Escape from Davao

by John D. Lukacs

  The Japanese, it seemed, had divided their patrol, with half going around the mountain and the other half coming over it in an effort to flush out their prey. In fact, the latter group “had actually passed us as we were scrambling around taking our shortcut,” claimed Parsons. The escapees’ luck in getting lost had likely saved them from being trapped between two enemy patrols and some unwanted fireworks on this Fourth of July. But they were hardly in the clear.

  They were now in effect tailing the Japanese who were chasing them.

  “There was only one trail and nothing to do but march on, taking what precautions against ambush we could,” said Parsons. Two guerrillas removed their uniforms, so as to look like locals, and scampered off to scout ahead. It was an agonizingly irrational situation: despite having found the path, they could not speed their advance for fear of overtaking their “pursuers.”

  Marching on edge, they found it difficult to maintain the snail’s pace for more than several hours. By 1500, they began to spot cigarette butts on the trail at their feet—some still burning. Not long after, at the top of a rise, they were startled by an old Moro woman. Through her gestures, they understood that the Japanese had questioned her about the presence of Americans on the trail. She decided to wait and issue a warning. “There was no rhyme or reason for her warning us,” stated Parsons, “except friendship for everyone but the Japanese.”

  Peering down at the Japanese resting in a grove, they weighed their options. Watching the enemy soldiers lounging, eating, and drinking coconut milk—they themselves had not eaten since early morning—was more than they could bear. Smith wanted to attack the patrol, but cooler heads prevailed; even if each of their bullets found its mark, they still would not have enough ammunition to dispose of even half the patrol. All they could do was chew on palm leaves to calm their nerves and stomachs—and cross their fingers. At the edge of the grove, the trail forked in two directions. If the Japanese took the left trail, they were safe since their route lay straight ahead. But if the Japanese continued on their current path, they would have to continue playing their game of reverse cat-and-mouse.

  Luck, as it had been so many times in the past, was with them once again. The Japanese moved out and chose the left fork. Once the patrol was safely out of sight, they picked their way down to the path and continued on for several hours, stopping only at an abandoned homestead at dusk to prepare an impromptu meal from a chicken that Dyess had chased down. They were forced to continue on well into the night to make up for lost time. Parsons knew that if they did not make the rendezvous, it was doubtful that they could arrange another due to the increased enemy activity in the Mindanao area.

  Nature, not the Japanese, would be their primary adversary on the third day of their trek. They traversed arduous mountain trails thick with mud that often reached to their knees. Streams consistently barred their path, forcing them to build rafts or else clumsily wade across. While Parsons traveled barefoot most of the time, the others were always stopping to empty their shoes of gravel. Parsons seemed to move with ease along the jungle trails, almost as if he had been there before. Perhaps he had. The ambitious Tennessean had left home for the Philippines in the 1920s and, within a few short years, had been everywhere from Luzon to Zamboanga while working for the American administrative government and honing his commercial talents.

  The succession of water barriers and sudden downpours left them continuously waterlogged at the same time that their endless perspiration left them dehydrated. McCoy had the only canteen in the group and it was almost always empty; the laborious process of purifying water with halazone tablets took too long to meet the demands of their thirst so they invariably dropped to their knees to gulp water from streams.

  Their tremendous expenditure of energy left them ravenously hungry, too, but they found it difficult to make any concessions, even when they happened upon a barn containing a large amount of livestock. A handful of goats “made such a human bleating” recalled Parsons, that they could not bring themselves to kill the animals. Happily, the situation was resolved when the scouts located a group of locals who offered to kill a pig for them. The detail returned with a feast of barbecued pork and a dish of ground, steamed corn that tasted like hominy grits. “The finest meal of our lives,” Parsons recalled. “It just was like sitting at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City with thirty waiters bringing on course after course.”

  The following morning, both their ranks and their spirits swelled with the arrival of a handful of guerrillas who had recently buckwheated from Aurora—they were now capable of defending themselves should they encounter any more enemy patrols. “At this point, we felt that the situation was well in hand and were in fact hopeful of making our rendezvous on schedule,” Parsons would write, “when we ran across the worst river we had yet encountered.”

  It was the Dinas, located midway between the barrio of Balongating and their next destination, Libunganan. While the rest of the group began raft construction, Parsons and Dyess went off in search of a guerrilla encampment rumored to be nearby. Parsons hoped to find a radio that they could use to warn the submarine of a possible delay. They inflated their trousers and then tied them around their necks before kicking their way across the river. Their advance work, however, was for naught; they would hike in a circle for nearly two hours, returning to their starting point just as the others, exhausted and scared stiff, landed ashore. The rafters had lashed a vine to a tree on the opposite bank, but the towline had snapped, sending the raft careening downstream with the powerful 8-knot current. Only a bit of topographical luck, the fortuitous appearance of a sharp bend, had enabled them to beach the runaway raft.

  Parsons had noticed that the former escapees were showing signs of strain, so it was with some apprehension that he allowed McCoy to march ahead with a guide. Parsons and the others failed to reach the guerrilla camp at nightfall and worse, lost contact with McCoy altogether. The next morning, they were relieved to find that McCoy had preceded them to Libunganan. “He gave a very hazy explanation of his actions … and we realized that he was badly in need of medical care—further necessity for making our rendezvous on time,” Parsons wrote.

  Captain Medina, commanding officer of the 115th Regiment, welcomed the travelers with open arms, as well as some interesting entertainment. The Americans had arrived in time to witness the trial of a captured spy. The accused’s testimony was collected in due form and affidavit and the man ultimately confessed to supplying the Japanese with information. Guerrilla justice was swift, meted out with a Moro barong, or long sword, which Dyess asked for and received as a souvenir from the sergeant who performed the execution.

  They rose early on the sixth day and took a southwesterly course. Parsons estimated that they traveled nine kilometers from Libunganan to the barrio of Sayog, which was located approximately ten kilometers from the municipality of Lapuyan. Beyond that, somewhere, was their ultimate destination, Margosatubig. It was nearly a guess. Shoulder-high cogongrass swallowed up the trail, making speculation a necessary part of navigation. They also had to deal with another wayward guide they sensed was leading them astray. Consultations with their compass and the guide revealed that the latter wanted to eat lunch at the home of a girlfriend who lived out of the way.

  For most of the afternoon, they wandered from hill to hill and fought through fatigue and hunger to breathlessly summit miniature mountains, each time expecting to see the blue waters of Igat Bay, but instead they peered out over more green jungle. “We kept plugging along at any trail we could see, wondering if we had suffered all these hardships and come this long way only to fail when our mission was so nearly complete,” remembered Parsons.

  And then, after another strength-sapping ascent at 1600 hours, Igat Bay suddenly appeared. By 1900 they were in Lapuyan, where Capt. Joe McCarthy, an American mestizo guerrilla, was waiting with a launch that would transport them through a driving rainstorm to Margosatubig.

  Parsons was pleased to learn that McCarthy
had had the foresight to radio a warning to Australia that the extraction party might be delayed. Parsons sent an updated message confirming his arrival in Margosatubig, but since the communications station was a one-way operation, there was no way for him to know if that message, or McCarthy’s message, for that matter, had been received. They could only follow through with the mission and pray that the rendezvous would go off without a hitch.

  They departed Margosatubig at dawn on the 9th of July, puttering first through the narrow channel separating Zamboanga from tiny Igat island and then striking out across the middle of Dumanquilas Bay for the village of Naga Naga. It was there that they found the General Fertig. The launch was armed with a machine gun salvaged from an aircraft wreck, but it was hardly a match for the Japanese destroyers that had been reported to be operating in the bay. They immediately set to work camouflaging the craft. By the time they finished, banana leaves and palm fronds hung from guy wires and no fewer than a dozen potted palms, plus piles of fresh fruit, were arranged on the deck. Mellnik noted, with some amusement, the lone coconut palm tree that flew from the mast: “Only a slight ripple at the bow and the wake at the stern belied our appearance as an island.”

  It was not until 1600, after stealthily slipping from cove to cove, that the General Fertig released into Dumanquilas Bay. Upon arriving at the rendezvous coordinates, Parsons ran an upside-down American flag up the mast, the agreed-upon recognition signal. But for the waiting, their work was done. (In U.S. Navy tradition, an inverted ensign is recognized as a distress signal.)

  Without the rumble and hum of the boat’s diesel engines, they bobbed in unsettling silence for what seemed like hours. The glassy sea lapped audibly on the ship’s wooden hull. Their hearts pounded inside their chests. “Dyess and Mellnik were pale and tense,” recalled McCoy. “I played solitaire to keep from going crazy.”

  Ever so slowly, the minutes ticked by. One hour turned into two. The escapees could not help but let dark thoughts enter their minds: that a Japanese ship or seaplane would discover them; that they had missed the rendezvous; that the Navy had called off the operation. Perhaps they were doomed to a life as fugitives perpetually on the run.

  “Think they’ll find us?” Mellnik asked Charley Smith.

  “Sure,” said an outwardly calm, confident Smith. “I’ll bet they’re watching us through a periscope right now.”

  Smith was described by Parsons, affectionately, as a “cold-blooded, unemotional sourpuss. I have never seen him smile, much less laugh. Just at sunset he grabbed me around the neck and let out what would almost be a scream.” Hearing a gurgling rumble off the bow, they turned to see a “great big black bulk rising out of the water,” recalled McCoy.

  “There it is!” shouted Smith.

  The submarine launched from the water at a 45-degree angle before toppling onto the waves in a giant cloud of spray. It was merely a routine surfacing, but to each of the five Americans it was an overwhelming sight that none would ever forget. The event was especially poignant for the former POWs. According to Parsons, one burst into tears. Another simply sat, frozen, unable to tear his gaze from the sub. The third arched his arms around Smith and Parsons in communal “silent witness of what seemed to us to be a miracle.”

  A shrill burst from an air whistle initiated a dizzying surge of activity. Steel hatches clanked open and American sailors poured forth to man the deck gun, to lash the General Fertig to the sub’s hull, and to help load the fruit and the human cargo.

  “All aboard and make it lively!” came the command from a crisp, God-like voice from high up in the conning tower. Heeding the voice, Parsons and the others paused long enough to empty their pockets of quinine, ammunition, and other items they knew the guerrillas needed.

  Stepping aboard the sub, McCoy’s legs buckled. “The thing I remember most clearly about going on that ship is the sensation of standing on armor plate—good, hard American armor plate,” he would write. “We were saying goodbye to bamboo and rattan.”

  Dazedly, they descended from the conning tower into what Mellnik called the “vaguely unreal and frightening” interior of the sub, inhaling the sharp smells of fuel oil and sweat as they passed through dim, narrow corridors lined with gauges, valves, pipes, and switches and filled with the sounds of commands, whistles, and clacking heels. And then they were ushered into a quiet, “cozy” wardroom where a deck of cards and a sugar bowl rested on a green felt table and pots of coffee bubbled on a hot plate. Mellnik dropped his head onto his hands. “I closed my eyes,” he said, “to let the thought sink in.”

  This floating 307-foot, 1,475-ton steel oasis was the USS Trout, a submarine whose decorated crew had acquired a reputation not only for bravery—the battle-scarred boat was credited with damaging a Japanese aircraft carrier, challenging an Imperial Navy battleship, and sinking a sub—but also for relentlessly harassing enemy shipping: the Trout had sunk or damaged more than 100,000 tons everywhere from the Solomon Islands to the Singapore trade route. Unique, however, was the Trout’s special history of secret missions, including one that occurred during its second war patrol in February 1942. The Trout delivered 3,500 rounds of antiaircraft ammunition to Corregidor, but the mission was more important for what the Trout returned to Pearl with as ballast: twenty tons of gold bullion, silver pesos, and securities of the Philippine Commonwealth’s currency reserve worth more than $10 million.

  In the midst of the controlled chaos, the passengers were welcomed aboard by the Trout’s skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Al Clark. They told Clark that they had heard that three Japanese transports were moored in a harbor ten miles west of their position and that an enemy warship might also be in the neighborhood. Clark assured them that the boat would get underway at once, and no sooner had he done so than a clamor of bells and whistles resounded throughout the ship, signaling their imminent descent into the depths of Dumanquilas Bay.

  The close presence of enemy vessels was not the only reason for the alacrity with which the crew moved. The Trout had once again taken on some extremely valuable cargo. And someone in Australia was waiting for the delivery.

  SATURDAY, JULY 24–FRIDAY, JULY 30, 1943

  Perth, Western Australia, and Brisbane, Queensland,

  Commonwealth of Australia

  Squinting through the bright sunlight, a light-headed and confused Steve Mellnik struggled to bring the figure lying in the adjacent bed into focus.

  “Where are we?” he asked, groggily.

  “In an Australian army hospital in Perth,” replied Charley Smith.

  Thanks to a malaria attack, Mellnik had been out for four days. He had only hazy memories of being strapped to a stretcher and carried up out of the conning tower of the Trout after the sub had entered Fremantle Harbor on July 20.

  “Where are McCoy and the others?”

  “Took off for GHQ in Brisbane two days ago. Said they wanted to see bright lights! You and I are lucky; we’re sick enough to loaf legitimately for two weeks.”

  Mellnik would have no such luck. The following day, a confidential telegram arrived.

  DO NOT, REPEAT NOT, DISCUSS EXPERIENCES WITH ANYONE. IMPERATIVE YOU ARRIVE BRISBANE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. HAVE NOTIFIED YOUR FAMILY OF SAFE ARRIVAL.

  MACARTHUR

  Mellnik soon wobbled off a bumpy, 2,500-mile flight to find McCoy and Parsons waiting for him. They provided more of a briefing than a welcome.

  “So far as the public is concerned,” said Parsons, “you’re a nonperson. Stay inconspicuous. We’ll get you some uniforms today—those rags look like hell. Tomorrow you’ll be seeing lots of brass, so get a good night’s rest.”

  The rapidly unfolding series of events was overwhelming. But regardless of the cryptic warnings from MacArthur and Parsons, as far as GHQ was concerned, the Trout’s special passengers were anything but nonpersons. They would spend the next few days behind guarded doors at AIB headquarters in an exhaustive succession of debriefings, interviews, and conferences. The interrogations, recalled Allison Ind, “were
pushed as rapidly as the strength of the pale, drawn-featured escapees would permit.” On July 26, Dyess and Parsons attended a morning conference with four staff officers regarding the construction of secret airfields on Mindanao. At the same time, Mellnik was being quizzed on “everything from the effects of artillery fire on Corregidor to the availability of rice on Mindanao.”

  GHQ’s appetite for information was insatiable, but Dyess, McCoy, and Mellnik were having a difficult time getting their interrogators to listen to what they felt was the most important intelligence they had brought out of the occupied Philippines: the revelation of what the Japanese had done and were continuing to do to American prisoners of war. They had not escaped to talk about tons of rice or rounds of ammunition, but those seemed to be the only statistics that interested MacArthur’s men. The thousands of corpses occupying mass graves at Camp O’Donnell, the 500 grams of rice, starvation rations, that the men in Dapecol were subsisting on seemed to be of no interest. The frantic pace of questioning slowed only when it finally came time to discuss the atrocities they had witnessed and their experiences as prisoners of war, because, explained Allison Ind, “the stories were so horrifying that the stenographers could take it for only twenty minutes at a time.”

  Predictably, McCoy’s patience began to wear thin. Like Dyess and Mellnik he was haunted not only by the men left behind at Dapecol, but by the knowledge that the other members of the escape party were still on Mindanao, presumably running for their lives. He had given his word and was determined to get them out. He strenuously argued that any submarine operating in the vicinity be sent immediately to pick up his comrades. It was, he believed, the least their country could do for them. “These men escaped from the prison camp, not to join the guerrillas, and not just to effect their own personal freedom,” he told his Navy superiors, referring to the paramount goal behind their escape.