Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  “No. You did it yourself,” Warren said. “You kept walking, but you were out on your feet. You didn’t answer us when we spoke to you.”

  Wally knew the truth immediately. “I didn’t do it myself,” he said, and he felt almost overpowered with thankfulness.

  “How are you feeling now?” Jack asked.

  Wally tried to think. “I don’t know. I don’t feel sick. I’m just tired.”

  “Sleep some more.”

  And so Wally did sleep. And when the guards woke the men in the middle of the night, he felt more strength this time. He didn’t have dysentery; he was sure of it now. He certainly wasn’t well, but he thought he could make it through another day.

  “Maybe this will be the last day,” Jack said. “We’ve got to be close to San Fernando by now.”

  “How many days have we been walking?” Warren asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve lost track.”

  “I think it’s been five days, or maybe six,” Wally said. But we didn’t eat for three days before that.”

  “We can do another day,” Warren said.

  Wally wanted to give some strength back. He knew what his buddies had done for him the day before. He tried to smile. “Nothing like a nice walk,” he said.

  And so they walked all day again, and all along the road Wally saw dead men. Most of them were Filipinos from the group ahead, but men in his own group were also going down. Late in the morning, Len Granfield, a staff sergeant from Wally’s squadron, seemed to die in his tracks. He had been wheezing hard all morning, but he had been keeping up with the others, and then, without warning, he simply slumped to the ground. Another friend of Wally’s, Don Cluff, tried to pull Granfield to his feet, but Len was clearly gone, and so Cluff dragged him to the side of the road. A guard ran up and forced the lieutenant back into the lines. Then he gave Len a kick, got no response, and walked away.

  Wally said another prayer, asked God to take Len home, asked for comfort for his family. But he didn’t glance back. He kept tramping ahead.

  Again that day Wally and his friends managed to get a little water and a bit of sugar cane, but Wally hardly had the energy to slap at the mosquitoes that landed on him, and he wondered how long it would be until he came down with more diseases. If the march didn’t stop soon, and the men didn’t get some food, they would all die.

  As the sun reached its zenith and continued on by, the men were forced to walk longer than usual. And now they faced a new challenge. This part of the road had been paved at one time, but the asphalt had been torn up by all the heavy military traffic, and clumps were lying about. Wally had a better pair of boots than most of the men, but even so, stepping on the lumps of asphalt burned his feet. And not stepping on them required too much effort. Wally watched and avoided the stuff when he could, but his feet seemed on fire, and some of the men were suffering much worse, actually crying out when they took a wrong step.

  Jack finally said, “It’s long past the time we usually stop. What’s going on?”

  But someone behind them said, “Look up there.”

  Wally looked and saw that they were coming to a town. And then he saw the church tower he had seen on Christmas Eve, where the bells had been ringing at midnight. It was San Fernando. Maybe this was their destination. Maybe the guards were giving one last push to reach the end of the ordeal. Wally felt some strength come back. “I’ll bet we’re stopping here,” he said to Jack, and he reached over and patted him on the back. “We can make it that far.”

  The men continued into the town and then were guided to a dilapidated old building, where they were herded inside. The building seemed to be a little dance hall that had long since fallen into disrepair. For the moment, it seemed good to be out of the sun, but the place was little more than a shack, and it would be very crowded. Wally walked all the way to the end of the room. He sat down and leaned his back against the wall. That comfort—the rest for his back—was almost too pleasant to believe, and within minutes he was sound asleep.

  Late in the day he awoke, remembered where he was, and then tried to sleep again. But the shack was like a steam room by now, and sweat was running off him. He wondered how many more would die if they were kept in this place very long. For quite some time he was restless in the heat, but late that evening the temperature improved, and finally he slept once again.

  Early in the morning Wally felt a nudge, and he opened his eyes. “Food,” Jack said. “They have rice for us. We have to get in line.”

  Wally was afraid to believe it, and yet he could smell the rice. He had to get up, and his body ached with the effort, but the thought of eating was so exciting that he could feel his hands begin to shake. He took his mess kit and cup, and he lined up with the other men. When he eventually got to the front of the line, just inside the door of the building, he saw the rice for the first time, cooked with something green in it, maybe a vegetable, and he couldn’t help himself. He began to cry.

  He glanced at Jack, ahead of him, who was holding out his helmet, since he had no mess kit. The guard slapped a cup of rice into the helmet, and Wally saw the tears in Jack’s eyes, too. Wally reached out his mess kit and received his own portion. Another guard was pouring water from a bucket into any container the men had. Wally got his cup filled and took a sip, but he saved his rice until he could sit down. When he got to his place, he scooped some of the rice up with two fingers, stuck his fingers into his mouth, and sucked the grains in. The taste was nothing special—just bland rice, pasty and maybe even burnt a little—but it seemed the best food Wally had ever eaten.

  Wally wanted to take his time, but he couldn’t force himself to do it. He shoveled it in quickly, every last grain, and then he finished his water. He looked at Warren, who had taken a little more time, and he was jealous that his friend still had something left.

  But that was it. The food was gone, and Wally’s hunger had only been reawakened. He wondered immediately whether there was any chance for more. But each man received his ration, and then the guards left. Still, Wally thought he felt some strength, and he hoped that this would be the pattern now—maybe three meals a day.

  The men were kept in the stifling shack all that day and another night, but no more rice came. A little water was offered, but nothing more, and after that first taste of food, the need for more only seemed greater.

  Wally could see that some of the men were breaking. More died that second day in the building, and they were dragged from the room. Wally watched, hardly feeling anything, and he found it hard not to think about the added comfort as the room became less crowded. He knew that something deeply instinctive in him was taking over, and he understood that to remain human, decent, he had to fight the impulse to think only of himself, but almost constantly his obsession was the thought of getting more food.

  On the following morning the men were left sitting in the little room again, and the tediousness, the weariness, was almost impossible to endure. But around noon the guards roused the men and marched them outside. The air felt good for a few minutes until the sun began to burn into them as they stood and waited. No one knew what would happen next, and Wally feared that it would be another full day of walking. He was almost sure he couldn’t do that. But the guards marched the men through the town to a little train station, then directed them into metal boxcars. At first the prospect of riding was relieving, but far too many were forced into each boxcar—a hundred or more in a car that was only about thirty feet long. There was no room to do anything but stand, and the men were pressed together tightly, their stinking bodies forced against each other. Then the doors were slammed shut so that no air could pass through.

  “They can’t keep us in this thing very long,” Wally told Jack and Warren. “We’ll die from the heat.” But Wally was sorry immediately that he had said it. He saw that Jack was losing his resolve again.

  “We’ll get by,” Warren said. “This must be the last leg of the trip. Maybe it’s a short run.” Wally was impressed wi
th Warren, who seemed never to lose his inner strength.

  As the train chugged along all afternoon, swaying and bumping, Wally began to believe this was the worst ordeal yet. There was no room to move, to do much shifting or adjusting of weight, and the heat was overwhelming. In time, men began to urinate where they stood, with no other option available to them. And some of the sick men, with diarrhea, had no choice either. One man vomited blood all over himself, as well as on the man in front of him. Not long after, Wally heard someone say, “This guy is dead.” But there was not even a way to let the man’s body slump to the floor.

  All day the train continued. At times Wally hallucinated, his brain shooting strange, quick little images through his consciousness. He was on the edge of passing out, and he was not sure that didn’t mean he was on the edge of dying. Every inch of his body ached, and gradually he became almost desperate for air, raising his head and sucking deeply, trying to get more into his lungs. He was taller than most of the men, but that put his head only about a foot away from the top of the car, where the heat was like a furnace.

  Wally was almost finished when the train finally stopped. Everyone else was too. No one said a word. When the door opened, they merely staggered out. Wally was one of the last, and he saw half a dozen men who had died along the way and had finally been released to drop to the floor. He limped out onto the loading dock and saw that the guards were forming the men into a line, two abreast, and marching them away. He welcomed the movement, the air, no matter how exhausted he was.

  “We can do this,” he told Jack. “We must be almost there.” “Okay,” Jack said, but there was very little left in him. Wally could see it in his eyes.

  A guard slammed Wally in the back with the stock of his rifle. Wally stumbled ahead, hardly giving a second thought to the added pain in his back. He took Jack’s arm and pulled him along, and together the two began to hike up the dusty road.

  A couple of hours went by, and Wally and Jack continued to shuffle up the road. Warren was right behind them. On both sides of the road were vast fields of rich, deep cogon grass, but no water, no food, and Wally saw no destination ahead. He felt like a machine, taking small but steady steps, and continuing on in spite of his depletion. Finally, however, the end did come into sight. Some sort of camp, ringed with a barbed-wire fence, lay ahead. The men marched in through the gate, under watchtowers on high stilts. This place, whatever it was, had the look of a prison camp, and so it seemed likely that the men really had reached the end of their trek.

  Inside, the men saw a row of neglected bamboo buildings with Nipo grass roofs. There were even a few wooden buildings that appeared to be the headquarters of a former military camp. The place was run-down compared to Clark Field, and there wasn’t a tree in sight, but Wally thought only of finding a place big enough to stretch out. He wanted to sleep for as long as possible and then wake up to a meal. But the men were marched to the center of the camp and lined up. More prisoners continued to arrive while those inside had to stand and wait, not even allowed to sit down. Eventually the entire trainload, hundreds of men, reached the area. Around the outside of the crowd were dozens of guards, and in time a Japanese officer stepped onto a box, with a guard next to him, on the ground.

  The stocky officer, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and a baggy pair of shorts, shouted at the men. For some time he continued his apparent diatribe before he allowed the interpreter a chance to speak. A small man with wire-rim glasses translated, “I am Captain Tsuneyoshi Yoshio. I am camp commandant. You are prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Government! You are cowards! Japanese soldiers would kill themselves before surrendering. We can only treat you with contempt and dishonor. Only my honor—the spirit of Bushido—keeps me from putting you to death, as you deserve.”

  Wally felt the anger swell in him, and he liked it. Anger made him feel alive again.

  What followed was a long list of instructions: The prisoners would take turns serving as guards, and if anyone escaped, every guard on duty at the time would be shot. The men would be fed, but they would have to work, serving on water and wood details. An area would be set aside for Filipinos on one side of the camp, and the various services—army, air corps, navy, and marines—would be segregated and then governed by their own officers. These officers would see to it that no one escaped—or they would die themselves. Prisoners would be required to salute all Japanese guards, regardless of rank.

  Finally, Yoshio raised his voice to a shout again, and the translator, in very correct English, told the men, “Asia is for Asians! You had no right to come here, to intrude upon our people. You have killed many noble men of the imperial army, and for this you must pay! You have your president to blame for this. He is the one who has made this war necessary. Japan is prepared to fight America for a hundred years, if it takes that long, and in the end, America will be ours.”

  The men stood in silence, but Wally knew the resentment everyone felt. He thought of a dozen things he wanted to shout back at the man, but of course he said nothing. And he was happy when the prisoners were marched off to their sections of the camp.

  The air corps people were taken to the far end of the compound. On the opposite side of a high, barbed-wire fence, Wally could see Filipino prisoners. Wally was already thinking about survival in this place. He grabbed Jack and Warren and said, “Let’s stake out a place under one of these buildings. We’ll be sheltered from rain down there, but some air will get through.”

  Jack and Warren agreed, and they looked around until they found a good spot. Then they climbed under to establish their place and to get out of the sun. All three were asleep in just a few minutes. But by evening Wally awoke, thinking of food. He climbed out from under the building and tried to find out what was happening. What he learned was that this place was called Camp O’Donnell. It had served at one time as a training camp for Filipino soldiers but hadn’t been used for some years. The rumor was that food would be served that night, but no one knew when.

  Wally went back to his friends, and the three continued to wait. He said very little because the anticipation of food preoccupied him almost entirely, but it was late in the evening before the food finally came. The men lined up and limped to the front of the line, and this time the portion of rice was greater than it had been in San Fernando, even more than they had often gotten in Bataan before the surrender. Wally walked away with enough rice to look like a meal, and it was laced with a good deal of eggplant. The flavor was bad, but the food filled his stomach for the first time in weeks, maybe months, and Wally felt almost human as the nourishment found its way into his body.

  What he saw around him, however, was almost too painful to watch. Some of the men, so worn out and sick, couldn’t get the food down, or vomited soon after they ate. He knew that many more were going to die, and he was thankful that he still felt his hunger, still had some strength left. The illness that had struck him, whatever it had been, was almost gone.

  Wally sat in the shade of the rickety building, and he and his friends savored their food. Wally saw Jack come back to life before his eyes. Once they each had enough food down them to take away the agony of their hunger, they ate more slowly, trying to make the rice last as long as possible.

  “We’re okay now,” Wally told Jack and Warren. “We’ve made it through the worst. If they’ll feed us like this every day, we’ll be okay.”

  Warren grinned. “If I can get this much rice in me for a few days, I’ll start to notice how bad it tastes.”

  “I notice already,” Jack said. “And I still like it.”

  “We did this together,” Wally said. “Now we’ve got to keep each other alive. If one of us gets sick, the others have to take care of him. We have to figure this place out, find out if there’s any way to get some extra food, some meat or vegetables, anything that will build us up.”

  “How can we do that?”

  “I’m not sure. But that Jap officer said there would be work details. If we get outside, the Fil
ipinos will help us get food. Back in San Fernando, I saw the local people on the streets flashing the “V for victory” sign when they thought no Japs were watching.”

  “I know. I saw that too,” Warren said.

  Wally laughed. “You guys look pretty bad,” he said.

  “You look awful yourself,” Jack said, and he laughed too. “Worse than that.”

  Warren had light, thin hair, and it was a tangled mess. His face was caked with dirt, his eyes red. His blue coveralls were also covered with dirt and torn at the elbows and one knee, and his hands were grimy and scaly, like alligator skin. Jack looked no better with his stringy dark hair and his stubble of black beard.

  “We need to clean up. I found out there’s a water pipe down by the army section. It’s the only water at this end of the camp, but it runs all the time—or I guess it just dribbles. If we wait in line we can get us a good drink and wash up a little.”

  “Let’s do it.” Jack got up.

  “But let’s make a vow. We keep each other alive. Okay?”

  Jack and Warren both agreed.

  “Do you guys want to have a prayer?” Wally asked.

  “Sure,” Jack said, and he nodded. He was not a Mormon, as Warren and Wally were, but he had become a lot more religious in recent months.

  “You say it,” Wally told Warren. “You’ve kept in better touch with the Lord than anyone.”

  Warren shrugged. “I don’t know about that,” he said, but he bowed his head, and then, as though he were talking to a friend, he merely said, “Lord, we made it this far, and we thank thee. Please give us strength now—all of us—to keep going.”

  Wally was suddenly crying. He had almost given up hope the night he had been sick, so this seemed a second chance. But he knew a great trial lay ahead. He hugged Warren and then Jack, and then the three went off to stand in line at the water spigot.

  Wally, along with Jack and Warren, learned fast. They were some of the healthier men, so they drew a lot of work assignments. Some days they carried water in five-gallon drums from a nearby pond, two men hoisting the drum on a long pole. This was tiring and uninteresting work, but other days they left the compound to haul loads of wood or rice from the nearby village of Capas. There the men came in contact with local people, and they were sometimes able to get food. All life for the prisoners came to revolve around scrounging extra food. Normal rations were a watery rice cereal, called lugao, for breakfast, and a decent serving of rice with eggplant or camote, a sweet potato, at night. Extra food meant crucial vitamins, but the extra flavor, extra satisfaction of any food other than rice was the only thing to look forward to—and the only way to get food was to get outside.