The Pacific (27 page)

Good news awaited them back in Sector Three. They had missed another shellacking delivered by imperial warships on November 11-12. Chesty Puller had recovered as much as he was going to allow himself to recover and had taken back his command of the battalion. Another regiment of marines, the Eighth, had landed. Individual replacements had come ashore to bring the 1/7 back up to strength. Mail call had begun to be sounded with regularity. That meant the possibility of a letter to Manila from Stephen Helstowski's sister, Helen. John had gotten in touch with Helen because their correspondence brought a little something else into his life. Manila, however, convinced J.P. or Richard to write his letters to her for him.
¹⁸²

Best of all, the supply ships had brought in good chow. The battalion mess served pancakes, nice big pancakes with great big piles of strawberry jam on top of them. After eighteen days of cold rations, hotcakes were a wonder.
¹⁸³
Sometime during the next few days, someone discovered an enemy soldier in the chow line. The marine dungarees he wore, which had allowed him to get into line, now put his life in imminent danger as men guessed how he had come to have the clothes and helmet. They brought him before Puller, who "had him on the ground and was cursing him up and down," to no effect.
¹⁸⁴
The prisoner was taken away.

SINCE THE JAPANESE HAD NOT MARKED
ERIE MARU
AS A POW SHIP, THE POWS hoped that a U.S. submarine would slam a torpedo into her. Any alternative, even taking their chances in the ocean, seemed preferable to further incarceration. From their perch high atop a pile of rice sacks, Shifty and Dobervich and Hawkins could tell they were sailing south and took heart. They evaluated the guards to see if they could be overpowered in a coup de main, but decided against it. They debated jumping overboard when they sailed within a mile or so of an island. They watched as the ship pulled into port on November 7 and the disembarkation began about one p.m.

The guards put the POWs' baggage with the camp's stores on the trucks and they set off. They walked through the afternoon and into the evening. Men began to fall out of the column, unable to continue. No one was allowed to stop walking. The question had to come: Was this another Bataan? Hawkins and Dobervich fell out somewhere close to midnight. Shofner and the others arrived at the camp gates at three a.m., having hiked twenty- nine kilometers.

Trucks brought in the men who had quit the march, unharmed. The first morning, Sunday, the men were given a chance to rest. A former penal colony, the POW camp still held about 150 of the original 2,000 civilian prisoners. Another 900 American POWs, officers and men who had been stationed on Mindanao, were also held there. From them they learned the camp took its name, the Davao Penal Colony, from the large city about fifty kilometers away on the coast of Mindanao, the most southern of the Philippine Islands.

The barracks were large, tin- roofed buildings with solid wood floors. Each held 250 men. At night the sleeping men crowded the floor space. No decks for sleeping had been built above them, though, so Shifty found it easier to breathe than in his last barracks. Davao also had a mess hall that seated almost half the prisoners at one time. Having a place to sit for meals and, on Sundays, worship, seemed like luxuries to the men from Cabanatuan. At the noon meal and at the evening meal the rice included cassava or camotes. There was fresh water for drinking, washing, and bathing.

At the first assembly, Major Maida shouted that he had "asked for prisoners capable of doing hard labor," but he "had been sent a batch of walking corpses."
¹⁸⁵
The major informed them that all officers were required to work. The Davao Colony produced foodstuffs for Japan on several thousand acres of rich farmland around them. " The first day of each month," he ordered, the "entire American prisoner complement had to appear in military formation and salute the Japanese flag, and salute throughout the 'Rising Sun' ceremony." Major Maida, however, had made no mention of "shooting squads." Shifty knew right away that as long as the POWs worked hard and produced the required amounts of food, they would be provided enough food to become healthy once more. He had gambled and won.

THE NEW SQUADRONS ARRIVED ON CACTUS READY FOR ACTION. RAY DAVIS offered to have them fly wing on Bombing Six until they got the lay of the land. They took one flight. In the ops tent for the debriefing, Ray warned them to stay away from the floatplane base about a hundred miles away. Bombing Six had not attempted to bomb the floatplane base because they had had other priorities and because the enemy planes could be expected to fight back. Dauntlesses had not been designed for aerial combat--they had been designed to fight off an enemy fighter, to survive an attack, but not to initiate aerial combat. The new guys dismissed the warning. Mike worried they were too "rambunctious," but Ray said, "Okay, they want to go on their own, let them go on their own." Some of the new guys did not come back from their first mission. No one knew for sure what had happened. Bombing Six assumed they had gone looking for trouble.

Even with all the reinforcements, Ray decided his squadron would not slack off. "We'll fly our flights right down to the end," he declared. On November 5, Ray asked Mike to fly his wing on search up the slot and around New Georgia. As they walked out to their planes, Ray said, "When we get up to the end of that island, there's no use . . . making that dogleg through that channel. We'll just fly over the top of the mountains." Mike nodded his assent and away they went.

After flying up the slot, they made the left-hand turn over the top of New Georgia. A cloud bank obscured their vision. So Ray led them down to drop out of the clouds. When they popped out, they saw ten ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Even pulling back on the sticks, their dives took them down to where Mike felt "we were right in the middle of them." Ray dodged and jinked, Mike followed, and they flew toward the open sea. Ray got on the radio and alerted the strike force. Instead of gaining altitude and arming their bombs, Ray led Mike back to Henderson Field. Mike did not ask his skipper why they had not turned around. Ray had proven his courage so many times that Mike figured it was something else. He was still wondering when, three days later on November 8, he and Ray and the remaining members of Bombing Six boarded an R4D and started the long journey back home. They flew to Efate and then to Noumea, New Caledonia. They could relax. Their only job was to await transportation home.

UP ON THEIR HILL, SID'S SQUAD WATCHED ANOTHER ENEMY AIR STRIKE COME IN on a Wednesday afternoon, only to be met by a tremendous barrage of AA guns. So many fired, it "looked like an asphalt highway across the sky." A lot of Zeros and bombers fell prey to the dark clouds bursting around them. Then the bad news came: "the biggest jap convoy in history is three hundred miles off " and due to arrive Friday, November 13, at two thirty a.m. Deacon prayed, "Please God, give us the strength to face and overcome the enemy and gain peace." His prayers seemed to be answered the next day, when three battalions of infantry landed at Lunga. Some of the marines were also replacements, and a few made their way to the #4 gun squad. They looked like Navy Yard marines, though--men more accustomed to filing papers than firing an 81mm. All hands turned to, preparing themselves, their fortifications, and their weapons for battle. That Thursday, way out to sea, the shit hit the fan. They watched the great warships fire shells and watched the shells tear through the air for miles. The next morning, Friday, the word passed that the United States had won the battle out at sea, but the emperor had landed sixty- five thousand men eleven miles from the marine perimeter.
^p

WHEN MIKE HEARD ABOUT ANOTHER BIG NAVY BATTLE RAGING IN THE WATERS off Cactus, he thought, "Oh God, we're going to get called back up there." Hours passed, then days, but the call did not come. One afternoon, Ray called his guys together. The skipper said a big decision had to be made, and rather than make it himself, he wanted all the guys to hear the options and take a vote. Option number one, they could take a passenger ship back to Pearl Harbor, then pick up another ship for the States. "Or," he said, "we can get on a Dutch freighter and go back straight to the States." The freighter would take a lot longer to get home and it would travel unescorted. The pilots weren't worried about enemy submarines, though. To a man they "were afraid if we got bumped off at Pearl, we'd turn around and come right back down to where we were. So we said, 'We'll go all the way to the States.' "

After the vote, Ray went down to COMSOPAC to make the arrangements. New orders arrived for each man of Bombing Six. But they all began the same. They were to report aboard the freighter
Tabinta
for transportation to the West Coast. Upon arrival, they would report to the commander of the "nearest Naval District." They set sail on the sixteenth. At four p.m. Mike heard an unfamiliar signal over the ship's PA system. It heralded, he found out, the daily liquor ration. He had his choice between a can of warm beer and a shot of spirits. This came as a happy surprise to the weary men of the Bombing Six. The U.S. Navy banned alcohol on its ships, but not the Dutch.

That evening the men were seated for dinner and had an even better treat. "They gave us fresh salad. And then they gave us spaghetti and meatballs. And that was delicious. We hadn't had anything like that, so we stuffed ourselves with spaghetti and meatballs. Then the stewards came around and said, 'How would you like your steak, sir?' 'Well,' we said, 'we're too full to eat the steak. We'll get it tomorrow.' So we did."

Since
Tabinta
made only eleven knots, heading east across the great ocean all by herself, the pilots settled in for a long trip. Unlike a carrier, though, the ship did not go to general quarters every day. Day after day, Bombing Six had all the peace and quiet they could stand, and a ration of liquor every afternoon at four p.m.

WITHOUT WARNING, A GUARD BROUGHT SHIFTY INTO A ROOM. HE WAS GOING TO be questioned. This was always a risky situation for a POW. A Japanese naval officer asked him to be at ease, offered a cigarette, and asked if Shofner had ever known any Japanese naval officers. Shofner replied, "Sure, I have quite a few friends in the Japanese Navy and I've found them to be all gentlemen."

"Where?"

"At Shanghai." The officer admitted he had not visited Shanghai. Shofner complimented the officer on his command of English and then, sensing an opening, he started to play upon the IJN's disdain for the IJA by looking his questioner square in the eye and telling him all U.S. forces wanted to be POWs of the Imperial Japanese Navy because they knew them to be gentlemen. It worked. The interrogator agreed and soon sent him away.

The next time he went in for questioning, he had already heard from another POW that the camp's leadership wanted to know about each prisoner's skills and training. Shifty, who had seen enough of the camp to know that being a worker in the fields would allow him the chance to steal lots and lots of food, wanted no part of reassignment. By the time he walked into the room, he was ready.

"What do you do?"

"Well, I'm a Marine." The officer clarified himself. He wanted to know if the prisoner had any specialized training. Shifty knew a good liar wouldn't just say, "I have no education," nor would he provide a reason to be reassigned. He replied, "I graduated in banking. I [am] capable of operating a bank." There was little danger of the guards asking him to manage their accounts.

"What else do you do?"

"I'm a football player."

"Other qualifications?"

"That's my two qualifications."

"Get out."

Plenty of work awaited him and the others. The Davao Penal Colony ran a plantation of several thousand acres. There were about seventy- five acres of bananas, a large portion of papaya, citrus fruit, avocados, jackfruit, coconuts, and other tropical fruits. Several hundred acres grew grains. Herds of carabao and cows had to be tended, and the eggs from ten thousand chickens harvested.

MORE RUMORS ABOUT THE GREAT VICTORY OVER THE ENEMY FLEET CONTINUED filtering up the hill to Sid's squad the next day. According to the scuttlebutt, eleven imperial warships had been sunk, including three battleships. The transports had been forced to beach, whereupon the fleet and the navy planes had savaged the troops in them. By Sunday, U.S. ships in the slot were trying to pick up the survivors out of the water. This idea met with derision in the mortar platoon. If the situation was reversed, would the IJN be picking our men up? "No" was their emphatic answer.

In another surprising gesture, two enemy officers and two of their enlisted men who had been captured were released on November 19. They were asked to go negotiate the surrender of the remaining troops. Airplanes dropped messages over the enemy positions. The marines and the army now had 137 pieces of artillery, and before they laid waste to the enemy areas, they were giving the enemy a chance.

The IJA ignored the peace offering, so the fighting continued. While enemy planes and enemy snipers continued to cause casualties, the great batteries of artillery owned the area around the marine perimeter. The batteries of marine artillery made a large- scale ground offensive against them all but impossible. Sid's mortar position, being well behind the line, had grown relatively safe. So he watched and he waited. The squad sang their favorite songs most nights; they called it a "jam session."