Escape from Davao

by John D. Lukacs

  Davao Province

  Melvyn McCoy did not know if it had been an intervention of the divine or quinine variety, but he was nevertheless thankful to have awakened with none of the symptoms of the malady that had plagued him the previous day. The others, dressing and bustling with renewed vigor, shared McCoy’s enthusiasm. Recharged by nearly eleven hours of sleep and a breakfast of oatmeal and tea, they sprang off the log at 0830.

  The scene in the swamp was much the same—yet different. Their faces were red and puffy from mosquito bites, the mud still clutched at their feet, the water lapped their midsections, and the razor-sharp cogon mercilessly lacerated their bodies. Even so, “the sword grass looked less dreadful than the day before,” noted Grashio. It was optimistic depth perception. The going was no easier, but the despondency that had made each step the previous day so laboriously difficult was absent.

  On they pushed, slashing cogon with assured, mechanical efficiency, sloshing through the swamp water, wiping their brows, swigging from their canteens, oblivious to the swarming insects and stifling heat, the minutes running into hours, morning becoming afternoon.

  Every few hundred yards, the column would halt and, after motioning for silence, Jumarong would cup a hand to one ear. The Americans looked at each other quizzically.

  “He is listening for the cock crow,” de la Cruz explained. “Wherever there are Filipino people you will hear the crow of the fighting cocks. The sound will travel for a long way.”

  The sounds of civilization eluded their ears, but another sign was visible: the swamp water seemed to be receding. When they halted for lunch at noon, it was hip-level. Each successive hour saw the water level drop; their spirits, correspondingly, soared. They also encountered sparser, smaller thickets of cogon, which enabled them to progress at a rate of roughly 500 yards an hour. They were soon joyfully splashing through ankle-high water. Finally, at 1400 hours, they exited the swamp and flopped onto the muddy jungle floor, leeches be damned. While they caught their breath, Jumarong loped into the brush. He returned fifteen minutes later with a grin on his face and some excited words: he had found a trail.

  Forty-five minutes of effortless hiking brought them to an embankment perhaps five feet above the level path. The railroad, the goal that at times had seemed impossible to find, was within reach. Confident that the area was clear, McCoy gave the signal.

  “Okay,” he whispered, “Everybody up.”

  It was an oddly anticlimactic triumph. The railroad was little more than “two ribbons of rusty steel piercing the jungle and all but overwhelmed by it,” recalled Shofner. Dazedly, they kicked around the rotting wood ties until someone let out an exclamation. There were footprints. Dozens of them. They were made by split-toed shoes with hobnail heels—Japanese footprints. Dyess had seen similar prints on Bataan. These shoes, he pointed out, not only provided Japanese soldiers with excellent footing on difficult terrain, they also made climbing trees a cinch for snipers. “The thing that jarred us,” said Dyess, “was that the prints were

  fresh.”

  The startling evidence sent them into a copse of trees for a conference. There were lots of questions—Were the Japanese ahead of them or behind them? Did they patrol the railroad? If so, how often, and by foot, by locomotive, or both? Where were the guerrillas and civilians Acenas had spoken of? Spielman volunteered to scout ahead for intelligence, and with McCoy’s blessing he, Jumarong, and de la Cruz left while the others prepared a camp in a clearing approximately 500 yards from the railroad. The scouting party returned at 1730 and Spielman reported on his findings—or lack thereof.

  “No Japs, nobody,” he said, shaking his head, “but we did find some deserted shacks about three kilometers north of here.”

  The tug-of-war between their hearts and minds—they were exhilarated to be out of the swamp, yet wary of what the next sunrise would bring—and the fact that the Marines’ bunk had collapsed yet again, eliciting a barrage of expletives, made for another sleepless night. Hungry for answers, they skipped breakfast, struck camp, and set out in the predawn darkness along the railroad toward Lungaog.

  “We’ll be safe or dead in about four hours,” reasoned McCoy. “The sooner we move, the better.”

  Slowly, fresh sunbeams poured into the emerald canyon, illuminating their narrow path north between the rusted rails. Because of the din of the waking jungle, they did not hear the sound of several feet sliding down the tapered trunks of the giant lauan trees towering several hundred feet above their heads and silently scampering into the undergrowth.

  At the Marines’ suggestion, they marched in a spread-out patrol formation of twos and threes staggered over several hundred yards, ready to melt into the jungle at the slightest hint of an ambush. With Japanese footprints appearing both in front of and behind them, heading north and south toward Anibogan and Dapecol, respectively, Hawkins did not want to take chances.

  They had traveled only four kilometers when they discovered the most disconcerting evidence yet: more of the distinctive footprints, plus cigarette butts, spilled rice, and spent cartridges. The blood-spattered foliage and trampled brush suggested that they were standing on a battlefield, most likely the site of the battle they had heard on Monday evening.

  “Looks like quite a fight,” said Dobervich.

  “Yep,” agreed Shofner. “Wonder where the boys are who tangled with them?”

  Hawkins noticed that the brush on both sides of the embankment seemed to be trampled in the direction of Dapecol, an indication of a retreat. But there were no sighs of relief just yet. “The Japs, we knew, would not give up easily in their efforts to kill or recapture us,” said Hawkins. “It was with great trepidation that we proceeded farther down the

  track.”

  Five hundred yards later, the escapees happened upon a small village. After deploying Dyess and Jumarong as lookouts, they entered what seemed to be a typical rural barrio—smoke issuing from cooking fires, water boiling, chickens, pigs, and dogs scratching around. But no people. They cautiously peeked into each of the half-dozen bamboo and thatch huts, but were left scratching their heads.

  “Well, if this isn’t the damnedest thing you ever saw,” said Hawkins.

  The bubbling cauldrons reminded them of their empty stomachs, so they decided to quan a breakfast of rice, papaya, cassava, and corn. They had just raised the food to their mouths when Dyess and Jumarong sprinted into the middle of the deserted village. The two lookouts were breathless and their faces deathly pale.

  “Couple of armed men back there,” reported Dyess, squeezing the words between deep breaths. “Filipinos. One of them drew a bead on me. Couldn’t have missed.”

  Dyess said that he had called to the men—“Americanos!”—but after one raised his weapon they disappeared into the jungle. First the battlefield, then the abandoned village, and now this—each successive development was proving more unnerving than the last. The men could have been guerrillas, or guides for the Japanese. “In either case,” wrote Shofner, “they would be inclined to shoot first then ask questions.”

  Stepping back between the rails, they could not shake the frightening sensation that they were being watched. “We could see nothing but dense jungle at each side, but hundreds of eyes seemed to be staring at us,” said McCoy. “Were we walking into an ambush? We didn’t know but we had to keep going.”

  They marched about two kilometers before crossing paths with a fifteen-year-old Filipino boy, their first encounter with another human since leaving Dapecol four days ago. Both parties were startled; the boy ran, but stopped after de la Cruz and Jumarong called out to him in Visayan. Staring at the Americans wide-eyed, he told them that his village, Lungaog, was nearby.

  After three additional kilometers on the railroad and a thirty-minute hike along a muddy side trail, they entered the outskirts of Lungaog. Jumarong and de la Cruz approached some riflemen congregating in a hut in the middle of a clearing and explained that the group had escaped from the penal colony. The Filipino
s initially seemed skeptical, but soon approached with handshakes and a warm greeting: “Brave American soldiers, sir. Brave soldiers, sir.”

  “At the moment, we looked like anything but brave soldiers,” wrote McCoy. “We all had four day beards. Our uniforms were wet and dirty, our faces scratched by the sword grass of the jungle…. We weren’t certain how brave we were, but we certainly were ten relieved Americans.”

  Runners were sent to notify local authorities, and food, including rice, cassava, and baloots, was brought out. A baloot is a duck or chicken egg taken after a ten-day setting. Boiled or baked, it is served cold and considered a delicacy in the Philippines. Though the sight of such a meal made their eyebrows arch, to refuse would have been in poor taste. So the escapees peeled the shells, revealing a partially formed bird, sans feathers, in a cloudy jelly, and hesitantly bit into their baloots; a ravenous McCoy was so hungry he gulped down two.

  They then spied a well and instantly gravitated toward it. Lathering up with hoarded soap, they dumped buckets of clean water on each other to cleanse four days of collected filth. “The sensation was nearly as delightful as feeling solid ground underfoot had been the day before,” remembered Grashio.

  Their guard lowered, they were milling about the well in various states of undress, laughing, scrubbing, shaving, and celebrating when a sharp whistle ripped the air and a loud voice called out an unsettling command: “Hands up!”

  Frozen and frightened stiff, they stood like statues at the well, dripping with water and suds as a strapping Filipino giant swaggered toward them. Brandishing two Colt .45 revolvers in his hands, with a campaign hat tilted on his head and two bullet-filled bandoliers across his barrel chest, he resembled a character they had seen in so many Hollywood movies.

  The stern-faced Filipino—estimated by McCoy to be in his early thirties, at least six feet tall and 200-plus pounds—demanded to know who they were and what they were doing there. Wiping the lather from his face, McCoy motioned for de la Cruz and Jumarong to join him. The others, careful not to make any sudden movements, attempted to dress and present as dignified an appearance as possible. McCoy cleared his throat.

  “We are your friends. Prisoners. We escaped from the camp. We’re Americans.”

  “How did you come here?”

  “Through the jungle,” chimed in Shofner. “Through the swamp.”

  The Filipino was visibly perplexed.

  “The Japanese send many spies. I don’t like spies.”

  Though it was hardly advisable for one who was being interrogated at gunpoint, McCoy could not help but laugh. After all they had been through, the suggestion seemed preposterous.

  “Spies?” wailed McCoy, “Look at us, we’re Americans!”

  The Filipino scanned the motley crew gathered around the well. Though months in the equatorial sun had darkened their complexions, their Western features made for a convincing argument. Still, the Filipino remained skeptical. Exasperated, McCoy yanked his dog tags from around his neck and held them out for inspection.

  “Look at these. They say I am Melvyn H. McCoy, commander

  U.S. Navy. If that’s not enough, ask our Filipino friends—they know who I am.”

  The Filipino scrutinized McCoy’s dog tags and then rattled off several questions in Tagalog in the direction of de la Cruz. Evidently, the answers were satisfactory, for it was the first of many times they were to see a broad smile creep across the big man’s round face.

  “I’m Sergeant Casiano de Juan of the Mindanao guerrillas,” he announced, thrusting one of the pistols into his belt and then moving forward as if to embrace all of the escapees at once. “We are happy to see Americans!”

  “Big Boy,” drawled Dyess while pumping de Juan’s hand vigorously, “we’re a helluva lot happier to see you!” (Thanks to Dyess, a nickname had been created in those first minutes of friendship. Casiano de Juan would henceforth be known to both the escapees and through guerrilla circles as Big Boy.)

  “I have a surprise for you,” said the grinning guerrilla, who then wheeled around, waved his pistol and let out a shrill whistle. “These are my guerrilleros.”

  At the signal, fifty-odd Filipinos erupted from the jungle and engulfed the escapees in a celebratory melee of whoops and cheers. The escapees had heard about the guerrilla movement that had arisen to resist the Japanese, but most of what they knew was hearsay. Now, they had actually encountered some of these guerrillas.

  It was a most peculiar army. They were grimy and poorly clothed—some went barefoot—and carried weapons ranging from BARs, boltaction rifles, and pistols to homemade shotguns, bolos, and Japanese swords, spears, bows, and quivers of arrows. Even so, their resolute appearance made a strong impression. Once in the depths of despair, Mellnik executed an about-face as the escapees moved out with the ragtag escort.

  “Mac,” he said, confiding to McCoy, “I think we’ll make Cateel in a breeze.”

  “Look, Major,” whispered Spielman, nudging Mellnik. “We’re on display.”

  Indeed they were. The entire barrio of Lungaog had turned out for their arrival. Adults crowded the building—a large nipa structure formerly filled with fighting cocks—and children crawled up into the rafters for a better view. While the Americans polished off their second, and in some cases third, helpings of cracked boiled corn, chicken, and stringbean soup, dozens of curious blinking eyes set amid the shadows watched with rapt curiosity. Many in the crowd had brought food, while others furnished their talents, such as the guerrillero who strummed “La Paloma” on his mandolin. “We were getting to see the justly famed Filipino hospitality,” wrote McCoy. “These people were poor and our presence might mean retaliation from the Japs, but they were willing to share whatever they had.”

  “Now,” said Big Boy, as they sat in a circular formation on the bamboo floor among the shadows created by the flickering light of a coconut oil lantern, “how do you really come?”

  “I told you,” said Shofner, “through the swamp.”

  Dubious, de Juan shook his head from side to side.

  “Nobody goes into the swamp. Nobody comes through.”

  Finally, accepting their protestations, he took their word.

  “Brave Americans,” laughed Big Boy. “Lucky too, eh?”

  More lucky than they would ever know.

  “We thought you were Japs at first,” explained de Juan. “We were planning to kill you, but we found out you were Americans.”

  “We’re certainly glad you found out in time,” replied McCoy.

  “What was all the shooting back on the railroad two days ago?” asked Hawkins. “Did you know about it?”

  “Did I know about it? Ho, ho,” chortled de Juan. “My men killed ten Japs there.”

  As de Juan explained, the bamboo telegraph—a primitive though highly effective network of scouts, swift runners, and drums—had alerted the guerrillas that a Japanese patrol had penetrated their territory. This, no doubt, was the search party sent out from Dapecol.

  Ernesto Corcino, then a twenty-five-year-old guerrillero who would become an astute student of American history, compared his compatriots to the Minutemen in American Revolutionary War times. With the alarm, men from scattered farms and barrios dropped their tools, picked up their weapons, and gathered at dusk to lay an ambush near barrio Kinamayan—the deserted village where the escapees had eaten breakfast. Though heavily outgunned and outnumbered, sixteen to eighty-three by one account, they had the factor of surprise. Felling ten enemy soldiers with their first volley, they pulsed a shockwave of panic through the Japanese ranks.

  “They fired their machine gun and the small cannon [mortar] but hit nothing,” Big Boy told the Americans, adding that not one of his men had been injured. “They fought only a few minutes and then they tied their dead on poles like pigs and ran away.”

  For the escaped prisoners, this timely intervention by de Juan’s men was freighted with fateful significance. Firstly, had it not been for the guiding light of the firefi
ght, they might not have found their way out of the swamp. And even if the prisoners had found an exit, the Japanese, advancing unimpeded along the railroad, almost certainly would have eventually ensnared the Americans. Instead, the Japanese were forced to retreat south, back to Dapecol, providing the escapees a small buffer zone and enough time to enter deeper into guerrilla territory. Given the circumstances and recent revelation of information previously unknown to the escapees, their safe delivery into friendly hands seemed an improbable miracle. “One would think it a God-protected experience,” Corcino would say.

  According to Corcino, guerrilla sentries perched high in the lauan trees had spied the Americans at sunrise, shortly after they had begun traveling north on the railroad. These scouts also detected a detachment of Japanese approaching the escape party, though still several kilometers distant. Despite the distance, the keen eyes of the scouts could discern the differences between the groups, with Corcino noting that the more northerly one was composed of “ten tall white men” and that those trailing were “Japanese soldiers with their identifiable hats with hanging strips of olive green cloth.” Because of the proximity of the groups, something seemed awry. The sentinels quickly descended from their lookout posts. While most of the outpost guards rushed to report the news of the intruders, two stayed behind to observe the movements of the nearer group.

  At de Juan’s camp, there was speculation that the Japanese were employing white-skinned German allies to masquerade as American POWs in an attempt to lure the guerrillas out and annihilate them with their superior firepower. “There are no Germans in Davao Penal Colony,” countered a skeptical de Juan. But he could not afford to take chances. Three times he had made trips to Japanese-occupied Davao City and twice he had been questioned about the activities of the elusive guerrilla leader known as de Juan. During his third visit, the Japanese finally recognized him with the help of a spy. The wily guerrilla brokered a deal in which, on condition of his release, he promised to surrender his army. Once safely back in his own territory, he sent a needling message to the Japanese garrison commander: “Want us? Come and get us.” Infuriated, the Japanese put a substantial price on de Juan’s head of 100 pesos—roughly $500—as well as a sack of rice.