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December 1941
Very soon after an early breakfast the ship had dropped anchor and we were preparing to go over the side and board a Navy tug for shore. But this was only a temporary respite. In very short order we had organized numerous working parties - no coolies now - for loading lighters, getting them alongside the dock and unloading them again. This took us all of the remainder of the day we arrived plus all of the next day. And since there were no barracks available for us we had immediately to prepare an old warehouse for our occupancy. Fortunately, it was the beginning of the dry season and we were not hampered by the torrential rains of that area - their usual annual rainfall was 240 inches believe it or not.
Since we were now out of the area of Japanese influence, or so we supposed, we were able to relax somewhat, none of us actually believing yet that we should ever go to war with Japan. So, though there was plenty of work to be done, we were in fine spirits, and were turning to with a will on the job of making our place habitable. All of us were of the belief that this was only a stopping off place - temporarily - before continuing on to the States, where we expected to be reorganized into a regular combat outfit. (Our strength at the time a machine gun company, was 89 men and 5 officers. Our ultimate strength on Corregidor, comprised of Army, Navy and Marine Corps personnel, many of whom were only a liability rather than a asset because of malaria, diarrhea and dysentery among those we received in April from Bataan after the surrender of that area, was 276 men and about 10 officers; and we covered the entire area of Corregidor for beach defense, together with the rifle companies, A and B of the Marines, east of Malinta Tunnel.)
This work was going forward rapidly, and in a few days we had everything pretty well shipshape. A number of us even had been able to take time off and go to the rifle range beach, about three miles from the Marine Barracks, for a swim. It was on this excursion, while wading in the shallows just before returning to camp, that I was severely attacked by a Portuguese man-of-war, a form of jellyfish, but by no means to be compared with the jellyfish that inhabits the Chesapeake Bay. My legs were so seared by the potent fluid that they ached until the following morning, and nothing I put on them seemed to have much effect. When I did look at them the next morning, they were black and blue, just as if I had been beaten with a buggy whip. That is my only and I hope my last experience with such a beast.
We had no information about the length of our stay in Olongapo, but we assumed it would be only until ships could be procured for us, which shouldn’t take long. In the meantime we were making ourselves as comfortable as possible and not taking anything very seriously, It was then, just two days after my jaunt to the beach, and at four o’clock in the morning of December 8th (December 7th in the States) that the blow fell. We were routed out of our bunks by the bugler blowing call-to-arms and the passing of the word that Pearl Harbor had been attacked in force. We were stunned. And this feeling was replaced by the knowledge that we were IT.
Almost at once we received orders to abandon the building in which we were living and move everything out onto the golf course, which was just alongside. This was a precaution against bombing, since it was pretty certain that we should not long be left unmolested; in fact, it might break anytime. This job being done in almost nothing flat, we began work on emplacement of the machine guns and the two Stokes mortars which was all we had to work with for defensive purposes, and at the end of that first day we had nine Browning machine guns - 30 calibre - in position, plus several Lewis, 30-calibre, machine guns and the two mortars. (You had the loading machines loading cartridges into the bandoliers as fast as they would go, and, after the guns were in positions, the crews were ordered to stand by them on a twenty-four hour schedule - we had no means of getting word in advance of an air attack, and we expected one at any time.)
Late the same night, the 8th, we, the first battalion only, received orders to prepare to evacuate to Mariveles to the Pacific Air Base, distance of about sixty kilometers, I believe. (The entire base at Olongapo was to be evacuated within a few days - submarines, PBY’s and Marines - so we were simply the first contingent out.) So, since our guns were already emplaced, we left them and took over the guns of the second battalion - on second thought, I believe we simply abandoned our positions, taking our own guns, and the second battalion simply replicated their guns for as great coverage of the area as possible. Anyway, we were to leave at one o’clock of the afternoon of the ninth, by trucks, and the second battalion was to follow in a few days. During the interval between the receipt of the orders and our departure, not a blessed thing happened, though we were kept constantly on the alert. Our leaving was completely uneventful except that our departure was delayed by some holdup of the orders clearing us out of the area. It even appeared for a while that we might be compelled to debark and stand by to leave the next day. Finally, though, the orders came through and we got under way at about two-thirty pm.
The truck drivers had orders to make all the speed possible, and that they did, with ourselves keeping a steady lookout for unfriendly planes overhead. It was a rugged journey, over hilly country and some winding roads, not to mention clouds of dust which never abated, this being the dry season. However, the trip was not of long duration and about five o’clock, after one stop along the way of about ten minutes, we arrived at our new duty area, the Pacific Air Base, directly across the north channel of the entrance to Manila Bay from Corregidor. We had not one mishap and had soon unloaded and moved into vacant barracks buildings in which there were double bunks already set up. (We didn’t know it at the time, but this was to be our new position for only three weeks.)
As was our custom we soon had everything shipshape and had begun to feel as if the place had been our home for many months. (A change of station means nothing to a marine; he is prepared and ready to go at any time.) We immediately began manning 50-calibre machine guns which the navy had there, in addition to the preparation of new positions for our own 30-calibre machine guns, plus digging fox holes all along one side of the perimeter of our camp and the machine gun positions. (We began having air-raid alarms on the second day after our arrival, indicating Japanese planes in the area, though none immediately came into view, and since our orders were to evacuate the barracks and man the machine guns on the fringe of the camp at such a time, we had a hectic go of it, running back and forth. The alarms came as often as three and four a day, evidently the Japanese had not learned of our location yet.)
On the third day after our arrival in the new area, the second battalion joined us, and we learned that the Olongapo base had been strafed by Japanese Zeros and that the 30-calibre machine gun fire poured against them by the marines was ineffectual as shooting at them with a water pistol. They were heavily armored. And what had happened was that the Zeros had sighted the squadron of navy PBY’s from a considerable distance and had followed them in to the base at Olongapo. There they came in at them after they had landed and before the crews had all got ashore and set fire to them like shooting ducks in the water. All six planes were completely destroyed. I don’t remember what the casualties were among the plane crews, but I believe two were killed –a pilot and a radio operator. This was on December 12th.
Our regiment-skeleton size- was now together at Mariveles, with the exception of a demolition crew which had been left at Olongapo, together with a small quartermaster force to bring the remaining supplies. The demolition crew, of course, was to destroy everything of value which we could not transport; this included, among other things, all of the excess baggage of the individual marines and the officers, containing thousands of dollars of worth of silks, laces, teakwood chests etc. which the owners had expected to send or take home to the States. It was all blown up.
We began functioning to the best advantage possible at the new base, but all of us knew that, with the weapons we had, with the exception of the 50-calibre guns, we were practically useless except as guards. There simply was no adequate defense of the place possible in its present state.
There were two other details we fell heir to beside the duty at the base proper. One of these was a guard detail aboard the French ship Mareschal Joffre, which was lying just offshore and loaded mostly with flour (the purpose of the guard being to see that the ship was not scuttled or abandoned by the civilian crew); and the manning of 50-calibre machine guns - four of them - on the floating drydock, also anchored close in shore, directly opposite the French ship. Our routine continued just that, with no untoward happenings until the twenty fourth of December, when we got our first look at Japanese heavy bombers.
All of the company officers and senior NCOs were at a conference just outside the company commander’s tent. We had been there for about twenty minutes, it was about two o’clock in the afternoon, when I asked another sergeant if he could hear any planes. He said no, that he thought what I heard was some trucks in the hills nearby; but he continued to listen, and so did I, as well as look, when, suddenly, he saw a squadron of nine heavy bombers almost overhead. The company commander proved to be the most levelheaded of the lot of us. He pulled his pistol and fired it three times as the signal for an air raid. By then we had all scattered to fox holes, which were within easy reach of almost any place in the area. In the meantime, though, if the Japanese had been after us they would have dropped their load at about the time we first saw them. We hadn’t long to wait to learn just who they were after.
They were flying at a fairly low altitude, feeling smugly safe, I imagine, knowing there was then no adequate AA defense in our area. I should say they were flying at not more that 15,000 feet, which gave them a fine opportunity for the maximum of accuracy, and they continued on out over the bay, but giving Corregidor a wide berth, then turned and headed in the direction of the French ship and the floating drydock. Almost directly we heard the awesome moan and roar of the bombs falling, and, not having been bombed before, it sounded as if they were going to land in my lap, I was in a hole ten feet in diameter and three feet deep, and alone, which made me feel as if I were right smack up on the surface of the earth, At the sound of the explosion, I was somewhat surprised, not to mention gratified, that it was obviously some distance away, their target was actually about three miles, on a direct line, from my position. I was well aware, then, what their target was--either the ship or the drydock. I learned later that they made a direct hit on the first try, dropping most of the load just forward of the bridge of the ship, and, in that explosion, two of my men were killed instantly. The planes then turned, no opposition whatever; we had nothing at all to use against them, and they were beyond range of the guns of Corregidor, and made one more run over the ship, dropping their second load even more accurately than the first; this time they hit amidship and in the after portion and had the entire vessel violently aflame. I don’t recall now how many of the French crew were killed, but the captain, miraculously, came out of it with only minor injuries. And for days bags of flour were being washed up on the beach where the Filipinos would salvage them for their own use, since much of the inner part of the contents was not contaminated.
We held a funeral, the first and last formal one, for the two men we had lost on the next morning which was Christmas day. At noon we had regular holiday dinner with cigars and beer and prepared to forget the incident until the opportunity should come to retaliate. And two days later, after having prior notice no useful purpose in our present position, we did just that and established a temporary camp about fifteen miles from the Pacific Air Base. (You can well imagine that all of this did not come about without a hell of a lot of work on the part of all hands.)
On the next day, at about noon, we received orders to break camp and proceed with all equipment to the Quarantine dock at Mariveles, there to embark aboard tugs and lighters for Corregidor. (Ever since we had been in the area we had heard about the invincibility of the Rock, bomb proof buildings, and the enemy couldn’t even hit the island, so the story went, because of queer air currents over it that would deflect any bombs and cause them to fall into the water. Oh, boy! How we were going to have that theory disproved, but quick!) Well, we worked like Mississippi river stevedores and in much the same fashion, loading our equipment and preparing to depart. At just about midnight we were all aboard and under way, with lights all dark and on a beautiful, hazy, moonlight night. There was coffee by the gallon coming out of the galley of the two tugs and we drank about all they could make. We, and they too, knew we had still a long and grueling job ahead of us to unload the stuff on the other side. It was twenty minutes ‘til four in the morning when we finally reached our billet at Middleside on Corregidor. We were practically too tired to sleep.
We were routed out by the bugler at eight-thirty for breakfast and to get things squared away, pending further orders as to areas we should occupy and the jobs each unit should have to perform in the defense of the island. Well, we were inclined to take things easy for the moment since there appeared to be nothing pressing, but don’t misunderstand me, there was still plenty of work; it just didn’t have the urgency of the previous forty-eight hours.
At eleven fifty, this same morning, I was down at the area in front of the supply room of “A” Battery of the Coast Artillery at Middleside, supervising and helping to move our company property to our company area, when, as startlingly as anything I have ever heard, we were all in such a state of lethargy and a feeling of false security, the siren started sounding the alarm for a air raid. Before it shut off, we heard the planes coming over and in a few more seconds they were dropping their loads all over the place. One of the first hits was in the middle of the building where I was, and, though the building had plenty of men in it at the time, no one was even seriously injured; though the bomb came through to the middle floor before it exploded. There were no shelters anywhere, other than the building and a deep gully in front of the building, and there again we had no means of fighting back, I was going to get used to this in the next four months. Be at first I dived into the battery office and sprawled out on the floor along the wall, together with the other five or six men who were there with me. By this time bombs were hitting on all sides but not another one came through the building, there were than about 150 men within its walls, I judge; mostly marines, since the army was living in the field by their guns. There was only the supply sergeant and one or two others of the army in the area, and they were as much puzzled as we about what to do or where to go for cover.
Not five minutes after I had dived into the building, a bomb hit directly in the middle of the supplies we had been moving and just outside the door of the office where I then was. I thought the walls at least were coming down, but no one was hurt. Almost at the same time, one hit just outside the adjoining corner office, sucking out the windows and knocking loose two telephone batteries onto the head of one of my sergeants, who happened to be lying on the floor under them. He was really worried for a minute.
During this debacle, which lasted just two hours, I changed my position five times and finally ended up in a culvert about a hundred feet from where I started. I just stumbled onto it in the last few minutes of the bombing, all of the rest of the time I was right out in the open, sprawled face down and hoping for the best. In the culvert I felt reasonable safe, since I had about twenty feet of dirt and rock over me, but it would have been rough if one had happened to hit just at the mouth; the concussion would have fixed me up permanently. (I felt like the guy in the cartoons of Bruce Bairnsfather of the 1st World War - Old Bill, looking for the better ‘ole.)
We learned later from the Coast Artillery battery that there had been fifty-four planes in the attack, but we never did get an accurate report of hits by our batteries or whether we even actually knocked down as much as one of the Nips. One boy, a sergeant in “A” Battery emptied seven clips from his pistol at them, having nothing better to fight them with. He might as well have thrown rocks, but, at least, it gave him some outlet for his excitement and something, however silly, to do. (Of course, the batteries claimed so many planes downed, etc., but the figures mounted so rapidly in the coming weeks without anyone in my area having seen any, or seen anyone who had seen any fall, that I find it hard to give their figures credence.)
In the raid, the principal damage that affected us materially was the firing of an oil storage warehouse which burned completely out. All of the other damage, such as to buildings which were not then in use, was of little real consequence. Almost all of the supplies were stored in Malinta Tunnel, and the hospital had been moved there too, which was very fortunate, as the outside hospital building at Topside had been given a thorough going-over, by the little slope-heads.
We had supper that night at the usual time-five o’clock, and at about six received orders to form and move off to our new area, where we were to begin the preparation of the beach defenses. At this time phase of the defense of the island, so we started from scratch. Our immediate destination when we moved at this moment was the Officers’ Beach area (I am speaking of my own company. The remainder of the regiment, including the personnel of the band, was distributed over the island for the same purpose at other vital spots.) We rested for two days there, enjoying the swimming in the cove, awaiting the orders to begin work in accordance with the plan then being worked out by the regimental commander and the battalion commanders. It was a much needed and gratifying respite. In the meantime the Nips were keeping us occupied once a day with a bombing excursion. They came over regularly at about eleven-thirty in the morning, and gave us a going over that lasted about an hour. After that we could settle down until the next day.
(The remainder of this narrative will be concerned almost entirely with the activity of my own platoon, while on Corregidor, that is, as we were so busy preparing machine guns and 37 millimeter gun positions, besides fire lanes, barbed wire obstructions of various/kinds and tank obstacles and traps, that I had little contact with any other units. When night came I was ready for the sack, and that is where I was to be found invariably. I had acquired an officers bedding roll which I could throw on the ground anywhere and be mighty comfortable. When I was wounded and taken into hospital in Malinta tunnel, another phase begins; but that didn’t happen until May 2nd, just three days before the Japanese came over.)
On December 31st the orders came out assigning a specific job to each platoon of the company, and my platoon drew the toughest job from a standpoint of the nature and extent of the work to be done. Our job was to dig gun positions, open fire lanes, string barbed wire and erect other obstacles beginning at the Officers’ Beach area and extending to the easternmost end of the island, a distance of about a thousand yards and covering both the northern and the southern sides of the island in that direction, as well as the air strip. As we installed the guns and finished other defense measures, another unit manned them and we moved on to a new work area. This continued until all of the installations had been made and we ourselves manned the final emplacements. In the meantime the Nips were not letting us feel too secure. They didn’t, though, seem to be concerned immediately with the area in which we were working, as the only military objective then there was a small chemical shed where gases were stored and an anti-aircraft battery just on top of the hill above where we were working.
Each time the bombers came over, they invariably made at least two runs over the battery above us, dropping a load each time; and in most instances, instead of hitting the battery, the load went on either side of the hill, on to slope or at the bottom, and usually in the area in which we were working. The battery itself was on a very narrow ridge, which made it almost impossible for the Japanese to do any damage to them. It must have been very disconcerting to the little so-and-sos to have this battery open up on them each time they came over, when, from the air photographs they had made, undoubtedly, they probably thought they had done considerable damage.
They never did hit this battery by bombing, though they came pretty close on a couple of occasions. In one instance a young soldier was completely covered with dirt from a very close hit as he lay in his foxhole alongside the battery position. (You see, the method employed was to fire on the advancing planes until they were given the signal of bombs away, when they would dive for their foxholes. After the bombs hit they would be out of the holes and resume firing almost instantly. In this connection, there was a first sergeant of the battery, whose name I do not know and who was later killed, who deserved a citation for bravery. He was an inspiration for his entire battery, as I was told by a number of men then and later, by his calm actions and a complete lack of any appearance of fear. He took it upon himself to mount the top of a water tower overlooking his battery and act as the lookout for time when the Nips let go with their bomb load and give the signal for the men to hit the dirt. He never sought cover for himself but merely flattened out on top of the tower. (You must bear in mind that this was happening every day and not just once.) And the remarkable thing is that he was never hit by shrapnel from the bombs, though he had a number of mighty close calls. He was killed later by shell-fire from the Cavite shore when the Japanese had set up batteries there. Their plan then, which took a long time for them to devise, was to shell the AA Battery as the battery shelled the planes coming overhead, thus having a clearer target. Of course that made it mighty rough on the battery and it was finally knocked out, but not until it had been in constant operation for about three months.)
In each area where we worked we had shallow foxholes - we needed only to be below the surface of the ground for adequate protection, unless we received a direct hit, which rarely occurred to anyone, and then it wouldn’t have mattered if we were twenty feet down, as the enemy was using then almost entirely demolition bombs - and of course we ducked for them when the signal sounded. It, the bombings, caused very little disturbance to our routine of work, unless they made a hit on some of our wire, though they never hit any of our emplacements of guns, pure luck! (I am speaking here of the area we were occupying, of course,. There were plenty of army installations that were having a pretty rough time of it, though, of course, I don’t know in detail.)
The bombings continued daily for a period of about two months; ending in the latter part of February. About then it was that the Nips started shelling us from the Cavite shore, southeast of Corregidor. Their principal target seemed to be certain battery installations on the Rock and the entrance, eastern to Malinta tunnel, but they did not by any means forget the other fortified islands: Ft. Hughes, Ft. Frank and one other that I cannot recall the name of now, though I know it well. Those forts got a thorough going over, I can assure you. Only on one occasion, though, did they do any substantial damage and that was against Ft. Frank when a 240mm came though and killed about 47 Filipinos. In the meantime we had begun (the army, that is) returning the fire with 12-inch mortar shells; usually late in the afternoon or early in the evening. The sound of those big projectiles going overhead was like that of a freight train going through a tunnel. And when they hit on the Cavite shore it looked as if a couple of acres of hillside was uncovered, I have no idea of the accuracy of our gunners, since they had no spotters (observation planes, you know at that time we had about two P-40s and one ancient two-seater observation plane that had been used by the Philippine army) and were trying to plot the target during the firing from it and lay on it with are shelling later (what the Nips probably did, though. was to move their battery after each shelling, as they always came back at us the next day.
During all of this shelling from the Cavite shore, the eastern end of the Rock where my battalion was was not getting any of it, so we led a fairly peaceful life for a period of almost a month. During this time, a company of AA engineers had been brought over from Bataan to begin work on the enlargement of the airstrip, which was right in the middle of the area my platoon was working in. This work by the engineers continued day after day, without interruption, but I don’t believe many of us thought there would ever be any planes to come in on it. It seemed to be just a precautionary measure, in the event any planes did get up that far from the south.
For the moment I shall interrupt myself to mention that just before the engineers began work in the area, one of two old two-seater observation planes of the Philippine army came in late in the afternoon with dispatches for General MacArthur, and, so the story goes, was standing by for a special mission just after dusk. Well, a Staff Sergeant Madison (I believe that was his name) came on the field, started the engine, got in the plane and took off, heading south. Sometime later, it was learned from the Japanese that they had shot a plane of that description down over Cebu. Madison, of course, was trying to escape from the Rock and it was a pure case of desertion in the face of the enemy. Another incident, which you probably read about, occurred a short time after that. Three navy patrol bombers came just after dusk and landed on the water just off Fort Hughes, took aboard a group of about twenty-five nurses and headed for southern Mindinao en route for Australia. As well as I recall the later reports, only one of them made it.
On March 24th, at about two o’clock in the afternoon, our pleasant respite was very rudely brought to an end. A group of Japanese heavy bombers came in from two directions and worked over the airstrip and the fringes of it for about forty minutes. And as luck would have it they caught almost all of the heavy equipment of the engineers at one end of the airstrip and made a hit smack in the middle of it. There were about thirty men in that area but most of them had hit the deck before the bomb fell and, actually, there were only two men seriously hurt. Several other received minor cuts but the equipment, much of it, was damaged beyond repair, so that just about stopped the work on the strip. The tragedy of the incident was that the company commander, whom the men swore by, he was so well like, died about a week later of the injuries he had received, though at the time they were not thought to be too serious to prevent his recovery. It was quite a shock to his outfit.
When I heard the planes first coming in they were almost overhead and had just about released their load (the air-raid warning signal picked them up about the same time, which did us little good); anyway I happened to be in the area that was our platoon headquarters with my platoon commander, Captain Bromeyer. We were together and hit the bomb shelter at about the same time. It was none too soon, as, almost immediately, bombs hit on either side of us, at a distance of about fifty feet. One that hit just down the slope below us might have ended our history if we had been above the surface. It was a fair sized demolition bomb and blew a crater about 18 feet across and about six feet deep. It shook us up pretty good, as it was, but no damage was done except that it started a brush fire which we had to fight out for about twenty minutes. In the meantime, other bombs that had fallen on the other side of the strip had started a fire there that was going strong. And the worst of it was that there was a stack of 25 one hundred-pound bombs directly in the middle of it. It would have been silly to try to put the fire out with that danger lurking immediately and no one tried it. I was determined to stick close by my hole until the stack blew, and urged Captain Bromeyer to do likewise. He figured he could get down below, near the beach, to the area where we had a number of men and see if they were all right before the blast came. I stayed where I was and watched him go down the hill. He had been out of sight about five minutes when a sheet of flame leaped into the air from the bomb dump. I didn’t wait to see what it was going to do or to hear the explosion. I hit the hole, and instantly a terrific blast shook the whole area and shrapnel was whizzing in all directions. It had one good effect, besides not injuring anyone, it put part of the fire out and lessened our job of extinguishing the remainder of it later. It also got a hazard that we had been worrying about some out of our way. And they were of no slightest value to us whatever. There were three other similar dumps farther away, but they were never blown up to my knowledge.
The end of William’s story
William was reported missing in the Philippines
Dad survived and made it home.
My parents met after the war when dad got home.
My mother was a volunteer librarian at the veterans hospital where he was recovering.
He was from Virginia and my mother was a westerner, they had me when they were 49.
Cynthia
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