Brave Hearts

by Carolyn Hart

  He stood before her and looked down, his eyes dulled with exhaustion. His voice was hoarse and scratchy. “I need to talk to you for a moment. Will you come out on the patio?”

  Nodding, she took a last swallow of coffee and followed him outside. It was already hot. Spencer took her arm, and they walked toward the sea wall. The deep blue water sparkled in the bright sunlight. Only the twisting coils of smoke rising in the south destroyed the atmosphere of tropical perfection.

  When they reached the sea wall, he offered her a cigarette.

  “Odd way to spend Christmas Eve.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, then said bluntly, “We’re pulling out at noon. Get your stuff ready, but do it unobtrusively.”

  “Pulling out?” She looked at him blankly. “Where? Where are we going? Where can we go?”

  He gestured out into the bay. “Corregidor.”

  Catharine looked south and west across the sparkling water at the low, dark island of Corregidor. She knew it was a fortress, a small island thirty miles from Manila that sat squarely in the mouth of Manila Bay. Its value lay in the immense guns which faced out toward the South China Sea. So long as U.S. forces held Corregidor, no enemy ships could enter the bay.

  “The troops are withdrawing into Bataan,” Spencer explained. He broke off a frond from a palm tree and squatted down to scratch out the big island of Luzon. Manila sat in about the center of the great sweep of Manila Bay. About forty miles to the north, a narrow road led through sugar country to Bataan, the peninsula which poked down into Manila Bay.

  “What good will that do?” Catharine asked.

  Spencer leaned back on his heels. “The troops can hold out for months if they can reach Bataan. That’s wild country, huge mountains, ravines, rushing streams. It’s practically impassable. If the troops get to Bataan, it will take a hell of a lot to dislodge them.”

  “If?”

  “The troops in the north are going to have to hold off the Japs while the southern troops move up through Manila and into Bataan. It’s all started, but it’s going to be touch and go.”

  Catharine looked again across the bay at the dark dot that was Corregidor. “Why are we going out there?”

  “It’s better than being captured,” Spencer said grimly.

  A chill of horror moved in her. “Is the army giving up Manila?”

  “Yes. It’ll be an Open City.”

  Catharine looked across the patio at the Residence. “What’s going to happen to everyone?”

  He shrugged.

  “How many of us are going to Corregidor?”

  “A couple of dozen.”

  Catharine looked horrified. There were several hundred in the Residence.

  “I know,” he said angrily, “but I can’t help it. Just be grateful we’re on the list. And don’t tell anyone. Have your stuff ready and be out at the drive by noon.” He grimaced. “I’ve got to get back to work.” He took a step, then paused. “I’ve got to see about transferring the gold.”

  As usual, there was a line for the one available phone. Catharine took her place, waited and prayed as the line slowly inched forward.

  There was no answer at Jack’s apartment. She left a brief message at the INS office which she hoped he would understand. Then she wrote a note and took it to one of the young MPs guarding the drive.

  “Would you do me a very great favor?”

  He looked at her and smiled. She knew it was the first time he’d smiled in days. “I will if I can, ma’am.”

  She gave him her note and he promised that if he got into Manila, he would take it to Jack’s apartment.

  Catharine looked up at him, then stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.

  “It’s all right, ma’am.” His voice was both gruff and gentle.

  She saw the MP again when she walked down the drive just before noon. He lifted his hand to her.

  She felt terribly conspicuous with a suitcase. People knew. They looked—then their eyes slipped away. Their faces were not judgmental or angry, just carefully vacant.

  Catharine looked down at the ground and followed the line of people carrying suitcases. The buses waited at the foot of the drive.

  Amea was holding a seat for Catharine when she climbed aboard the second bus. “Come sit with me. Woody and Spencer will meet us at the pier.”

  “I know.”

  They didn’t talk on the drive. Both of them looked grim-faced at the shattered intersections and gutted buildings, and at the steady stream of refugees interspersed among the jeeps and trucks, all moving north.

  Two PT boats waited at pier 7. The VIP party boarded first. It included High Commissioner and Mrs. Sayre; President Quezon, his wife, Aurora, and their three children; and General Douglas MacArthur, his, wife, Jean, and their son. Catharine had only a brief glimpse of MacArthur before he ducked below decks. His son, Arthur, stayed above with his nurse. Spencer and Woody were on the pier, directing the loading of the odd assortment of trunks and boxes which contained the gold and silver. Finally, Catharine and the rest of the party were waved aboard. Catharine looked back at the sprawling city cupped in its semicircle of low hills.

  Just as the boat began to move, a disreputable yellow Ford convertible pulled up and the door was flung open.

  She began to smile even as tears blurred her eyes. Jack had found out she was leaving. She didn’t know how. Perhaps he’d received her message. Perhaps the news had burned across Manila like a grass fire that the American leaders were fleeing to Corregidor. Somehow, he’d known and here he was. She raised her hand and waved.

  Jack waved back.

  She clung to the railing of the bucketing boat and waved until she could see him no longer.

  Once past the breakwater, the PT boats idled and the escaping VIPs transferred to an interisland steamer, the Mayon, for the three-hour trip across the bay. Catharine was standing amidship when MacArthur, his wife, and little Arthur went down the central stairway. She watched curiously. She’d seen MacArthur before but never so near. He was imposing, his posture ramrod straight, his uniform impeccable. She’d seen so many unshaven, exhausted officers these past weeks. MacArthur might have stepped from a July Fourth reviewing stand. He walked briskly, his wife and child following; then he was out of sight down the stairs.

  A steward brought around sandwiches and Coca-Cola. Catharine shook her head. She put her suitcase with the others in the main lounge, then returned to the deck. The steamer was passing by the burning ruin that had once been Cavite Naval Base. The smell of burning oil overlay the scent of the sea.

  Catharine stood by the railing and stared across the water. She was cold, but she didn’t want to go below decks. She stayed by the railing and watched the dark blur of Corregidor grow larger and take shape. She thought how odd it was that she should be on a steamer in the middle of Manila Bay, fleeing from the Japanese. War caused such strange things. It took lives that had been planned and tossed the plans to pieces. What a peculiar twist her life had taken. During her childhood years in Pasadena, she had never even heard of the Philippines. All those long years ago, life had seemed reasonable, a happy equation. She’d discovered when Reggie’s plane nosed down into rolling English hills that equations sometimes didn’t prove out. She’d learned that reality more bitterly when Charles, breathing stertorously, lay heavily in her arms and slipped beyond recall. Now Jack was in Manila and the Japanese were coming.

  The steamer slowed. Two PT boats from Corregidor nosed closer, and the passengers gathered up their belongings. The MacArthur party made the first transfer. Arthur MacArthur laughed as his mother swung him up to carry. Catharine’s heart ached for the MacArthurs. How dreadful to hold your child, your only son, in your arms and know that death and destruction lay ahead. At least Charles was safe now. Nothing ever again could hurt or frighten Charles.

  “Catharine, come along.”

  Catharine managed to turn and smile at Amea. As they walked together toward the crosswalk, Catharine looked beyond the PT at Corregido
r. Back in Manila, when all she could see was a dark dot on the horizon, Catharine had imagined a cattish, rounded island, but Corregidor flung itself out of the water, an enormous chunk of volcanic rock with sheer five-hundred-foot cliffs at its head. The island glistened with lush vegetation, including thickly branched fir trees that covered the rugged terrain in green.

  Amea pointed at the middle hill. “That’s where we’re going.”

  “Are there quarters there?”

  Amea didn’t answer directly. “Woody and I came over to visit once. We played golf and lunched at the Officers’ Club; then they took us on a tour.” She took a deep breath. “We saw Malinta Tunnel.”

  Tunnel. Catharine thought of a subway tunnel; rounded brick walls, narrow, constricting, dark space.

  She followed Amea across the plank to the PT boat. As soon as they were aboard, the PT roared to life. A few minutes later, the boat docked at a concrete pier. They were herded off, this time to board a rickety bus. Spencer and Woody stayed behind to supervise the unloading of the gold and silver.

  The bus chugged and wheezed up a narrow dirt road that clung to the edge of Malinta Hill. It stopped in front of what Catharine would come to know as the east entrance.

  Once again, the refugees gathered up their belongings and slowly filed off the bus, then walked toward the huge mouth of the tunnel.

  Malinta Tunnel.

  It was like nothing Catharine had ever seen before.

  The enormous mouth of the tunnel arched twenty feet high and was wide enough for four cars to drive abreast. Railroad tracks ran down the middle of the tunnel. As far as the eye could see, wooden crates and boxes lined the concrete walls in stacks six to seven feet tall. Men in uniform moved in and out of the tunnel in a constant stream.

  Catharine felt very aware of her sex. Men were everywhere. Then, with a feeling of relief, she saw two army nurses in khaki pants and combat boots. The nurses looked surprised at the straggling group of women in civilian dress.

  Catharine immediately disliked the tunnel. The air was unpleasantly damp, the kind of damp found in cellars or mausoleums. There was a graveyard smell of wet rock and other unpleasant smells, too: diesel oil fumes, urine, sweat, creosote, medicine, disinfectant.

  She followed her group into the main tunnel. A black-and-white sign announced “Hospital,” and the group turned right into a smaller tunnel. The smells of medicine, blood, and disinfectant grew stronger. Smaller tunnels opened to the left and right off the hospital lateral. The women were taken to tunnel number 11, which housed the medical detachment. They walked down a narrow aisle between neatly made cots for the doctors. Midway down this side passage, sheets were draped over a rusty metal screen which marked off the nurses’ sleeping area. This was to be their new home.

  “Home sweet home,” Amea said drily.

  The three Quezon children giggled and laughed as they dumped their things on their cots. Mrs. Quezon looked around the cramped, bleak, smelly quarters, then smiled brightly. Mrs. MacArthur and Arthur weren’t included in the group of women and children to be quartered with the nurses.

  Catharine and Amea chose neighboring cots. They tucked their suitcases beneath the cots, then looked at each other.

  “Shall we explore?” Catharine asked.

  “Of course.”

  The hospital lateral was about half the diameter of the main tunnel. As they walked back through it, they passed the laterals opening off to each side, each marked by a sign: Surgical, Respiratory, Dental, Clerical, Dispensary. For privacy, sheets were draped over the lateral entrances. The main hospital corridor was about one hundred yards in length and broken by two slight bends. Double-decker beds were lined up on each side of the main corridor for the patients. Their passage created a wash of silence as the men—officers, soldiers, patients—watched them walk by.

  “I feel rather conspicuous,” Amea murmured.

  Everyone noticed them. The glances were apparently interested, but always polite.

  The main tunnel swarmed with activity. Keeping close to the crate-stacked wall, Catharine and Amea walked the length of the tunnel. Every glimpse and sound reinforced the reality of war. Soldiers sweated as they maneuvered handcars along the rails. Men hunched over desks or clustered by map boards. Telephones buzzed. The overhead neon lights bathed everything in faintly blue light. Catharine had never thought of all the paperwork and logistics involved in men killing one another.

  “Let’s go outside,” Catharine urged. The noise and the penetrating, heavy smell sickened her.

  They walked back down the main tunnel to the east entrance and came out onto a narrow road. Trucks climbed up in low gear and exhaust fumes choked them, but there was also the sweet scent of frangipani and hibiscus. They followed a narrow path and struggled up the steep side of Malinta Hill until they stood at the crest and looked back across the bay at Manila.

  Catharine knew she should be happy to have reached the island safely. She was safe here, at least for now. Manila would fall quite soon. MacArthur intended to declare Manila an Open City to save it from further bombing, but that didn’t mean the inhabitants would be safe when the Japanese took over. The smoke that hung over the city looked dark and sooty like rain clouds. Catharine turned and looked to the north at Bataan, the mountainous and vividly green peninsula just across the channel from Corregidor. That was where the American and Filipino troops were going to make their stand. It looked wild and forbidding. She turned to look again in the direction of Manila. Whitecaps glittered on the bay. Jack was across the bay. He was somewhere in Manila, somewhere beneath that thick and ugly pall of smoke. Perhaps he’d already left Manila. Perhaps he was covering the withdrawal and was on his way to Bataan.

  God, please don’t let Jack be hurt, she prayed.

  Bullets and bombs didn’t discriminate between soldiers and civilians. There was no safety for Jack and no safety for the soldiers he was covering.

  But she said her little prayer over and over again.

  The acrid smoke curled into the sky, eddied near the ground. Flames crackled in every quarter of Manila. Heated clouds of smoke dumped occasional swaths of artificial rain, leaving oily black smudges on everything it touched. Every so often. Jack took a grimy cotton cloth and reached over the windshield to wipe a clear space. It was late on New Year’s Eve when he reached the INS office; not surprisingly, it was deserted. He wondered briefly what had happened to Logan, then he sat down at his desk and began to pound out the story. He could have written for hours, but he knew he only had minutes. When he completed the story on the withdrawal of the southern troops toward Bataan, he dialed Western Union. The telephone rang and rang.

  Artillery fire rumbled from the south.

  Jack stuffed the copy into his canvas pack. He was on his way to the door when an enormous explosion rocked the room. He was lifted from his feet and flung backwards. As he came up against the cracking wall, he knew this was more than bombs or artillery shells. He scrambled to his feet, ran outside, and stared up at the roiling columns of black smoke. Flames danced in great blazing sheets. He knew the army had blown up the Pandacan oil storage tanks. Even from the distance of several miles, he could hear the roar and whistle of the fire. Explosions erupted to the east as the fuel supplies at Fort McKinley were fired. What was left of Nichols Field went up in smoke and fire. Flames ringed the city.

  The Japanese troops must be near, Jack thought. He had to move fast, for they would intern any Americans they found in Manila. He damn well didn’t intend to spend the rest of the war in a Japanese prison. He ran to the convertible, gunned it to life, and swung the wheel toward the harbor. If he could find a boat, any kind of boat, he’d head for Bataan.

  When he reached the deserted yacht club, he swung his flashlight across the basin and spotted a rusty motorboat. He scrambled down the ladder and climbed aboard. The motor sputtered to life, but it almost immediately died. It was out of gasoline. No wonder the owner had left it when almost anything that could move or be moved wa
s being utilized by those escaping from Manila. Gasoline. He hit the pier running, hoping the little yellow convertible was still parked in front of the club.

  He found the car and searched the glove compartment and the trunk, but there was no rubber tubing. He ran back to the club and looked in a storage shed which no one had locked. The garden hoses were too big and heavy. He moved to the back door of the club, grabbed up a loose brick, and broke in. It was ghostly inside, the tables set for dining and no one there. He found the kitchen and rummaged through the drawers. He picked up a siphon bottle and a length of rubber tubing attached to a sink.

  Back at the car, his improvised siphon worked beautifully. He filled the bottle and, returning to the kitchen, searched until he found several gallon-size empty jars, which he filled, too. When he’d emptied the car’s tank, he grabbed some food from the kitchen and transferred his precious fuel supplies to the motorboat.

  Gunfire rattled on Dewey Boulevard. The militia or the Japanese?

  Jack jumped into the boat. He pulled the cord, and the engine came to life. He maneuvered the boat slowly out of the yacht basin. He moved cautiously, skirting the masts and funnels of sunken ships.

  Another explosion erupted; Jack twisted to look back at Manila. The city lay silhouetted against the brilliant orange-red fires that glowed around her.