by John Grisham
The Philippines is a collection of seven thousand islands spread over a far-flung archipelago in the South China Sea. The terrains and landscapes change dramatically from island to island. There are mountains that top ten thousand feet, dense forests, impenetrable jungles, coastal floodplains, beaches, and miles of rocky shorelines. Many of its larger islands are crossed with swift rivers that are not navigable. In 1940, it was a country of vast mineral resources and food supplies, and thus crucial to the Japanese war effort. U.S. war planners had no doubt that the Philippines would be an early target, and they also knew that defending it would be next to impossible. It was geographically close to Japan, an ambitious enemy whose imperial army was savagely invading every neighbor in the region.
The defense of the Philippines was in the hands of Major General Douglas MacArthur, U.S. Army. In July of 1941, President Roosevelt coaxed MacArthur out of retirement and appointed him commander of all U.S. forces in the Far East. He established his headquarters in Manila, and went about the formidable task of preparing to defend the Philippines. He had lived in the country for years and knew it well, and he also knew how dire the situation really was. He had repeatedly warned Washington of the Japanese threat. His warnings were heard but not heeded. The challenge of getting his army on a war footing looked impossible, and there was little time.
Upon taking command, he immediately began demanding more troops, armaments, airplanes, ships, submarines, and supplies. Washington promised everything but delivered little. By December of 1941, as relations with the Japanese deteriorated, the U.S. Army in the Philippines numbered 22,500 men, half of whom were the well-trained Filipino Scouts, a crack unit that was comprised of Filipino-Americans and a few natives. Another 8,500 U.S. soldiers were shipped in. MacArthur mobilized the regular Philippine Army, an inexperienced, ill-equipped ragtag army of twelve infantry divisions, at least on paper. Including everyone with some semblance of a uniform, MacArthur had about 100,000 men under his command, the vast majority of whom were untrained and had never heard a shot fired in anger.
The condition of the regular Philippine Army was pathetic. The bulk of its force, the native Filipinos, were armed with World War I–vintage small arms, rifles, and machine guns. Their artillery was outdated and ineffective. Most ammunition proved defective. Many officers and enlisted men were untrained, and there were few training facilities. Few had decent uniforms. Steel helmets were in such short supply that the Filipinos used improvised headgear made from coconut shells.
MacArthur’s air force numbered several hundred planes, almost all of which were leftover hand-me-downs no one else wanted. He repeatedly demanded more planes, ships, submarines, men, ammunition, and supplies, but they either did not exist or were committed elsewhere.
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Pete arrived in Manila on Thanksgiving Day and caught a ride on a supply truck to Fort Stotsenburg, sixty miles north of the capital. There he joined C Troop of the Twenty-Sixth Cavalry Regiment. After presenting his orders to his commanding officers, he was assigned a bunk in the barracks and taken to the stables to select a horse.
At the time, the Twenty-Sixth had 787 enlisted men, mostly well-trained Filipino Scouts, and 55 American officers. It was the last remaining fully operational horse-mounted combat unit in the regular U.S. Army. It was well equipped, expertly drilled, and famous for its discipline. Pete spent his first days in the saddle of his newest companion, a dark chestnut thoroughbred named Clyde. Polo was popular with the Twenty-Sixth and used as part of the training. Though somewhat rusty at first, Pete quickly grew to the saddle and enjoyed the games. But tension mounted each day, and the regiment, along with the entire island force, felt the urgency. It was only a matter of time before the Japanese made their move.
In the early hours of December 8, radio operators in the Philippines heard the first reports of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The games were over; the war was on. All American units and installations were ordered to stand ready. According to the master plan for defense of the Philippines, the air force commander, General Lewis Brereton, put his entire fleet on full alert. At 5:00 a.m., General Brereton arrived at MacArthur’s headquarters in Manila to request permission to mount a B-17 bomber strike on the Japanese airfields on Formosa, two hundred miles away. MacArthur’s chief of staff refused a meeting with the commander, saying he was too busy. The prewar plan was well established, well rehearsed, and called for such an attack immediately, but MacArthur had to give the final order to go. Instead, MacArthur did nothing. At 7:15, a panicked Brereton returned to the headquarters and again demanded an audience with the general. Again he was rebuffed, and told to “stand by for orders.” By then, Japanese reconnaissance planes were being spotted and reports of enemy aircraft were pouring into Brereton’s headquarters. At 10:00 a.m., an angry and frantic Brereton again demanded to see MacArthur. A meeting was refused, but Brereton was ordered to prepare for the attack. An hour later, Brereton ordered his bombers into the air, off the ground, to protect them from a Japanese attack. They began circling the islands, without bombs.
When MacArthur finally ordered the attack, Brereton’s bombers were in the air and low on fuel. They immediately landed, along with the squadrons of fighters. At 11:30, all American aircraft were on the ground being refueled and armed. Ground crews were working frantically when the first wave of Japanese bombers arrived in perfect formations. At 11:35, they crossed the South China Sea and Clark Airfield came into view. The Japanese pilots were stunned. Below them were sixty B-17s and fighters parked in neat rows on the runways. At 11:45, the merciless bombing of Clark Field began, and within minutes the U.S. Army’s air force was almost entirely destroyed. Similar attacks were made simultaneously at other airfields. For reasons that would forever remain inexplicable, the Americans had been caught flat-footed. The damage was incalculable. With no air force to protect and resupply the troops, and with no reinforcements on the way, the Battle of the Philippines was decided only hours after it began.
The Japanese were confident they could take the islands in thirty days. On December 22, a force of forty-three thousand elite troops came ashore at various landings and overwhelmed the resisting forces. During the first days of the invasion it appeared as if their confidence was well-founded. However, through sheer stubbornness and uncommon courage, the American and Filipino forces, with no hope of rescue or reinforcements, hung on for four brutal months.
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Shortly after the landing invasion on December 22, C Troop was ordered north to the Luzon peninsula, where it conducted reconnaissance for the infantry and artillery and was involved in several rear-guard skirmishes. Pete’s platoon leader was Lieutenant Edwin Ramsey, a horse lover who had volunteered for the Twenty-Sixth because he had heard “they had an excellent polo club.” Lieutenant Banning was second-in-command.
Their days were spent in the saddle as they moved quickly through the peninsula watching the enemy’s movements and gauging its strength. It was immediately evident that the Japanese forces were vastly superior in number, training, and armaments. To take the islands, they used their frontline divisions, battle-hardened veterans who had been fighting for almost a decade. And with control of the skies, the Japanese air forces were free to bomb and strafe at will. For the Americans on the ground, the most terrifying sounds were the screaming engines of Zero attack fighters as they barreled in from just above the trees with their two twenty-millimeter cannons and two seven-millimeter machine guns blasting anything that moved on the ground. Taking cover from the Zeros became a daily, often hourly, ritual. It was even more difficult for the Twenty-Sixth because the men not only had to find a ditch for themselves but had to hide their horses as well.
At dusk, they camped and fed and watered their horses. Each troop was well supported by cooks, blacksmiths, even veterinarians. After dinner, when things were quiet and the men were ready to collapse, they read the mail from home
and wrote letters. Until the invasion, and the naval blockade that followed, the mail service had been fairly dependable, even remarkable given the circumstances. By late December, though, it had slowed considerably.
The week before Christmas, Pete received a carton the size of a shoe box filled with letters and cards from his family, his church, and what appeared to be most of the fine folks in Clanton. Dozens of letters and cards, and he read them all. The ones from Liza and the kids were read until practically memorized. Writing to his family, Pete described the islands, a country far different from the rolling hills of north Mississippi. He described the drudgery of life in the army. Never did he portray his situation as dangerous. Not once did he use words that could even remotely convey the notion of fear. The Japanese would soon invade, or had already invaded, and they would be repelled by the U.S. Army and its Filipino comrades.
On December 24, MacArthur put in motion the prewar plan of withdrawing his forces to the Bataan Peninsula for a last stand. Victory was not really in the cards, and MacArthur knew it. The U.S. goal was to dig in at Bataan and occupy the Japanese as long as possible, thus delaying other invasions on other fronts in the Pacific.
“Delay” was the key word. A “delaying action” became the common term.
To protect his forces as they retreated to Bataan, MacArthur established five delaying positions in Central Luzon, where the bulk of the Japanese forces were maneuvering. The Twenty-Sixth Cavalry became crucial in stalling the enemy’s advance.
On January 15, 1942, Lieutenant Ed Ramsey and his platoon had finished a grueling recon assignment and were planning to rest themselves and their horses. However, C Troop received word that a major Japanese force was moving in its direction. A counterattack was planned, and Ramsey volunteered to assist in the assault.
He was ordered to take the village of Morong, a strategic point on the Batalan River in western Bataan. Morong was held by the Japanese but not heavily defended. Ramsey assembled his twenty-seven-man platoon and headed north on the main road to Morong. When they reached the Batalan River on the eastern edge of the village, they cautiously approached and realized it was deserted. The Catholic church was the only stone building in town, and it was surrounded by grass huts on stilts. Ramsey divided his men into three nine-man squads, with Lieutenant Banning leading one. As Pete and his squad approached the Catholic church, the entire platoon came under fire from a Japanese advance guard. Ramsey’s men returned fire, and in doing so caught sight of the lead elements of a huge Japanese force fording the river. If those troops reached Morong, the platoon would be overwhelmed.
Without hesitation, Ramsey decided to launch a horse cavalry charge against an infantry, an attack unseen in the U.S. Army in over fifty years. He ordered his platoon into formation, raised his pistol, and yelled, “Charge!” With his men screaming and firing away, the galloping horses slammed into the Japanese front guard and sent it reeling. The terrified enemy retreated to the other side of the river and tried to regroup. With only three men wounded, Ramsey’s platoon held off the Japanese until reinforcements relieved them.
It would become known as the last cavalry charge in American military history.
The Twenty-Sixth continued to harass and stall the enemy and delay its inevitable siege of Bataan. MacArthur moved the Philippine government and the bulk of his army to the peninsula, but for his command post he chose a bunker on the heavily armed island of Corregidor, protecting Manila Bay. His forces frantically established defensive positions throughout Bataan. Using barges, they ferried men and supplies from Manila in a frenzied effort to dig in. The plan was to warehouse enough food to feed forty-five thousand men for six months. Ultimately, eighty thousand troops and twenty-five thousand Philippine civilians retreated to Bataan. By mid-January, the withdrawal was complete and successful.
With the American forces confined to the peninsula, the Japanese moved swiftly to choke them with a complete air and naval blockade. Flush with confidence, the Japanese made a tactical error. They pulled back their elite divisions for action elsewhere in the Pacific, and replaced them with less capable troops. It was a mistake from which they would recover, but it ultimately added months to the siege, and the suffering.
In the first weeks of the Battle of Bataan, the Japanese incurred heavy losses as the Americans and Filipinos fought furiously to protect their last stronghold. The Allies incurred far fewer casualties, but their dead could not be replaced. The Japanese had an endless supply of men and armaments, and as the weeks wore on they bombarded their prey with heavy artillery and relentless air attacks.
Conditions on Bataan rapidly deteriorated. For weeks the Americans and Filipinos fought with little food in their stomachs. The average soldier consumed two thousand calories a day, about half the number needed for hard combat. Their hunger was acute and the supplies were dwindling. This was primarily due to another inexplicable mistake by MacArthur. In his rush to solidify his forces on Bataan, he had left most of their food behind. In one warehouse alone, millions of bushels of rice had been abandoned, enough to feed his army for years. Many of his officers had begged him to stockpile food on Bataan, but he had refused to listen. When informed that his men were hungry and complaining bitterly, he placed all units on half rations. In a letter to his men he promised reinforcements. He wrote that “thousands of troops and hundreds of planes are being dispatched. The exact time of arrival of reinforcements is unknown.” But help was on the way.
It was a lie. The Pacific Fleet had been severely crippled at Pearl Harbor and had nothing left to break the Japanese blockade. The Philippines was thoroughly isolated. Washington knew it, as did MacArthur.
As the men starved, they ate anything that moved. They hunted and slaughtered carabao, the Philippine version of the water buffalo. Its tough, leathery meat had to be soaked and boiled in salt water and pounded with mallets to become somewhat chewable. It was usually served over a mush of rotten and bug-infested rice. When the carabao were decimated, the horses and mules were killed, though the soldiers of the Twenty-Sixth Cavalry refused to eat their beloved animals.
The starving soldiers hunted wild pigs, jungle lizards, even crows and exotic birds and snakes, including cobras, which were plentiful. Whatever they killed they threw into a giant pot for a common stew. By February, there was not a single mango or banana left on Bataan and the men were eating grass and leaves. The Bataan Peninsula was surrounded by the South China Sea, known for its abundance of fish. Harvesting it, though, proved impossible. Japanese fighter pilots took great pleasure in attacking and sinking even the smallest fishing boats. It was suicide to venture onto the water.
Malnutrition was rampant. By early March, the physical fitness of the troops was so impaired they were unable to mount patrols, stage ambushes, or launch attacks. Weight loss was staggering, with each man losing thirty to fifty pounds.
On March 11, MacArthur, following orders from Washington, fled Corregidor with his family and top aides. He made it safely to Australia, where he set up his command. Although he performed no acts of combat valor, as required by law, and left his troops behind, MacArthur was awarded the Medal of Honor for his gallant defense of the Philippines.
The emaciated men he left on Bataan were in no condition to fight. They suffered from swelling joints, bleeding gums, numbness in feet and hands, low blood pressure, loss of body heat, shivers, shakes, and anemia so severe many could not walk. The malnutrition soon led to dysentery with diarrhea so debilitating the men often collapsed. Bataan was a malaria-infested province in peaceful times, and the war provided countless new targets for the mosquitoes. After being bitten, the men were hit with fever, sweats, and fits of chills. By the end of March, a thousand men a day were being infected with malaria. Most of the officers suffered from it. One general reported that only half of his command could fight. The other half were “so sick, hungry, and tired they could never hold a position or launch an attack.”
The men on Bataan were listening too, on shortwave radios in their foxholes and tanks, and now they knew the truth. There would be no rescue.
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At home, the Bannings had received no letters from Pete in almost two months. They knew he was on Bataan, but had no idea how grim the situation was. They, too, listened to the President, and for the first time began to grasp the extent of the danger. After the broadcast, Stella went to her room and cried herself to sleep. Liza and Joel stayed up late, talking about the war and trying in vain to find a reason to be optimistic.
Each Sunday morning when Dexter Bell began the worship hour, he called the names of the men and women from Ford County who were off at war, and the list grew longer each week. He offered a long prayer for their well-being and safe return. Most were in training and had yet to see battle. Pete Banning, though, was in a horrible place and received more prayers than the others.
Liza and the family strived to be courageous. The country was at war and families everywhere were living with fear. An eighteen-year-old kid from Clanton was killed in North Africa. Before long thousands of American families would receive the dreaded news.
Chapter 25
Without horses, the Twenty-Sixth Cavalry no longer existed as a fighting unit. Its men were assigned to other units and given tasks they were not accustomed to. Pete was placed with an infantry and handed a shovel with which to dig himself a foxhole, one of thousands along a thirteen-mile reserve line stretching across southern Bataan. In reality, the reserve line was the last line of defense. If the Japanese broke through, the Allies would be shoved to the tip of the peninsula and routed with their backs to the South China Sea.