Just as he had at Brisbane, Mellnik methodically spread the Mindanao guerrilla gospel throughout the warrens of the Pentagon, detailing the operation’s leadership, breadth, size, and sheer gutsiness. He fascinated every interviewer with the guerrillas’ methods and astonishing effectiveness.
Mellnik always began by differentiating Mindanao from Luzon, which was heavily garrisoned and controlled by the Japanese. The guerrillas controlled 95 percent of Mindanao, with enemy activity limited to patrols on major highways. In fact, Japanese soldiers were terrified of the jungle—home to both the guerrillas and the legendary head-hunting Moro tribes. “The possibility that the Japanese will send a strong force to Mindanao to neutralize this resistance does . . . not . . . exist.” Mellnik would repeat the last three words slowly and succinctly.
Perhaps Mellnik’s most important Washington meeting was with Lieutenant Harold Rosenquist, an officer with MIS-X, an unpublicized section of the army’s G-2 (Military Intelligence) branch. MIS-X was an ultrasecret POW communication, support, and supply program operating with vaunted success in the European theater. Mellnik was stunned to learn that such an organization existed. So clandestine was MIS-X, code-named “1142” for the box number at which it received top secret correspondence, that relatively few within the military establishment had even heard of it.
Rosenquist was entranced by Mellnik’s story and responded with a description of what MIS-X did to assist men trapped behind German lines. Its primary purpose there, he explained, was to rescue downed airmen as well as maintain communications with those inside German POW camps. Monopoly game boards and checkerboards loaded with real currency and forged documents were smuggled into camps throughout Germany. Chess pieces, shaving brushes, and other hollow items were packed with compasses, tools, and money. Decks of playing cards, when stripped of their backs and laid out, became full-color silk maps of Europe. Cribbage boards were actually radios, and rubber shoe heels were carved with the word “Visa” and other official stamps that could be inked and imprinted on forged papers.
Mellnik could barely contain himself.
“Why aren’t you operating on Mindanao?” he asked, incredulous.
“Many reasons,” replied Rosenquist. “First off, we’re not bombing the Philippines—yet—so there’s no urgent escape-and-evasion training required. Second, we had no information about conditions on the islands; your group was the first to bring back any solid data. Third and last, we had no way of getting to you! Darwin, Australia, our closest base, is twelve hundred miles from Davao.”
Mellnik then outlined the very new Seventh Fleet submarine operation that was ferrying supplies to the guerrillas from Australia. Rosenquist responded with the confident tone of a man accustomed to overcoming the difficult and dangerous: “Well, then,” he said, “we could reach the Mindanao prisoners by that means.”
An elated Mellnik agreed. And, he ventured, there was one particular guerrilla unit on the island, headed by a Lieutenant Colonel Claro Lauretta, that already had the manpower to storm DAPECOL and rescue the prisoners. “All Lauretta needs,” Mellnik said, “are supplies and guidance. I know that springing two thousand prisoners sounds like a major undertaking, but if you could see how well they function in that jungle area, you’d agree with me. I have it in mind to persuade GHQ to do something along those lines.”
“I’ll volunteer for that rescue operation,” said Rosenquist. “I’ve had training in escape-and-evasion techniques. I’d like to put it to practical use.”
“Well, if you do go in,” Mellnik said, “it will have to be under MacArthur and GHQ’s auspices; no one can operate for long without guerrilla support, and the guerrillas look to General MacArthur.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
While jubilant at this turn of events, Mellnik felt it only fair to disclose the difficulties of the jungle—its intrinsic dangers to health and life, and the near certainty that a mistake or moment of carelessness would mean certain death.
“I’ll chance it,” said Rosenquist. “You people took worse risks when you made your break. I’ll have GHQ and the guerrillas at my side.”
Shortly afterward, Mellnik was contacted by General Richard K. Sutherland, MacArthur’s Brisbane-based chief of staff, who was then in Washington at a war planning conference. With Pacific strategy beginning to crystallize, MacArthur had tapped Sutherland to negotiate his priorities with the War Department. In fact, Sutherland traveled between Brisbane and Washington extensively for this purpose. When he heard that Mellnik was in town, he requested a meeting with his old colleague from prewar Manila days.
“Sorry I couldn’t welcome you in Brisbane, Steve,” Sutherland said when they got together. “But I read your entire report with great interest—it has caused comment at the highest level of government! Tell me, what are your plans for the future?”
Mellnik said that General Willoughby had requested he return to Brisbane to work on guerrilla matters at GHQ. Sutherland nodded approvingly. “Excellent. It’s about time we beefed up that new Philippine Guerrilla Section.”
Remembering the contentiousness between Willoughby and Whitney on this point, Mellnik carefully pivoted the conversation back to rescuing the POWs at the Davao Penal Colony. He again described to an attentive General Sutherland the island’s tough and well-organized guerrilla assets, with specific praise for Colonel Lauretta’s unit that had controlled the Davao region so effectively since the fall of the Philippine government. Mellnik then repeated, nearly word for word, what Lauretta had told him one night regarding a possible POW rescue:
“ ‘Steve,’ he said, ‘we’ve been operating effectively against the Japs without support for sixteen months. We are an agricultural island, so we have plenty of food, and some of the best-known physicians and trained nurses in the Philippines are operating clinics in the hills for guerrillas and civilians alike.
“ ‘My headquarters are about seven miles from the penal colony. The heavily jungled area in between is under absolute guerrilla control. So we could easily raid the colony, which has garrisoned, at most, two hundred and fifty Japanese soldiers—mostly low-ranking guards. But we cannot do it without more ammunition.
“ ‘It’s a matter of simple arithmetic,’ Lauretta said. ‘So you see, I have four times the manpower of the Japs at the penal colony, and control the entire area between the prison camp and my headquarters, but I have only one hundred and fifty rifles. If I had a thousand rifles, we could overrun the colony and move the POWs to the mountains, where we have the resources to protect and feed them. The Japs simply don’t have the troop numbers or knowledge of the terrain to challenge that.’ ”
A rapt Sutherland did not interrupt, and Mellnik continued full steam ahead: “Lauretta said they could take rifle and supply delivery from a surfaced navy submarine after sunset. It’s already been done many times and works beautifully,” he said. “His men wait in nearby bancas”—a canoe-shaped boat indigenous to the Philippines—“exchange recognition signals, load the supplies onto the bancas, and get them ashore. The sub is exposed only briefly, and the guerrillas have hours of darkness to move the supplies to safety.”
Mellnik emphasized the guerrillas’ unique dominion over Mindanao, as opposed to other islands in the Philippines. To curtail guerrilla control on Mindanao, the Japanese would have to send ten times as many men as they now had. He then told Sutherland about his meeting with Lieutenant Harold Rosenquist and MIS-X—about which, to Mellnik’s surprise, even Sutherland knew little.
He explained MIS-X’s capability for supporting behind-the-lines resistance. Not only could they arm and train the guerrillas in the art of rescue, escape, and evasion, he said, but also they could help map out multiple prisoner escape routes. Mellnik then related Rosenquist’s offer to lead this very mission. “General,” he concluded, “I think we have the ingredients for a successful jailbreak.”
Sutherland had heard more than enough to be convinced. Mellnik’s knowledge was detailed, and
the information well presented, eliminating any concern that the former POW was pursuing the rescue plan out of guilt or outsized rage at his former captors. He had made a strong and persuasive case.
“It’s a wonderful idea,” Sutherland said, “and Harold Rosenquist sounds like the right man for the job. But don’t underestimate the difficulties. It’s a long way to Mindanao, transportation is limited, and our buildup is just beginning. But with those cargo subs the navy is lending us, we can send a hundred tons of cargo over at a time—and carry out a hundred passengers.”
Steve Mellnik nearly skipped out of General Sutherland’s Pentagon office. If General MacArthur’s chief of staff—one of the most powerful men in the US Army—had viewed his rescue plan as wishful, impractical, or of secondary importance, he most certainly would have said so. Instead, Sutherland approved it.
The cargo subs that Sutherland mentioned referred to GHQ’s recent agreement with the US Navy to commit a pair of Seventh Fleet submarines to supply the Philippine guerrillas. As agreed previously, the navy counterpart in the clandestine supply and intelligence operation would be naval reserve officer Commander Chick Parsons.
The army-navy negotiations over the subs had been delicate. Parsons’s boss, Captain Arthur McCollum, and McCollum’s boss, Seventh Fleet Commander Admiral Arthur S. Carpender (a vocal MacArthur detractor), had wanted a few things in exchange for lending from their precious submarine supply, particularly for fateful missions into enemy-controlled waters. Could MacArthur deliver coast-watcher reports of the navy’s hit-and-run strikes against Japanese shipping in Philippine waters? The navy was sure that it was having measurable success with these raids, but its subs did not stick around to see if the ships it hit actually sank. They could get credit for these “kills” only with confirmed reports from coastwatchers in the Philippines—who reported directly to MacArthur.
When Whitney agreed to forward the coast-watcher reports to the navy, a deal on loaning its submarines was struck. That final detail also resolved Mellnik’s one remaining logistical question regarding the Davao prisoner rescue. The freed men could be rotated out of Mindanao in these very submarines. With this, he immediately began devising a detailed rescue plan to present for General Sutherland’s approval.
23
SECRETS INSIDE THE OXYGEN TENT
DECEMBER 1943: EVEN IN his miserable, pneumococcal state, Bill entertained a feverish reverie inside an oxygen tent at the Naval War College infirmary. A prisoner rescue mission? Is it too good to be true? The dreamy vision came and went as if regulated by his wildly fluctuating body temperature. How hot he was, how cold now! The monotonous whirrrr-tap-tap of the oxygen pump, the beads of moisture on the plastic windows, the dampness of the sheets, the din inside the rubber enclosure—all combined to challenge his tether to reality as the monstrous double pneumonia fought to take over his lungs.
At a series of Pentagon briefings during Bill’s brief Thanksgiving trip home—hardly a respite from the long hours of coursework and drills at the War College—he was stunned to learn from the Seventh Fleet’s intelligence officer, Mac McCollum, that a plan to rescue the prisoners at Davao Penal Colony on Mindanao was in the works. Ever since March 1943, when Helen and Arthur were notified of the change in Barton’s status from missing in action to prisoner of war, Bill had sought to triangulate his precise location by every possible means. When Barton’s first, electrifying postcard subsequently arrived at Lilac Hedges from “Military Prison Camp Number Two,” he confirmed this meant Davao Penal Colony on Mindanao.
Captain McCollum had also been elated to learn of the plan, for both personal and professional reasons. He too had a family member—his favorite first cousin, Shivers McCollum—being held at Davao. Bill’s first question was inevitable: “After they’re rescued from the prison camp, how the hell are they getting them out of the Philippines?”
“By navy submarine,” came the answer, as though from the breath of an angel.
McCollum explained the arrangement that he and Admiral Carpender had negotiated with MacArthur’s staff regarding GHQ delivery of coast-watcher confirmations of enemy ships sunk by US Navy submarines lurking in Philippine waters. With this proof, the navy would finally get due credit for its serial successes eliminating Japanese vessels. And besides, the two submarines McCollum had offered, Narwhal and Nautilus, weren’t useful for combat: their torpedo capacity was limited, and their driving time slow. But with significant interior capacity, they were ideal for ferrying guerrilla supplies in—and men out.
McCollum had nothing but praise for the subs’ covert trial missions under Commander Chick Parsons. Bill remembered Chick from his astonishing arrival in Washington from occupied Manila the previous fall. He was now back in Australia working to supply the Filipino guerrillas. It was Parsons who had arranged sub passage out of Mindanao for the ten escaped prisoners from Barton’s camp.
McCollum explained the now-standard operating procedure: After unloading supplies, Americans who had been trapped behind enemy lines since the fall of the Philippines were boarded onto the empty subs. First evacuated were those of political or military significance, followed by American civilians, and, finally, other asylum seekers. As many as possible, as quickly as possible—that was the imperative. Parsons had been given significant leeway to save as many American lives as he could. McCollum had said they wanted to save these prisoners. “Not just Shivers—all of them.”
The news had seemed incredible to Bill at the time, and now, in his oxygen-tent delirium, even more so. He liked—no, cherished—the fact that the navy would play a role in the covert operation. And what luck that the rescue was to be of prisoners from Barton’s camp! Of course, he could tell their mother nothing of this, not until Barton was out safely. Bill so looked forward to that moment.
When would it take place? Not sure, replied McCollum, but the mastermind of the operation, Lieutenant Harold Rosenquist from MIS-X, meant business—that much was clear. Rosenquist would depart for Australia in January, but he was already hard at work on the rescue plan, McCollum explained.
There were risks, of course. The escapees’ sworn statements cast plenty of doubt on any prisoner’s ability to survive his ordeal much longer. Could Rosenquist get to Davao in time? Get them out without a bloodbath? Every worry spiked a coughing fit and expulsion of phlegm into the sputum cup.
Bill had paid close attention to any mention of MacArthur’s GHQ during the Washington briefings he’d attended over Thanksgiving. For each section in Brisbane—G-1 (Personnel), G-2 (Intelligence), and so on—there was a corresponding oversight unit at the War Department. Useful information on developments in Brisbane could be extracted from these Washington counterparts.
Clouding matters right now was the fact that Courtney Whitney—no longer General Willoughby, who, Bill understood, had greater sympathy for the prisoners of war—had total control over Chick Parsons and his submarine supply missions. Rosenquist couldn’t execute a rescue operation without access to those subs. It was no secret that “Colonel” Whitney was more MacArthur loyalist than military professional, one of a select circle of GHQ insiders that had fled Corregidor with the general—as well as partaken of enormous last-minute payments by the Philippine government to exiting US Army leadership before the doomed command was abandoned. Wealthy civilian Whitney had also been MacArthur’s prewar Manila attorney, and the general placed considerable trust in him.
Of all the general’s aides, Whitney seemed the most focused on ensuring the success of MacArthur’s all-consuming objective: returning to the Philippines in a reputation-restoring blaze of glory, forever removing the humiliating blot of defeat.
Given Whitney’s narrow objective and bewildering power at GHQ, it was unclear how MacArthur’s overriding objective of retaking the Philippines squared with Washington-based Rosenquist’s orders to rescue these prisoners—from the very island where the general planned to make his initial landing. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. After all, Sutherland, MacArthur’s chief
of staff, had already approved the mission, hadn’t he?
Still, there was cause for worry, especially given GHQ’s obsession with interference from Washington. Normally Bill didn’t concern himself with the army’s petty rivalries or gnarled bureaucracy; there was plenty in the navy to keep him busy. But the question begged an answer: How would Brisbane’s complicated office politics affect the rescue plan?
He remembered MacArthur’s early and emphatic refusal of OSS intelligence support from Washington; it would be inefficient, the general had said. But everyone knew the real reason: MacArthur wanted complete control of intelligence gathering and distribution within his command area, especially with respect to the Philippines.
THE SEVERE BOUT OF pneumonia had Bill alternately gasping for air and coughing up blood-stained phlegm, prompting his transfer to Newport Naval Hospital. Even Eleanor Roosevelt’s anxious phone calls to the night nurses (“Yes, this is Mrs. Roosevelt calling again. Can you tell me, please, how is Billy Mott?”) did little to buoy his spirits or condition. He’d been lying there for three days, teetering on the edge of delirium as his fever climbed and plummeted, climbed and plummeted.
Bill could see the nurse through the tent’s rubber-seamed windows, periodically checking the oxygen-ration meter, the pumping apparatus, and the tent’s temperature readings. What a hell of a time to get sick. For now, all he could do was dream of this rescue plan’s success and a Pacific reunion for Bill, Benny, and Barton.
The Jersey Brothers Page 25