Mike Guardia (7 page)

Later that week, Bruno—by virtue of being a native Filipino— secured a travel pass from the Japanese. It permitted him free access to the country without being detained at any checkpoints along the main roads. Using this pass, Bruno would often travel into Dinalupihan for food, supplies, and updates on Japanese activity. On 15 May, the entries in Volckmann’s diary abruptly stop and do not resume again until 31 May. He attributed the blank entries to his deteriorating health:

I have many blank pages this month; it’s the same old story most every day. For the first time in my life, I realize the value of health. To my disgust, many of the nights I have almost hoped not to wake up in the morning. I know, if I am to regain my health, I must get strength to get out of this part of the country. To the mountains [of North Luzon]; that is my only chance.
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On 1 June, Guerrero once again returned to the camp. Claiming that he had secured a doctor near Dinalupihan, he transported Volckmann and Blackburn by a small sled to an old garage a few hundred yards from Highway 7. There, the doctor—whom Volckmann described as a “quack”—gave them a series of shots. Neither Volckmann nor Blackburn had any idea what the shots were, but given the debilitating status of their health, it hardly mattered to them. Whatever it was they had received from the “quack,” it obviously had some effect, as both men were soon feeling better.

The pair remained at the doctor’s garage over the next few days with Guerrero returning periodically to check on them. Meanwhile, Petit and Anderson—both of whom had remained at Volckmann’s camp—sent word that they were moving north into the Zambales Mountains. Bruno, however, had decided to stay—a decision that Volckmann obviously appreciated. Volckmann, meanwhile, drifted in and out of consciousness but retained enough of his wits to record small entries in his diary.

3 June 1942. Nothing unusual. We can see the Japs pass in trucks on [Highway 7]; it is only about 200 yards away.

4 June 1942. Awfully hungry for something that tastes like American chow. Feel somewhat better.

5 June 1942. Guerrero’s children got us some flour. Baked a coffee cake. Turned out pretty well.
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By 7 June, Volckmann had returned to Guerrero’s camp where he spent the next two weeks convalescing. Day by day, Volckmann recorded new feats as his strength slowly came back to him. By the 15th, he was able to walk again under his own power. Around this time, Petit returned to the camp for the first time since his departure with Anderson.
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While searching for other Americans, the pair had encountered an evacuation camp run by two brothers named Bill and Martin Fassoth. The Fassoths, Petit explained, were two American sugarcane farmers who had fled to the Zambales when the war began. Since the fall of Bataan, they had taken in a number of American escapees. Their numbers even included an Army doctor who had with him a limited supply of medicine.
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The camp sounded fascinating and, according to Petit, was only a day’s hike from their current location. Petit left later that day, but Volckmann resolved that he would join him at the Fassoth camp as soon as he regained his strength.

But whether he was feeling stronger or not, Volckmann knew he had to keep moving. He hated the idea of leaving Guerrero and his family; they had been enormously helpful and he owed them a debt of gratitude, which he could never truly repay. With their lives interrupted and ruined by the Japanese, the Guerrero family willingly risked themselves and their resources to help these obscure Americans. Despite the burden that looking after two Americans had placed on his family, Guerrero and his children urged Volckmann and the others to stay.
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The offering was certainly tempting—over the past month he had grown quite fond of the Guerrero children. But Volckmann politely reminded his hosts that he was a military officer and he still had a mission to accomplish. With that, he graciously thanked them for their hospitality and departed on 22 June 1942. Volckmann later wrote of Guerrero and his family “To these gracious natives we owe our lives.”
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By this time, Volckmann was feeling relatively well. Back on the trail, they followed a native guide who had been an old friend of Guerrero. Ideally, the hike to Fassoth camp should have taken about twelve hours, but Volckmann had to bypass Pitao because the Japanese had occupied the town. The detour added an additional three hours onto their travel time and took them over the most rugged terrain of the Zambales Mountains. Finally, at around 11:00 p.m., they arrived at Fassoth Camp.
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Though Volckmann had made the hike with relative ease, it took a devastating toll on Blackburn. His fever had relapsed before departing Guerrero’s camp and now, after hours of continuous hiking, the infirmity had taken Blackburn to his knees. For most of their stay at Fassoth’s, Blackburn was nearly comatose.

The Fassoth Camp was an impressive display. Volckmann had never seen anything like it: the dominant feature was a large barracks-like building complete with bunk beds made from bamboo. What a testament to the Fassoths’ ingenuity! A working radio picked up station KGEI in San Francisco, broadcasting the first real news Volckmann had heard since the fall of Bataan. There were approximately 80 Americans residing in the camp. Most were enlisted men who had escaped from the Bataan Death March, although eight officers also complimented the group. Just as Petit had described, there was an Army doctor who ran a small infirmary.
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Along with the Fassoth brothers, the camp was maintained by a local Filipino named Vicente Bernia. Bernia was one of the few prominent businessmen in the area who had emerged from the Japanese invasion unscathed. He was a major player in the Zambales provincial affairs and the plantation he owned was still operating. The Americans at this camp owed their lives to this man: for as long as the Fassoths had operated this camp, Bernia had kept them supplied with food and medicine.
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Bernia was a boisterous man, warm and friendly with a contagious smile. On his frequent visits, he would regale the men with his hairraising tales of outsmarting the Japanese. Bernia owned a small utility truck, which he used to carry supplies from Manila. When passing the Japanese checkpoints along the main highway, he insisted that the goods were for his plantation workers. When questioned about the mass quantity of his purchases, he explained that the rainy season required him to buy in bulk.
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It was a plausible story, and the Japanese accepted it. But Bernia, that sly devil, was not satisfied with merely fooling the enemy; he wanted to make the Japanese his unwitting accomplices.

For this, Bernia bought almost exclusively from Japanese bazaars. Arriving at a highway checkpoint, he would present his receipts to the guards and tell them the tale of his “workers’ needs.” Upon seeing that his receipts were issued by Japanese merchants, the guards—just as Bernia had expected—offered to help him transport the cargo. Thus, the food and other supplies for Fassoth Camp were brought halfway up the mountain by Japanese Army trucks, all under the ruse of supplying Bernia and his plantation.
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Although he was a wealthy man, Vicente Bernia could not singlehandedly finance the Fassoth operation forever. Using his influence in the area, he negotiated several lines of credit with Filipino merchants in the foothills. In exchange for their goods, Bernia implemented an I.O.U. system; an American officer would sign a receipt promising full reimbursement from the United States Army at the end of the war.
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Any sensible merchant would have balked at such an indefinite proposal. But if it came from Vicente Bernia, there was no need to question it. Such was the power and influence this man had in the region. When asked by Volckmann what he was getting out of this, his only response was: “When the war is over, all I want is for some soldiers to sponsor me for American citizenship.”
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The news reports over KGEI left Volckmann wondering if help would ever arrive—Allied forces were on the ropes in North Africa and the Japanese still controlled half of the Pacific. By this time, 26 June 1942, the United States had won a decisive victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy at Midway, but it appears that Volckmann was unaware of this.
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Meanwhile, his fascination with Fassoth Camp began to sour. Bernia and the Fassoth brothers had done a fine job maintaining the camp, but they had let the enlisted men run amok, and the officers— outnumbered nine to one—did nothing to reel them in. On the day of their arrival, Volckmann and Blackburn were cornered by Sergeant Red Floyd, a former artilleryman who had become the camp’s de facto strongman. Brusque and intimidating, Floyd wasted no time educating his new guests.

“Now look, let’s get the name of the game straight, if you guys want to stay here I want you to recognize that there is no such thing as rank. The war is over. If you want to play by our rules, fine. If you don’t, you can get out of here. Now, if you don’t believe me,” he said, pointing to a group of nearby officers, “you go ask those officers. They’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.”
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“If you think that you can do anything about it,” he added, “all the weapons around here are in the hands of the noncoms.”
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Volckmann and Blackburn were speechless. Floyd had taken the Fassoth’s humanitarian endeavor and turned it into a cesspool of discontent. By and large, the camp shared Floyd’s attitude. Others had simply given up on the war. Determined to get to the root of the problem, Volckmann questioned Floyd about his hostility towards the officers. Perhaps if Floyd had someone to hear him out, it would be the first step towards improving the current state of affairs.
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Red Floyd’s story began in early May, when Bernia and the Fassoth’s were building the camp. According to Floyd, the officers had gone around barking orders while not wanting to do any of the work themselves. Fed up with their laziness and condescension, Floyd and the others rebelled. Outnumbered and outgunned, the officers backed down.

While Volckmann did not approve of the insubordination, the story at least gave him and Blackburn an idea of how to fix things at Fassoth Camp. To ease the tension between the officers and the enlisted men, they had to create an incentive for both sides to work together. Blackburn, who by now was feeling well enough to stand, approached Floyd with an offer to improve the camp’s conditions. Floyd was complaining about the dysentery that had taken over the camp when Blackburn chimed in, “If some of the people around here had brains, something could be done about it.”
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“Well, you’re running the camp and there isn’t any such thing as a slit trench or a latrine around here. All you do with your ‘business’ is throw it out of the window. All that great food you cook in there is covered with flies that come off of that stuff, or don’t you understand that?” This, Blackburn explained, was the reason why everyone was coming down with dysentery.

“Well,” Floyd replied indignantly, “who’s going to dig us a trench?” Seizing his opportunity to bridge the officer-enlisted gap, Blackburn said, “Everybody will pitch in and dig. Now can you get your guys to pitch in? Are you willing to pitch in?” That did it. Both officers and enlisted got to work on digging a network of slit trenches that would keep the human excrement away from the living quarters and, more importantly, away from the food. It was the first time they had accomplished anything as a cohesive group.
Beginning with smaller tasks like cleaning the barracks, they went

on to build an entire mess hall as well as a new infirmary. Volckmann, despite his own battles with dysentery and malaria, chipped in wherever he was needed. As the men regained their trust for one another, they began to distance themselves from Red Floyd’s resentful leadership. Soon, the officers resumed control of Fassoth Camp—this time leading by example.
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Volckmann spent the entire month of July and the majority of August at Fassoth Camp. While regaining his strength, he finalized his plans for heading north. Blackburn, though still suffering from fever, reported feeling strong enough to finish the trip. Their current location in the Zambales put them over 100 miles southeast from the nearest reported enclave of American units in Mountain Province. If he expected to make it there before New Year’s 1943, he would have to leave Fassoth Camp before 1 September. The terrain between the Zambales and the northern provinces was somewhat benign compared to what he had been through earlier, but heavy jungles still dominated the landscape and they were sure to impede his movement. At Fassoth Camp, Volckmann learned from Bernia that two Lieutenant Colonels, Claude Thorp and Peter Cayler, were commanding small groups of USAFFE guerrillas in Tarlac Province, just a few miles north.

Volckmann had known Cayler before the invasion—they met aboard the
USS Grant
en route to the Philippines two years earlier. Taken prisoner at Bataan, Cayler escaped the Death March only after being run over by a Japanese truck. Lying in the road and nursing a broken arm, he was left for dead until a nearby Chinese mestizo family, the Jincos, picked him up. Now living under the Jinco’s care, Cayler and his crew, which included four other Americans who had escaped from the Death March, were recovering just fine.
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Claude Thorp had been active since the Japanese first landed at Aparri. Prior to the war, he had been the Provost Marshal of Fort Stotsenburg in Central Luzon.
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But when Thorp was given the order to vacate his post and join the USAFFE retreat, General King, who later surrendered the Philippine II Corps at Bataan, reassigned him as the Provost Marshal for the Northern Luzon Forces. Thus began Thorp’s career as a USAFFE guerilla. By January 1942, Thorp apparently recognized that USAFFE was on the losing end of its struggle against the Japanese. Most records confirm that Claude Thorp submitted the idea of organizing guerrilla units to General MacArthur and, on 26 January 1942, Thorp allegedly received MacArthur’s permission to travel out of Bataan and begin organizing an Allied resistance based in the Zambales Mountains.
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Volckmann was not certain of either Cayler’s or Thorp’s exact location. As Tarlac and Zambales provinces had few towns and fewer distinguishable landmarks, he reasoned that he could use Cayler’s and Thorp’s locations as checkpoints to track his progress on the way to North Luzon. While contemplating his next move, Volckmann was interrupted by the arrival of another Filipino, Sergeant Emilio Gumabay.

Emilio had been a police officer with the Philippine Constabulary prior to the invasion. He had escaped the wrath of the Rising Sun until someone—possibly an old enemy—falsely accused him of collaborating with Americans.
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Now a fugitive running from the Kempei Tai,
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Emilio wandered into Fassoth Camp, offering his services to anyone still interested in carrying on the fight. Unfortunately, guerrilla warfare didn’t seem to resonate with anyone besides Volckmann and Blackburn. The tension between the officers and enlisted men had died down, but so had their tenacity for fighting the Japanese. Many had devolved into apathy, content simply to wait for MacArthur’s return.

Inviting Emilio into his group, Volckmann explained the situation: he was headed north to Mountain Province, into the Igorot tribal lands. Fassoth Camp had become a reasonably nice place, but the collective apathy of its residents only hastened the need for his departure. Volckmann did not want to stay in the company of lukewarm soldiers. Accepting the invitation to join the group, Emilio mentioned that aside from his duties as a policeman, he was also a shoemaker and a barber. Both skills came in handy, as Emilio offered free haircuts and taught Volckmann to mend the soles of his shoes using tire treads.
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