The Lonely War (20 page)

A hundred yards of cleared land lay between the go-downs and a snarled web of barbed wire that encircled the entire prison. Beyond the wire were guardhouses, where Indian, Japanese, and Korean guards were housed. A watchtower with machine gun posts and searchlights stood at each corner of the prison, but there was little need for these towers because there was no place to escape to.

The
Pilgrim
’s survivors made the forced march from the military docks to the Changi Prison. Reduced to a ragged and filthy bunch, their bodies and uniforms were streaked with fuel oil, vomit, mud, and feces. They dragged along in a mechanical manner, the strong helping the weak, the weak helping the weaker.

Along the city streets, natives stood at the roadside, boldly offering bananas, boiled eggs, and cups of water, but the Japanese escort kept them back with their bayonets, which glistened brightly from the barrels of their .25 caliber rifles. These offerings were heartwarming, considering the brutal treatment that their captors inflicted, but especially so for Andrew because when he looked into the faces of the sympathetic locals, he noticed that many of the eyes staring back were Chinese.

A five-hour march brought them to the crest of a hill where the sixty-five ragged Americans caught their first glimpse of Changi. From a distance, the walls rising above a belt of green jungle looked enchanting, as if they belonged to a sultan’s palace surrounded by an oasis. But as they marched closer, Changi took on a more sinister appearance, transforming into a sunbaked scab on the jungle, the color of dried bones.

Andrew didn’t see the walls. Having lost all vital energy, he suffered from heat, thirst, and crushing weariness. All his attention zeroed in on moving his legs while supporting his handle of a makeshift litter that carried an unconscious Lt. Mitchell.

He held his knees stiff so that they wouldn’t buckle under the litter’s weight. If he stumbled, he risked taking a bayonet in the gut, as had three others. Bullets were a precious commodity, so the Japanese soldiers had become adroit with their bayonets. They drove the blade into the gut and scrambled the bowels by twisting the rifle with a flourish, leaving the victim screaming while dying a prolonged and agonizing death.

Moyer, Stokes, and Hudson manned the other litter handles, and they carried the same fear. Brutish guards kicked, clubbed, and stabbed the men who faltered. Eighty-eight men were pulled from the water, but after two weeks on Guadalcanal and another week crammed shoulder to shoulder aboard a foul-smelling cargo vessel, the number had dwindled by a quarter.

Andrew’s temple itched like crazy under a bloody bandage wrapped around his head. He yearned to reach up and scratch under the bandage, but he was too afraid to let go of the litter handle.

Hour after hour they struggled through scorching heat, until they passed under a tower festooned with the Rising Sun. They marched through an opening in the barbed wire, up the path that led beyond the rows of go-downs, through the wall gate, and into a courtyard surrounded by cell blocks.

Andrew lowered Mitchell and crumpled to ground. He had not had a drink of water in two days. His mouth felt cottony; his tongue hung thickly over his cracked lips. But rather than wish for death, which had become his habit, he focused on Mitchell.

He fought back his weariness and crawled to Mitchell’s right thigh. Mitchell’s pant leg had been ripped away, showing his bare leg and shoe. The sole of his shoe was hanging on by only a few threads. The leg was swollen and had a sickly gray color. Andrew inspected the rag pressed against the wound. It was filthy, but Andrew had nothing to replace it with. Pulling the dressing away, he scrutinized the angry-red, putrid-smelling wound.

They must have drugs here
, he thought.

Another litter was laid beside him—the one holding Cocoa. Grady, who had helped to carry Cocoa’s litter, collapsed beside Andrew. He leaned against Andrew and croaked, “We made it, Andy. Praise God, we made it.”

Like Mitchell, Cocoa’s lower leg had been badly chewed by sharks before the rescue, and it was festered and swollen to three times its normal size. Cocoa babbled incoherently. Sweat poured from his body.

Andrew had done his best to keep the wounds clean and dressed, but in the tropics it was impossible to keep infection away without antibiotics. Andrew closed his eyes, feeling the intense heat rippling off the pavement.

There were two seasons in this part of the globe: oppressively hot and monsoon wet (which was also oppressively hot). No winter and no spring, no hibernation and no renewal, there was only the monotonous heat with an occasional downpour.

The courtyard baked Andrew’s mind, and in his delirium he began to relive portions of their torturous journey. Two weeks on Guadalcanal, slogging about a mucky hellhole with rats, leeches, blowflies, mosquitoes, maggot-infested piles of feces, and every strain of intestinal parasite, all surrounded by a bamboo fence. Andrew could still smell the pungent and indescribable stench.

On the first day Andrew had approached a guard, bowed, and used his best Japanese to beg for medical supplies to help the wounded. The guard’s response was a rifle butt to Andrew’s gut, dropping him like a stone. The guard had pointed his bayonet at Andrew’s neck and screamed, “Yankee scum, next time you die!” Andrew crawled to his knees and bowed again, putting his face to the dirt.

Others were also targets of gratuitous brutality. The guards’ fanatic hatred of the white race influenced their every action. They would steal anything that caught their eye: rings, watches, pocketknives, lighters. Smitty had his teeth bashed out by a soldier who noticed his gold fillings. On four separate occasions, the officer in charge became angry when a prisoner failed to understand his orders, given in Japanese. Three of those times the officer drew his revolver and shot the pleading prisoner in the head. The fourth man was knocked to the ground with a rifle butt to the face. The officer placed the tip of his bayonet on the man’s neck and plunged it to the hilt.

Finally, they were led onto a tramp steamer and loaded into a cargo hold with floor-to-ceiling shelves three feet high and ten feet deep. They were wedged into the shelves, sitting cross-legged and hunched over, knee-to-knee and five deep. The temperature from the collective body heat quickly grew infernal in the ill-ventilated hold. Breathing became nearly impossible, and several men passed out.

Mitchell had a dangerous fever and his cadaverously pale body trembled, so once again Andrew begged for drugs and bandages. This time he was shoved aside by three guards holding bamboo canes and received a blow to the side of his head. As he crashed to the deck, one guard drew his revolver and pointed it at the other prisoners stuffed into the shelves so that they would not interfere.

“Please, Master, don’t beat me,” Andrew mumbled.

Rough hands, unbelievably strong, grabbed his shoulder and pulled from behind, jerking him to his knees and whirling him around to face a guard. Andrew’s lips were pressed to the man’s crotch. He saw the brown buttons of the man’s fly, the weave of the uniform. It smelled of soap and sweat. Andrew’s eyes followed the line of the uniform up to the man’s face. The guard, stocky and powerful, slid his tongue across his lower lip. Andrew heard it, the sound of the man’s moist tongue wetting his lip. Above the open mouth were eyes blazing like a tiger’s.

A shiver ran up Andrew’s spine. The guard’s hand cupped Andrew’s jaw, applying enough pressure to hold it in position, while his other hand unbuttoned his fly. The odor of sweaty flesh hit Andrew’s nose. Another guard knelt behind him, leaned his head next to Andrew’s, cheek to cheek. Hands fumbled at Andrew’s belt. He caught the stench of whiskey on the man’s breath while his pants and underwear were yanked down, bunching about his knees. The man’s breathing was heavy and echoed in Andrew’s head. Everything became a blur as Andrew was squeezed in the vise of these two men, one holding him from behind, the other towering over him.

Andrew understood the snarl of Japanese. “This is what we do to Asians who are white inside!” Andrew heard the man behind him spit three times into his palm. An electric charge ran from Andrew’s heart to his testicles. He struggled to free himself, but there was no escape.

The ache in his head became searing waves of pain. The compartment went deathly still. Andrew looked to the side. Eyes were watching. All the
Pilgrim
’s survivors were stuffed into the floor-to-ceiling shelves, witnessing his shame.

The guard looming over Andrew let his pants fall about his thighs and pressed his cock against Andrew’s lips. A slap across Andrew’s face dropped his mouth open, forming a red circle. The guard cupped a hand behind Andrew’s head and wrenched it forward.

As Andrew’s face mashed into the man’s sweaty pubic hairs, he felt a searing pain rip into his bum. He screamed a muffled cry. The compartment spun about him. He gagged again and again. He couldn’t get enough air. He focused all his attention on gulping air between thrusts as the guards worked him over, roughly and clumsily.

Occasionally, details of what was occurring filtered through his numb consciousness: the taste of slick flesh, the stink of whiskey, the bristly pubic hair, the labored breathing, the animal-like grunts, the stench of vomit from the other prisoners.

An eternity seemed to pass before the man standing over him squeezed the sides of Andrew’s head and pumped his hips like a jackhammer. All at once, Andrew was choking on sperm. Even while gagging, Andrew could feel the eighty pairs of horrified eyes helplessly staring.

The guard behind him savagely groaned in his ear and he knew it would soon be over. But he also knew that it would never be over. He would suffer this humiliation every minute of his life. Andrew whimpered as both men pulled free of him and he was finally able to breathe.

They shoved him to the deck and beat him with bamboo canes: five blows across the back, slamming him harder and harder; two severe blows to the head. He heard his skull crack, twice. His mind drowned in a sea of flames.

They hauled him across the deck and rolled him into the lowest shelf, where he lay perfectly still with eyes unblinking. In that tropical heat, Andrew felt cold. He wanted to move, to pull his pants up over his nakedness, but he couldn’t. Rifts had opened in various parts of his body, in his mouth, his bum, his skull. He felt the hot, sticky, stagnant air within the ship’s compartment course through these ruptures, touching something deep inside. At the same time, he felt his life force hemorrhaging out these same holes.

Mitchell’s face hovered above him, looking helpless in a comical sort of way. There was something ridiculous about the situation. Grady slid closer, eyes as wide as saucers, and he turned and vomited.

Andrew wanted to tell them that it was okay, that the pain was seeping away, leaving only the frigid cold, but he couldn’t speak. Mitchell curled an arm under Andrew’s head and across his shoulders, but Andrew couldn’t feel his touch.

“Christ, he’s dead.”

Andrew recognized Cocoa’s voice but couldn’t see him.

The hold-cover was lowered into place. Andrew was consumed by claustrophobic darkness. He became convinced he
was
dead.  A moment later, he felt a cool breeze whisper across his cheek and under his wings, lifting… lifting…. The world below stood still as he glided high above the ship. He did not know if he was flying through time, or suspended, hovering in a still universe of blue sky and brilliant sunshine. He only knew that delicious feeling of freedom.

Ever so slowly, his feathered body fused with the sky and he became the wind. After a timeless span, things turned confusing. Harsh voices, burning light, and an incredible soul-consuming pain all rushed back to him, pulling him down.

The men in the darkness around him had become crazed with fear. They shrieked obscenities and lashed out at each other in claustrophobic hysteria until the guards opened the hatch cover once again, letting light and air pour into the compartment.

Andrew opened his eyes, blinked. The first thing that came into focus was Mitchell’s face, which still held that comical expression. “You’ll be okay,” a voice said. He felt himself being pressed in a tight hug and he heard words hastily whispered. “I love you,” or “God love you.” He wasn’t sure which, but regardless, he was startled to his core.

During the seven-day voyage, to escape the pain, humiliation, and stench Andrew often wished for death, for that freedom of flight, to never return to his body again. Every day, three or four men were given up to the sea, and he prayed he would be next.

Once, while waiting on deck for the daily rice ration, a prisoner stumbled to the rail and jumped over. Nobody knew who it was. Guards and prisoners all stared as the man drowned in the ship’s wash. In the hold, Andrew emptied his mind and willed himself to have the same courage as the man who jumped.

Chapter Eighteen

May 25, 1942—1500 hours

I
N
THE
Changi courtyard, the prisoners baked for an hour before the prison commandant sauntered in front of them and stepped onto a wooden box. He was a powerful man, about forty years old. He stood slightly under six feet tall and wore an immaculate, straw-colored uniform. A samurai sword clung to his side, tucked under his thick belt, and his black boots gleamed in the sunlight. In the center of his red-striped visor-cap sat the emblem of his regiment, which shined like gold from years of polishing. The cap covered a head of short, iron-gray hair, and his face and arms were burnt a masculine red-brown. He surveyed the ragged survivors while holding a swagger stick in one hand, slapping it against the palm of his other hand. Behind him spread a black shadow that seemed to move of its own accord.

He pointed the stick at the
Pilgrim
’s crew and, using a belligerent, baritone voice, announced in perfect English, “You are the first Americans to become prisoners of this camp. The Imperial Army has conquered the English, the Australians, and the Dutch. Now we are defeating the Americans. The prisoners of this camp are not prisoners of war, but rather, captives. A real soldier fights to the death and would not disgrace himself by being taken alive. You are no better than dogs, only concerned with saving your miserable skins. Thus, you will be treated like dogs. Obey the rules and you will avoid punishment. Break the rules and we will show no mercy. Escape is futile. There is no place on this island to hide. That is all.”