Whether he knew it or not, every act of goodwill he had performed over the previous months had been for this mission. Every cigarette, every friendly wave, every sack of star apples he had given to the guards would be redeemed in the next hour. In one bold stroke, Dyess planned to pack his bull cart with half of the escape party’s gear at the coffee patch, then transport the load across the breadth of the penal colony, past numerous guardhouses and sentry posts, to the plowers’ shack, where Shofner and Grashio would offload the supplies. If he was caught, there would be no bailing out, no living to fly and fight another day. Failure meant certain death.
While the coffee pickers crouched in the weeds, Steve Mellnik perspired nervously, literally sweating every facet of the mission. Finally, McCoy poked his head through the bushes: “Here he comes!”
With a “whoa, Betsy,” Dyess eased the cart to a complete stop. McCoy, Mellnik, Marshall, and Spielman sprang from the brush with their gear, covering it with saplings—which would be declared as fence posts should the Japanese inquire—and fruit, which would also shield the contraband cargo from prying or alert eyes.
“Need any help?” inquired Mellnik as Dyess returned to his primitive cockpit.
“It’s a lonesome mission. I’d welcome company.”
Once Mellnik settled atop the heaped freight, Dyess maneuvered down a feeder path that bled into a secondary road bisecting the camp. They had bounced along for several hundred yards when the first of three sentry posts along the route appeared on the hazy, heatwave-warped horizon. Seeing the sentry stir inside his hut, Mellnik’s mind raced. “Was he alert or dozing? Would he suspect two PWs riding a cart? What would he do if he discovered equipment under the fruit? What would I do?” Swiveling his neck, Dyess interrupted Mellnik’s train of thought.
“I’ve flown this route fifty times,” he explained. “Each trip is different. Some sentries always stop me for fruit; others never do. You just can’t tell.”
After what seemed like an eternity, the cart slowly crawled abreast of the sentry post. Mellnik made frighteningly fleeting eye contact with the guard, then quickly turned his head and swallowed a deep breath. The lethargic guard, likely recognizing Dyess, did not move. Five yards separated them from the sentry post. Then ten. Soon, the shack disappeared in the distance. “I exhaled and went limp,” recalled Mellnik.
Betsy plodded forward with leisurely indifference, pulling the creaking cart and its passengers past gun emplacements and beneath guard towers in which sentries with binoculars scanned the jungle prison. The cart moved in slow motion, as if fighting against the torrid tide of heat and humidity inches at a time. For once, Mellnik welcomed the oppressive heat. “I found solace in the steam bath atmosphere,” he said. “It would make the sentries less attentive.”
Thankfully, that was the case with the second sentry post; the guard had fallen asleep and they passed by with ease. Dyess whistled with optimism.
“One more to go,” he chirped.
Mellnik could not believe their luck when the drowsy soldier at the final sentry post waved them by without even a cursory examination—nor what transpired next. To his astonishment, Dyess jerked the cart to a stop and jumped to the ground. Mellnik watched apprehensively as Dyess “stretched luxuriously and saluted the sentry” and then pointed to the cigarette between his lips. Rummaging for matches, the guard, obviously familiar with Dyess, obliged. Dyess exchanged an arrigato—“thank you”—for a nod and slight bow.
Minutes after the surreal event, Mellnik still could not believe what he had witnessed. He stared at Dyess, puffing contentedly as he steered toward the banana groves, and remembered his Kipling, albeit in a paraphrase, “You’re a braver man than I am, Gunga Din.”
Dyess’s celebratory bravado was premature. They arrived at the rendezvous point to find Grashio and Shofner waiting as planned, as well as a guard—perhaps the only one in the camp that Dyess did not know—posted only a few yards up the road. “There was nothing to do but start unloading,” said Dyess. “Any funny business then would have been
fatal.”
Dyess maneuvered the cart between the guard’s line of sight and the edge of the road. He and Mellnik unloaded the poles from the side
of the cart facing the guard while Grashio and Shofner hurriedly carried
the contraband cargo off the other side. In order to shield the gear from the rains and the Japanese, it would be stored in five-gallon gasoline cans that Grashio had acquired from the Japanese kitchen and covered with banana leaves.
Returning to the coffee patch as the workday drew to a close, Mellnik said “silent good-byes” to the men whom he had spent the past few months working and stealing food with, men whom he knew he might never see again. He sensed questions in one prisoner’s eyes, a friend he had known since Corregidor—“I was grateful that he did not ask them.”
Pop Abrina, feeling similarly sentimental, pulled both McCoy and Mellnik aside and placed some pesos in their hands, a parting gift from Juan Acenas.
“My wife and I prayed for you last night,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
“My God, Pop!” said McCoy. “Did you tell her about us going?”
“She knows I’ve helped you,” he said, nodding. “When I couldn’t sleep last night, she asked what was wrong. I told her I was afraid somebody would find your supplies in the coffee patch. So she got down on her knees and prayed!”
When the column marched back to the compound, Abrina paused at the lane leading to his house. McCoy and Mellnik turned to see the middle-aged Filipino standing in the twilight waving goodbye, his fingers forming the V for Victory sign.
As the countdown entered its final hours, the emotional, yet constrained farewells seemed to be the most difficult problems remaining. Dobervich and Hawkins were relieved to learn that their sentence had been commuted thanks to the efforts of McCoy and their high-ranking friends. Only a few additional items—the most important of which was the quart bottle containing nearly 1,000 quinine tablets that Dyess had pilfered from the pharmacy—needed to be cached, but Shofner had presumably completed that task in the afternoon.
As the last of the conspiring POWs passed through the gates of the main compound that evening, most were confident that the only thing standing between them and their freedom was time. Yet for all their meticulous planning, they had overlooked one important thing. Incredibly, they had forgotten about their universally despised archenemy.
Visibly shaken, Shofner and Grashio returned to Bay Ten that evening and collapsed next to Hawkins.
“What’s the matter?” Hawkins asked Shofner. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Shofner, his mouth bloody and swollen, had almost seen his own. As usual, Lieutenant Hozumi’s timing had been near-perfect. At noon, the officer, Simon Legree, and two guards had strutted into the plowers’ shack for a surprise inspection—just barely missing Dyess’s delivery.
“[Hozumi] caught us with our pants down,” said Shofner.
Heavy rains the night before had postponed the plowing, so the plowers had been sitting around enjoying bananas when Hozumi surprised them. Flying into a rage, he ordered the POWs to attention and instructed his cohorts to rummage for contraband food. He then went down the line slapping the prisoners. “Dogs!” he shrieked. “You steal fruit! Is
the fruit of the Japanese empire!” Hozumi saved his full fury for Shofner, the senior officer. The Marine was powerless to do anything but absorb the
blows.
“I stood like a post, staring at the horizon across the top of his head. His hand whacked across my face, bringing a trickle of blood. Anger and frustration boiled inside me, but from the corner of my eye I could see a guard with rifle ready, waiting for my slightest move. Hozumi already had his hand on that meatcleaver of his.”
Hozumi continued to work Shofner over, but the latter’s attention was subconsciously riveted on the guard ransacking the prisoners’ belongings. He opened Shofner’s musette bag, which contained the
bottle of quinine pills that he had not yet stashed. “My heart took a nosedive,” Shofner would say. The guard reached inside and after several excruciating seconds, moved on. He had surely touched the bottle, but he had not been looking for medicine and likely would not have comprehended the presence of the pills anyway. “His orders had been to search for food,” Shofner would later reason, and with the Japanese, “orders are orders.”
“I didn’t feel Hozumi’s slaps anymore,” he added. “Relief made me numb.”
Hozumi finally stormed out with his entourage. One of the guards kicked at Shofner’s bag on his way out, but providentially his foot did not hit the bottle.
“How lucky can you get?” exclaimed Grashio, who himself had been working to cover gear near the jungle’s edge and had nervously watched the spectacle from afar. Father Carberry, toting two gas cans full of blankets and other supplies to the rendezvous point just as Hozumi was departing, had also been fortunate to duck into a banana grove before being spotted.
It was the closest of calls. Had Hozumi discovered the quinine, some type of severe punishment, ranging from solitary confinement to torture or death, would have been guaranteed. An extensive investigation, one that might have led Hozumi to uncover the escape plan, almost certainly would have been launched. “Once Hozumi’s suspicions were aroused,” theorized Hawkins, “that implacable individual could be counted upon to take relentless countermeasures.” Thankfully, the only damage Hozumi had seemingly inflicted was to Shofner’s face.
Once darkness fell, the escape party—minus Mellnik, Marshall, Spielman, and the Filipinos—gathered for one final, furtive meeting at the barber’s shed.
“Now men,” McCoy addressed the group, “tomorrow’s the day, and I guess we are all set. I think we should reach an understanding right now that if any one of us becomes too weak to carry on, or is wounded, or has to fall by the wayside for any reason, the rest will have to continue on without him.”
Heads nodded. McCoy then suggested that they not wear their leggings the next morning so as to not draw any undue attention when they departed the main compound. He also advised that they leave their bays looking as lived-in as possible.
“Just pretend you are going to work as usual, and we can’t miss,” he concluded.
At lights out, they settled into their bunks and tried to catch a few winks. In Barracks Five, Jack Hawkins’s eyelids were locked open as raindrops noisily pattered the tin roof above his head. His mind was filled with “all kinds of disconnected thoughts.” He thought of his fiancée, Rhea. Was his blanket in the thicket soaking wet? Was he a fool to leave the camp and risk probable death? He had lain awake with sleepless anticipation before early morning duck hunts in the past. “Tomorrow, I would be the hunted and not the hunter,” Hawkins would recall. “The stakes were high in this game…. To be won was freedom—a chance to live again, a chance to fight again, perhaps even a chance someday to see home again. This was a rich prize to be won, and I was staking my life on it.”
There was something else gnawing at Hawkins. Hearing that Dobervich was restless, too, he reached over and tapped his friend on the shoulder.
“Whadaya say?” replied Dobervich, poking his head beneath Hawkins’s mosquito net.
“Say, Mike, you know what we agreed out there tonight—about leaving anybody who falls out or gets shot? Well, as far as I’m concerned, that doesn’t go for you and Shof and me.”
Dobervich reached his hand under the net to clutch that of Hawkins.
“That went without saying, Jack.”
While the Marines expressed their motto of Semper Fidelis—“Always Faithful”—a few snoring prisoners away, Ed Dyess was equally restive. He could not shake a premonition that the cool night wind had swept through the eaves and settled upon him.
“I felt something was wrong, I couldn’t say what,” he would write. “I just didn’t believe we were going … that’s how psychic you get in prison camp.”
SUNDAY, MARCH 28–TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 1943
Davao Penal Colony
The day began like any other Sunday—just as McCoy wanted it. The plotting prisoners were clangorously bugled out of their bunks, but it was the announcement from their barracks leaders that rang in their ears: “This is a special order from Lieutenant Hozumi. As a punishment for disobeying the rules against the picking of fruits and vegetables, all hands will forfeit their recreation today and will work in the rice paddies. This means every man who is not actually hospitalized. Fall in outside the barracks after breakfast.”
As curses, grumbles, and groans echoed through Barracks Five, Jack Hawkins’s hands froze and dropped the shoe he was putting on. He turned to look at Mike Dobervich, who, sitting beside him, beat him to the question: “My God, what do we do now?”
“Shof joined us at this time looking as he had been shocked beyond recovery,” added Hawkins. “There was a blank, dazed look on his face. His mouth was drooping.”
“It’s all my fault,” whispered Shofner, hoarsely. “The plow detail—
getting caught with the fruit. It’s all my fault.”
But the natural-born leader quickly snapped out of his fugue state and dashed in the direction of Barracks Eight. His gloomy mood, though, did not improve upon his return.
“McCoy can’t figure a way out of this one and neither can I,” he said. “How about you?”
Dobervich and Hawkins shook their heads. The Air Corps contingent could not come up with an alternate flight plan, either. After some hasty yet cautious conferencing, the escape party reluctantly decided on the only course of action available: postponement. The new E-Day, they decided, would be the following Sunday, April 4.
But what about the Filipinos? The thought of both colonos showing up at the rendezvous point and being discovered along with the stashed gear by the Japanese was chilling.
While lining up to board the Toonerville Trolley, the Marines noticed Ben de la Cruz walking down the road toward them. In all likelihood, he had heard of Hozumi’s pronouncement and had come to investigate. Careful to avoid eye contact until he passed the spot directly abreast of where the Marines were standing, he shot a quick, inquisitive glance in their direction. Without speaking, Hawkins shook his head from side to side. Never breaking his stride, de la Cruz nodded receipt of the message and continued down the road. “He knew the plans were off,” said Hawkins.
Toiling in the rain and mud of Mactan was miserable, yet having to endure the suspense-filled week was worse. “The strain,” said Steve Mellnik, “was frightful. Problems filled my mind. Each Japanese appeared as an accuser, and each PW as an informer. I became acutely aware of evening roll calls, the searches at the gate, and the ubiquitous sentry posts…. Did Hozumi have more surprises?”
The nerve-racking tension notwithstanding, none of the conspirators had second thoughts about their decision to participate in the plan—or at least none intimated such thoughts to the others or later documented them—but their apprehension was nevertheless evident.
Leo Boelens’s terse diary entry for March 28—”?????????”—illustrated the dark cloud of uncertainty hanging over them.
“How far is it to Australia from here, Commander?” Marshall asked McCoy one day.
“About sixteen hundred miles to one of the nearest points—Melville, for instance.”
“And you mean, if we can find a sailboat, you can take us there?”
“Within ten or fifteen miles of any place on the map,” replied McCoy, as reassuringly as possible. “Provided, of course, that we can rig up some halfway decent navigating equipment.”
“And provided, of course, that we had a lot of luck with the weather, and the Japs didn’t stop us. But I kept these thoughts to myself,” McCoy later wrote.
Even Pop Abrina’s faith was being tested. “What will happen next?” he asked.
The hourly bell that rang across Dapecol’s fields seemed only to signal a spike in their stress levels. Mellnik noticed that the usually mischievous, energet
ic duo of Marshall and Spielman was quiet and moody. And that he and McCoy were prone to overreaction at the slightest incidents. All of the members of the escape party took turns badgering Shofner, asking no fewer than ten times by Mellnik’s count, “How well did you hide the stuff?”
Their cached gear was the main source of their anguish. They wondered if it would be so waterlogged that it would be useless to them on their journey or, worse, that it would be discovered. The stockpile of supplies contained food, medicine, bolos, and other items that served as conclusive proof of escape preparations. And their names were written all over this escape plan—literally. Both their names and in some cases their serial numbers had been stenciled and stitched on their musette bags, blankets, and other personal belongings. The discovery of their supply depot was as good as an admission of guilt.
“As each day passed without discovery, each of us sent up a prayer of thanks,” recalled McCoy. “And each of us prayed that, on the coming Sunday, we would not be punished with an order to work.” Their anxiety skyrocketed with the startling midweek newsflash (most likely originating with Lieutenant Yuki) that Dapecol’s garrison was scheduled to be reinforced by additional troops the week of April 4. All work details would thereafter be guarded. They would have to execute their plan the next Sunday. There could be no more delays.
Dyess, Grashio, and Boelens focused their nervous energy into practical pursuits. While Boelens labored in the machine shop, the two pilots performed an exhaustive ground-level reconnaissance. They observed the tendencies and movements of tower guards. They noted the schedules of patrols, timed their own movements, and measured distances.
Hawkins coped in his own way. “I think what happened to me in the Philippines, which psychologically was a really good adjustment to make,” he said, “was that I thought I probably was not going to survive at various times. And so I just resigned myself to that and didn’t think about it. You just went ahead and did whatever you had to do.”
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