Did I think help was on the way?
I said I thought the fleet should be coming along pretty soon.
“I wasn’t wondering so much about the big fleet,” he said. “But we sure could use some planes. Those damn Japs cavort around up there, and our pea-slingers can’t always reach that high. We knocked down a few foolish ones, but that did the trick. Now they just go a little higher.”
The next night I was able to go into Corregidor itself. I wanted to see what it was like, and I wanted to pick up a few radio parts if they could spare them. In the darkness, wearing sandals and shorts and shirt, a heavy growth of beard on my face, I walked up the dusty road and got my first glimpse of the island fortress, 600 feet high, that splits the Bay of Manila, and was then known as the biggest and most impregnable fort in the world. None of its defenses could be seen from the sea or sky. The gun emplacements were beautifully hidden by trees planted to hide them. It was magnificent.
As I looked at the Rock, there in the gloom, I thought, Corregidor may fall, but the Japs will pay for it.
Finally I came to the mouth of a tunnel at the base of a cliff. I was amazed at the brilliance inside. It was as bright as day, and I had to shield my eyes at first against the hard white light. I saw men sleeping everywhere. They lay rolled up in blankets; dozed sitting on chairs and cases of ammunition. Here two men were lining a number of hospital cots against a wall. A little farther on, a group of soldiers were standing about a small cigar stand, chatting and exchanging gossip as men do around cigar stands anywhere in the world. Half a dozen soldiers hurried by me, carrying large galvanized cans. They stared at me. I guess I looked like a hermit come out of the hills.
“What’s in that can?” I asked.
“Chlorinated drinking water,” one soldier said.
“Wait a minute,” I called. “What tunnel is this?”
He paused for a minute. “Malinta tunnel,” he said. “You looking for anything in particular?”
I told him I was looking for Communications.
“Straight ahead,” he said. “Keep going.”
I kept going. I passed massive steel doors on either side of the tunnel leading to smaller tunnels, and finally came to one door behind which I was told I’d find Communications. I put my hand on the knob.
A navy ensign appeared from nowhere. “Just a minute, please,” he said crisply. “Where are you going?”
I identified myself and told him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think we can permit you to go in there now. They’re just too damn busy, and you wouldn’t have a very good chance of finding what you want anyway.”
I decided the best thing for me to do was get out of the way.
My place was on the Seawolf. I returned the way I came. Walking back to the dock, I could see searchlights playing up and down the shoreline of Mariveles, the naval base about a mile to the north, hunting the Japs along the mainland. Now and then, the rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire came to my ears, and I could hear the dull thud of artillery fire from Bataan. Every few minutes brilliant white flares split the darkness off toward Mariveles. Searchlights continued to move their fingers across the sky.
I went aboard the Seawolf and down where I belonged—in the sound room. That was the last picture I had of Corregidor.
CHAPTER V
Rescue of the Bamboo Fleet
IT WAS later that we surfaced and stole in to the dock again. We had not been there ten minutes when a military truck rumbled down to the dock, and out of it came more than a score of the most disreputable human beings in Army uniform I had seen. They looked as if they might have stepped by magic right off New York’s Bowery. They were gaunt, and their fatigue uniforms were dirty and tattered. I caught one glimpse of them and then was called below. Our visitors came abroad. I wondered who they were.
Then a message came down: “All passengers on deck.”
Passengers? I thought. What were we up to now? After acting as a transport all over the Far East, were they going to turn us into a ferry? Maley solved it for me when I took up my post next to him.
“We got passengers aboard,” I said. “Now all I’m asking is that they keep out of my way and out of this shack.”
“Aw, take it easy, Eck,” Maley said. “They’re fliers. They’ve been shot down, and a lot of them are pretty goddamn heroes, too.” He was topside when they all came on, twenty-six of them, he said, and he heard an Army officer give them a little pep talk. It ran something like this, said Maley:
“Men, we’re fortunate to leave the Rock on this submarine. We’re more than fortunate because this ship has a good crew and it is clean. I want everyone here to remember that he is a passenger, and that the crew has work to do. Stay out of their way. They aren’t too eager for this hauling duty, anyway. There will be plenty of food, but frankly, I don’t know what you’re going to do about sleep. There may be an empty bunk once in a while. If you’re sure that some crew member isn’t due to use it, then you can lie down. Remember that we’re depending upon these people to get us where we’re going. We’re leaving in a few minutes now; so go below, get in a corner, and be quiet.”
I had to admit they were quiet, too, and that they made the best of things. There was scarcely any room on the Wolf for them.
We shoved off that night, but before we left, we loaded many more boxes of valuable material, and this took every cubic foot of space left. At midnight we started out of the harbor to run the Jap blockade once more. If space was at a premium on our trip in, now there wasn’t room to move anywhere.
Finally an arrangement of hot bunks was worked out. The Wolf’s crew and the aviators slept in relays, and during the eight-day trip every bunk on the boat had someone sleeping in it every hour of the day. Even that was not sufficient; and going through the boat, now and then you’d see an aviator sleeping on his feet—leaning against a bulkhead catching forty winks. Some fell asleep while they were eating.
The Japs were looking high and low for us as we sneaked out of Manila Harbor. Two or three times in the darkness it seemed as though their planes might have discovered us, but the Wolf outsmarted them, and by dawn we were far enough out to be comparatively safe.
I had my hands full on sound as we went through the blockade, and had little chance to stroll around and get a good glance at our passengers. But at 8 a.m., after my morning watch, I went forward to the forward torpedo room and saw two of them near my bunk. They were just youngsters, and they looked worn out. They were discarding some of their personal gear—gas masks, knives, and belts—and I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation.
“D’you know,” one of them, a young kid with a scar on his face, was saying, “you can get hot coffee anytime you want on this ship? They got sandwiches, fruit—why, it’s like being on a goddamn luxury liner.”
I began to cool down. Hot coffee… sandwiches… why, we were always griping because the meat was too rare or too well done.
The other aviator spoke up. “All I got to say is I’m sure glad to get on. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll stand right here until we hit port and won’t say a damned thing.”
My conversation with the sentry on the dock came back to me. These men must have gone through hell like all the rest of the boys on the Rock.