My Hitch in Hell

by Lester I. Tenney

  I refused the offer, saying, “You keep it, Lew. I’ll need more than a compass to stay alive.” I realized that if I did not find someone to guide me through the jungle the compass itself would not be of much help.

  CHAPTER 6

  LIFE WITH THE GUERRILLAS

  On my sixth day in Camp O’Donnell I made my break for freedom. Occurrences during the past few days made going now a necessity. First, the death rate of both the Filipinos and the Americans had reached more than 250 per day. Those who did not have malaria or dysentery one day were certain to have a life-threatening sickness by the next.

  Second, men were being herded into forced work details regardless of their health or physical condition. We did not know what we were going to do or where we would be working. I wondered why we were chosen to do this work and how we were going to be expected to do the work set out for us. All I knew was that what I had seen thus far I did not like. If the future was going to be anything like these past three weeks since our surrender, I did not want any part of it.

  Third, and maybe most important, the Japanese still had not issued the prisoners group numbers or any other type of identification. One of the doctors had told me that some of the men sent out on work details were placed in groups of ten and told that if any one of them escaped the remaining members of that group would be beheaded. On other work details, I was told, the guards assigned a number to each man. If one escaped, the guards would then kill the men with the five numbers above and below the escapee’s number. No person or group inside Camp O’Donnell had been given a number at this time, but the doctor expected such a numbering system would be implemented any day.

  The reason I am emphasizing the numbering system is that many men were killed when a man in their numbering order escaped. I was opposed to anyone trying to escape once we had been assigned numbers for there was a great possibility that innocent fellows would be shot, beheaded, or bayoneted because of the action of one self-centered, non-caring person. I was forced to witness several beheadings after someone escaped or attempted to escape from either camp or a work detail. I will never forget it. So I am setting the record straight right now: no one in Camp O’Donnell at this time had been given any type of identification or number. The Japanese would have no way of knowing whether a prisoner had escaped; therefore, no one else was likely to be punished for another man’s actions.

  The following morning the guards began hollering for men to go on the water detail. They needed another group of prisoners who were physically able to make the one-mile march to the creek and who were strong enough to carry two five-gallon cans filled with water back to the camp. I wanted Bob Martin to go with me, but he was unable to make the walk to the creek and back let alone escape through the jungle. Not many men volunteered for this detail. In fact, on a few occasions either our officers or the Japanese guards would have to pick the men to go. I was waiting for this detail and hoping that only one guard would accompany us and that the guard would as usual not count the number of men on the detail. I was in luck that morning: only one guard was assigned to look after the twenty-five men who had volunteered for the detail. This detail seemed to be made for me and my plan. So, filled with determination I moved into the water detail’s line of volunteers.

  The guard in charge was short—about five feet six inches—with a stocky build and clean-shaven head. Bowlegged, he set a rapid pace. He looked innocent enough with his steel-rimmed eyeglasses placed halfway down his nose. If he did not like the looks of one of the volunteers, he pushed him out of line. I could hardly control my excitement while we waited for the detail to begin. The five minutes of waiting seemed like an hour. Some of the men who volunteered stepped back out of line, and others stepped in. Confusion reigned everywhere while we waited for the detail to start.

  When we finally got to the creek the men spread out over its entire length, about 150 feet, and waded about four feet into the water. Some of the men on that detail volunteered just to cool off, to clean off a little bit, and in general to refresh themselves in the water. Because of the number of men on the detail, the guard decided that we would make three roundtrips to the creek.

  My waiting paid off. It was starting to get dark as the last trip began. This “overtime” by the guard was my chance. Everyone was tired, including the guard. At one point, I had tried to hold my breath underwater. I had seen this done as a kid in a Tarzan movie many years before, and it seemed like an easy way to fool the guard. This was my original plan of escape, but I found that I could not hold my breath for as long as I thought was necessary. So I began thinking of another way. With the protective covering of darkness coming, I realized I could easily slip into the surrounding jungle and hide in the tall grass behind a large mango tree. I then thought of an excuse I could offer if I got caught. My plan was simple: if caught I would explain that I had to have a bowel movement, and because I had dysentery, I left the area to avoiding spreading the sickness to others. While all these things were going through my mind, darkness fell. I then moved to my protected position.

  Nighttime came and no one missed me. The guard called for all the men once again to start carrying their cans of water to the camp. From the grassy area I watched the work detail trudge back to camp for a meager ration of rice, our so-called dinner. After what I estimated to be an hour or so, I started to stand up and suddenly felt a strong hand on my shoulder, pressing deep into my flesh. I was instantly afraid. I broke out in a sweat, my heart pounded like a trip-hammer, and nausea filled my throat. What was going to happen to me now? They caught me, and my excuse was not going to be believed. I slowly turned my head in panic, and I knew there was no retreating from my plan. With a deep sigh of fear, I was ready to face my fate. Then I heard a voice behind me say, “Don’t worry, I’m an American. I’ve been watching you for the past hour. I’m going to help you get some medical attention and some food. Come with me!”

  I turned around quickly, still leery, and saw a massive-looking, bearded man staring at me. I soon found out I was in the good hands of an American guerrilla. He told me his name was Ray. I never did bother to ask him his family name; what difference would it make? Ray was about thirty years old. He was dressed in old army fatigues and a cap that looked like it had been around for a dozen or so years. His beard was at least two inches long and covered most of his face. As he explained later, “This is the best darn camouflage a guy could have in this jungle.” He had a hoarse voice, as if he had a bad case of bronchitis. I guess his time in the jungle made him very suspicious and cautious, because he did not say much until we had moved a good couple of hundred yards away from the pond.

  Ray explained that he had been helping many of the men on the march and from Camp O’Donnell join the behind-the-lines fighting force. Its purpose was to become a thorn in the enemy’s side by keeping the Japanese constantly busy protecting themselves and to psychologically erode their “better-than-thou” attitude. When Ray spoke about this mission, his voice reverberated, and he shook visibly. I could see how much he hated the Japanese, and I wanted to know what they had done to him, but I decided not to ask.

  As I found out later, one of the first rules of conduct within a guerrilla band is that no one asks personal questions. After all, there were many reasons for joining a guerrilla group. Some men had escaped during the march, some had become separated from their outfits during a battle, and a fair number were simply AWOL, having fled from what they considered an intolerable situation or even to avoid the consequences of an illegal act.

  Finally, after walking about a mile, Ray allowed me to stop for a short rest. Things out here were so different than at O’Donnell that I fell to the ground, laughing and crying at the same time. Nothing, I thought, could be worse than our sufferings on the march. Anything would be better than the stench of O’Donnell, seeing men dying by the hundreds day after day, and then being buried with dozens of other corpses, in a single hole, like animals. God, I was glad to be out in the jungle, away from the pain an
d agony of being a prisoner of the Japanese.

  Ray told me that we would have to walk through a mango grove, a pineapple field, and a herd of wild carabao to get to the bivouac area his guerrilla group was using. Ray said that each band of guerrillas had their own area of command and their own area of combat readiness. In other words, each had responsibility for annoying the Japanese in certain areas. Every man within each group was expected to torment the enemy.

  When we started to walk again, I admired the moon shining through the trees. What a beautiful sight, I thought. We stopped for the night in a well-camouflaged area, hidden by tall grasses, big trees, and heavy shrubs. We were not too far from a stream and a path that the natives used while traveling through this jungle. Paths were always near water because the natives always traveled with their carabao. Because this swampy area was full of leeches, mosquitoes, red ants, and snakes, we did not expect the Japanese to come even close.

  The weird sounds of the night were actually music to my ears. I was hearing them as a free man without being slapped around, starved, deprived of medicine, or forced to do the dirty work of any Japanese soldiers. Yes, at that very moment I felt that if I had to die in this war then it was better to die a free man than to have to live under the subhuman conditions in a germ-laden, stinking nipa hut of Camp O’Donnell. Or was it?

  I kept thinking that for me it was an easy choice, but then I considered how my folks would take it. Laura would then be a very young widow. How would she react when word reached her of my death? Then I started to think about all of those friends I left behind at O’Donnell and what was going to happen to them. Is there anything—even any small thing—I can do now as a free man to help them? I wondered.

  Maybe if I had stayed at the camp I would have died in captivity. Then I would have joined that stack of corpses that were stripped of everything they owned and dumped into a shallow mass grave. Maybe my hand would be sticking out, maybe a foot, or maybe a pole would have to be jammed into me so that I would not float to the top of a water-filled hole. Would I get a prayer? Only a handful of the Japanese guards allowed us to say a prayer for the dead at the burial site. In most cases, the detail carrying the dead bodies would say a silent prayer as they lifted the poor, malnourished skeleton of a body that was once a vibrant happy man into the grave. All of these thoughts kept going through my mind as I lay in the open field a free man once again.

  That night before we settled down for some shut-eye, my newfound friend Ray opened his musette bag and took out two cans of Spam, one for each of us. I quickly forgot that Spam was one of those foods GIs joked about. I could not remember when I had my last taste of real food, and Spam was real food to me. I devoured the contents of the can but was not greedy enough to ask for more. I was happy with what I got. Then to my amazement, Ray pulled out of the bag a bottle of fluid that looked like wine. A few minutes later, by golly, it even tasted like wine. Then with a smile on my face, I stretched out on the grass and fell sound asleep.

  Early the following morning we began our trek up the mountains to the area where I would be questioned and then indoctrinated into the life of a guerrilla. Ray explained that there was a Filipino barrio there, and I would meet about six or seven other Americans who had also escaped or were cut off from their own troops during the fighting on Bataan. In fact, that was how the guerrillas got started. Men who were trapped, out of touch with their own units, and unable to move through the jungle found friends in the Filipino communities who were willing to help Americans.

  When we started to withdraw, we came into contact with many Filipinos, most of whom were pro-American and willing to do anything they could to win back their country. To counteract this pro-American loyalty, the Japanese tried to convince the Filipinos that they belonged to the same race as the Japanese, and the Filipinos should not protect or befriend Caucasians. The pro-American Filipinos were considered traitors by the Japanese, who were just as brutal to the Filipinos as they were to us Americans.

  Along with Filipino soldiers, the U.S. soldiers continued to fight the Japanese but in a different manner. The guerrilla activity in the Philippines was not a surprise to General MacArthur. Prior to the start of the war, MacArthur tried to form a guerrilla resistance unit in northern Luzon as a means of ambushing the Japanese if and when a war with them was declared. I wondered if I might run into some of my old buddies in one of the guerrilla groups.

  We finally arrived at the barrio headquarters of the guerrilla band that I was to join. After being questioned I was fed all the rice I wanted, broiled chicken, and barbecued pork—a meal fit for a king. Once again my thoughts went to my friends at O’Donnell. I wondered what they were doing, whether Lew went out on a work detail, and if any of my buddies from Company B died in the last two days. In spite of eating a magnificent meal, I was crying between bites. I could not really be happy with my friends still prisoners. I was mixed up and did not know how to react to this newfound freedom.

  The officer in charge, a lieutenant who said to call him Riley, informed me that the other men of my detail were going out first thing the next morning to contact a Japanese unit that was traveling on one of the roads leading from Manila. The Japanese were carrying their supplies inland, and it was our job to see that these supplies never reached their destination. I was reminded once again that our role as guerrillas was “to be a thorn in the enemy’s side.” I was told, however, that until I recovered physically I was not to go out on any detail searching for the Japanese.

  Lieutenant Riley was a big man of at least two hundred pounds and a good six feet two inches tall. With his almost bald head and a full beard, this man was awesome. Yet his voice sounded calm, and his tone was reassuring. He enunciated every word with pure artistic talent. Riley was a proud man of Irish descent, and when he wanted to sound comical, he would use an Irish brogue to emphasize a point. Everyone in his detail respected him, for he made a point of never asking his men to do anything that he was not ready to do first.

  Virtually every man in our group, I discovered, had some dark past experience hanging over his head. I began to understand why the men did not ask each other personal questions. One of the men confided in me that he had walked away from his lookout position the day before the surrender. He said it was useless to continue fighting, but his commanding officer did not realize the situation and wanted his men to be ready to charge the Japanese front line. I am sure one of the other men in our group was half crazy. He cried at the drop of a hat, and on a few occasions, in his sleep, he started screaming in a foreign language. One of the mornings after being awakened by this screaming I asked Ray what was going on with this guy. Ray just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Don’t ask.”

  By my fourth day, under the watchful eyes of Lieutenant Riley, I had gained both weight and a sense of what was expected of me. My first detail consisted of twelve Filipinos and two other Americans. Each of us had a .45-caliber automatic pistol, a large bolo knife, and a Thompson submachine gun with two extra loaded drums. We took off about 7:30 in the morning, and an hour and a half later, we found the road over which the Japanese were expected to drive their loaded trucks. We arrived well ahead of the Japanese convoy and were instructed on where and how to rig explosives along the side of and on the road. Once the explosives were set, we took up positions about one hundred feet forward of the expected vehicles’ destruction.

  We did not have to wait too long. Within fifteen minutes, we heard the strain of the trucks’ motors and knew they were getting closer to our hidden explosives. Soon the convoy of three trucks rounded the bend in the road. On each truck we could see four guards plus two men in the cab. The bed of the trucks were all open, revealing an assortment of much-needed supplies and, more important to us, no other Japanese soldiers. As I watched from my hiding place beside the road, my legs felt wobbly, my arms were heavy, and my knees seemed to knock at a constant tempo. Waiting, I realized, was almost as bad as the fight itself.

  Then, within a split second,
I heard the explosions, loud and resonant. I sprang from my hiding place into action. With a pistol in my right hand and a hand grenade in my left, I was ready for any Japanese survivors of the blast. The explosions sounded just like the Japanese bombs over Clark Field only a few months before. All three of the trucks rolled over from the impact, and the Japanese guards riding on or in the trucks were hurled twenty feet in the air and landed only a few feet from where we were crouched. None were alive when we reached them, and their cargo was strewn all over the road.

  As we looked at the bodies, the trucks, and the blown-apart supplies, we did not speak a word. We were not sure whether another contingent of soldiers was bringing up the rear. We moved back into our positions immediately, waiting for whatever was to come. Then we received orders from the lieutenant: all was clear, mission accomplished. We returned to our bivouac area, carrying those salvageable supplies that we so badly needed.

  Once back at our staging area in the small barrio of Dinalupihan, I marveled at the ease with which we were able to accomplish our mission. The whole event took less than five hours. I felt good about being a part of this effort to destroy the enemy. If only Lew or Bob knew what was going on outside of prison camp, they too would be excited. At last I had my opportunity to “get even,” to repay those Japanese bastards with the same type of treatment they had been giving us. Show no mercy was our motto; “Give them hell” was what we said.

  In these few weeks after the surrender, the activities of the guerrilla bands were mostly retaliatory in nature. We wanted to avenge all of the atrocities we had witnessed. Sitting still and waiting for the next assignment were more stressful than going out and confronting the enemy. Staying out of sight of low-flying enemy aircraft was the more sensible approach.