eight feet tal , flickering and sputtering and sending up thick, oily smoke,” one of the
Narwhal
’s chief petty officers later told
The Saturday Evening Post.
Other sailors saw barbecued pigs and kegs of beer laid out as if in presentation for a banquet. Soon there were hundreds of inquisitive locals swarming the pier.

The band alternated sailors’ requests with some favorite tunes such as the “The Eyes of Texas,” which Ed Dyess had taught them, as wel as “Anchors Aweigh” and “Yankee Doodle.”

So much for secrecy. Shofner, standing on the deck next to Cmdr. Frank Latta, skipper of the
Narwhal
, while savoring a cup of American coffee and a cigarette, noticed that Latta’s face, previously beaming in wonderment, quickly drooped. It must have dawned on the bewildered skipper that this surreal scene was taking place deep in enemy territory. The Japanese garrison at Butuan was, after al , only fifteen miles away.

“You say we have good security?” asked Latta.

“Every road, every trail is covered by sentries,” Shofner reassured him. “If a Jap goes to get a drink of water in Butuan, the bamboo telegraph wil tel us about it.”

When the unloading was finished, Filipinos brought forth baskets of fruit, as wel as long bamboo tubes, which Latta, once he understood the contents—tuba—apologetical y refused. Touched by the Filipinos’

generosity, the crew reciprocated by emptying their lockers of candy, cigarettes, and clothes, which they distributed to the crowd. The Marines did likewise. Shofner unslung his BAR from his shoulder and handed it to McClish.

“Big Boy wil need this back,” he said.

Dobervich characteristical y slid off his battered shoes and tossed them to a shoeless Filipino on the dock. Hawkins handed his pistol to McClish. “I choked up and had difficulty saying goodbye to him and to my other friends on the dock. I had come to love these warm and brave people and this wild and primitive land,” he would say. “I had a feeling that the high point of my life was at hand and would soon slip into the past. Nothing in my future, I thought, could ever equal these experiences in these two years.”

One could certainly sense the sentimentality in the sultry, smoke-choked air. With the human cargo embarked, a total of thirty-one evacuees, including several women and children, among them a baby, the sub shoved off to farewel waves and the strains of “God Bless America.”

The
Narwhal
’s eight-day voyage to Australia became the stuff of legend. In a matter of days, the wardroom became a dispensary for chewing gum and gumdrops. Grizzled torpedomen hauled children over hatch coamings by their diapers. Crewmen taught children how to make sailor’s knots so that the kids would quit “monkeying with the valves, levers and electrical switches.” According to
The Saturday
Evening Post
, “fril y and pastel-hued underthings” appeared “upon improvised laundry ropes in those portions of the Old Girl’s innards that were warmer and dryer than the others.” There were lines for the head and many surprises, such as the time Latta turned on the shower jets only to be ambushed by a pair of pink pants and a brassiere.

The high jinks, however, hardly bothered the Marines. Just about the only problem they recounted was an inability to sleep, but that had nothing to do with their fel ow passengers. As Shofner remembered, not even Latta’s soft bunk helped. Nearly two years of sleeping in foxholes, on concrete floors, wooden slats, and bamboo cots had adversely conditioned him. So one day he climbed down onto the hard steel deck plating and, much to the surprise of the sailors stepping over his body, fel asleep immediately.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1943

San Francisco, California

The Pan Am Clipper skimmed San Francisco Bay, its propel ers whirring to a stop at 0900. Exhausted after eight days of island hopping across the Pacific—their flight itinerary covered a total distance of more than 7,000 miles and included stops at New Caledonia, Espiritu Santu, the El ice and Phoenix Islands, and Pearl Harbor—the three Marines were also cold and hungry. With another plane waiting to whisk them to Washington, they would have to hurry if Shofner was to col ect on his bets.

Strol ing down the dock and shivering in their thin field jackets, they found a cozy restaurant decorated for the season with tinsel and holiday bunting. Wearing decorations of their own, Distinguished Service Crosses awarded to them by MacArthur during an unforgettable ceremony in Brisbane, they took a booth near a smal Christmas tree.

“If General MacArthur had gone into the movies, you would never have heard of John Barrymore,”

Shofner said. “I went in hating his guts—we used to cal him ‘Dugout Doug’ and a few other nice choice words—[but] he told me what a great job I had done and gave [me] the Distinguished Service Cross. I thought he was God and I was his right-hand angel when I left.”

But nothing could compare to the elation that accompanied being back in the States. They were so caught up in the holiday atmosphere and in the joy of being home that they could barely finish their meals.

“I stil can’t believe it,” Hawkins muttered aloud, “it’s like a dream.”

The tune playing on the restaurant’s nickelodeon, Hawkins would recal , had a familiar ring to it. Had it real y been one year since he, restless in Barracks Five in Dapecol on a cold, rainy, miserable Christmas Eve, had awakened Dobervich with a strange premonition?

The name of the song was, “I’l Be Home for Christmas.”

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1943

Burbank, California

No one could accuse Ed Dyess of not taking time to stop and smel the flowers. Not today, at least. It was late morning and though somewhat in a hurry, Dyess was al smiles walking down Crescent Heights Boulevard, his arms fil ed with the fresh-cut flowers he had personal y selected for the dinner party he and his wife were hosting in their Hol ywood apartment that evening. Marajen Dyess counted a number of Hol ywood elite, including several movie stars, as close friends, so the event promised to be star-studded.

Nothing could ruin Dyess’s mood, not even the preposterous stal tactics being employed in Washington. Exactly three weeks earlier, the
Gripsholm
, her cargo delivered, had docked safely in New York. The
Chicago Tribune
immediately petitioned for permission to release the Dyess story, but “the War Department said that the American people were not yet ready for such an appal ing story of Japanese atrocities,” recal ed Charles Leavel e. The situation, it seemed, had morphed from a matter of supposed practical pretexts to one of transparent, official obstinacy. Just when did the government think that America would be ready?

Dyess went to Washington to consult with General Hap Arnold, but Arnold could offer Dyess little in the way of answers or assistance. The War Department had classified the matter as one of national security, Arnold told Dyess; he had no power to intervene. The War Department had reiterated that any revelation of Japanese atrocities would possibly result in reprisals against American POWs. Dyess was incredulous. Those men stil behind Japanese barbed wire, he argued, would want the people back home to know what was happening. It was a chance that needed to be taken.

The
Tribune
then began to wheel out its First Amendment field artil ery. The paper first enlisted the help of Roy Roberts, editor of the
Kansas City Star
, president of the American Newspaper Editors Association, and chairman of the Newspaper Advisory Committee of the Domestic Division of OWI, to lobby Elmer Davis on the paper’s behalf. Next, the
Tribune
’s research staff assembled a massive file containing hundreds of atrocity and escape stories—organized by theater, enemy, publication, and date of publication—that had been printed with military censorship approval and submitted this package of precedents to OWI.

Dyess could only wait. In the meantime, he had plenty to do, including finding his crucifix and Saint Christopher medal, the treasured talismans that had accompanied him on his journey through combat and captivity to freedom. He had been wearing them during his stay at Ashford and had al owed the
Tribune
to photograph the objects, remembered Leavel e. But on December 20, the items mysteriously disappeared. A ful -scale search was initiated, but nothing turned up. “On the night of December 21st

[Dyess] stil was hopeful of finding his talisman,” wrote Leavel e. “He spoke of it to Mrs. Dyess as they addressed Christmas cards.”

One of those cards was addressed to Sam Grashio. Dyess had been planning to visit Spokane, but poor weather had grounded him. No matter. He would get there after the holidays.

Dear Sam—

I was to leave here this morning, but O-O kept me on the ground so now I’ll have to put it off
until after Xmas as the weather is supposed to be bad all day tomorrow. Listen “knucklehead”

if it isn’t too much of a secret just where in the hell do I find you after I get there, or have you
moved into the jail to feel at home.

There were some additional matters that Dyess needed to attend to before the holidays. Depositing the flowers at his apartment, he then headed to Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale to sneak in some flight time on the P-38 Lightning, the Army Air Force’s new ultrafast twin-engined fighter. Armed with four

.50 caliber machine guns and one 20 mil imeter cannon, the P-38 was capable of reaching speeds in excess of 400 miles per hour. It was the kind of warplane that aggressive, talented pilots salivated over—

Dyess’s kind of plane. He needed to log some hours in order to assume command of the outfit that he was preparing to take into combat in Europe, the 479th Fighter Group, a component of the Eighth Air Force.

Just before Dyess’s arrival at the field, Lt. Robin Olds, a twenty-one-year-old West Pointer, was given his orders. “The operations officer said, ‘I want you to check out this colonel in a P-38,’ ” Olds would say.

“Nobody told me who he was or anything else about him.”

As Dyess settled into the cockpit of P-38H-5-LO, Olds crouched on the wing and explained the controls. Dyess was not curt or overbearing, but, recal ed Olds, “I realized that he wanted to hurry up.”

Though Dyess had logged only ten total hours of flight time in the P-38 and Olds had extensive training on the model, Olds deferred to Dyess’s rank and distil ed his preflight check into a handful of necessary items. Olds told Dyess that warplanes in the United States were provided with lower-grade gasoline in order to conserve high-octane, high-performance fuel for combat aircraft. As a result, the engines of stateside birds frequently became congested and tended to detonate, or backfire. Sometimes, they even locked up mid-flight. These problems were particularly prevalent with the P-38.

“As you line up,” Olds told Dyess, “if you hear bang, bang, bang, shut ’em [the engines] down and stop.

Hit the brakes. Go off the end of the runway if you have to.”

Dyess signaled that he understood, but Olds would later say that it seemed as though Dyess was dismissive of the briefing. Of course, Dyess had logged thousands more hours of cumulative flight time in his career than Olds, a recent flight school graduate. And, as a pilot who had actual y tangled with the Japanese in aerial combat, Dyess was unlikely to be frightened by something as seemingly harmless as bad gasoline.

After Olds hopped down from the wing, Dyess gunned the plane’s engines. At approximately 1206, he cal ed the tower for taxi instructions. Dyess was notified that he was cleared to runway 30, but when he rol ed onto the flight line, he found himself waiting for several minutes as a B-25 prepared to take off. This likely tried Dyess’s patience; it was now past noon and he had plenty of other errands to attend to. At 1209, Dyess radioed the tower again—permission to take off was final y granted.