Escape From Davao (5 page)

Flame-lit Cavite shuddered with clattering explosions. McCoy, his mind now racing at flank speed, looked at his wife’s picture. “
It doesn’t do her much justice
,” he thought. And Corregidor did have, in the midst of al those guns and tunnels, a nine-hole golf course. The calculating pragmatist slung the clubs over his shoulder and headed for Corregidor. It was the logical decision. McCoy, like everyone else, expected his navy to smash through the Pacific to rescue the Philippines. Until then, he might as wel work on his swing.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1941

Corregidor, Manila Bay, Philippine Islands

The hands of 1st Lt. Austin Shofner’s wristwatch, like anything else moving in the malevolent midday heat, ticked lazily toward noon. Shofner, sitting in an office on the third floor of Middleside Barracks, shook a smoke from a pack of cigarettes. Ordinarily, the Marine did not smoke. These, however, were not ordinary times. An oak of a man standing more than six feet tal and accustomed to carrying 200 pounds, Shofner was miserably hungry. With each pul he subdued his rioting hunger pangs. But that other feeling, the queasy sensation in his empty gut tel ing him that his days as a combatant were numbered, would not go away.

It was unfamiliar territory for Shofner. In his twenty-five years, the gung ho Marine had yet to drink from a half-empty glass. He had brought that infectious optimism with him to Corregidor’s North Dock less than thirty-six hours earlier when the 4th Marine Regiment had arrived to assume beach defense duties.

It was not long after that he discovered the famed fortress island was not al it had been built up to be—both literal y and figuratively.

Located at the maw of Manila Bay, the tadpole-shaped island—though official y designated Fort Mil s and known the world over as the “Gibraltar of the East”—was affectionately cal ed “the Rock” by American troops. Hundreds of mines sat in the water, just off a perimeter of rocky beaches, vertical limestone cliffs, and the jaws of deep ravines. Craggy hil s swathed in high talahib grass were stratified into three terraces of elevation: Topside, Middleside, and Bottomside. With its own airstrip, Kindley Field, and power plant, the Rock was practical y self-sustaining. The island bristled with dens of artil ery, mortars, and fixed seacoast guns—the largest of which were the 12-inch cannons of batteries Smith and Hearn, which could hurl a 1,000-pound armor-piercing shel seventeen miles. Its most notable feature, however, was the bombproof Malinta Tunnel and its honeycombed maze of reinforced concrete laterals, cavernous 400-foot ventilated shafts used for hospital wards, offices, and storage. “Corregidor was indeed a mighty fortress,” decided Associated Press correspondent Clark Lee. “Doubtless it would have been impregnable—if the airplane had never been invented.”

A jarring duet of sirens and clanging brass shel casings sounded across the hil s at 1140. Most of the Marines who had been unloading supplies and digging positions casual y looked skyward—the Japanese, their Army comrades had told them, didn’t dare chal enge Corregidor’s defenses. Lieutenant Shofner jumped to his feet. After talking a colonel into the barracks basement, Shofner also headed for the exit.

Though admittedly discouraged after having seen Corregidor’s “antiquity” up close, he had no intentions of waiting out the raid. The soles of his spit-shined cordovan shoes clacked down the stairs. He pul ed his helmet over his closely cropped chestnut hair, ripped a final drag from his cigarette, and flicked the butt, contemptuously, to the ground. “I wanted to go out and see these planes get knocked down,” he said.

Eighteen bombers, flying in a V formation at 15,000 feet, arrived to a raucous reception of hundreds of smoke puffs bursting upon the pale blue sky. Hunched behind sandbags, men and machine guns chattered away in separate, frantic staccatos. The twinkling of the metal bombs in the sunlight jolted Shofner to his senses. “I couldn’t tel what their targets were,” he said, “but I hoped it wasn’t me.” He did not wait to find out.

Just as the first bombs slammed into the Rock, Shofner dove into the barracks, buffeted by blast concussions. It was a close cal , the first of many face-to-face encounters with the specter of death in this war, but luck had been on his side. His father had always told him, if you can’t be smart, be lucky.

During his formative years in Shelbyvil e, Tennessee, a bucolic town about fifty miles southeast of Nashville, Shofner learned the values of a strong work ethic and self-sufficiency from his father, a schoolteacher and part-time farmer. When his schoolwork and chores were completed—he drove cattle and hauled buckets of spring water on a 200-acre ancestral farmstead—Shofner could be found hunting squirrels and rabbits amid the tulip poplars and hickories in the hol ows along the Duck River, or else on a basebal diamond or footbal field demonstrating the talents that would earn him a reputation as one of the best athletes in Bedford County history.

His gridiron prowess merited a partial footbal scholarship to the University of Tennessee, where he met the second greatest influence on his life, Coach Robert Neyland, West Point graduate and onetime aide to then-Commandant Douglas MacArthur. Shofner saw a recipe for success, not just in footbal , but for life, encoded in Neyland’s famous “Footbal Maxims.” “There aren’t many like Neyland in this world.

He was a winner,” he explained, “and he taught me mind over matter.”

He took Neyland’s teachings and a footbal nickname—“Shifty”—

with him when he reported to Marine basic school in Philadelphia in August 1937. For Shofner and the Corps, it was love at first salute. With his syrupy Southern voice, powerful parade ground timbre, and chameleon personality—he could be caustical y abrasive or irresistibly glib—he possessed a natural command presence. His uncanny ability to motivate was his greatest strength. Whether his modus operandi was fear or encouragement, cajolery or coercion, Shofner knew how to get the job done. And the job now facing him looked to be the most chal enging task of his life.

The whirr of the bombers’ radial engines receded into the distance and Shofner emerged, brushing off dirt, to survey the damage. One of the bombs had struck the supposedly bombproof Middleside Barracks, a hit that wounded some Marines in the gal ey. Nurses darted through the film of smoke and dust. As best as he could hear through the shouts and wailing of wounded, they needed a doctor. Shofner ordered a dentist, the closest thing to a medic within his reach, to assist with the injured.

“Suddenly,” Shofner would say, “I had the feeling this would be a long war.”

If ever there was a perfect place for a desperate last stand, it was the Bataan Peninsula. Twenty-five miles in length, and spanning at its widest twenty miles from the South China Sea to the upper reaches of Manila Bay, Bataan was a spine of ancient volcanic rock dominated by two colossal peaks—Mount Natib and Mount Bataan. A southern extension of the Zambales Mountains, the thumb-shaped isthmus was carpeted by virgin jungle and studded with giant coconut palms, mahogany, narra, camagong, and mayapis trees festooned with creeping vines. A menagerie of monkeys, lawin, mynah birds, and wild carabao, lizards, pythons, and boars lived in the undergrowth. On the saw-toothed west coast, rocky promontories and forbidding cliff wal s painted with the fiery orange and red blooms of talisay trees and hanging pandanus fronted the South China Sea. Most of the inhabitants of Bataan lived on the eastern coastal plain, in the clusters of bamboo, thatched nipa, and clapboard houses lining the paved al -weather East Road, which hugged the shores of Manila Bay.

It was into these hostile environs that nearly 80,000 American and Filipino troops retreated during the final, humiliating days of 1941 and the first, uncertain hours of 1942. They came from al corners of Luzon, from Lingayen, from the Agno River, from the foothil s of Mount Banahao, from Manila. They dribbled down the tributaries of rural roads and footpaths, eventual y merging into the swol en cataracts of men, animals, and machines flooding National Highways 3, 5, 7, and, final y, 110. Sluggishly, they crossed the Pampanga River on the Calumpit Bridge, filtered through San Fernando and struggled into Bataan through the bottleneck of Layac Junction. The stink of burning rubber, infected flesh, and gunpowder, mixed with fragrant frangipani, wafted through the humid air. Fat black flies buzzed over corpses, animal carcasses, and empty ration tins, the detritus of an army under constant attack. The sounds of screeching brakes, backfiring engines, clanging metal canteens, and leather and rubber soles crushing pavement mingled with the unintel igible bits of English, Spanish, Tagalog, Visayan and Ilocano conversations, arguments, and orders. For days, the narrow roads to Bataan were clotted with trucks, staff cars, jeeps, ambulances, tanks, carts and civilian buses. Fol owing closely behind, a handful of USAFFE tanks, infantry, ack-ack gunners, and cavalrymen—the latter armed with pistols and soda bottles fil ed with gasoline—gal antly held off the Japanese while engineers dynamited bridges.

Despite the lack of road signs, military police, and air cover, the plodding exodus was a chaotic success, a “smal Dunkirk,” one Air Corps pilot cal ed it. Much of MacArthur’s army had been able to slip into Bataan intact, carrying with it large stores of ammunition, mostly World War I surplus ordnance, but ammunition nonetheless. The exigencies of the hastily ordered retreat and the tangled bureaucracy of the Filipino government, however, had ensured that stores of clothing, medicine, fuel, and, most important, food were left behind. The abandonment of 5,000 tons of rice at the Government Rice Central warehouse, in Luzon’s Nueva Ecija Province, enough to feed USAFFE troops for at least one year, was one glaring example. As per MacArthur’s original defense strategy, most of the supply depots and reserves had been set up near the beaches, and were now deep inside Japanese-held territory after their landing of December 22. MacArthur had also ordered that Corregidor be stocked first with enough supplies to last the 10,000-man garrison for six months. By the time the door to the Bataan Peninsula was barred, only a few thousand tons of foodstuffs would be secured there.

The madness of the retreat had scarcely subsided when MacArthur learned that an estimated 26,000

civilian refugees had drained into the peninsula with the retreating troops. Faced with slow starvation or immediate defeat, MacArthur chose to give his forces a fighting chance. On January 5, 1942, in one of the first orders issued from his new headquarters located inside Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor, MacArthur put al USAFFE troops on half-rations.

And so the epic fight for the Philippines, America’s first major land battle of the Second World War, began with il -equipped American

and Filipino troops burrowed into defensive positions, their weapons loaded with suspect ammunition and their stomachs empty, waiting for the Japanese to attack and for help from the States.

And we were sacrificed—perhaps to gain

That little time that warded off defeat

In those first awful months of swift retreat.

With the Al ies in ful , humiliating retreat throughout the globe in early 1942, the defenders of the Philippines looked to be waiting a long time. German forces controlled territory from the steppes of Russia to the sands of North Africa to the icy Atlantic. The Stars and Stripes no longer flew over Guam and Wake Island, nor did the Union Jack fly over the British crown colony of Hong Kong. Singapore would fal in February; the Dutch East Indies in March. Japanese forces would close the Burma Road in April, severing the supply link to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist forces. The rays of the Rising Sun shone across the Pacific Rim, to the Solomon Islands and through the Malay Barrier. And should Australia and New Zealand crumble—Australia was virtual y undefended because most of the continent’s troops were fighting in North Africa—it was feared that only Hawaii would stand between the Japanese and the United States.

The numbing disbelief and national outrage that fol owed Pearl Harbor gave way to mass hysteria. Japanese submarines sank merchant vessels within sight of coastal residents, fueling the invasion paranoia. One elected official, believing the West Coast to be indefensible, demanded that U.S. forces prepare defensive positions in the Rocky Mountains. The original copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were removed from display and shipped to vaults at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Even the Rose Bowl footbal game was moved from Pasadena, California, to the perceived safety of the East Coast. By February, the situation had reached such a fever pitch that President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcing thousands of West Coast Japanese, ful -fledged citizens born on American soil among them, into internment camps.

The nation desperately needed heroes, and it found them in the defenders of the Philippines. America’s romantic fascination with extraordinary struggles against long odds conjured comparisons with the siege of the Alamo mission and the legendary last stand of George Custer’s 7th Cavalry. In an April panegyric,
Life
magazine cal ed the battle an “American Thermopylae” and equated MacArthur’s men with the stalwart Spartans who endeavored to halt an overwhelming Persian invasion in 480 b.c. Bataan and Corregidor, names of distant places previously unheard of and locations heretofore unknown, had become in America’s darkest hour rays of hope. With each passing day, the battle assumed an almost mythical significance on the home front. Atop San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, Wil iam Winter of shortwave station KGEI beamed his “Freedom for the Philippines” news program across the Pacific and dared the Japanese to attack. As the nation mobilized, screen stars, radio personalities, and athletes gave way to war celebrities, men like Lt. Alexander R. Nininger, Jr., the war’s first recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, and Capt. Arthur W. Wermuth, the “One-Man Army of Bataan,” whose exploits were celebrated in wire stories and comic books. Capt. Colin P. Kel y, Jr., earned instant, though posthumous, fame when, after his B-17 sank a Japanese cruiser near Lingayen Gulf, he stayed at the controls of the mortal y wounded bomber so that his crew could bail out.