Broken Jewel - [World War II 05]

by David L. Robbins

  Now Donnelly.

  Remy stood from the crate where he sat. He needed to get started. He grabbed a long bamboo shoot, green and strong because it was young. Donnelly was as tall as Talbot. Remy sawed the first rod to a length that would fit his own son.

  At quarter to seven this morning, Donnelly stumbled out of the brush along the southern fence. He’d been in the village that night. Some in the camp heard him tramping around Boot Creek. They whispered for him to stay away, to come in after dark. Donnelly didn’t hear, or didn’t heed. When he answered them, he sounded drunk.

  At the western gate, carrying a burlap bag of fruit, he walked into the sights of a sentry. Without warning, the guard fired, striking Donnelly in the left shoulder. The Aussie boy dropped the sack and lurched forward to collapse against the fence. Guards ran to the spot. Doc Lockett and the boy Santana were nearby at the dao tree and hurried over. Lockett said later that Donnelly’s wound was just a graze. Donnelly clutched his shoulder; he laughed off the blood drizzling between his fingers. Through the wire Lockett told the boy he’d fix him up for his stay in the brig. Then Toshiwara arrived.

  A half dozen guards forced the doctor and Santana back from the fence. Out in the yard where the camp gardens had once been, the rest of the garrison in loincloths began their morning calisthenics. To counts of “ichi. . . ni. . . san . . . shi,” Toshiwara and the guards conferred around Donnelly. The crowd of internees grew by the hundreds. When Remy heard the shot, he left his breakfast plate on the table and hurried outside.

  In minutes Nagata arrived at the fence, changed out of his loincloth. He stormed loudly at the collected internees, blaming them. Toshiwara moved the deliberations into his office. A picket of guards kept Donnelly from the internees behind leveled bayonets. The Aussie lay calling through the fence for help.

  Remy gathered with Tal and the boys of No. 11. Donnelly quieted down, weakening. Doc Lockett, Lucas, and many committee members made strong protests to Toshiwara. An hour and a half after the shooting, four guards showed up with a door. They rolled Donnelly onto it and carted him into the jungle behind Boot Creek.

  From the trees, out of sight, cracked a single pistol shot.

  Shock rippled through the internees. Men put hands to their heads, many spat on the ground. Women covered their mouths. Every face dammed back anger.

  Remy left the fence for the garage, where he sat for an hour, unable to start.

  Now he cut through another bamboo rod. Sawdust snowed on his sandaled feet. The body would be here soon.

  Remy put his heart into his working hands, soothing himself the way he’d done with every death in his life. The green casket took form, tailored long and narrow. When Lucas, Doc Lockett, and four boys from No. 11 carried the body in on the door, the coffin was ready.

  Donnelly lay faceup, a neat exit wound under his chin from a single bullet fired straight down into the back of the head. The doctor had mopped much of the blood off the door, but a russet stain recalled how it had spread and dribbled off an edge.

  Lucas explained that he and the committee had gotten more of the same claptrap from Toshiwara. The Japanese claimed Donnelly had been escaping and was subject to the death penalty. Just like Clem. The internees could assume the same for anybody caught by the guards outside the wire, even a few steps.

  Donnelly was lifted into the casket. The body seemed light without its soul. The four boys stood aside until Remy, Lucas, and the doctor had secured the bamboo top to the casket. By the hemp handles, the boys carried Donnelly to the cemetery.

  Remy asked Lucas, “Where’s this gonna stop?”

  The committeeman ran a hand over his thinning hair. “We’re all going to be dead or we’re all going to be freed. Can’t see any other way out.”

  Lucas headed for the cemetery. Doc Lockett gazed around the garage before leaving. He scuffed a toe through the white sawdust on the floor.

  “I know,” said Remy. “More bamboo.”

  ~ * ~

  Remy took the cigarette from his son’s lips. He set a hand under the boys dropped chin.

  “Hey,” he said, “lift this up. You owe him to be standing by that hole with your head high. That ain’t who he was. You understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. You go let people see you. You tell the Japs to kiss our asses. You get right up front. Show ‘em.”

  “Where you going to be?”

  “The whole camps headed to the cemetery. I’m getting on the radio. I want to know what Carmen meant.”

  Five days ago, a message had been smuggled into the camp to Tal. The girl warned him and Remy to be ready to leave the camp. She’d try to tell them when the time was right. Plainly, Carmen was dealing with the guerrillas. But what did she know? What was happening outside the fence that made her send that message? Or was the danger she referred to inside the wire?

  Remy took a drag on the boy’s cigarette. He coughed the smoke back out.

  “Th’ hell are you smokin’?”

  “Catnip and papaya leaves.”

  Remy handed the butt back, unable to comment on how sad that was. Another time it might have been funny.

  Tal walked with Remy to No. 12. The camp headed toward the Protestant chapel. Remy was struck by how gaunt the population was becoming, how listless their shuffle to the cemetery. All the gains made during the six days of Camp Freedom had been erased over the past two weeks. Remy looked at his own hands, thankful they could still deal cards. He and his boy remained among the stronger ones in Los Baños, but bullets and disease were like luck, making no promises.

  In their room, Remy and Tal hauled aside the bunk bed and dug up the crystal radio. Tal helped him put the bed back in place, then left for the funeral.

  Clear morning weather aided the signal. In short order, Remy snared a Voice of Freedom broadcast out of San Francisco. The reporter cast around the world at war. He described the German defeat at the Battle of the Bulge, the occupation of Warsaw by Soviet forces after the Nazis had devastated the old city. On the Russian front, the German army was in full retreat and Lithuania was poised to fall. Hungary had signed an armistice with the Allies.

  In the Pacific, the news focused on the Philippines. MacArthur fought his way closer to Manila. Unconfirmed reports had the main American force at Calumpit, thirty miles northwest of the city. The Yanks were preparing for a fierce Japanese defense with block-to-block fighting. The first accounts were coming in of civilian massacres inside Manila. The Japanese had begun executing supposed underground members, smugglers, every character suspicious to them. The claims of dead numbered in the thousands. MacArthur demanded the Japanese government protect and treat all Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees under the terms of the Geneva Convention, though the Japanese had not signed it.

  Doug MacArthur was not a man to tip his hand. Clearly, the general was worried. When the cool MacArthur worried, it was time to consider putting one foot out the door.

  Remy shut down the radio and hid it under his mattress until the boy could help him lift the bunk again.

  He stepped outside. For the last hour, Remy had kept the radio whispering in his ear. He hadn’t heard the shovels at work just beyond the shade of the dao tree. The first internees returned from Donnelly’s funeral. They, too, stopped to gape at the dozen guards digging an unannounced and unexplained pit.

  ~ * ~

  sanko seisaku

  —”three-all policy” of the Japanese army, meaning

  “kill all, burn all, destroy all,” dating from 1941

  to the end of the Pacific War

  §

  the radioman, many massacres, and the tenth game

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Twenty-three

  B

  OLICK LAID his portable radio, hand generator, pack, and carbine into the false bottom of the banca. The reek of fish, long sunk into the wood of the boat, curled his nostrils. He knelt beside his equipment. The guerrilla Gusto waited for him to lie down so he could
replace the deck panel and cover all evidence of the American soldier.

  Bolick asked, “There’s no chance I’m going to like this, is there?”

  By lantern light, Gusto pursed his lips. “Even the fish don’t like it.”

  Bolick peered into the dark, shallow well around him. The old banca creaked against the rickety pier. Two hours after sunset, a fine wind had risen for the sail east across the big bay. Out on the water, Japanese patrol boats motored the coast with their lights off.

  “Okay,” Bolick said. “Lemme show you something, Gusto.” Bolick dug into his pack for a pair of grenades. He held them up so the Filipino fighter and his unnamed sailing mate could get a gander.

  “You don’t trust me, sergeant?” Gusto asked.

  “I do, I do.” Bolick waggled the grenades. “These are just in case I’m wrong.”

  Bolick sucked a last clean breath of moist air off the bay. He held it and folded his long frame into the cramped hold between his rifle and the radio, resting his head on his pack, knobby with extra grenades, ammo clips, and food. Gusto secured the deck panel, locking out the last fresh air and slim light. Water slapped the hull under Bolick’s ear. He released the breath, spending it slowly. The boat pushed away from the pilings, gliding smoothly on both outriggers. Bolick took his first closeted breath. “Ah, geez,” he muttered.

  Gusto and his mate hoisted the sail. The banca surged ahead, the black and stinking hold heeled Bolick onto his shoulder. The slap of water thickened with the slicing, speeding prow.

  Bolick tucked the grenades under his knees to keep them from rolling about, and to find them fast.

  He searched for cracks in the flooring over his head. Maybe some good air might vent in. A century of fish had died where he lay. He imagined the flying splinters of the reeking old boat if a Japanese patrol boarded them during their crossing and he pulled the pins.

  Knuckles rapped on the deck. “So, Sergeant.”

  “What?”

  “You volunteered?”

  “Yep.”

  “All the American soldiers say no one volunteers.”

  “First thing they teach us.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  Bolick shrugged. “I like to camp out.”

  “Good one. Myself, I haven’t slept in a bed in three years. I hate camping.”

  Bolick winced. Gusto deserved a better answer.

  Five days ago, on January 31, the 26th Ranger Battalion, Filipino guerrillas, and Alamo scouts freed five hundred American soldiers from a POW camp north of Manila, in Cabanatuan. After two and a half years in captivity, many of these survivors of Bataan could hardly walk. Dozens of their rank were not alive to be rescued at the end.

  MacArthur worried that the Japanese might take revenge on the four thousand civilians held at the University of Santo Tomas in the heart of Manila. Yesterday, two flying columns of First Cavalry knifed into the capital. The first American troops inside the city, they crashed through the main gate of the university, liberating all the captives. Again, a number of those rescued were starved and diseased.

  Bolick, like every soldier in the 11th, cheered when the Rangers pulled off the first rescue, then applauded the cavalry after the second. This next operation figured to be the toughest one yet. Twenty-one hundred civilians imprisoned thirty-five miles behind enemy lines, the Japanese Tiger Division a few miles south. Surrounded by jungle and water, no open road in or out.

  MacArthur gave this job to Airborne.

  Bolick called through the deck. “Hey, Gusto.”

  “Yes?”

  “The truth?”

  “If you wish.”

  “I volunteered cause this time we get to save folks. Not a lot of that goes on in war.”

  “Sadly, no. It does not.”

  Bolick saw little chance for sleep.

  “Gusto. What did you do before?”

  “Professor of religion.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Do you mind if I ask your faith, Sergeant?”

  “I’m classic Philadelphia. Fathers Jewish, mother Catholic.”

  “What does that make you?”

  “Dunno. A guy who likes cheap whiskey.”

  Gusto patted the deck above Bolick’s head. “I think you’ve used that one before. I was raised Protestant.”

  “Well.” Bolick took the pair of grenades in hand, deciding to try for some rest. “If I have to blow us up before dawn, we got our bases covered, you and me.”

  ~ * ~

  The only way to get through to these guys, Bolick decided, was to be quiet.

  He slouched in a chair. His M1 leaned against the wall alongside an assortment of tommy guns, old Enfields, birding shotguns, more Garands. The twenty guerrillas in the room with Bolick were unevenly armed. That’s what they argued about.

  The commander of one group pointed across the table at Gusto of Terry’s Hunters.

  “Why can’t you share? You’re the only one who gets carbines from the Americans.”

  Gusto drummed a finger lightly on the table. Blood had purpled all his nails. Every fighter here bore some mark from three years of hit-and-run combat against the Japanese, whether scars, scabs, bruises, missing digits, a limp, or some sign of torture like Gusto’s bloody nails.

  Gusto’s tone was patient. “The Americans give us the most weapons because we’re the best organized. Sergeant,” he addressed Bolick, “tell them.”

  Bolick shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  He did, but saw no purpose in commenting. Before the guerrillas would even consider settling down to listen to him, they had to first thrash out their several rivalries. Bolick let them bicker.

  The discussion zigzagged across a wide catalog of complaints and suspicions. Geographic boundaries, recruiting, timing, the scope of missions; Bolick crossed his arms and ankles.

  All five groups had answered his call for a meeting: Terry’s Hunters, President Quezon’s Own Guerrillas, the Hukbalahaps, the Chinese Squadron, and Marking’s Fil-Americans. The guerrillas operated independently from one another. All were positioning themselves for political gain after the war. They were small or large; two levied taxes in their areas to support operations, two did not, one stole what it needed. Every one had what Bolick called “big eyes,” appetites larger than their abilities. To a man they were patriotic and courageous.

  After an hour of fruitless accusations and hashing, Bolick prodded the man beside him.

  Gusto rose. “That’s enough.”

  A member of the Fil-Americans, slight and intense, who called himself “General,” rose to answer for the gathering.

  “Who says?”

  “MacArthur says.”

  General took in the others around the table with a bemused manner.

  “You speak for the Americans now?”

  “No.” Gusto indicated Bolick. “He does. I speak for him.”

  Bolick nodded his agreement. He didn’t leave his seat, because he would tower over Gusto. That would have cemented his own influence but undermined Gusto’s. Bolick needed a Filipino in charge.

  In concert, the guerrillas grumbled. Gusto stayed on his feet. General sat.

  Bolick didn’t figure how Gusto’s authority, or anyone’s, would last long with this bunch.

  “Get to it,” Bolick said.

  Quickly, Gusto outlined the mission: the rescue of the internees at Los Baños. The U.S. Army had reason to believe the Japanese were going to eliminate them. The operation was urgent.

  This wasn’t news. Everyone in the room knew about Palawan, the rescue of the internees at Santo Tomas, atrocities inside Manila. The Japanese could execute the internees at Los Baños any day, without warning. According to reports, they’d already dug a great pit inside the camp.

  U.S. forces were tied down fighting around Manila. MacArthur wanted to explore the possibility that the guerrillas in the area—the five groups present—could conduct the operation on their own.

  “We need a p
lan,” Gusto told them. “We’ve got to have arms, transport, a safe evacuation route, and the cooperation of the internees. If Sergeant Bolick and I can get all these, can we work together?”

  The pock-faced chief of the Hukbalahaps, the oldest of the guerrilla groups, laced with Communists, spoke first.