Hold on …
… it appears we have some additional breaking news … this just in … It is now confirmed that the Japanese military has conducted air strikes against targets in the Philippines at Manila, and various U.S. army airfields, as well as naval facilities and ships stationed in the port city of Manila. For more on this breaking development stay tuned to your CBS radio station.
The sounds from the radio were drowned out by the excited and emotional chatter among the more than one hundred townsfolk filling the small rail station. Jason looked into the eyes of his daughter-in-law and read the same fear and uncertainty that filled his own heart.
He had lost the love of his life little more than a year before. His only children, twin sons, were no doubt engaged in the defense of the U.S. military bases as they sat there trying to comprehend what had suddenly happened to their world.
“We had such good plans, such happy plans for our boys,” Jason finally spoke to Mary Jane as she struggled for self-control. His composure was lost as she threw her arms around his neck.
“What do we do, Mr. Parker?” she cried. “I’m afraid. What do we do?”
Several faithful church people from the community had already gone to their knees. One after another followed until a quiet fell upon the crowd.
A voice arose from the back of the room. It was a voice recognized as the oldest resident of the small Oklahoma town.
Harry Harrison had found his way from his bed to be with his townsfolk and granddaughter in this moment of trial.
With respect for the man who had two sons in the battle, and a granddaughter whose husband was one of them, the not-sodevout old man Harrison began:
“Almighty and gracious Father of all …”
CHAPTER 38
Morning, December 8, 1941, the Philippines
Fort Stotsenberg and Clark Airfield sat side by side. Most soldiers weren’t even on duty yet. It was a casual day with some on and some off. Pearl Harbor was still a rumor this morning, unconfirmed, like so many rumors which swirled through the fort and didn’t come to pass.
It wasn’t more than two hundred feet from Norman’s position that his first sergeant stood out in the open near runway number one as fighter planes warmed their engines, readying for flight orders.
Waves of planes appeared in the distance. All gunners held off, unsure whose they were. Some said they were new B-17’s from the States, reinforcements. Others thought they were planes from some of the other Luzon airfields on maneuvers.
No alert, no sirens, no advance words explaining what or whose these planes were until it became suddenly clear. They were bombers and curious black dots started falling from them. Some men started ignorantly running toward them, thinking they were parachuting packages. Others stood there, gazing intently at the sight.
A whistling sound followed the falling objects. New to the inexperienced soldiers the whistling was followed by a thudding of earth-shaking explosions raining in a direct and advancing line from north to south as if someone had set off dynamite charges every ten feet and was pushing the plunger every two seconds.
Eardrum shattering blasts in rapid succession burst from the earth, throwing tons of debris, shards of hot screaming metal, fire, and smoke as each explosion marched from one end of the field to the other. The enemy bombers flew over, taking the Americans by complete surprise.
Norman stood temporarily transfixed at the new sights and sounds along with everyone else at Clark Airfield. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom … The steady stream of explosions advanced. He watched as a crew chief for a nearby B-17 was standing, squinting into the sun, trying to make out the markings on the planes one minute, simply disappearing in a bomb blast the next, disintegrated, as if he had never been standing there at all.
Now the sirens, shouts, screams of the suddenly wounded, exploding P-40 fighter aircraft with pilots in them on the ground, others taking off and being caught in the bombing, created instantaneous mayhem and destruction. A placid, sultry Philippine afternoon had been transformed in an instant to a fiery inferno.
Transfixed no more, Norman, Johnny, and the others scrambled into their gun emplacements and put them into action.
“Open fire!” Norman yelled at the top of his lungs amid sounds of bomb explosions, machine-gun fire from strafing enemy planes, and their own anti-aircraft guns being fired for the first time since the 200th Coastal Artillery had arrived in the Philippines.
“Lead him. Thata boy, Johnny Come on, you got him now!” he encouraged as he loaded while the younger cousin sitting in the swivel chair of the 37-mm artillery piece sighted the oncoming Japanese Zero.
Clark Airfield had been totally taken by surprise. Saboteurs had taken out the phone lines the night before, and though scout planes had tried to warn the base, it had been too little, too late. Its P-40 fighter planes and B-17 bombers were still sitting, waiting—warming up engines—for orders to take to the skies.
General MacArthur’s headquarters staff, with nine hours notice of the sneak attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, had failed to order the B-17s and P-40 squadrons into the air. Now they were being obliterated on the ground. Like rows of ducks in a shooting gallery, the flight lines were put to the torch of enemy bombs and heavy machine-gun fire. It couldn’t have been easier for the Japanese.
Pilots rushing out of the mess hall to their planes were shredded to pieces like so many puppets shook loose from their strings. Their bodies appeared shaken and torn to bits by dogs of war at play.
Planes that weren’t on fire or destroyed on the ground and had gotten off into the air were now engaged in dog fights near or over the field itself, making it harder for the men firing their weapons from the ground to avoid hitting some of their own.
“I think I got him, Norm. Yeah I did! Look at the smoke coming out of him,” Johnny Mead hollered excitedly. “He’s going down! Definitely!” the eighteen-year-old from New Mexico exclaimed triumphantly.
“Come on. Here comes more trouble. Keep blasting those Japs! Fire at the red dots, the meatball markings!” he shouted to Johnny. Norman hurriedly loaded, aided by the efforts of Private Bob Cory who was running back and forth, distributing ammunition along the line of gun emplacements with Stiles and Stinson.
“Good Lord, Oh! No! No! No!” Norman shouted as he waved at the men running toward their emplacement. Guns blazing, the approaching Jap Zero was tearing up the earth and headed directly for the three men who were valiantly trying to keep the ammo spread out. “Cory!”
He waved for him to get down as Stiles and Stinson dived into a nearby ditch. A terrified expression crossed the face of the young high school graduate from Santa Fe as bullets ripped into his back, tossing his body forward like a rag doll being flung and discarded to the ground.
“Get that Jap SOB, Johnny. Get him!” he screamed as he pulled a Browning automatic rifle up to his shoulder and unloaded it into the speeding Jap fighter. The fighter pitched. It was close enough for Norman and Johnny to hear the sounds of the heavy slugs tearing into its aluminum skin with a thump, thump, thump, as it rolled over their heads and crashed into the jungle a half mile beyond them.
“I’m going out for him,” Norman called as Stiles and Stinson dove into the emplacement with more ammunition. “Keep firing!”
He ran the few yards to the crumpled body and scooped the lifeless boy up. He sprinted in a furious run toward the aid station, which was now under attack.
Turning back he ran for the nearest ditch. “Medic!” he screamed. He no sooner laid the boy down than he jumped back, gasping for air, vomiting uncontrollably at the ghastly sight of the headless body torn to a bloody pulp by the Jap Zero’s guns.
Horror swept through him in violent waves of nausea. Scrambling to his feet, spitting vomit as he went, he found himself on the other side of the field at Lucian’s gun emplacement.
Private Jimmy Bogan was firing fast and ferociously from the last box of ammo loaded by a man now flailing his arms and legs, gaspi
ng for air, rolling on the ground in panic. Blood oozed from his wounded throat.
“Who is this guy?” Norman, still shaken, asked, trying to console him, putting his hand helplessly to the young man’s throat.
“A pilot, I think. Saw him scramble over here from his burning plane. Load for me, Parker! Come on! Don’t stand there! Load! He’s a dead man!” Bogan screamed above the cacophony of firing, explosions, planes falling in twisted agony from the sky.
He mechanically loaded for the angry Native American and watched as if in slow motion the entire scene of war was being played out by others on a giant panoramic screen. He momentarily looked down at the man who would have been Lucian had his brother not gone off to run errands for the company to Corregidor.
Limp and lifeless now, the gurgling stopped as the wide-eyed and deathly still young pilot lay bloody, facing the sky. An expression of shocked amazement that he had been killed seemed frozen on his face, in his open eyes.
The firing continued and he wondered if Lucian would find him dead too. So soon. In an instant the thought crossed his mind that it would at least ease one thing, should it happen.
He saw the face of Mary Jane and knew his torment would finally end and his brother could also be at peace. The thought caused him to well in anger and recklessly stand above the emplacement with his .45 automatic pistol and fire, along with Bogan’s firing, at the oncoming plane.
“Come on you lousy sons-a-bitches! Come on!” he screamed, emptying his weapon into the sky.
Seeing the nearest other .50-caliber machine-gun crew all dead or wounded, he abandoned Bogan and sprinted across the open field. Rocked by shrapnel, explosions, ignoring the mad scream of diving Japanese fighters, he pushed aside a dead man and put himself behind the gun firing furiously, screaming obscenities at the attackers in the air.
“Come on and get me! Come on! That’s it! Here I am!” he hollered at the top of his lungs as he dueled with a fighter diving directly for him.
The rail bum Skully had been right. He had taught him a valuable lesson. “A fool stays angry except when you want to kill someone. Killin’ is for war, boy.”
Lucian and Sergeant Riley had hitched a ride up the main highway with a soldier in a jeep also trying to make his way back to his outfit at Clark Airfield.
The first wave of Japanese planes had disappeared from Manila Bay. Now he and Sergeant Riley swerved in and out of the burning wreckage that occupied parts of the highway.
“Hey, look!” Lucian called to the driver who was slowing down at a railroad crossing. Coming to a stop, he jumped out, followed by Riley as some Filipinos were shouting frantically to others down the rail line for help.
They were removing the bodies of the engineer and fireman from the cabin of the tired-looking steam locomotive that had been attacked moments before by a Japanese fighter plane. The Filipinos lay the two lifeless bodies down carefully to one side of the tracks in foot-high elephant grass and ran back to look the engine compartment over.
Blood soaked the floor and flesh and bone fragments splattered across the controls. The Filipino train crew looked on in shocked stupor, unable to comprehend how to handle this ghastly and sudden turn of events in their work day.
“Hey, get that bucket!” Lucian pointed to one of the Filipinos. Lucian’s years of experience in railroading took over.
A metal bucket hung from a rack behind the compartment over the coal car. “Put some water in it. Here, give it to me!” He motioned, agitated at their inaction.
He looked around him and went for the nearest ditch carrying rain run-off that now sat stagnant and squirming with mosquito larvae. Filling it, he yelled at the Filipinos to get out of the way as he doused the compartment, washing the blood from one side out the other. “Go get more!” he commanded as he stepped up into the engine compartment and took control of the train. He began to methodically check the gauges, boiler pressure, fuel, throttle, brake, oil … “Riley. What do you say we take this train north, as close as we can get to Clark Airfield?”
The stunned sergeant grunted approval and handed him the filled bucket of brown putrid water, alive with disease, which Lucian liberally splashed over the bloodied seat, controls, cleaning the evidence of death off best he could.
They stood by as the Filipinos talked excitedly to each other in Tagalog about what had just happened. No one seemed to be the leader of the group. Military vehicles started up the road toward them and a general gridlock had begun to form on the road where the train sat blocking the only crossing for miles.
“Hey, you! Come here!” Lucian ordered to one of the more talkative of the Filipino crew. “You speak English?”
“Yes. I speak real good English,” he replied proudly.
“Who’s in charge here?”
“Those dead guys,” he said, pointing to the two bodies lying in the grass.
“Where is this train headed?”
“San Fernando, then loading supplies to trucks for army bases. But how we to get the train moving again and not block the main road from Manila to north? You know how to drive?”
“Yeah. Do you?”
“No, Joe. We are all new. This is our first day. Others ran away that maybe know something.”
“Tell ’em we’re taking over,” Sergeant Riley yelled grabbing the two carbines from the jeep. “Let’s fire this up. Show me what to do, Lucian,” he called above the noise and waved off the jeep driver who scurried around the train and up and over the tracks to keep heading north.
“You ride with me,” Lucian said to the diminutive Filipino. “Tell your pals we’re heading to San Fernando. Tell them to take over where they left off. Come on,” he said, extending his hand downward to help the young man up. “What’s your name?”
“Manuelito Salazar, at your service.”
CHAPTER 39
Jason Parker came early to the small home on Main Street. The entire town, and country, for that matter, were gathering in each home around radio sets to hear what the president of the United States would tell Congress this day after Pearl Harbor.
Japan had attacked, decided on warfare against the sleeping giant America. Japan and Germany are allies, he muttered to himself as he opened the gate. This could only mean one thing. War. War on a worldwide scale.
A second war involving all the powerful nations in little over twenty years! he brooded silently to himself as he knocked on the front door. My boys, he groaned inwardly.
“Good morning, Jason,” Harry coughed, cracking the door open to a cold December chill.
“I wish I could say it was a good morning, Harry. I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Well, habit is hard to break, I guess. So, bad morning it is. What a damnable shame. A cryin’ shame. Millions are gonna die in this one, Jason. You remember the last one, don’t ya?”
He shook his head in sad confirmation of the estimate. Some twenty-five million people had died in World War I a mere twenty-three years earlier.
“Hello, Mr. Parker,” Mary Jane offered, coming from the kitchen with coffee for both men.
“Thank you, granddaughter,” Harry said. “Please sit, Jason.” He pointed to the sofa. Jason thanked Mary Jane and warmed his hands with the coffee mug as he sunk into the comfortably worn cushions.
Mary Jane adjusted the dial on her Zenith table radio. The news had been on around the clock, repeating the same statistics over and over again; confirming their worst nightmares. The Philippines were under siege from the air and the landing of Japanese army troops was expected any time.
There was no way to know the fate of their loved ones. Chaos reigned. The army couldn’t tell them. And even if mail got out of the Philippines it would be weeks, possibly a month, before Lucian or Norman would be able to get word out on their condition.
“I guess there’s nothing we can do,” Mary Jane voiced, breaking the stony silence.
“Pray, daughter,” Jason answered. “And keep the faith. It’s something we said to each other all the years I was
married to Mrs. Parker. ‘Keep the faith’ meant something to her family and so we always said it too. Hope the boys know we’re in this with them,” he offered in a low emotionless voice.
“I’m going to get better, Jason. I’ll be able to get back to helpin’ you on the shortline soon,” Harry announced optimistically.
“You just take care of yourself, Harry. I can’t afford you to worry about it. Take good care of Mary Jane here. For Lucian. It’s all I ask of you.”
They sat in quiet, sipping the coffee mechanically. Mary Jane brought out a tray filled with hot slices of homemade bread and jam. It was something to do. Waiting to hear any item that could reveal the conditions of their troops in the Philippines was all they could be bothered with. The radio repeated the same news every hour, occasionally offering updated casualty numbers of the dead and wounded at Pearl Harbor.
Like the day after a funeral, they offered consolation to each other. They repeated in as many ways as they could their favorite speculations on how God would protect and take care of their boys. Jason offered that the boys were in good hands under the experienced command of General Douglas MacArthur. Maybe they’d give the Japanese such a hard time they’d think twice and back off any invasion, he suggested.
Mary Jane thought they would be evacuated by the navy.
“No,” Harry replied. “It ain’t that easy. They’d have to fight. Sure there will be reinforcements, but they sure enough have to stop the Japanese in their tracks,” he voiced firmly.
The radio announcer abruptly caught their attention, derailing their banter and speculation:
Ladies and gentlemen. It is reported that President Franklin D. Roosevelt has entered the Capitol building and is preparing to address Congress. We are interrupting this program to broadcast that speech. Please stand by.
They sat erect in eager anticipation. Suddenly the air changed to one of anxiety for what the most powerful man in the world would say regarding the state of affairs between the United States and Japan. As much as anyone, this solitary man held the destiny of the Parker boys and all the other soldiers in his hands. The announcer returned.
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