Ticket Home

by James Michael Pratt

  “What we are doing now means there is no turning back. We have to be ready to kill if we take hostages.” Norman winked at Manuelito. “I don’t mean you, but your bosses better not get in my way. I got a starving platoon I was just put in command of down in Bataan. We are infantry now. I will kill to keep them alive,” he said, staring directly in the eyes of the smaller man. “You tell them in Tagalog that we mean business.”

  “I understand,” Manuelito observed. “You two brothers are very difficult Americanos.” He laughed, suddenly relaxing as he understood their intent. “I am cien por ciento, one hundred percent, with you. I am ready to fight too,” he pledged.

  Lucian saluted his brother in mock respect for military authority. “Lieutenant, let’s go get the stuff.”

  CHAPTER 46

  “Pull that whistle again, Norm!” Lucian growled. “That damn oxcart better be movin’ off the tracks. I got a load of ammo and food supplies and the Japs are eight hours behind us!”

  The urgent sound of train and whistle didn’t budge the carabao as the distraught farmer ran for safety and watched his animal swept aside like cow dung.

  “That would have made mighty fine steaks. Don’t you think, Manuelito?” Norman called above the noise of engine, steam, and fire as the young Filipino shoveled coal furiously with Lucian to keep the boiler hot.

  “What you say?” he called back.

  “Nothin’.”

  The train was suddenly protected by as many P-40 fighter planes that the army had left and could spare. From Clark Airfield and Fort Stotsenberg to Manila seventy-five miles south, stores of supplies were either being transferred or destroyed.

  The entire city of Manila had been evacuated days earlier on December thirtieth, and piles of supplies at Rizal Stadium and other locations were being left behind to either be destroyed or fall into the hands of the Japanese. Too much fell into their hands when the Japanese occupied the city on January second, 1942.

  Now the enemy was cornering the Americans and Filipino defenders in central Luzon. Their retreat was already decided by MacArthur’s War Plan Orange. The plan called for retreat into the ample and mountainous Bataan Peninsula. They were to hold out until reinforcements and supplies reached them, but not surrender the island of Luzon.

  A fine plan on paper. But one hundred thousand hungry and diseased men without enough ammunition to fight, and all because of inadequate and poorly prepared military authority, did not a good defense make. Adding the thousands of homeless fleeing Filipino civilians to that and it was a mess that only guns could solve.

  Part of the fault for not getting the supplies shipped in time to Bataan was the army’s doing. Too much bureaucracy, paperwork, and authorizations by order-following regular army staffers who never fired a gun at the enemy but could shoot down common sense in a New York minute.

  “This train and its cargo are being appropriated by special military authority,” Lucian had called out to the Filipinos at the train station.

  Parker authority to be exact. Corporal Johnny Mead had manned the half-track mounted machine gun and persuaded the Filipino engineers, who had not been persuaded by normal military bureaucratic means, to turn the train over to the new American authority. Manuelito, the only Filipino conspirator, acted as if he would be shot as well if his friends in the train office didn’t obey.

  “Funny how guns work, Norm,” Lucian shouted. “Paperwork gets us into war, acts of Congress and such, generals signing some order, and then guns get us out. You suppose we’d still be arguin’ back there with them Filipino train fellas in Capas?”

  “Suppose so, brother. I’ll bet you they don’t argue with the Japs when they pull into town,” Norman yelled. “You know, Lucian. I got this idea. I see this whole darn thing unraveling and us being trapped or captured by the Japs some day soon.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I don’t like to but it’s a sight better to be prepared, after what we’ve seen. Don’t you think?” Norman shot back above the fiery noise in the engine compartment.

  “I surely do, brother. What’s your great idea?”

  “We got a lot of canned goods, see? I figure we are going to back ourselves up against the sea down in the tip of Bataan before any reinforcements arrive. Then we’ll have to fight our way back up the peninsula to rid Luzon of the Japs.

  “I figure once we get today’s load to the railhead at San Fernando, there’s another ten miles of track heading down toward the peninsula, see. We take us a boxcar load and have Johnny and Manuelito waiting with the half-track and a truck.

  “We locate some places along the way to our assignment down in Mariveles at the tip. Bury some cases of canned goods and rations from one of them boxcars. Spot our location real careful and each carry a map. That way if we need to escape from the Japs, hide out or whatever, we’ll have some food. This man’s army has already proven they don’t care diddly whether we starve or not.”

  “The officers seem to be always fed. You notice that?”

  “You’re talking to one, remember?”

  “Yes, sir, Norman, sir,” Lucian howled. “Forgive me if I don’t salute. My hands are busy,” he laughed, as he tossed a load of coal into the fire. “How’d you come up with this harebrained idea of burying food?”

  “Harry. Remember how Mary Jane and Harry always seemed to have some of the best meals in town?”

  “Yeah. Go on,” Lucian drawled contemplatively as Manuelito took his turn shoveling coal into the fire.

  “Harry showed me on my first visit to the house there on Main Street how he stored food. He had dug these root cellars about ten feet down or more and kept produce, canned goods and dried meats real fresh for months. Other people went without, but not old pioneer Harry Harrison.”

  “We could throw some stuff out of the train and mark the spot. Maybe even stop, but bury it? Come on, Norm.”

  “Hey, we could find some hillsides. There are plenty. Cover our little caves with palm fronds and rocks. It’s canned goods. They’ll do better than a warehouse with some dope that has to have paperwork filled out before he lets a starving soldier at it.”

  “Good point.”

  “We leave half a boxcar off the tracks into our lines enough that the Japs won’t get there for a month, but not so far down that we give it away to the army. They’ll bungle this load of supplies like they always do, Lucian.”

  “You’re a sorry excuse for a loyal officer, Lieutenant, sir.”

  “Family and friends first. So we leave it off, see, with Manuelito here and cousin Johnny and his weapons to guard it. Men and supplies are all strung out to hell and gone. When we get to the end of the line, we each grab a truck and head on back to help Johnny dig and bury it.

  “We are still officially on MacArthur’s staff. I guess we wouldn’t be missed. We can turn the platoon over to one of the other guys. Say Palinsky. They’re just diggin’ in anyway.

  “Besides, we got these.” He pulled out his special orders signed by MacArthur’s staff officer in charge of quartermaster personnel. “We are legal. We are supposed to handle supplies.”

  “How far does this rail line go?” Lucian drawled, tired and hot, leaning on the coal shovel.

  “We’re nearing the end of the main line. I figure a shortline down the peninsula ought to take us another ten miles at least, maybe more,” Norman replied from his seat at the engineer’s control panel.

  “I’m goin’ back to talk to Johnny about this. We got the half-track on the flat car. I’ll have him ready for action at the first stop you figure we can unload some of this stuff. Get Manuelito ready.” Lucian hopped onto the remaining coal pile in the tender car and did the circus balancing act he had performed so many times before in Oklahoma. He crawled atop the cars and worked his way back to his cousin.

  “You hear what we were talking about, Manuelito?” Norman called.

  “Sí. I hear. I agree. We are going to need this stuff. I hang out with Johnny. Besides, it be a whole
lot better for me to disappear for a few days. Maybe my friends in Capas complain to the army and figure me out.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry. What’s the worst they can do? Send us to the Philippines to fight Japs?”

  The shorter Filipino roared at the American humor. “I like you, Lieutenant Parker. You a good Joe. Maybe I stay and fight with you. I hate the damn Japs.”

  “I think we make a good team,” he replied.

  “Sí. A good team.”

  “Say, Manuelito. I’ve been meaning to ask. How come you use Spanish words so much and not Tagalog?”

  “I speak Tagalog, Spanish, and English. Me a real smarty pants, no?”

  Norman let out an uncontrolled roar of approval. “Si, you are real smarty pants. Go on.” He smiled, chuckling at the offhand remark.

  “My mother, a mestizo, she insisted. Only maybe ten percent still speak Spanish but she was from a noble family and my father, his family spoke it at home. Tradition from the colonial years. Landowners, the mestizos, did not want to change. So I speak Spanish; English I learn at school as a boy; and Tagalog I know. Maybe I learn Jap?” He smiled.

  “You definitely are a valuable member of my little army. I say you have just been drafted into the New Mexico National Guard. What do you say?”

  “Yes, sir!” He saluted with a broad grin.

  “Okay. Here’s where we stop,” he said, pulling on the brakes. “You take this map. You and Johnny get busy and unload all you can with Lucian. Just as fast as you can. Just toss the stuff off. Then Lucian and I will hightail on out of here and be back in a few days.”

  “Yes, sir, Lieutenant,” he called as he prepared to jump from the slowing train.

  “Norm! We’re ready to go!” Lucian called above the screech of brakes as the ancient steam locomotive ground to a halt.

  Norman acknowledged with a thumbs-up.

  They hurriedly tossed as many crates as a thirty-minute stop would allow then took off with a wave to Johnny who was tossing as much into the half-track as he could and making for the bushes off the tracks.

  “Great machines them half-tracks. I suppose once this fun is all over we’ll be back to our infantry platoon. Wait for the Japs to attack. Be regular fighting troops,” Lucian called across the cab as they picked up steam.

  “Suppose so.”

  “Next big holiday is Easter Sunday. Holidays don’t seem like much here do they?” Lucian returned as they reversed the train to go back to the original destination, San Fernando main line station.

  “Nope.”

  “So what did the Easter Bunny say to make the hen so mad?” Lucian called back.

  “‘I ordered these months ago and you promised orange eggs with speckles. What happened? You were supposed to be a special hen.’ And the hen said, ‘If you think I’m not so special why don’t you stand in line and take a number along with all them other roosters.’”

  “Did Pa really make that stupid line up?”

  “Repeated it every year like it was the funniest line in the world. I used to laugh just because he’d get such a kick out of his own homemade jokes. The more I’d laugh, the more dumb one-liners he’d do. Sometimes he’d go on for a whole hour repeating one-liners he’d heard at the loadin’ docks somewheres on the Santa Fe line.”

  “Mama sure didn’t care for that Easter line much. Remember how she’d swing at him?” Lucian laughed. “But Pa was simply trying to make her feel like a special hen, I suppose. He always said he felt like he had to stand in line to get her hand. He surely did love her.”

  “He surely did,” Norman agreed somberly at the thought of his beloved mother and her care for them as boys. “He was a funny old rooster.” Norman brightened quickly with the kind of smile only memories of home bring to a soldier’s face. “Wonder what he’s doin’ right now?”

  “Eatin’ Sunday supper I suppose. I’ll bet Mary Jane fixed up something real special.”

  “A mighty fine woman. You’re lucky, Lucian.”

  “You got over that? I figured you were just hidin’ your feelings. Being the good boy you are and all.”

  “I don’t have much time to think, being an officer and all,” he laughed, wanting to avoid the issue. He had transformed his anger over losing Mary Jane to gunfire against the Japanese. Every time he killed he did it for all the right reasons, he supposed.

  “You’ve changed, Norm. I’m proud of you.”

  “Yeah. Me too. Pull that whistle real loud, Lucian. I want to hear some noise. They say that sound travels until it is absorbed somehow. Let’s give this a whistle for Pa. Let him know we’re comin’ home.”

  “You figure he’ll hear it all them miles to Oklahoma?” Lucian laughed, remembering how they had always blown the whistle just short of the depot. “We always tried to see how far out we could blow it and still get Pa to hear it. Remember?”

  Norman nodded with a smile a grown man’s memory keeps in supply for moments like these. “God willing, he’ll hear it,” Norman voiced solemnly.

  “Say what?” Lucian replied above the noise.

  “I say pull for Pa!” Norman hollered back.

  Lucian grinned and pulled. Three whistles. Two whistles. Three whistles—Lucian’s code. “Just like bein’ a kid again.” He grinned.

  CHAPTER 47

  Two Months Later, March 12, 1942, the Philippines

  “MacArthur left Corregidor,” Johnny reported to the platoon.

  “Says who?” Corporal Jimmy Palinsky called back from his foxhole above the distant thunder of artillery explosions.

  “I just overheard it at company HQ. Norm and Lucian are there now,” he answered.

  “How would he leave? Those guys over on Corregidor are getting plastered just like us. They got no planes. A seaplane maybe?” Palinsky responded.

  “Nope. Submarine.”

  “So dug-out Doug is hightailing now that the Japs have us cut off and surrounded?” Thatcher interjected sarcastically.

  “The president ordered him to Australia. And he didn’t want to go,” Johnny Mead loyally countered.

  “As if the president cares about the rest of us. We’re ‘expendable.’ Heard that on the radio broadcast some guys in supply are getting from San Francisco,” another soldier threw in.

  “They could still get reinforcements and supplies to us. You just gotta have faith,” Mead proposed earnestly.

  “Look at you, Mead. You are skin and bones. When you don’t have the runs you got malaria. I got to hand it to you, you are a dreamer. We haven’t had meat for five weeks. We got cut to half rations two months ago, cut twice since that. We are down to survival rations! Maybe a thousand calories. No protein. Not fightin’ rations! Guys are eating bamboo, elephant grass! So when they gonna ‘reinforce’ us? When we’re dead from dysentery? Starvation?” Thatcher shot back, unbelieving. “Hey Palinsky! Pull out that harmonica of yours. You know ‘Yankee Doodle’?” Private Thatcher called out above the backdrop of thundering guns on the battlefield surrounding them.

  “What? That’s kid’s stuff. Of course,” he answered.

  “Play it for me,” he asked. Palinsky began.

  “No, not ‘Yankee Doodle.’ I meant the other one. What’s the name of the hymn of the republic?”

  “‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ you pea-brain,” Palinsky replied and began to play. Thatcher began to sing the poem that had spread across Bataan like a bad virus. Soon the entire platoon chimed in.

  We’re the battling bastards of Bataan;

  No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam;

  No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces;

  No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces;

  And nobody gives a damn!

  “Hey, who wrote that?” Palinsky laughed.

  “Some war correspondent. This piece of paper says Hewlett is the name,” Thatcher replied.

  “Well you guys make fun. But MacArthur said, ‘I shall return’,” Johnny Mead protested patriotically.

  “Well if he don’t
bring some food, bullets, and fresh troops it won’t matter much if he does return,” Thatcher countered.

  “Ah, you guys just remember Valley Forge. They were starving and they won,” said the young optimist Mead as he walked away.

  Bataan Peninsula was a deathtrap. With the sea surrounding them on all sides, the Japanese advancing from the north and having landed on the east coast, the hundreds of thousands of military and civilians had already eaten anything that moved.

  There wasn’t a carabao, the big common water buffalo, to be had. Men had resorted to eating the few horses the cavalry had brought, dogs too. Military brass had left and destroyed tons of rice, rations, and canned food in warehouses from Manila to Clark Airfield. The men were down to fighting with poor food, poor ammo, and raw nerve.

  “Norman, it’s HQ,” Lucian said, handing the walkie-talkie over to his platoon leader twin brother.

  “Yeah, this is Parker, go ahead,” Norman called back. “We’re down half strength, sir,” he replied. “We’re beat up pretty badly, sir,” he answered again after a pause. “Roger that, sir,” he said clicking the conversation off.

  “Looks like we’re the one’s going in to do the dirty work again,” he whispered to his staff sergeant brother.

  “What is it this time?” Lucian asked above the din of distant artillery, rain now pelting them in sheets.

  “We’ve got Jap spotters out there on the hill marking their artillery. Battalion HQ figures we are the closest ones to them. We have to send a man or two out, load him up with grenades and take them out.” He paused, looking at the sorry sight of skeletal eighteen, nineteen, and twenty-year-old men huddled in foxholes half filled with muddy water.

  “Damn, I hate sending these boys to die. Who’s it going to be, Norman?” Lucian asked, turning to his twin who had already grabbed the walkie-talkie from him and was talking to one other man—Thatcher. Lucian grabbed his rifle and began to load grenades into his trouser pockets.