“Lucian, we need you. You can’t go,” Norman said, yanking at his brother’s sleeve. “We’ve made it this far, and—”
“We can’t let these kids go out there, Norman,” he spit back, cutting him off.
“You’re married and I’m not,” Norman replied, grabbing the grenades the Thatcher kid had brought up. “I’m going alone. I’ll make it.”
“No, dammit! This is my mission! Get out of my way,” Lucian demanded, pushing his brother aside, grabbing the handset walkie-talkie. “Take over for me. Help Norm out,” Lucian called to Johnny Mead who now appeared as he charged over the top of their protective makeshift bunker.
Just then an explosion behind him from incoming enemy fire threw Norman, Thatcher, and Johnny Mead to the muddy ground.
He checked himself out and then got up tentatively, looking around him to the men scattered over a fifty-square-yard area.
“Dammit, Lucian.” He scowled, looking around himself for his Thompson submachine gun. “Palinsky!” he yelled. “Get over here,” he screamed above the noise of the monsoon wetness and artillery fire toying with the battlefield like the tympan section of the orchestra—off and on again, never sure what to expect next.
“Yeah, Lieutenant,” answered the lithe but sturdy Corporal Jimmy Palinsky from Las Cruces, scrambling low over the muddy encampment.
“Take this handset and see if you can raise Sergeant Parker. I’m going out there to relieve him. Johnny, you’re in charge now.”
“Norm, I don’t think …” Johnny stammered but understood and cut his statement off.
“What’s he doing outside the perimeter?” the young corporal with the radio handset queried.
“We got some Japs out ahead, maybe one hundred meters on that rise just above us. We got to take them out if we want to survive this 105-mm barrage.”
“Norm—I mean, Lieutenant,” Palinsky countered. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea. I mean the two of you, brothers and all. I mean what if … you both … you know …” He didn’t finish his question as the rain suddenly ceased.
Like a malignant growth, spreading, doubling, and choking out life as it did, an oppressive eeriness crept over the suddenly silent field they were assigned to defend. They talked in whispers now.
“Listen. Do as I say. I promised my pa.” He winked and slapped the young soldier on the back. He gave a thumbs up signal to Johnny Mead, now in charge of the platoon.
Just then a burst of automatic gunfire exposed the brief muzzle of silence that had bridled the battlefield. The rules of war wouldn’t allow silence. A grenade, screams, and more gunfire came from the hill ahead of them.
Norman, just about ready to crawl out into the blackness, rolled back down the incline that offered cover and took the handset.
“Lucian! Come in! Lucian! This is Norman. Lucian, come in!” he breathed urgently. “Lucian! Damn you, Lucian, say something!” he ordered into the handset.
“Lucian … Over …” the strained reply came back.
“What’s your situation?” Norman whispered back.
“One hundred meters east. The rise. Rocky area before forest. Yeah, I got two of them. But I caught some in the shoulder from a grenade.” He ended with a sudden and unexpected scream mixed with the unmistakable sound of a Japanese voice.
“Lucian! Lucian! Dammit, Lucian, come in!” Norman demanded in a panicked voice.
“American die. All American die!” screamed the broken English voice with a heavy Japanese accent over the handset.
“Bastards!” Norman yelled as he dropped the walkie-talkie to Palinsky and threw himself over the ridge.
He rolled into one water-filled crater after another under a steady stream of artillery and mortar fire which now probed both sides of the line. The incoming and outgoing noises of death were so much screams of hot metal piercing the night sky—screams even before they mutilated the bodies of the young soldiers—as they soared high enough for him to run, hit the ground, and roll into another muddy crater in desperate search for his brother.
The darkness became filled with every kind and size of artillery. Now illuminating the field with every fifth round were the tracers arching overhead. Added to that were flares bringing a pulsating strobe-light movement to even the dead—whether men, trees, or the rocky stillness of boulders. Everything seemed to move and only God knew if Lucian was alive in the midst of it.
Machine-gun fire followed Norman, kicking at his heels as he dove into a muddy ditch. He spotted the flashes and pulled the pin from a grenade, his breath heaving as he offered every ounce of strength he could muster. He waited. The next flash of muzzle fire found him lobbing the grenade from a prone position with deadly accuracy. Two Jap soldiers blew apart twenty meters away.
He crawled, whispering as he went, “Lucian? Lucian? You hear me, Lucian?”
A moan straight ahead alerted him. Then another one. Norman bellied his way to the groaning sound knowing it could be a Jap trick, submachine gun ready in his right hand, bayonet unsheathed in his left.
He rolled into a water-filled crater on top of two bodies. “Norm,” he heard one gasp as he pulled the dead body of a Japanese soldier with a bayonet protruding from the man’s rib cage.
“I don’t think it’s too bad. Help me up,” Lucian moaned. “You should’ve stayed put, Norm,” he whispered.
“Shut up, Lucian. Just shut up.” He put him over his slender shoulders and rolled out of the hole.
“I can run. It’s my shoulders and not my legs. I was just so spent. I didn’t have an ounce of energy left after fighting that crazy Jap.”
“Okay. On three we get up and hightail it together.”
“I love you, Norm,” Lucian responded weakly, innocently.
“Yeah,” he answered as he huffed from the exertion he’d used to get here. “One, two, three … go!”
They both ran through the mud and mire back toward their lines. Enemy gunners spotted them through the silhouettes their bodies created against the flashing of artillery close by.
“Ahh!” Norman grunted from the impact of a single bullet to his skeletal upper body throwing him forward.
“Norm!” Lucian called, crawling over to him just under the hail of fire skirting the air a foot above them. “Norm, you okay?”
Norman looked himself over and felt the hot burning sensation filling his upper arm and shoulder. “Hit right shoulder. I’m beat, Lucian. I don’t know,” he added, confused.
“My turn,” his brother replied. “I only got a few pieces of metal pokin’ me. Here, you hop on,” he ordered his brother. Norman climbed onto his prostrate twin’s back. Lucian inched forward on his belly under the steady stream of fire that was trying to discover where the two Americans had fallen, making sure they had been killed.
“Just a bit more, Norm,” he whispered. “You still with me?” Lucian asked, out of breath.
“Yeah. I think we lost those Japs.”
“Hang in there. We’ll get you taken care of,” Lucian whispered.
“You act like you just got scratched,” Norman muttered in reply.
“You caught a big slug, Norman. A man can bleed to death from a slug like that. I did just get scratched. Almost there now.”
He slid over the embankment as they both rolled down the muddiness to the waiting hands of Johnny Mead and the others below them.
“Oh Norm! Lucian! They got you both? Oh! We got to get you boys to the rear,” Johnny Mead urged, looking helpless.
“Well, that can’t be too far since the ocean’s just a piece down the hill,” Lucian offered sarcastically, out of breath.
Norman moaned. “Johnny, you stay. Take over. Palinsky and Thatcher. Get a couple of others to carry us to the medics. We got those spotters. The artillery should ease up a bit.”
“Hey, Norm?”
“Yeah, Lucian?”
“Thanks.”
“That’s what a brother’s for.”
CHAPTER 48
April 9, 1942,
Bataan Peninsula
“Over ten thousand of us are supposed to just up and quit? Just give up? Never in the history of the U.S. Army have ten thousand men surrendered at once!” Lucian growled, pacing back and forth in agitation at feeling trapped. His wounds had healed surprisingly fast while Norman, who rescued him that night a month ago, was wounded in the shoulder and instead of getting better was deteriorating.
“We must have ten times that many Filipinos here in Bataan with us. If MacArthur could just get us some food, more guns, and ammunition. I’m not givin’ up, no sir,” Lucian grumbled as he continued to stomp up and down the aisle in front of his brother’s hospital cot.
“We need food. We can’t hold out. We’ve just eaten every carabao on Bataan. Horses have disappeared, cats, dogs. Men are killing monkeys, eating rats, lizards, bugs to stay alive. Maybe they’ll treat us good like their leaflets say,” Norman offered sickly, hopefully.
“Those damn leaflets! You don’t believe they would, do you? And look at you! You still recovering from the gunshot wound to your shoulder a month back. Malaria crazed out of your head last night. We’re out of quinine. I’d be surprised if we had a bottle of it on all the peninsula. I had to steal what little we got between us. It’ll be gone in a couple days. Guys are dropping all over the place. We just need supplies that’s all. And need to kill more of them sons-a—”
“Lucian,” Norman interjected, pointing across the tent to the sickbed of their cousin. “Johnny,” he said. “He needs help. Maybe they’ll give us some medicine. He’s going to die without it. Dysentery just about has him.”
Lucian paced back and forth looking somewhere for an answer. He knew Norman was right. Norman was always right. Rechecking his watch every couple of minutes he realized that if they were going to make a break, the three of them, and hide out in the mountains with the guerillas they had but a couple of hours left.
At twelve hundred hours all hostilities were to cease and weapons stacked in piles. Then the men were to wait for the Japanese to arrive and take them prisoner. Outfits were all broken up now. Men looking out for themselves and their close buddies. Too many were sick and wounded.
“The Japs are brutal demons, Norman. I’ve seen ‘em up close. In Lacay they took this young Filipino, not a hundred yards from where we were holdin’ that bridge and shot him. Cold-blooded murder in the head.
“Then they took his little wife and daughter, bayoneted them, and while they were still screaming tossed them over the bridge. Screamin’ and all I tell ya! That was women and children! We swung that .50-caliber mounted on the half-track and mowed those mothers down on the spot.”
“Where was I?” Norman groaned.
“That was right after the night we had to get them Jap spotters. You were kinda sore from that bullet to the shoulder. I was dazed by the shrapnel but it turned out a few pieces were taken out and I figured you needed the rest more than me. So Captain Miller, seein’ my predicament, let Palinsky handle what was left of the platoon and sent me and Johnny on a special bridge guarding assignment. Lost the half-track that day.” He shook his head.
He paced some more, searching for a way out. “Only reason we held back on them Japs on the bridge at first was because of those Filipinos in the way of our line of fire. No, Norm, they won’t treat us good. They’re mean-spirited little morons.”
Norman rolled upright from his cot, coughing. “Come on, help me with these boots,” he wheezed. “Let’s make our way out of here. Get our canteens, some rations. Grab that litter over there and put Johnny on it. Time to go dig up some buried supplies. Where’s Manuelito?”
“Off with some Filipino guerilla unit I suppose. I hate this, Norm. I surely do hate this,” he complained.
Norman knew something about hate. He had transferred all his pent-up emotions and anger he’d stored at losing Mary Jane to these merciless legions from the Empire of the Rising Sun.
He was hungry, sick, and tired as most of the ragged American forces were, but he wanted to keep fighting, killing, and lose himself in the anger. He felt justified, it was legal to be angry, mad as hell, and kill these murdering Asian bullies.
Norman motioned tiredly to his brother. They both gingerly lay their emaciated first cousin on the stretcher. Hospital medics and surgeons where too busy caring for the seriously wounded and others who had signs of surviving. Private Mead was given less than 10 percent chance of making it through the week.
“We’re gonna act real calm, Lucian. Like nothin’s wrong when those Japs come bustin’ down this road. We’re gonna take Johnny, one on each end so they won’t separate us. By the way, you look like hell,” Norman offered with a dark laugh—a coughing, malarial, plaintive laugh reserved for those soldiers who could stare at death with cold indifference.
“At least I still got some meat on me. Guess you haven’t seen a mirror in awhile,” Lucian replied. “Come on. One, two, three,” he said as they lifted the light cargo. Johnny Mead was a mere one hundred pounds.
“Thanks, boys,” the wasted cousin weakly offered. “But I can’t go on. You fellas just leave me be,” he groaned.
Norman laid his end down, followed by Lucian. “As long as you are breathing you’re going with us, Johnny. What’s our promise, the Mead and Parker family motto?”
“Keep … the … faith,” he replied, struggling with each word.
“What’s that mean, cousin?” Norm asked tenderly as he squeezed water on Johnny’s forehead to cool him off then placed the wet rag over his temples.
“‘Fight the good fight’ like the good book says. We don’t let down the other … Ohhh, I can’t … ,” he gasped, holding his stomach. His bed, trousers were soiled from constant diarrhea. “I’m a dead man, Norm. Leave me be. Please?” he cried weakly.
Norman motioned to Lucian to pick his end up and they started out the tent door. “Johnny, the other patients are complaining. You stink too much. They told us we had to get you out of here or else.”
“Thanks, Norm.” The dying soldier laughed sardonically in spite of it all. “I know what you’re tryin’ to do,” he groaned.
“Yeah,” Norman answered. Lucian didn’t answer a word. His eyes were too wet with rage and his throat too dry to say what he was thinking.
CHAPTER 49
April 1942, Warm Springs
Jason had taken a train run to Amarillo and had not been able to get back to Warm Springs on Easter the week before. Mary Jane had promised they would celebrate Easter when he returned. It had meant a lot to him, that she would help him celebrate a day so filled with significance. He needed refreshing and encouragement and at least the thoughts of Easter and what it had always meant to the Parker family offered that.
Mary Jane struggled to smile, speak, become animated in any way about this day they were celebrating as a rebirth. She placed the ham on the small dining table and sat quietly in her chair.
Jason Parker had never felt more alone, more abandoned, and less able to say a prayer, even grace for this meal. But he had to. He was alone more than Mary Jane could understand, but he had to be strong for her and his boys. He began:
“Dear God, our Father in Heaven: It is with … a grateful heart … ,” he stuttered, trying to bring himself to feel what he was saying, “ … that we bow our heads to offer thanks for this Easter feast.”
“Thank You. Thank You for all Your loving kindness. We ask You to bless this meal before us … ,” he said, not knowing if he should conclude or go on. After a long silence he cleared his throat.
“We are mindful of the first Easter day when Jesus came out of the tomb and became the first fruits of the resurrection for all mankind. We are comforted to believe we will see our dearly departed loved ones again because of this miracle,” he said with a sigh of genuine longing to be heard.
“God my Father, I’ve never prayed a prayer like this one,” he voiced sincerely. “We request a sign, a knowledge, a feeling, anything, that will help us know our boys are alive and alright amidst the ter
rors and brutalities of war. That’s all we can ask for now. We commend our lives to You and trying to remember Your goodness and patience with our human weaknesses. In Jesus’ holy name. Amen.”
“Thank you,” Mary Jane offered in a low whisper.
“I lost my Maria Linda. I can’t lose my boys too,” he replied almost inaudibly. They ate in quiet reverie of meals that had been, when there was laughter and every seat at the table had been occupied by a loved one. At length Mary Jane brought in a warm vanilla pudding. “Grandpa’s favorite,” she observed.
She mechanically tuned the radio dial and turned up the volume as the evening’s CBS radio broadcast opened. The deep throated voice of the announcer began:
We are just getting confirmations of reports that on April ninth at approximately twelve P.M. Manila time the combined forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur with headquarters in Australia surrendered unconditionally all allied forces on the peninsula of Bataan in the Philippines to the Japanese Fourteenth Army. The surrender was effected by General Edward King, Army AirCorp, the acting commander of U.S. and Filipino forces on Bataan.
The last American holdouts, some thirteen thousand, remain grasping to a final hope of defense in the Philippines two and one half miles off the tip of the Bataan Peninsula under the Command of General Jonathan Wainwright on the island of Corregidor also known as ‘the Rock’ for its fortresslike tunnels and fortifications.
The Japanese herded the starving, sick, and besieged Americans and Filipinos alongside the coast road, starting in Mariveles on the southern tip of Bataan.
It is estimated that approximately ten thousand American soldiers have surrendered along with seventy thousand Filipino allies. This sets a historic precedent as the largest surrender of Americans in any war during its proud history. Those last rescued by submarine were nurses who confided to reporters that the conditions were dreadful, lacking in medicine, sanitation, and food. Nevertheless the men’s fighting spirit held to the end and only then did they reluctantly lay down arms under direct command of their superiors.
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