In addition to Sergeant Percy Lewis Everly, USMC, the force consisted of twelve other servicemen. Senior among them was Chief Pharmacist's Mate Stanley J. Miller, USN, who with Seaman First Class Paul K. Nesbit had been the first recruits to the unit.
For two weeks after leaving the Yet Again adrift off Lubang Island, Wes-ton and Everly had traveled very slowly and very cautiously, sailing for three or four hours a day and spending the rest hiding. On the afternoon of the fif-teenth day, they had come across the Chief and Nesbit in the Sibuyan Sea, drifting in a demasted sailboat. They had left Luzon with the same intention as Weston and Everly: making it to Mindanao and possibly to Australia, mean-while avoiding capture by the Japanese.
They took them aboard, scuttled their boat, fed them from their dwindling stocks of canned foods from the Yet Again, and resumed their painfully slow voyage toward Mindanao.
It took them six months, by far most of it spent on one small island or another, trying to stay alive and out of the hands of the Japanese. On the island of Panay, while moving through the hills in search of food, they encountered a group of five Army Air Corps enlisted men, under Sergeant Allan F. Taylor. Taylor had been sent to search for possible auxiliary landing fields under the command of an Air Corps lieutenant colonel, who had surrendered to the Japa-nese at his first opportunity, telling his command they could do what they wanted; in the circumstances it was every man for himself. None of the enlisted men had been willing to surrender.
They placed themselves under Weston's command with the understanding that it was their intention to make it to Australia, and that they had no intention of trying to wage a guerrilla war against the Japanese.
The force grew two months later on the island of Cebu by the addition of a sailor and a corporal. The corporal had been one of the few American enlisted men assigned to the 26th Cavalry, which had American officers and Filipino troopers. On Luzon they had decided that between them they had the skills (the sailor knew how to handle a small boat; and the cavalryman, a veterinarian's assistant, knew how to speak Spanish) to make it to Mindanao, and possibly out of the Philippine Islands.
The last three recruits were Marines, Old China Marines, career privates of the 4th Marines, who had been captured and made a valiant effort to escape. Like Sergeant Everly, they were familiar with the practice of the Japanese Army to bayonet their prisoners when feeding or guarding them became a problem-or simply because it seemed like an interesting idea at the time.
Everly knew two of the three. He told Weston that one was a world-class drunk, and the other had a room-temperature IQ but was tolerated in the 4th Marines in Shanghai because when he turned out for Guard Mount he looked like the pictures in the manual. The third had been a clerk in the S-4 (Supply) Office, who was pressed into duty as a rifleman just before the 4th Marines were committed to battle for the first time.
"But don't worry, Mr. Weston. I can handle them, they're Marines."
The 26th Cavalry corporal had an Enfield rifle and twenty-three rounds of.30-06 ammunition. The Air Corps contingent had three Enfields, sixty rounds of ammunition for them, and a.45 Colt 1911A1 pistol with twelve rounds. The Marines had no firearms whatever, but had picked up two machetes and an ax.
The money was just about gone-the five thousand dollars Weston had begun with, plus the four hundred Everly had taken from the murderous Filipi-nos on the boat, plus the three thousand they had taken from the Yet Again. The price of anything was what the market would bear, and simply to have enough simple food to stay alive-rice, fruits, and a rare pig, or fresh ham-had been very costly.
The notion of getting out of the Philippines to Australia now seemed un-real. And Weston privately thought that when they got to Mindanao, it wouldn't be very different from any of the other islands they'd been to. There would be no organized military force to which they could attach themselves. If they found any Americans at all, they would almost certainly be just like them-selves, desperately dreaming of getting to Australia but with no real hope of doing so.
They had come to Mindanao because there was no place else to go, and because word had come to them on the grapevine that the Japanese were about to sweep Bohol Island and round up Americans once and for all.
On making port, most of Weston's Weary Would-Be Warriors spent most of the day concealing their two boats, while a reconnaissance party consisting of Sergeant Everly, two of the three Marines, and one of the Air Corps PFCs investigated the area.
When they did not return by nightfall, as Weston had ordered them to, he thought they had probably encountered Japanese. But he wasn't particularly concerned. They had, if nothing else, acquired a demonstrated skill in hiding from Japanese. If they didn't return that night, they'd be back first thing in the morning.
If they had actually gotten into a firefight with the Japanese, it was un-likely that all of them would have been killed or captured. In case there was a disaster, the standing order was for whoever came through the encounter alive to return to "headquarters" and warn the others.
No one came to Gingoog Bay that night, or during the day, or during the next night. And Weston went to sleep about midnight wondering if the ultimate disaster had happened, that everyone had been killed, or, worse for him and the men with him, captured. Given a few hours, the Japanese could force any infor-mation a prisoner had out of him. At that moment, the Japanese could be stag-ing an operation to surround him and to make sure that no one slipped out to sea.
At daylight, after Weston decided no one was going to come at first light either, he tried to decide whether to lead a second reconnaissance patrol, leav-ing Chief Miller in command, or to send Chief Miller on the patrol. The Chief might be a marvelous pharmacist, but he was not a great leader of men. The only thing the Chief would probably be worse at than commanding "the unit" would be leading a reconnaissance patrol.
On top of all that, Sergeant Allan F. Taylor, of the Army Air Corps, was a special problem. Without any justification that Weston could see, he believed himself to be a professional military man on a level with Sergeant Everly. Tay-lor had been some sort of technician, something between a surveyor and a draftsman. Those skills were not very useful to Weston's Weary Would-Be Warriors.
Weston could not leave Taylor behind to command "the unit," because it was clear that neither the Chief nor the remaining Marine would take orders from him-even if Taylor decided, in his own best interests, to assume com-mand. The same consideration applied to sending Sergeant Taylor to lead the reconnaissance. He knew a little less-which was to say, almost nothing- about how to run a reconnaissance than Weston himself. And it was likely that if he got out of sight (and, as important, out of range) of Weston's Springfield, he would decide that his best interests dictated taking off on his own and get-ting to Australia.
At that point, Sergeant Everly returned, bringing with him not only everyone he had taken with him, but a Filipino. The Filipino was dressed in dirty, baggy, white cotton trousers and shirt, a U.S. Army campaign hat, and he was carrying an Enfield and a web belt slung around his neck. He looked, Weston thought, like a Mexican bandit.
"Where the hell have you been?" Weston greeted Everly.
"Look at this, Mr. Weston," Everly said, and handed him a sheet of paper.
It was a delinquent tax notice, dated November 8, 1941, from the Misamis-Occidental Provincial Government to a farmer named Almendres Gerardo.