Behind Japanese Lines (11 page)

Because few Filipinos had firearms before the war, carabao, deer, pigs and chickens were plentiful. Chicken and venison were, of course, good. Wild pig was tasty enough, though very fat. Occidental pork producers have carefully bred hogs to reduce their fat content. I was invariably impressed by how much fatter were the wild pigs I riddled with Thompson submachineguns (tommyguns) in the Philippines. (One thinks little about the sporting side of hunting when hunger drives him to stalk animals for their meat.) Carabao meat had an acceptable flavor but was so tough the Devil himself would have been hard put to chew it. Filipinos also esteemed large rats that lived in sugarcane fields, though I must add in their defense that they did not eat rats of the sort that infest garbage dumps. I don't know whether I ever ate “sugar rat” or not. Sometimes one was served stews and soups that were best consumed without asking a lot of questions.

Rice was the staple of the Philippine diet. Because of its starch one could easily gain weight on it, though the weight was as readily
lost if one fell sick. Once I subsisted for eight days on rice and tomatoes alone. “Coffee” was made from rice and corn roasted together, then served with much sugar. Cassava, the root of a common tropical plant, was cut, fried, and made into something like potato chips. Small, transparent shrimp were somewhat disconcerting when they jumped around live in a coconut shell just before they were to be devoured, but they were palatable. Fish were sometimes dried and stored for later consumption, sometimes merely cooked as they had come from the water, without being cleaned. The diner ate as much as he chose and threw away the rest. Small fish called
bagong
were often mashed and left to ferment, a process that turned them into a sharp-flavored, smelly seasoning. Cattle intestines were carefully cleaned and much prized. One's craving for sweets was satisfied most easily by chewing sugar cane, though the Filipinos did make a crude brown sugar by pouring boiled cane juice into coconut shells to harden. Sometimes they made candy by boiling sugar and freshly grated coconut together. What resulted made a respectable confection—and a memorable laxative.

Filipino cooking and serving techniques required some adjustment on the part of an Occidental. Most Filipino food was either boiled or roasted, and it ran heavily to soup. Silverware was unheard of. Everything but soup was put on banana leaves spread on the floor and eaten with the fingers. I occasioned much good-natured laughter before I finally mastered the knack of kneading food into a ball before popping it into my mouth. But learn it I did, just as I learned to eat nearly everything put before me. Soon the Filipinos complimented me for not being “delicado” (choosy).

There were times, though, when I drew the line. I never became reconciled to the delicacy called
balot
, a fertilized egg that had been buried in manure for some time, and I never developed a taste for Philippine jerky after watching clouds of flies blow it while it was being dried in the sun.

But the worst was dog. The first time I ate it, I didn't know what it was. When I was told, I promptly vomited my entire dinner. It was not that the flavor was repellent; it was just that I had always liked dogs and the thought of having eaten one gagged me. Maybe devouring Man's Best Friend would not have seemed so bad had I not learned of the barbarities that preceded a dog's appearance as the main course in a dinner. The usual procedure was to tie the poor beast to a tree, starve it for several days, then stuff it with all it could eat and batter it to death with a club. The carcass was then cut into small pieces, cooked with rice, and served with wine. Eventually I got so I could force
myself to eat dog if I didn't have to watch the butchering, but I always drank a lot of wine with it.

Later in the war I heard tales about famished Japanese soldiers who allegedly resorted to cannibalism. Though I am not so ill-balanced that I think more of dogs than of human beings, somehow the prospect of cannibalism never seemed as repulsive to me in those days as devouring a dog, and I sometimes wondered idly if I could ever become so starved that I would sink to cannibalism. Fortunately, no test case ever arose.

Usually I was alone in my grass hut, but now and then I had visitors. The least welcome one appeared one day while I was lying on my side with my ear to a bamboo floor. I heard something near my foot and looked down. There was a good-sized snake crawling alongside my leg toward my head. Momentarily I was frozen with terror: I even stopped breathing. Gradually I recovered my senses sufficiently to decide that I must grab the loathsome creature with my hands if it came much closer, since it might bite me and the closer a bite is to the heart the more dangerous it becomes. Perhaps the snake also had a premonition of impending disaster: when it reached my waist it abruptly made a ninety-degree turn and vanished into the cogon grass. My heart resumed beating.

Other visitors were more agreeable. Nobody will ever know exactly how many American soldiers escaped into the hills and jungle during the Bataan campaign or on the Death March. There must have been several hundred. Many died soon of starvation or diseases, and the Japanese caught quite a few. Others tried to live out the war in wilderness hideouts, or moved furtively from one Filipino settlement to another for months or years. Some sought a way out of the Philippines, others looked for guerrilla forces to join, still others tried to melt inconspicuously into the Filipino populace. Periodically one or more of these footloose fugitives passed through the small village of Tibuc-Tibuc. One such was a Maj. John E. Duffy, a Catholic priest whom I was to meet again in San Antonio, Texas in 1946. He had graduated from Notre Dame and enjoyed talking about his namesake, the famous Father Duffy of World War I, who had reputedly said to his troops, “May the Good Lord take a liking to you, but not too soon.” I remember him chiefly because he had what seemed to me a remarkable vocabulary of profanity for a clergyman. I used to wonder if he could swear as impressively in Latin as in English.

Another visitor was a Brooklynite named Louis Barella. Because Japanese patrols were known to be close by, he and I were moved one night into the center of a large cogon grass field. Here we were covered
with a mosquito net secured at the corners by tying it to the cross stems of the grass. This arrangement foiled the Japanese and the mosquitoes but not a large rat that somehow made its way in but could not find an exit. It kept us busy until I lifted the whole net in desperation and let it scurry away. Needless to say, the mosquitoes promptly exploited the situation; but one thing you learn in war is that life is not a series of clear-cut decisions between good and evil: it is a succession of choices among alternatives all of which are disagreeable.

Another time I had several visitors rather than one. They turned out to be Hukbalahaps, Philippine communist guerrillas. I was to have much more to do with the Huks later on, and my introduction to them on this occasion was not auspicious. Their leader had a parrot which he insisted that I take in trade for my rifle. The bird was beautiful but of doubtful utility to a fugitive from the Japanese, so I declined. A couple of his armed companions then made gestures the import of which could not be misunderstood. I hastily handed over the rifle and accepted the bird.

For unusual people, wartime often provides exceptional opportunities to exhibit resourcefulness. One such individual whom I had encountered in the Fassoth camp and whose path I crossed again at Tibuc-Tibuc in the spring of 1943 was an American soldier who bore the easily remembered name of Johnny Johns. Johnny and a Captain Newman had been captured at the same time by the Japanese. Johnny had persuaded the captain to write a statement calling on all Americans hiding in the mountains to surrender. They were assured that the Japanese would feed them and treat them well, but warned that if they obstinately remained fugitives they would be captured and beheaded. Armed with this piece of paper, Johnny went to the Japanese and talked them into giving him $7 cash, some cigarettes, and a five-day pass, in return for which he proposed to travel about in this portion of Luzon and try to induce American escapees to surrender. To insure that he was serious and would come back, the captain was held hostage. After five days Johnny dutifully returned from his travels without having persuaded me, or anyone else, to surrender. In fact, he proved to be more persuasive with the Japanese than with Americans, gradually convincing them that five days was too little time to accomplish anything. Eventually his captors gave him a pass of indefinite duration and sent him on his way once more.

Before the war Johnny had somehow gotten hold of a considerable sum of money, which he had hidden. Now he promptly dug up his cash, headed for Manila, and began a playboy's life in the big city
nightclubs. Before long the hostage captain heard through the grapevine what had happened and, realizing the precariousness of his own situation, tried to escape—and made it. Whether Captain Newman knew where I was, or merely happened to find me by accident, I do not know, but soon after his escape he paid me a visit. Meanwhile the Japanese too had learned how Johnny was abusing their trust in him, and arrested him, but Johnny was a slippery customer and soon got away from them again. I was as hospitable to Captain Newman as I could bring myself to be in the circumstances, for the enemy soon got wind of
his
whereabouts too, and swarmed into the area. The alarmed captain abruptly took off. The conclusion was irresistible that I too needed to change my address without delay.

Though I hated to leave the Filipinos who had protected me and treated me so well, I did not depart a day too soon. At one time, in fact, the Japanese had me surrounded in a field of cogon grass but fortunately did not realize it. I waited until nightfall, then stripped naked, tucked my clothes under my arm, and slipped through their lines. The reader might wonder why I chose thus to offer extra opportunities to the ubiquitous mosquitoes. The reason was that I had become so brown from swimming and lying in the sun that at night I was less conspicuous naked than clothed.

Soon after the Japanese left the area, I met two American soldiers, Sgt. Hugh B. McCoy of the Fifth Interceptor Command and Sgt. Ray Schletterer of the Seventeenth Ordnance. They were accompanied by a Philippine army machinegunner, a tiny Igorot tribesman from the mountains of north Luzon named José Balekow. The three of them were headed north. Having nowhere in particular to go, I joined them. Soon we met another escapee, a fellow alumnus of the Fassoth camp named Fred Alvides. Fred was a short, stocky, fast-talking American of Mexican descent, so dark he could pass easily for a Filipino. Most Americans in the camp had disliked him, in part because of his habit of leaving for days at a time, then coming back and bragging about all the good food and girls he had had. According to Vernon Fassoth's recollections, later in the war Clay Conner thought Alvides tried to set him up for the Japanese, but Conner grew suspicious and left the area, whereupon the Japanese killed Fred as a consolation prize.

Whatever the accuracy of that conjecture, I remembered Fred mainly because we had once gotten into an argument in the Fassoth camp, and he had challenged me to a fight. I was so weak then I couldn't have fought Little Boy Blue, but I told him I would take a rain check. I had fought a good deal while growing up, so when I had my health back I reminded Fred of my earlier offer. He was willing so with
McCoy and Schletterer as witnesses, we had it out bareknuckled and barefooted, among the rocks along the river. We fought until we were tired, took an intermission, fought again, and quit by mutual consent. Our two referees did not render a formal decision. I would have called it a draw. Fred had a black eye and blood on his face. I had stone bruises on my feet, a swollen hand, and a sore jaw that prevented me from chewing for a week or so. Thus was honor preserved all around.

The fight over, we resumed our trek northward, wandering through the foothills by day and across flatlands by night, guided by a succession of Filipinos. After going perhaps fifteen or twenty miles we stopped at a house in the hills near Porac in Pampanga.

Ever since my health had begun to improve, I had turned over in my mind the idea of forming a guerrilla army of my own to fight the Japanese. Of course, the guerrilla bands could not hope to do battle successfully against regular army units, but they might be effective against the Kempeitai, the Japanese military police who terrorized Filipino civilians. More to the point, I knew little about either existing Filipino guerrilla operations or the plans General MacArthur had made for American guerrilla activity before Bataan fell. About the Hukbalahap guerrillas I knew nothing at all save that they had coerced me to trade them a rifle for a parrot who couldn't speak English. I knew so little about communism then that I supposed that if I could raise a guerrilla force of my own I would be able to make common cause with the Huks.

Now, near Porac, we met an old man. I told José Balekow, the Filipino who would soon become my bodyguard, to ask him if there were any Japanese in the vicinity. The two carried on a long, animated conversation during which José, who was barefooted, shifted repeatedly from one foot to the other on the hot noonday sand. Eventually I lost patience and asked José what the old man had said. “Nothing,” he replied. The truth of the matter was that there are so many dialects in the Philippines that understanding can easily vanish within twenty miles. José had no idea what the old man had said, but was ashamed to admit it. Perhaps symbolically, in a nearby house a mynah bird chattered incessantly in still another dialect. The whole episode made me realize how much I had yet to learn if I was ever to do anything in the Philippines save skulk about as a fugitive until I was either killed or the war ended.

The next night we crossed the Manila-Baguio highway, only a stone's throw from Camp Dau, just north of Angeles, a town lit by electric lights. By now I had been in the bush nearly a year, and the lights seemed a striking curiosity. We headed on into the central
Luzon ricefields near the base of 3,367-foot Mt. Arayat, a spectacular peak because it rises all alone off a level plain just a few feet above sea level.