Conduct Under Fire

by John A. Glusman

  Murray soon knew what George meant about mealtimes on the Rock. His galley was hit three times in just as many days, and his medical supply dumps might as well have been targets on a string. From Cavite, the Japanese could see troop concentrations in the area, truck activity on Government Road (which snaked around the reservation), and the water tank to the northeast. Murray had that strange sensation again of being watched. The Japanese were just warming up.

  Major General Moore, commander of the Philippine Coast Artillery and the Harbor Defenses of Manila and Subic Bays, described the first day of action on Corregidor after the fall of Bataan:0800—On the morning of 10 April, for the first time, an enemy observation balloon was seen rising from the vicinity of Lamao, concurrent with a bombing attack on Topside.

  0835—Second string of bombs landed at Middleside.

  0850—Shells from Cavite shore fell near Ordnance Point.

  0950—Fort Frank under fire.

  0952—Four flights of three each bombed Topside and Morrison Hill.

  0958—Two bombers again hit Topside.

  1056—Enemy shelled Corregidor from south mainland (Cavite shore).

  1115—Bombs dropped at Bottomside and Morrison Hill.

  1127—Two heavy bombers hit Morrison Hill.

  1144—Four heavy bombers hit between Morrison Hill and Middleside.

  1313—Nine heavy bombers, in flights of three, dropped bombs along south shore roads.

  Immediately after King’s capitulation, the Japanese began making preparations for their final offensive. They started by moving 250 field pieces, ranging from 75mm guns to 240mm howitzers, to the south face of Mt. Mariveles and along the southeastern coast of Bataan. Ravines and wooded slopes afforded natural protection to Japanese batteries. Corregidor’s defenders, without observation planes or balloons and without counterbattery equipment, had difficulty spotting them. By contrast, the Japanese could always call in Photo Joe or the observation balloon, Peeping Tom, to assess damage and readjust their sights accordingly.

  By mid-April, the Japanese had amassed more than 400 guns on Bataan, many of them 240mm howitzers. For every shell fired from Corregidor, the Japanese returned four. They plotted almost every flash emanating from the Rock, computed firing data, mapped and targeted on their topographic charts every battery they spotted, and systematically eliminated those batteries. They had detailed information on harbor defenses as well as supply and communication lines. But they were oddly uninformed regarding Malinta Tunnel, convinced that it was connected under water to the tunnel network in Mariveles.

  The Japanese preferred mortars and howitzers for weapons. Light and medium mortars are portable, and while their shorter barrel restricts their range, their elevation (usually from 40 to 80 degrees) makes them more useful than a cannon for hitting targets on rugged terrain. The howitzers were also more suitable for hilly, forested topography and, at a size of 240mm (9.2 inches), capable of inflicting tremendous damage. The steeper trajectory of both guns meant that the shells penetrated the ground more deeply, and the explosions sent splinters flying in all directions.

  Homma had bragged that he could bag Corregidor in a week, and April 25 was initially slated as the day of invasion. But two factors delayed it: a lack of landing barges and an outbreak of malaria. Small craft were obtained from Lingayen, Nasugbu, and Olongapo. Bound for Cavite, where they were armed and outfitted with bulletproof iron plates, they were forced to sneak through the North Channel at night while Japanese artillery blasted Corregidor as a diversionary tactic. Amphibious exercises were then conducted at Orani on Bataan, but the regiment that was scheduled to land on the first night—the 61st Regiment of the 4th Division—showed up with only 250 out of 3,000 men. The reason was simple: malaria. The disease that had nearly brought the Americans to their knees on Bataan now threatened to subdue the Japanese.

  Just before Bataan’s fall, 15,500 Japanese troops were in hospitals. Once the Japanese occupied southern Bataan, the number surged to 30,600, some 28,000 of whom were malaria patients. The 4th Division was hit especially hard. Homma had requested quinine from Saigon and Tōkyō “nine or ten times,” but an air shipment of 300,000 tablets did not arrive until month’s end.

  The 14th Army field order for the invasion of Corregidor was finally published on April 28, but it was not released to the troops until May 2. May 5 was designated “X Day.”

  What a change of heart, George wrote in his diary:Yes, Bataan fell but what of it. . . . For a few days it appeared that a surrender of Corregidor was in order but now we are going to defend the fortified islands and really are in a good position to do so.Already we have had help from Southern based Flying Fortresses in bombings at Cebu, Davao and Manila. Planes, hangars, ships and installations have been hit severely.An entirely new attitude has been developed here, and now defense and extermination of a few thousand Japanese looks easy.

  Hope flared on Corregidor. On April 13 a lone B-17 on its way back from a bombing mission over Nichols Field flew east of the Rock, and the pilot, Frank Bostram, waggled his wings in greeting. The men were dazzled by what they saw. The day before, ten B-25s had arrived at Del Monte Field in Mindanao, along with three B-17s. A gang of P-40s and P-35s went on to strafe a Japanese fighter squadron based in Davao. Could this be the help that had been promised for so long?

  In a direct plea, Wainwright had proposed to MacArthur on March 27 that bombers based in Australia stage a surprise attack against Japanese naval forces guarding the route to Corregidor. The tactic was to divert them from eight blockade runners from Cebu and Iloilo that were loaded with food, medicine, and ammunition. But the aircraft were late, the six pursuit planes on Mindanao that were to escort the convoy were bruised from action, and Cebu was invaded on April 10. Before Cebu fell, the ships and their cargo were destroyed. George was jubilant about a plan that was stillborn.

  By April 14 the Japanese succeeded in destroying or crippling Corregidor’s North Shore batteries. In some areas beach defense had no contact with Malinta Tunnel, which meant orders were being given without eyes, and reinforcements could not be summoned when needed. Soon the island was encircled with Japanese artillery—from Cabcaben, Mariveles, Batangas, and Cavite.

  As the pace of the bombardment increased, “life on Corregidor took on a faster, more intense tempo,” said hospital assistant Maude R. Williams.

  The smallest and most simple pleasures became sought after and treasured as they became increasingly rare and dangerous—an uninterrupted cigarette, a cold shower, a stolen biscuit, a good night’s sleep in the open air.

  There was a heightened feeling that life was to be lived from day to day.

  Symbols were cherished. On April 18, a shell fragment from a 240mm battery on Bataan struck Corregidor’s flagpole, a mainmast from a Spanish ship sunk in the Battle of Manila Bay and erected in 1898. The flag slid down toward the ground as if in resignation. But before she touched the earth, Captain Brewster G. Gallup, Technical Sergeant Ezra Smith, and a Philippine civilian, Honorio Punongbayen, ran to repair the halyard and raised the flag as shells burst around them. Wainwright awarded the three men the Silver Star for gallantry. What none of them realized was that Japanese pilots as well as gunners on Bataan had aligned the 100-foot-high flagpole into coincidence with the crosshairs of their telescopes.

  That same day Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle and a squadron of B-25s took off from the carrier USS Hornet and penetrated Japanese airspace uncontested by the army and navy. They bombed Kōbe, Nagoya, Yokohama, and targeted Tōkyō at noon. Fifteen of the sixteen planes crash-landed in China, though there were only nine fatalities from the mission. For American spirits at home and for the troops abroad, the effect was galvanizing, like a “shot of adrenaline,” said the nurses on Corregidor. Nothing was more sacred to the Japanese than their homeland, and the Americans had invaded it with impunity. Of the captured fliers, three were executed and five were sentenced to life imprisonment. In revenge for the raid and to seize local airfields t
o prevent another, the Japanese went on a rampage in China that claimed an estimated 250,000 lives.

  The Doolittle raid was a harbinger. “We never for a moment doubted that we would win the war,” said John. But winning would cost the Allies dearly.

  On April 22 an observer on Fort Frank spotted what looked like “invasion barges” southwest of Longoskawayan Point. Battery Geary didn’t take it kindly. As Colonel Bunker wrote in his diary, “We hope we raised hell with them and spoiled their projected trip.”

  Then on April 24 intelligence reports indicated a possible Japanese landing force assembling on Bataan’s east coast. That afternoon Geary provoked a fantastic artillery duel with an enemy howitzer. A massive 240mm gun as solid as a tank, the howitzer quickly turned its wrath on Battery Crockett. Crockett was helpless; she faced away from Bataan. The rear of the battery was protected by a barrier of oil drums filled with earth, but a 400-pound projectile pierced her defenses. The blasts were blinding. Steel fragments ricocheted off of concrete walls, while a fire raged in the battery’s lower passages. Captain Lester I. Fox, a surgeon with the 59th Coast Artillery, was tending the wounded when a shell detonated and broke his leg. He was hopping around on the other leg helping to organize a fire crew when another shell landed and blew off his right elbow, blinded him in his right eye, and left him with several fractured ribs. One gunner was killed, several more were injured, and Crockett’s No. 1 gun was neutralized. The explosions threatened Battery Hamilton, above which was an ammunition dump.

  Fort Drum fired in retaliation. Salvo after salvo sailed over Government Ravine. Murray’s corpsman, Cecil Peart, tried to evacuate a casualty at the height of the barrage but it was too dangerous to evacuate him to the Malinta Tunnel hospital. At 1751 Fort Drum finally silenced the enemy howitzer. Then Geary came under siege from a smaller gun.

  Minutes later Major James V. Bradley, Jr., of the 2nd Battalion took a call at his Wheeler Point Command Post from a runner at Geary Point. An American soldier named Henriques had been seriously wounded at Battery Crockett and removed to Battery Hamilton. It was a spinal injury, but Lieutenant Napoleon Magpanty had few supplies with which to treat him. Could a doctor be sent?

  “No, we can’t do that now,” Bradley said. “The road is being shelled, and it’s littered with fragments.”

  Typically company aid men or corpsmen are responsible for evacuation, but on Corregidor battalion surgeons removed the wounded as the situation demanded.

  “I’ll go and get him,” Fred Berley volunteered.

  Meanwhile Japanese aircraft flew into the fray and scored a direct hit on the ammunition dump between Crockett and Hamilton, causing a huge conflagration. Seventy-five-millimeter antiaircraft shells exploded uncontrollably as clouds of dust and smoke tongued the sky.

  Fred jumped into a truck and headed out for Battery Hamilton with Navy Chief Quartermaster George R. Williams and Private First Class Charles F. Jonaitis. The South Shore road was swept by enemy fire and studded with shrapnel from the burning dump. All personnel had been warned to clear the area for fear that Crockett’s magazine would blow, but Berley, Williams, and Jonaitis were able to remove Henriques safely to the E Company aid station. Shells continued to ignite even after the firing had stopped. Once the all-clear sounded, Henriques was taken to the Malinta Tunnel hospital.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” Fred said afterward. “I just felt we had to go out and get him.”

  “You would hear the cars long before they reached the tunnel,” wrote AP correspondent Clark Lee on Corregidor:The urgency of their horns, blowing all the way down the hill from Topside and then up the slope from Bottomside, told you they were bringing dead and those about to die and those who would be better off dead. The MPs would make the cars slow down as they drove into the big tunnel and they would stop at the hospital tunnel and blood would be dripping from the cars or the trucks. Then the stretcher bearers would gently lift out the bloody remnants of what had been an American soldier or a Filipino worker a few minutes before. They would lift out carefully the eighteen-year-old American boy who would never again remember his name, or his mother’s name, or anything else, but would just look at you blankly when you spoke to him.

  On the night of April 24 the U.S. engineer launch Night Hawk, under the command of First Lieutenant James Seater, went on a reconnaissance mission up the east coast of Bataan with volunteers from the 59th and 60th Coastal Artillery. Off Lamao they spotted a small boat with two Japanese men in it, whom they quickly took prisoner. The Night Hawk resumed her patrol north toward Limay when she was hailed by a larger ship flying the Japanese flag. The Night Hawk’s gunners answered with a fierce fusillade of cannon and machine gun fire, killing most of the crew and torching the ship.

  As the Night Hawk began to tow its quarry, Japanese boats raced out from the shore. The Night Hawk cut loose and sped back to Corregidor. The two prisoners, meanwhile, tried to escape by jumping overboard, but the Americans shot them dead in the water.

  The next day enemy dive bombers targeted shipping in the South Channel, Corregidor’s roving guns opened up on 250 Japanese near Barrio San José on Bataan, and Geary lambasted an enemy dump. A string of bombs fell on Fort Hughes, and the Japanese lobbed shells from Bataan and Cavite, one of which landed in Geary’s pit, causing serious injury. Engineer Point came under heavy fire, and then that ammunition dump was struck as well.

  Due north of George’s position, Engineer Point was “a hellish place” to reach, as George put it. He scrambled down with Pharmacist’s Mate Donald Edmond Bansley and Private First Class Graham H. Andrews. George treated one casualty for burns on the feet, lacerations to the scalp, and multiple abrasions. They were searching for more wounded when they noticed a case of grenades on fire a mere five feet away. They dove into a dugout just before the ammunition dump began to detonate. Between explosions Andrews scrambled down around the bluff and reported two more wounded, one of whom was severely burned. High tide made it nearly impossible to get around the point, unless you swam or were lowered by rope. But if they did that, they’d be completely exposed. They waited until dark to retrieve them. “Wet, oily, slick rocks through smouldering ruins of explosions dump and into Hospital lateral,”13 George wrote in his diary entry for April 25. “Days [sic] work done.”

  As intense as the aerial activity was over Corregidor, it usually stopped in the evening. After a day of being cooped up in Malinta Tunnel, there was nothing like going outside for a breath of fresh air, a cigarette, and a little small talk—maybe a romantic stroll beneath the stars with one of the army nurses on “Lover’s Lane,” the stretch of road that ran down to the beach from the tunnel entrance. Sometimes a voice broke into song, “The Yellow Rose of Texas” or “Home on the Range,” and inspired a sing-along. But on the evening of April 25, it was the Japanese who began to serenade Corregidor, shelling Topside at 1831 and Morrison and Grubbs at 1922.

  Suddenly at 2158 a 240mm shell crashed near the west entrance of Malinta Tunnel. Bystanders ran for cover, but the concussion slammed shut the ten-foot-high reinforced entrance gate. A second shell careened into the crowd. Arms and legs were wrenched from bodies; shrapnel tore into flesh. One army nurse, Helen Cassiani, watched in horror as a severed head rolled by her feet. Corpsmen ran to the scene from the hospital lateral, pried open the iron rails, and extricated the wounded.

  Said Juanita Redmond:We worked all that night, and I wish I could forget those endless, harrowing hours. Hours of giving injections, anesthetizing, ripping off clothes, stitching gaping wounds, of amputations, sterilizing instruments, bandaging, settling the treated patients in their beds, covering the wounded that we could not save. . . .

  I had still not grown accustomed to seeing people torn and bleeding and dying in numbers like these. When one patient dies, it is agonizing enough; when you are faced by such mass suffering and death, something cracks inside you—you can’t ever be quite the same again.

  The tragedy could easily have been prevented. The pr
esumption that it was safe to be even a few feet outside Malinta Tunnel for a even a few moments irked George.

  Net result 14 dead and 68 injured, many severely. More casualties than several days of intensive shelling have produced. People have been warned but that wasn’t sufficient.Too many come out for air, sit near entrance and then hope to scramble in if necessary. It won’t work and Japs know it.

  Ten days earlier forty Philippine Army men had been buried alive in Morrison Hill when a burst of mortar fire triggered a landslide that sealed the entrance to their tunnel behind Battery James like a crypt. During one air raid Murray’s dugout collapsed, and half the hill that supported it was carried away in the blast. Some marines made sure they had shovels in their tunnels and a three-inch piece of pipe protruding from them for air.

  Another time Murray dove into a culvert where he had gone to treat a casualty just a few days before. By the time he reached him, the man had bled to death. Shrapnel had ricocheted off of a tree and whizzed through the narrow opening between the sandbagged entrance and the culvert’s top, striking him in the head. As Murray listened to the bombs explode around him, he figured the odds of that happening again were in his favor. But if the Japanese could spot tunnel entrances, only the deepest recesses were secure. The problem, as Wainwright realized, was that you couldn’t fight a land battle from underground.

  It seemed as if no one was listening to the pleas of the men and women on Corregidor, but on April 26 Wainwright received a radio message from one man who understood the situation well: the governor of Malta. In one month the bombs dropped on the strategic British naval base in the central Mediterranean exceeded the entire blitz on England in 1940 and amounted to thirteen times the tonnage dropped on Coventry by the Luftwaffe on the night of November 14, 1940. General William Dobbie knew whereof he spoke. In April 1942 Malta suffered on average 190 enemy air attacks each day, but the base still held:People of Malta send their warm greetings to the gallant defenders of Corregidor. They have watched with profound admiration the magnificent fight you have put up which has been a great inspiration to us all. You are giving untold assistance to the Allied cause.