As Good As Dead

by Stephen L. Moore

  Poyatos was eager to get his men going again, but he reluctantly allowed the newly arrived Americans a brief rest. Soon he told them that they must keep moving to stay ahead of the searching Japanese. He and Sergeant Modesto Padilla would escort them on to what he called the “guerrilla zone,” located outside the area occupied by the Japanese. All six Americans now had decent civilian clothing, they had been fed, and their wounds had received medical attention. Staying put to rest and relax might mean recapture and certain death. They had to press on.

  17

  MAC’S ODYSSEY

  MAC MCDOLE AWOKE to the vile odors of the camp dump. He had only been drifting, unable to truly sleep due to fear, pain, and the wretched filth in which he had taken shelter the previous afternoon. Sleep had largely eluded him during the long hours of darkness, as unseen worms and insects had mentally tortured him with their endless slithering, crawling, and nipping. His naked body was covered with mounds of rotting food, coconut husks, and camp refuse of all descriptions in various stages of decomposition.

  Sunrise on December 15 brought fresh apprehensions. Mac was alone but alive, and his head was swimming with indecision. He knew that he could not remain buried in the waste pile forever, but if he climbed out in the daylight, he would be quickly killed. As dawn slowly illuminated the coastline below the Puerto Princesa camp, McDole scratched open a peephole. Japanese guards moved along the beach as their manhunt continued. Mac knew at least one man was still unaccounted for.

  One of the Japanese turned toward the trash dump. He shuffled through, kicking at the garbage and peering into cracks. Within seconds, he was standing directly above McDole and seemed to be staring him right in the face, so close that Mac could smell his foul body odor, even amid the garbage. He closed his eyes, expecting the worst.1

  Mac silently prayed, as he had done on other occasions since becoming a prisoner of war, asking for guidance and protection. All the while he expected a cold steel bayonet to be thrust into his chest. When he finally reopened his eyes and peered through the small hole, the Japanese soldier was gone. Then he heard a gunshot ring out down the beach, and the guard joined others running from the dump area toward the sound of the shooting.2

  Mac jumped to his feet for the first time since he had scurried down the cliff the previous day. He ran along the shore, away from the sounds of the shooting, ignoring the pain as rough coral sliced into his feet. The bloated bodies of his comrades bobbed along the shoreline. Mac noticed he was leaving a blood trail, so he moved into the water and ran through the shallows until he tripped and fell face-first. As he lay panting, he spotted what looked like a small tunnel leading into the edge of the coral rocks. He ducked underwater and came up inside a tiny cave.3

  There was room inside for only two men to sit on a ledge with their feet in the water. He realized that it was a sewer outlet, into which a small stream of water trickled down on him each time a wave crashed into the rocky shoreline. It was dark inside, but at least he felt safe for the time being. Small crabs scurrying about on the rocks soon began crawling on him, but he would rather tolerate the crustaceans than take his chances topside.

  Mac spent the remaining daylight hours hiding in the cave, reliving all the shocking tragedy he had witnessed in the past twenty-four hours. His solitude allowed him to nurse his lacerations and burns, and try to ignore his parched throat and shriveled belly.

  As he thought of the horrific deaths he had seen, a wave of nausea swept over him, but his guts had nothing to heave up. He fell back against the rocky wall of his hideaway.

  *

  THANKFUL TO BE alive, he stayed put until the sun began to set. All he needed was a fair chance to get away, and that opportunity finally presented itself when he noticed the guards drifting away from the beach back toward camp as darkness settled over the island.

  He exited the sewer outlet, waded into the ocean, and began swimming. As far as he could tell, he was the lone American survivor from the Palawan POW camp. He knew it was miles across Puerto Princesa Bay, but he would feel better about his survival chances if he could reach the penal colony there.

  McDole did not make it far before he changed his mind. A storm erupted with a hard downpour and high winds that whipped the waves into a pounding white froth. He would drown if he continued swimming. He cursed his luck and swam back toward the shore he had just departed. He crawled back into the sewer outlet to wait for calmer weather.

  He had just curled up to take a nap when a thrashing sound startled him. Someone was splashing up toward the opening of the waste tunnel. When he looked out of the opening in the rocks, he saw a pair of battered, bruised legs that could only belong to one nationality on this island.

  “Hey, American!” Mac whispered.

  The man bent down and peered into the shadowy rocks. “Where in hell are ya?” he asked.

  McDole poked his head up from the hole and recognized Corporal Dane Hamric, whose left arm was nearly severed from a gunshot wound. Hamric explained that he was too badly wounded to swim when five of his companions had abandoned their cave the previous evening. He had reluctantly remained behind and had stayed hidden from the enemy patrols through the day.4

  Mac could see that Hamric had lost a considerable amount of blood. As he inspected the man’s wound, he could see that gangrene had already set in. He knew the man would not live long without proper medical attention. McDole washed the arm with salt water while Hamric struggled through the pain by continuing to relate his ordeal. He rattled off the names of those he recalled who had swum away. Mac hoped to hear the name of his buddy Smitty, but Hamric had not seen him. Mac feared that his friend was dead, but he tried to remain optimistic. He now had companionship, and the comforting knowledge that at least some other Americans had started for the far shore. Maybe there were others out there.

  They remained in the cramped outlet through the night, swatting away pinching crabs. Hamric seemed to grow weaker with each passing hour. For the time being, Mac could only pray for calmer seas as they huddled in the darkness.

  *

  MAC’S CRACKED LIPS and raw throat were teased by the warm waters swirling around his ankles, but he knew the dangers of drinking salt water. The smell of human waste only added to his misery as the tide slowly carried the camp filth out into the sea. As the sun rose on December 16 and the morning hours slowly passed, he and Hamric starved through another day. Outside their hideaway, Japanese guards were again prowling the beach to explore the rocks, making any hopes of dashing for the jungle or the adjacent bay pointless.5

  Hamric’s strength seemed to fade through the day, his attempts to communicate feeble as he endured unspeakable pain from his wounded arm. Early in the afternoon, Mac heard the welcome sound of American bombers overhead. Hysterical Harry is at it again, he thought. He did not dare look, but the number of bomb explosions he heard told him that Harry was not alone this time. Some of the blasts seemed to be closer to the prison camp than before, and one of them was tremendous.6

  When the sun set that evening, Mac was more than ready to make another attempt to swim the bay. He saw it as his best escape option, compared to the dangers lurking in the unknown Palawan jungles farther away. Hamric was weak, but Mac planned to help him across. Though barely strong enough to support his own body, he was not about to leave a comrade to die.

  Once they entered the ocean, Hamric became resistant. He was barely coherent, and his shredded arm kept him from being of any use in swimming. Mac struggled to keep him afloat and found that Hamric was fighting him—thrashing about in the water, shunning McDole’s efforts to keep him afloat. At length, Mac gave up, but Hamric was still fighting him and endangering them both. Mac finally punched him hard enough to render him unconscious and dragged Hamric back into the sewer outlet cave.

  Mac knew he was strong enough to make the swim, but his training had taught him never to leave a fellow marine behind to die. Am I really just going to stay here and die with him? he thought.

  He
collapsed back against the cavern wall to suffer through his third night near the bay. Once again, he carefully washed out Hamric’s shredded arm with salt water, and noticed additional bleeding from the bullet wound. The gangrene appeared to have spread, making Hamric much weaker by the time Mac drifted off to sleep.

  *

  THE NEXT MORNING, ocean water lapping at McDole’s feet roused him from his slumber.

  His body was terribly weak. Hunger and dehydration were draining his spirits and his strength. The only liquid to sip was the foul water dripping from the roof of their cavern. It had been more than sixty-five hours since he had tasted his last bit of rice between the air-raid alarms. One look at Hamric drove home the brutal truth: His badly wounded friend had no chance of making any swim to freedom.7

  Still, he offered encouragement, telling him they must try again. Hamric shot McDole a pitiful look and moaned. “I can’t make it, Mac. You go on. Get the hell out of here and let me die!”

  Mac did not have the heart to do so. He tried consoling Hamric, begging him to just hang on a little longer, since he could not bear to go on with the ordeal alone. Hamric worsened during the afternoon, becoming less responsive as blood loss and spreading infection overcame his body. The small talk began to fade. Mac knew Hamric was dying. He huddled close, whispering encouragement until Hamric lost consciousness. Mac took him in his arms and cradled him, rocking him gently, as tears poured down his own cheeks, not just for Dane Hamric but for all of the friends he had seen die. A short while later, Hamric expired as Mac continued rocking him in his arms. Once he recovered sufficiently from his own grief, McDole eased Hamric’s body from the rocky cavern to bury him as the late-afternoon sun set. He found a small depression in the coral beach, laid the body in it, and covered it with coconut husks, leaves, and other debris. He crafted a crude marker near the makeshift grave and crawled back to his sewer cave to await complete darkness.

  Once the stars came out, McDole eased out into the ocean. His two previous attempts to swim across the bay had ended in failure, and he knew this was likely his final chance. He had no idea how much longer he could hold out without food or decent water, so he stroked steadily away from Camp 10-A.

  He scanned the heavens above for a guide as he moved into deeper water. He picked out the brightest star—which he believed to be the Southern Cross—for a navigational bearing and hoped that the Iwahig Penal Colony, miles away, would afford him some faint hope of salvation.

  McDole was the last American survivor of the Palawan Massacre to attempt to swim across the bay.

  18

  ELEVEN AGAINST THE ELEMENTS

  ED PETRY PLODDED forward with mechanical efficiency, mindless of the warm evening air or the sweat streaming down his face as he stumbled through thorny vines that snagged his already abused flesh. Each stream, gorge, and hilltop they crossed came with slips, falls, and further abuse to their bare feet as the six American escapees and their two Filipino guides made their way through the rough terrain of Palawan Island during the predawn hours of December 17.

  Petry, Willie Smith, Beto Pacheco, Gene Nielsen, Willie Balchus, and Ernie Koblos had survived three nights since escaping from Camp 10-A. Lieutenant Poyatos and Sergeant Padilla prodded their charges forward like shepherds herding a flock as they eased south of Puerto Princesa toward the relative safety of the guerrilla zone. They reinforced the urgency of adding distance while darkness afforded them some protection from the roving Japanese patrols. Poyatos and Padilla lifted the wounded when they collapsed from exhaustion and reminded them that everyone’s life was at stake.

  To reach safety, the group still had to slip past one last Japanese outpost at the village of Inagawan before daylight. Inagawan, a tiny settlement at the edge of the jungle just hundreds of yards from the sea, lay immediately off the trail leading south from Malinao Station. Smitty was certain that the Japanese guards had figured out by now that there were not 150 American bodies lying about the compound and the beach area. Patrols were undoubtedly scouring the area near Puerto Princesa for the survivors, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the sweeps expanded farther. Their guerrilla guides had good reason to keep them moving.

  The first rays of daybreak were peeking through the lush green vegetation on December 17 as they approached the Japanese outpost. Smitty saw that the guarded post was little more than an old abandoned schoolhouse. Guerrilla intelligence reported that anywhere from twenty-seven to thirty-two Japanese soldiers normally manned the post. As they neared, the Filipinos urged the six Americans to crawl silently through the jungle canopy while they slipped closer to the schoolhouse. The Filipinos kept the Japanese guards in sight, ready to create a distraction if necessary.1

  Smitty, Nielsen, Petry, Pacheco, Balchus, and Koblos crawled through the brush past the school yard. Once they were safely beyond the Japanese post, their Filipino guides rejoined them. The eight men stayed on the main trail only a short distance before they veered off to the west into the thickets. The main trail leading north toward Puerto Princesa was no place to be caught in the daylight hours.

  Poyatos and his comrades traversed only a small portion of the jungle before they rendezvoused with a group of Captain Nazario Mayor’s guerrillas who had been awaiting the arrival of the six Americans. Gene Nielsen felt that he could not last much longer. He was stumbling from tree to tree, grabbing branches to help support each painful step as he tried to avoid falling. The rest of his group was making better progress, leaving him farther and farther behind.

  “This is as far as I can go,” he finally said. “You go ahead. I’m going to have to rest and try to recover a little bit.”2

  His Filipino guides decided the Americans had had enough. “Go ahead and rest now,” said Poyatos. “We’ll take care of you.”

  The men flopped down on straw mats on the jungle floor to catch their breath while one of their guides trotted off in search of food. When he returned a short while later with tiny chicken eggs, Nielsen stared in bewilderment, unsure how to go about eating them. One of the Filipinos took one in his hand, showing the Americans how to poke a small hole through the shell and suck down the insides. The others followed suit, gulping down the fresh protein.3

  Each man collapsed and slept soundly until early afternoon, when they were told it was time to get moving again. Nielsen and Pacheco, both suffering from gunshot wounds, could not move fast enough to keep pace with the pack. Poyatos sent out Padilla to find a better means of transportation, and he returned with a pair of carabao for the former POWs to use. The efficient Palawan guerrilla communications network amazed Smitty. I don’t know how they do it, he thought. They know where everybody is, how many of us there are, and what we need.4

  Poyatos and Padilla headed back toward Iwahig and reported on the progress of the Americans at this point. One of Captain Mayor’s guerrillas, Corporal Pablo Quiliop, who knew the trail that led south to Company D’s headquarters, would escort the Palawan survivors for the remainder of their trip to Brooke’s Point. Nielsen, with his numbed leg, was the obvious choice to ride one of the carabao most of the way. Pacheco, suffering from two gunshot wounds, rode the other most of the way, although he allowed other weary men to take turns on the beasts. Nielsen found that he had to pound hard on the water buffalo’s hump to keep it going. Anytime he stopped pounding, the water buffalo stopped moving. The ride was uncomfortable on his torn-up leg, but it was better than walking.5

  Late in the afternoon, the seven men approached a river crossing in the jungle, where Quiliop helped four of the Americans across on foot. Nielsen and Koblos were riding the carabao at the time, but as the beasts lumbered across the slippery rocks, Koblos was suddenly pitched off his mount. He came down hard on the shallow rocks, snapping a bone in his arm in the process—one that had been broken before in the Puerto Princesa camp while he was on a work detail.

  The group halted as Koblos rolled about in pain. Quiliop looked around for a makeshift splint to help keep the arm set until they co
uld reach better care. He found some small boards and collected strips of bamboo while Koblos’s comrades helped reset the bone in his arm. The Filipino used banana leaves for bandages and pressed them down around the nasty break area. After the arm was reset, he carefully placed the boards along Koblos’s forearm and secured them in place by weaving the bamboo strips around the crude splint. Finally, small strips of wire were used to tie the whole compound together.

  It was far from proper medical care, but Koblos had no options. He and the others needed to keep making time before dark. Quiliop’s flock was quite the sight with one man sporting a broken arm, one with an arm ravaged by a shark, and three others suffering from bullet wounds. But he got the group moving again, two men once more riding the large carabao along the shoreline as evening approached. Nielsen found at one point that his water buffalo was intent on drinking water, as his beast suddenly turned and plowed right into the ocean while he pounded on it, trying to turn it. The animal stopped and drank for a while, then continued deeper. Soon it was out far enough that only its nose was above water. Nielsen became so frustrated that he slid off and swam back up to the beach.6

  With night approaching, the Filipino guide moved the six exhausted Americans a short distance farther to a suitable spot in the jungle to rest.

  *

  THE FOUR-MILE SWIM across Puerto Princesa Bay took Mac McDole most of the night of December 17. His arms and legs became numb after several hours, but he stayed with it. When he felt he could go no farther, he would stop to float, and then he would push on again. It was shortly before daybreak when his feet hit sand. As he collapsed on the beach, unable to move for some time, he found that he was only a little off his original mark.