Behind Japanese Lines (35 page)

Everything went wrong. No sooner did our two advance men get over the fence, than two suspicious Japanese, alerted by the unusual noises in the town, stepped out of the eastern warehouse and shouted “Kuri” in Japanese and “Halto” in English and Spanish. Immediately Joseph Henry, one of my best men, forgot all about my order not to fire until I gave the command, and opened up with a tommygun. Then another lad, only a step behind me, began to blaze away. For an instant I thought the bullets were coming at me. I stepped backward in disgust. No matter; all hope for surprise had vanished. We did the only thing left: individually clamber over the fence as fast as we could. I raced for the side of the building where the two Japanese had appeared, shouting commands in English as I went. Henry had mowed down the pair, but one of them twitched his leg spasmodically just as I came to him. Already angry and excited, and long since conditioned by hard experience to take no chances with Japanese, I instinctively opened fire on him with my tommygun, at point blank range. Even in the dark I could see the man's face fly off in chunks. “What a hell of a way to die,” I thought momentarily. I grabbed for what looked like a rifle lying across his body, but it turned out to be his sword, partly drawn from its scabbard. I have no idea why, but I yanked it free and handed it to Greg. All at once a machinegun our Filipino cartographer had forgotten to put on his map opened fire. We had to fall behind the building for protection.

Meantime a few of our men had been sent around to the opposite side of the garrison to attack a small native hut on stilts that contained a few Japanese. They were supposed to wait until they heard our fire, then when the Japanese in the hut awakened and came outside our men were to mow them down. Once more somebody got buck fever. One awakened a Japanese, who started to jump out a window but was shot immediately. He fell back into the house and thus alerted all his companions, who began to race about madly inside. One of our guerrillas, Virgilio Blando, then dashed under the
bahay
, whose floor was above his head, and began to fire up through the bamboo flooring. Afterward he told me excitedly that he was sure he must have killed many Japanese since streams of blood had poured down through the floor. The truth was more prosaic: he had shot up a big jar of water.

While this Marx Brothers battle (though waged with real weapons) was going on inside the stockade, things went better outside. Our men there burned a wooden bridge and cut the telephone wires on both sides of town. Those of us still inside fired a few parting shots into the rice warehouses and melted away in the dark without a
casualty. The Japanese in the main barracks, who hardly knew what had happened all around them, then began to fire mortars in all directions without having any idea where we were. As we made our way back to our camp, we could hear much more firing coming from Umingan to the south where a battalion of our guerrillas was attacking another Japanese garrison. There the battle went on most of the night.

Next morning the enemy troops in San Quintin slipped out of town. A Filipino told us afterward that when they had heard commands given in English and found spent cartridges dated 1942 and 1943 they had concluded that they had been attacked by American paratroopers.

After I was informed on January 4 that an American landing was imminent, I trusted that it would come in Lingayen Gulf, about seventy miles west of our camp. On January 7 I sent runners off in that direction to seek contact with American forces. For three days they walked through ricefields full of Japanese troops, eventually making contact with Gen. Walter Krueger's Sixth Army on January 10, the day after the landings had begun. They were able to give him much information about enemy dispositions and our own situation. I would have been immensely relieved had I known that the actual Lingayen Gulf landings had been unexpectedly easy because U.S. carrier strikes around Manila had led the Japanese to expect landings there. The chief menace that had faced the Allies in Lingayen Gulf had proved to be kamikaze attacks.

Several days later the runners were back with abundant news of their own plus a pencilled order from Colonel Lassetter, the G-2 of First Corps headquarters. It was dated January 12, 1945. Paragraph five read, “You and your unit could be of best service by remaining in your areas and supplying us with required information at such time as our troops can reach you.” Paragraph six added, “Congratulations on your good work.”

Of course, I was pleased to be commended, but the rest of the message was a heavy blow because my men and I, after three years as nomads or guerrillas, were chafing to join the American forces. I was fully aware of what would follow if I stayed where I was. As U.S. regular troops advanced, they would push droves of the enemy eastward right into my lap. As the days passed, reports poured in from every side. I rushed them immediately to General Krueger, when I could, but communicating by runners was maddeningly slow: usually three days each way. Once civilians in San Quintin reported to me
that their town contained a large concentration of enemy troops and tanks, commanded by two Japanese generals. How I wished for artillery, or even a decent radio so I could report it to our air force at once. Next morning the enemy had departed. I cursed my helplessness.

No doubt, I would have been less discontented had I known that my ex-sidekick Al Hendrickson was quite as isolated as myself, and in more pressing circumstances. Al and his men never really linked up with American forces at all. Instead, they fought alone near Tarlac City until January 16 when they finally took the town from a much larger Japanese force. Next day a single company of the U.S. Thirty-seventh Division finally managed to break through and establish contact with them.

All I learned for sure in these days was that Bob Lapham and Harry McKenzie had made their way through miles of territory held by the enemy to join the regular American forces. Meantime the retreating Japanese poured eastward and then split shortly before they would have reached our position. Some of them veered off northeast toward San Nicolas onto the Villa Verde Trail, a mountain pathway too narrow for either trucks or armored vehicles. Other Japanese passed virtually over our feet on their way south, where they would pick up the Santa Fe Trail which eventually turned northeast, intercepting the Villa Verde Trail and entering the Cagayan Valley. Fierce fighting took place in both sectors. The Japanese on the Villa Verde Trail were soon forced into a last stand on high ground that would be named Yamashita Ridge. Those farther south had their tanks run out of gasoline or break down. When this happened, they pushed their stranded tanks into hillside dugouts and used them as artillery against their oncoming foes. When they ran out of shells, they set fire to their tanks and burned them. As our own artillerymen blasted them out one by one, they could not forbear a grudging respect for the Japanese tank men who stayed to the death by their iron steeds quite as faithfully as beleaguered cavalrymen of legend had stayed by their horses. As for myself, there I sat with all this action taking place all about me, periodically devouring some new message like the one that came from Bob Lapham on January 15: “Remain where you are.” I felt like the last inmate of an orphanage when the building was burning down.

On January 22 I finally received the directive I had awaited so impatiently. It was from Bob, and it ordered me to report to him at the village of Manoag some thirty miles to the west. Though we would have to go through about fifteen miles of territory still held by the Nipponese, we were so anxious to go that we left at once, not even
waiting for nightfall. The dangers were clear, but it isn't every day that a soldier gets an invitation from his own forces to join them after a three-year separation. I rode a horse and fifteen men followed me. As we snaked our way across the countryside through the ricefields, we questioned Filipino civilians closely and repeatedly changed our course. A few times we spotted Japanese in the distance, but if they saw us at all they showed no more interest in us than we did in them.

After some time American artillery began to pound at nothing obvious to me, somewhat ahead and to the south of us. We drifted off northward to avoid it, only to have it move after us. I wondered if we had been spotted and mistaken for the enemy. I dismounted and started to look for a trail around a rice dike that was covered with tall grass. As I turned a bend, I abruptly encountered what was momentarily one of the strangest sights I have ever beheld: three white men, dressed in weird clothing, jumping in and out of a ditch with every artillery burst. They proved to be merely an American officer and two enlisted men garbed in army battle fatigues. They started to deploy against us until their Filipino guide assured them that we were guerrillas. After introductions the officer said he was en route to our headquarters to secure information about the enemy.

In the movies there would have been a joyous and noisy reunion, but we were still in enemy territory where there was a distinct possibility of being fired upon by either the Japanese or the Americans, or both, and with still another enemy, darkness, due to envelope us before we could get to the American front lines. So we forswore celebrating and merely followed the American officer, who was obviously tremendously relieved to be able to abandon his erstwhile mission and head back toward his own army.

During the next few weeks a lot of things happened to me, but one of the main memories I have of those days is that, for the first time, I realized how easy it is to “go native.” By that I do not mean that I had forgotten civilized ways but rather how readily I had mixed new habits and attitudes with old, sometimes unconsciously sloughing off much of the old in the process. The degree to which I now needed “re-Americanization” became evident soon after meeting the three Americans in the ricefield.

After we joined forces, we started westward toward the Agno River. It soon became clear that we could not reach it before nightfall, so we decided to spend the night in a cluster of native huts. It was simply too dangerous to walk around after dark into what might become a combat zone at any time. I was still wearing my one-piece
khaki suit, my gourd hat, and my crossed bandoliers with their heavy load of ammunition, a getup that must have seemed as strange to my army guests as their battle dress did to me. When we sat down to eat, both sides were happy to exchange food. Our chicken, rice, and Philippine vegetables were relished by the Americans, and I devoured a delicious canned snack called K rations, a commodity I had neither seen or heard of before and so did not know was universally reviled by GIs. My new compatriots then offered me some cigarettes. I took them eagerly, but after smoking a few even the Camels were so insipid it was like tasting air. Though I had not liked them at first, I had long since gotten used to Philippine cigarettes wrapped in black paper and packing at least three times the wallop of any American brand. After we had talked for hours, I said I was going to bed and started inside one of the huts. “Isn't that dangerous?” the lieutenant asked in tones of mild astonishment. I replied that I had been doing it for years; that the natives would be alert and would warn us if anything happened.

At dawn we moved out toward the river, as quickly as we could since some U.S. B-26 light bombers were pasting a village a mile or so to the north and we did not want to get hit accidentally. As we started into the river, some American troops began to ford it coming toward us. Though I had just turned twenty-five, they looked impossibly young and fresh, not to say peculiar as well in their combat outfits. One boy was munching an apple; another winked at us.

When we reached the opposite bank, I stopped and took a long look back. Though it sounds melodramatic to record, this was one of those rare occasions when a man reflects seriously on his past life. Random memories from the preceding three years tumbled over one another in my mind like pieces in a kaleidoscope: thoughts of gnawing, aching hunger; of some ailments that had been merely irritating and others that I had never expected to survive; of never having enough of anything; of perpetual danger and constant anxiety, the foreboding that even momentary lack of vigilance might mean death; all of it mingled incongrously with everlasting uncertainty and interminable waiting. I felt strongly that a bizarre chapter in my life had ended at last. What would come next? I cannot recall having any intuitions about this.

At length I turned away and we continued our march down a dusty road into a small detachment of American troops bivouacked for a rest before pushing on ahead. They all seemed to think I was a Filipino. Finally one of them summoned up sufficient nerve to ask me if I was an American. My temper was often short in those days,
and I barked back something like, “What the Goddam hell do you think?” To my surprise, the reply raised immediate cheers and an offer to join them in a meal. The GIs now accepted me, but they simply could not believe that I had been on Luzon for three years. As a matter of fact, the more I talked about it the stranger it sounded to me too. It was like the proverbial awakening from a dream. Some of the newcomers remarked that my eyes darted about constantly. No doubt they did: if I had not long since acquired such a reflex action, I probably would have been dead.
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After breakfast the lieutenant in charge of the detachment loaned me a jeep and driver to take me quickly to Twenty-fifth Division Headquarters, Sixth Army. Since the fall of Bataan I hadn't ridden anything faster than a horse or carabao. When the jeep started off, I felt like a Montana sheepherder taking his first ride on the New York subway. I huddled in the back seat and hung onto my gourd hat as the maniacal driver hurtled down the dirt road at what seemed like a hundred miles an hour. Once I looked apprehensively at the speedometer: it read thirty.

When we reached our destination, I was immediately ushered in to meet a general, whose name I have forgotten. He was anxious to get as much information from me as possible and asked me a great array of questions about Japanese numbers, dispositions and plans, the state of Philippine rivers, bridges and trails, the number and condition of guerrilla outfits, and much else. I answered as fully as I could, but to the surprise of both the general and myself, in the middle of a reply I would occasionally lapse into one of the three Philippine dialects I had picked up. I suppose I was just excited. Anyway, each time I apologized, backtracked, repeated my answer in English, and promised to try not to stray again. Finally I had to acknowledge shamefacedly that I couldn't seem to speak anything better than broken English that day. The general smiled broadly and waved off the matter lightly.