After examining their group, Surgeon Thomas Hayes confided to his journal, “1,234 prisoners arrived from Davao after 21 days in route . . . A horrible, miserable lot, many officers, both Army and Navy, among them. A wild eyed, dirty mob, many changed almost beyond recognition.”
The resident prisoners at Bilibid must have made similar observations; they showed extraordinary sympathy toward the returnees, despite their own privations. Miraculously, they produced a tub of ice water to welcome them. Ice water? From where in all of war-torn Manila was there ice to be found, the Davao group marveled—much less at Bilibid Prison? Many described feeling the most grateful they had felt in their entire lives at that sole gesture.
But the reprieve was brief. After four days at Bilibid, some of the Davao draft received bad news; others worse. Nine hundred were to go back to Cabanatuan. The rest would be shipped to Japan.
31
SEPTEMBER 1944, LILAC HEDGES
ON EVERY SEPTEMBER FIRST in memory, Helen Cross had launched her autumn garden preparations as if prompted by the same lunar pull that stirs birds to journey south. Just as winged migrants detect a scent in the wind, a shift in the stars, or the changed direction of a late-summer breeze, something tugged at Helen’s soul when the calendar page turned to September. The first day of that month always marked the start of a weeks-long autumn gardening ritual.
The summer of 1944 had been unusually hot and dry in New Jersey, killing some of her plants outright, despite Helen’s vain attempts to keep them hydrated. To her diary, she complained:
Pretty hot, diary mine! Rainless for over a month. I have visions of a nice stand of hay where lawns used to be! Jupiter Pluvius must be on some Olympian holiday. The flowers and bushes droop for his attention—the expected thunderstorms seem to pass right out to sea—poor garden!
Barton’s twelve-year-old spaniel, Sable, trailed behind her during this autumn’s garden rounds at a noticeably slower clip. Helen lamented:
I think this may have been his last summer—he is very feeble, yet he follows me slowly and faithfully all over the yard. He’s now blind and deaf to all but my whistle. Queer, but he seemed to fail fast once Barton went away. I remember him sharp as a trigger years ago, cute as a fox, and fast on his little feet. He is Barton’s dog, and I hope he lives for his homecoming.
As usual, Helen began her fall inspection at the outer-perimeter beds and worked her way in toward the house. She would set out each morning in the early-autumn cool, wearing sensible shoes and her favorite apron, with its wide band of pockets, home to a notepad, trowels, and other gardening implements. Her auburn hair was tucked under a broad straw hat the color of sunflower petals.
She noted first that the plants in the unshaded southwest corner of the property were parched and wilted; they must be dug up and replanted. (“It will look nice, I think, for Barton to see,” she wrote that evening.) Moving on, she decided to plant a new bed of yellow tulips and relocate the red ones to the side lawn.
She would then address the routine tasks: dig up and divide her daylilies, which had come back crowded that summer, barely able to breathe. Her rosebushes needed cutting back, too, after which she must lay down a protective winter blanket of good straw. The next job would be an all-day project: fertilizing her dozens of precious lilacs from the lovingly tended compost pile behind the shed. But first, some fall adornment to cheer her as she worked:
Geraniums came for the beds—a blaze of scarlet glory!
As skeins of southbound geese passed over Lilac Hedges in military-like V formations, Helen worked her trowel with the same focus and passion that she did her pen. And for nearly nine months out of the year, the glorious gardens at Lilac Hedges repaid her with pendulous blooms of every description—one of her few remaining sources of pleasure.
But on the fifteenth day of that September, Helen’s hopes, plans, and gardens were fouled—like so many other events of late—by circumstances beyond her control. What would go down in history as the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 slammed into coastal New Jersey.
Sixty-foot trees toppled like sticks, pulling down wires and telephone poles with them. Whipping winds dashed a 250-ton freighter onto the shore like a toy boat. Atlantic City’s iconic boardwalk and Steel Pier were laid to waste, and hundreds of homes were reduced to rubble. Lilac Hedges—and Helen’s gardens—were not spared:
Last night the house shook, windows rattled, and trees bent before the onslaught . . . And oh! Never can I forget the sight which met our eyes this morning. Trees crashed through the garage, all smaller trees bent to 45 degrees, the lilacs—as though beaten nearly to death by some sinister force.
Sick at heart as we survey the damage, try to straighten small trees and tie up plants. Every one of the Jap lilac trees on our western border is devastated, huge centre haunches broken off at the base . . .
The horror at the shore is terrific—everywhere trees through rooftops—wild demonic destruction—worst storm in 75 years and it must come now?
God in heaven, isn’t war’s anguish enough?
For the next two weeks, Helen cleaned up from nature’s vicious attack. She stumbled through fallen boughs and heaps of brush as she worked, wringing her hands over the destruction. The wreckage that surrounded them, she mused to Arthur, matched the wreckage in her heart.
SOME RELIEF ARRIVED WHEN Benny, now stationed in Washington, arrived by train. It was only his second visit to Lilac Hedges since his orders to the Pentagon. There had been little respite from his work as the harried new chief of Ship Characteristics and Fleet Requirements—or from vexing negotiations with his estranged wife.
Over a rare home-cooked meal with Helen and Arthur—prepared lovingly by William and Nelly in his honor—Benny covered many topics, including Bill’s recovery. He was much better and had finally been released from Aiea Heights Naval Hospital at Pearl Harbor, Benny reported. He hoped to be back in the fight soon. But Helen’s focus never wavered. To her diary that evening, she confided:
Benny had news of Bill, healing from ulcers of the stomach. But he [Bill] had apparently done nothing to get news of Barton. I had asked him to call on the Provost Marshall.
Benny’s visit to New Jersey was actually official business. He was scheduled to honor the workers at a converted sewing-machine factory in Elizabethtown for their extraordinary productivity. He had hoped a respite at Lilac Hedges would restore his flagging spirits, but the arrival of bad news the following morning foiled that plan.
A letter came today from a Bataan Relief correspondent confirming the Japs’ report to International Red Cross of the sinking by an American submarine of an American prison ship. It was said to be carrying hundreds of American prisoners of war, and was off the coast of Mindanao . . .
The sick continuous ache, the shaking fear the Japs will kill their prisoners as help approaches, and now—this! It is the final horror. Dear God, dear God, grant that this not be true! After three years, must American lads be sunk by their own country? I stumble around in a fog, talking to Barton’s picture and crying until I am weak. I got out all his baby pictures, his Christ School pictures, my son—my dear lad! Come soon!
Benny did everything he could to calm his mother. Too little was known for her to draw the worst conclusion, he reasoned. He pointed out the unreliable and often strident nature of the Bataan Relief Organizations’ reports—particularly since, in this case, the enemy was its source of information. But privately, he too was troubled, making it harder to muster reassuring arguments in which he didn’t fully believe.
The Pacific Fleet—including Enterprise—was closing in on the Philippines, and its carrier planes and submarines routinely fanned out ahead of the fleet to soften enemy resistance—in this case to prepare for MacArthur’s imminent landings. The cruising formation of the now-gigantic fleet was forty miles long and nine miles wide. With a fleet that size, communications in the heat of battle were challenging under a single, unified command; under an unrehearsed command divided between the
army and the navy, such tragic incidents would not surprise Benny.
Tacking away from the topic, Benny tried a different approach. Why didn’t she come with him to Elizabethtown? It would be an interesting excursion with the added benefit of taking her mind off the news. Helen was reluctant, but Benny prevailed on her to fix her hair, put on some nice clothes, and go hear him speak on behalf of the navy she was coming to despise.
At Elizabethtown, wearing a black dress with little adornment, Helen took her seat among the thousands of war-industry workers. Benny’s mission was to present a special award to the plant’s workforce for its phenomenal output: a coveted fourth star on its hard-earned army-navy E flag. The E on the pennant stood for Excellence. As a way of acknowledging the importance of home front workers to the war effort, the E flag was awarded to individual plants rather than to parent companies for exceptional yield and product quality; additional merit stars could be earned, as was the case on this occasion. The hard-earned E flags flew over war materiel facilities all over the country, and lapel pins reflecting the honor were worn proudly by every plant employee.
Benny received an introduction that would have made any mother proud. “Please welcome USS Enterprise gunnery and antiaircraft officer, Commander E. Bertram Mott—New Jersey’s own!” Benny was hailed at length for his role on the storied Enterprise in the formidably difficult early months of the war, where he had “seen action at Pearl Harbor, Tokyo, Midway, Guadalcanal, and other points in the Southwest Pacific, fighting against overwhelming odds.”
There was full, respectful applause as Benny approached the lectern and held up his hand to acknowledge the accolades. When he cleared his throat and looked out at the sea of faces, the room quieted in anticipation. Despite her darkened mood, Helen allowed a sense of pride in her firstborn son as Benny began to speak:
“Because of your faithful efforts toward victory, the Armed Forces today are again conferring upon you the highest civilian honor on the production front. The depth-charge pistols and booster extenders you make here are playing a dramatic part in our antisubmarine warfare in the Pacific.
“We normally think of depth charges as only being carried by destroyers and escort vessels, but not any longer—this critical antisubmarine ordnance is on all aircraft carriers. I know that our flyers on the Enterprise spotted many Jap submarines from the air, and we successfully depth-charged them more than once—thanks to you!” Benny smiled and gestured to the crowd with both hands.
At this, the thousand-strong audience clapped and cheered. Already fierce patriots, enthusiasm for their work had reached and remained at a new high after the Dyess story detailing the Japanese atrocities toward American prisoners broke. They were as fired up now as they had been in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Benny then took them back to those first days of the war, recalling the desperate position of the country following the Pearl Harbor attack:
“The expansion of our military and naval establishments to their present formidable proportions would have been impossible without the complete mobilization of our war industries to provide these vital tools. If we have emerged from the shadows of unpreparedness and initial defeat, the credit belongs in enormous part to the skill, labor, and cooperation of the production front. The credit belongs to you.”
He paused again, smiling at the wild, self-congratulatory applause and more than a few whistles.
“At the time,” he continued, “the job of the US Fleet—or what was left of it—was to hold the line. We faced battle every time we left port. We knew we were overmatched, yet did not dare lose a single action. We were at sea constantly, under great nervous strain. Without a doubt, every single officer and crew member realized his enormous personal responsibility—to the nation.”
The applause was building in enthusiasm, if that was even possible. Benny responded with a controlled nod, despite a surge of emotion welling up inside. It had been exactly as he’d said just now, hadn’t it? That was the very feeling, every hour of every day aboard the Enterprise—no exaggeration.
He would never forget KGMB’s Webley Edwards’s somber farewell to him at Pearl Harbor in the early-morning hours of December 9, 1941. They had been standing amid the ruins in the predawn darkness, their faces lit only by the burning USS Arizona.
“It’s up to you carrier boys now,” Edwards had said, slapping Benny on the back. “You’re all we’ve got left.” Prescient words.
Benny was home now, which had been his fondest wish. But all he could think of right now, right here in the middle of giving this speech, was that ship. His ship. He yearned for her explicit rules and creeds and clarity of purpose. It was a hard life, but orderly, honorable, and worthy. He ached for the simplicity of a sailor’s order of priorities, drilled into him from plebe year forward: Ship. Shipmate. Self.
In fact, the very hardships from which Benny had sought relief, from the inconsequential to the significant—hard bunks; earsplitting shelling; lack of privacy; a constantly vibrating deck; navy chow; the uncertain sequence of anticipation, fear, relief, and euphoria; and the monotonous, ticking meter of the sea when the bombs weren’t dropping—were what he missed now. All those things, as well as the ready companionship of thousands of shipmates struggling under identical pressures. He was so lonely now, and so alone. Benny had to work to suppress the sudden, indescribable longing to be back aboard his beloved Enterprise.
After clearing his throat, he returned to the task at hand. “Planes from the Enterprise reached Pearl Harbor at the height of the sneak attack on December seventh. The task force to which Enterprise was assigned reached the blasted harbor the following day to see the saddest sight any of us had ever seen: battleships, cruisers, installations, blasted beyond recognition.”
He paused an overlong moment at the memory of it. The audience grew quiet. Hundreds of heads nodded somberly; many began to cry. Virtually everyone in the audience had someone dear off fighting the war, and a considerable number had already lost loved ones.
“For the next year, the Enterprise was in one action after another—Gilbert and Marshall Islands, then Wake and Marcus Islands, in quick succession. Then came our raid on Tokyo in which Enterprise joined Hornet and her task force—”
He couldn’t finish the next sentence. The audience had snapped out of its momentary mourning as though a switch had been flipped. Every last person was out of his or her seat, cheering and stamping their feet. Benny smiled and nodded, smiled and nodded.
“We fought against overwhelming odds, endured great hardship, living for the day when our great new fleet would be ready. That fleet—thanks to millions of American men and women in shipyards, mines, and factories such as yours—is near completion. If we have come out of the shadows of initial defeat, again, the credit belongs to the skills and labor and cooperation of the production front. And because of that, at long last, the initiative is ours. We have the ball, and we are going places.”
Helen smiled and lifted her leaden hands from her lap to join in the next ovation. With time and a measure of luck, perhaps these fiery, patriotic words would again have meaning for her, she hoped, half listening as Benny wound down with highlights from the battles of Midway, Guadalcanal, and Santa Cruz.
“And now,” Benny said after the room quieted, “here is your flag. Fly it proudly above your plant until the Stars and Stripes wave in triumph over the ruins of Berlin and the ashes of Tokyo.”
AFTER SEEING BENNY OFF on the train back to Washington, Helen returned directly home and sat down at her desk with a full draft of ink in her fountain pen and a clean sheet of powder-blue Lilac Hedges stationery. Benny had done a fine job, but it seems her mind had been elsewhere during most of his speech. She had a letter to write, and by the time she got home, she knew what it had to say.
October 5, 1944
Dear Mr. President,
Word has come to me of the sinking of Japanese transports loaded with American prisoners off the coast of Mindanao on September 7.
I d
o not yet know if my youngest son Barton was among them—like those doomed men, he too was imprisoned at Davao Penal Colony. However the horror and stupidity remain the same. To endure nearly three years of Japanese treatment—then to be sunk like a rat in a trap by one of your own American submarines!
Why sink transports in the first place? Why sink transports going north in any event? What about the colossal stupidity of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not to foresee such movement of those abandoned American men and forbid the shelling of any northbound transport in waters off Mindanao?
If your son, a classmate of Barton’s, had been imprisoned on Mindanao, you would have seen to it, wouldn’t you, that such stupidity of the Joint Chiefs were corrected by orders from you?
Mr. President, you will probably never see these lines from any other agonized mother. To think, Americans, trapped in a hold being sunk by an American submarine!
Yours very sadly,
Helen C. Cross
The next day, she unburdened to her diary:
No sleep, no food. Rosemary called from New York—it seems Arthur has known it for two weeks and carried the awful news alone. Whether Barton was on that ship or not, the horror of it sickens me. But I must keep up, somehow. Arthur and I try to keep on, but we are so lonely for our lad.
32
HOPES DASHED
BY EARLY JUNE, TENSION at GHQ in Brisbane had risen to a fever pitch. Had Harold Rosenquist made contact with the prisoners at Davao without arousing Japanese suspicion? Were the friends Steve Mellnik had left behind, Doc Cain and Johnny King, still alive and able to help? Without word from Rosenquist, the agonizing days passed slowly. Mellnik made repeated visits to the GHQ’s radio receiving room to check for incoming messages. For weeks, nothing.
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