by Dean Hughes
Wally knew that some of the shells must be hitting the road ahead of him, killing American and Filipino soldiers, and before long he saw the proof. He came upon mangled, bloody bodies left on the side of the road. But no one was allowed to stop and help, even though some of the wounded were still alive.
He was so numb now that it was hard to think much about what he was seeing. But ahead, he heard a man screaming. He watched as he came nearer, and then, just when he was almost there, one of the Japanese guards stepped to the wounded man and drove his bayonet through his chest.
The screaming stopped abruptly, but as Wally passed by, he heard the gurgling in the man’s throat, and he heard the guard curse the man, then spin around and shout warnings to the prisoners. Wally’s sense of his own peril deepened. He didn’t panic, but a realistic awareness struck him that these guards were capable of anything. When he saw a severed head stuck on a pole—the head of a Filipino soldier—he assumed that this was a warning from the guards, a method of instilling fear. But Wally’s fear couldn’t get any deeper.
Wally wondered how long he could go on, whether he could hold up if this nightmare continued very long. What he knew for certain now was that he could keep going only if he got help from outside himself. And so he continued to pray as he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. His only other attempt was to keep track of Warren and Jack, just to know they were with him.
Wally sensed that this was his trek. He was like those pioneers his dad talked about every year on Christmas day. Wally saw no irony in that memory. In fact, he felt reassured that others had been through similar tests and that he could get through this one. But he hardly thought in words; he only felt a powerful impression that he had to keep going, that he had to stay alive so he could get back to his family.
The words in his head continued, almost without a break, always the same: “Father, please help me.” He meant his father in heaven, of course, but he also thought of his father back home. And his mother. And all those who would be praying for him. It was strange that he finally felt so close to them, finally felt strength coming from them. His single focus now was the hope that he could get back to all the things he had run away from.
***
Bobbi drove back to her apartment, but then she sat on the front step, outside. She needed to go in and study, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. What struck her was that she had worried entirely too much about herself for the past couple of years. She needed now to see things on a much larger scale. On the day Pearl Harbor had been attacked, she had thought she understood the implications of it all—that everything was changed—and that a great sacrifice was going to be necessary if America was to turn the tide of the war. But now that war had come home. It had hold of her little brother, and it was ripping away at her family. For so long, she had been trying to establish her independence, but that seemed unimportant now. What she longed for more than anything was the safety her family had always given her. She soon found herself praying. She prayed for Wally, of course, and for a timely end to all this chaos, but she closed her prayer by asking for the one thing that she wanted most: “Lord, as we go our separate ways, please keep us together.”
Alex went back to the plant. There was so much work to do. He sat at his desk and stared at all the paperwork before him, but his thoughts were full of Anna. He pictured the little arch in her upper lip that was so unexplainably beautiful, the soft curve of her cheekbones, and he dreamed that he could bring her home to Utah somehow, and that he could forget everything going on in the world. But he was at war with Anna—at war with all the German members he had loved so much. He was at war with part of himself. There had to be a way to love a people and war against a movement, a philosophy, but he had no idea how to fit such conflicting feelings inside himself. All the same, he prayed that somehow he could do battle and still love, and that when the war was over, he could be one person, still part of all the things he cared about: his family, his church, his German brothers and sisters. But what he felt, even after praying, was that he was asking too much. He had ended one battle with himself—and his father—by committing himself to go off to war. But he had entered a darker, more difficult realm, and he was not sure he would ever be himself again.
***
President and Sister Thomas sat across the kitchen table from each other and held hands. Sister Thomas prayed that she would have the strength to manage, to hold out through everything she would have to face. But President Thomas felt an odd sense of relief. He had seen a great deal of strength in his children that morning. From all appearances, they were made of the stuff he had been preaching about for such a long time. He was concerned about Alex and Bobbi, but they had stood up to him, and in doing so, they had actually chosen better than he would have chosen for them. Maybe Wally could do as well, and maybe the younger children were equally strong. He was struck with the strangeness of it all: that he would feel so confident on this of all mornings. And yet, an inner voice kept telling him that it was time to trust his children. The fire was coming, but he believed they would be refined, not destroyed.
Since You Went Away
Since You Went Away
Children of the Promise: Volume 2
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hughes, Dean, 1943–
Since you went away / by Dean Hughes.
p. cm. — (Children of the promise ; vol. 2)
ISBN 1-57345-285-8 (hardbound)
ISBN-10 1-59038-446-6 (paperbound)
ISBN-13 978-1-59038-446-6 (paperbound)
1. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. 2. Mormons—History—Fiction.
I. Title. II. Series: Hughes, Dean, 1943– Children of the promise; vol. 2.
PS3558.U36S5 1997
813'.54—dc21 97-36179
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
Banta, Menasha, WI
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
For Gene Jacobsen
Chapter 1
Wally Thomas didn’t know how many days and nights he had been marching up the coast of the Bataan Peninsula. He was almost too numb to think, too full of pain. He tried to keep a steady pace, but the Japanese guards pressured the prisoners to keep moving, forced them close together, and in their exhaustion the men stumbled and knocked each other off stride. When that happened, the extra effort was almost overwhelming; there were times when Wally thought he would go down—and not get up—the way so many other prisoners had already done.
Each day the men started their march in the dark and continued until the sweltering heat sapped their strength. Then, early in the afternoon, they were herded off the road, crowded into tight groups and made to sit almost on top of each other. They tried to sleep in this congested condition, but Wally never felt rested. Along the way, he had sneaked a few drinks of water from the flowing wells near the road, and now and then he had been able to snatch a stalk of sugar cane to chew on. This had been his only nourishment, and he thought it had been six days now since he had eaten—but it might have been longer. He simply couldn’t keep track of time anymore.
When the march had started on this particular morning, Wally’s friend Barney had not been able to get to his feet.
Wally had lifted him, but Barney had sunk to his knees again. “I can’t do it,” he said. “Just leave me here.”
“The guards will kill you,” Wally told him.
“I don’t care.”
Wally knew what Barney meant. The fatigue hardly felt worth fighting. Besides, the guards seemed intent on pushing the men until all of them died. More were dropping all the time. Ahead of the Americans were the Filipino troops, and Wally had seen their bodies by the road, bloating in the sun. One day he had been at the front of the Americans and had watched what was happening to the Filipinos. When a man would lag behind or collapse, the guards would run him through with a bayonet or shoot him in the head. Wally tried to sta
y in the middle of his own group now—so he wouldn’t have to see what was happening ahead and so he wouldn’t be in danger of falling behind. He was marching with a large group of men—maybe a couple of hundred—and he liked the idea of having plenty of them around him.
“Hang on for another day, Barney,” Wally pled. “They’ll have to feed us, sooner or later.”
“No. They’re starving us to death on purpose.” Barney had already shed a lot of weight. He had tightened his belt until his trousers were gathered into pleats around his middle, and his face was so drawn, his beard so long, that it was hard for Wally to think of him as the same man he had known since their days together at Clark Field. He was still holding Barney by the arm, but the big man was folding, and Wally didn’t have the strength to hold him much longer.
“Help me,” Wally said to the men around him. “We have to keep him on his feet.”
The men had become increasingly silent as the march had continued. At first the guards had enforced the silence, but gradually words had become an unwanted exertion. Jack Norland and Warren Hicks, who always stayed close to Wally, stepped up to Barney, and the three pulled him upright. “You can do it,” Jack said. “Just hold out today and see what happens.”
Barney didn’t answer, but he stayed on his feet. When the guards shouted and began to push, the prisoners shuffled ahead until they were able to spread out a little and take longer strides. Barney trudged along with them, but he was breathing heavily already. That was not a good sign.
Wally heard someone say, “Miller didn’t get up.”
Miller was one of the men who had become sick. Dysentery had begun to take its toll. Puddles of water lay along the way, and some of the men, too thirsty to resist, had been scooping it up in their hands and drinking it. Others warned them to wait for a chance to get water at wells or streams, but the temptation had been too much, and those who had drunk the stagnant water were beginning to pay for it.
Part of the problem was that all the men had been weak when the march had begun. They had lived on short rations for several weeks. The Japanese had attacked the Philippines on the same day they had bombed Pearl Harbor. Under the direction of General MacArthur, the American and Filipino troops had withdrawn into the Bataan Peninsula and tried to hold out until help could arrive. Without proper food and weapons, however—and with the numbers against them—it had been only a matter of time until they had been overrun by the Japanese. In April of 1942, over seventy-five thousand men in the Peninsula had been taken captive, about twelve thousand of them Americans, and now the Japanese were marching all the prisoners to a destination known only to the guards. There was no telling how much longer the torture would continue.
No one said another word about Corporal Miller. Deaths were happening so often now that it was impossible to muster much emotion. Besides, each man had enough to do to concentrate on his own survival.
“I need water,” Barney said, his voice a hoarse gasp.
“I know. We all do. But wait until light. And wait until we find a well.”
The guards seemed to think only of moving the men ahead, and so they never allowed anyone to step off the road. If a man were caught going after water or sugar cane, he was beaten to death or stabbed with a bayonet. And yet, strangely, if those same guards saw men chewing sugar cane as they marched, they seemed not to care; so the danger was in being caught off the road. The vast numbers of prisoners could not all be watched, but Japanese soldiers were scattered all along the route, and no one knew where they might be.
The first light was beginning to break when the men finally came to a flowing well. The water spilled into a little pond and then dribbled across the road. Wally heard someone say, “Water ahead,” and he looked to see that a couple of men had stepped off the road and were filling their cups or canteens.
“I’ll try to get us some,” Wally said to Barney. Wally still had his mess kit cup, which he carried in a little mosquito net. He got the cup out and edged his way to the left side of the road. He looked up and down the line, but he could see no guards. Many of the men were stepping to the water and then moving quickly back into the lines. In the half light, Wally could see that some were taking big chances—staying at the water, taking a drink and then refilling—or trying to fill a whole canteen. One man had dropped onto his knees and was scooping handfuls of water into his mouth.
Wally waited. The men were moving slowly now, crowding toward the water and waiting for a chance. This was dangerous. A guard could spot the slowdown and hurry to the area. Wally felt his own panic. He wanted to get water for Barney, but he was also desperate for a drink himself.
As the men crushed forward, Wally finally got his turn. He stepped more quickly than he thought himself capable, and he plunged his cup into the water. He drank the whole cupful in two long gulps and then filled the cup again. Just then he heard someone whisper, “Guard!”
Wally jumped back to the road, and as he did, most of the water spilled. He handed the cup to Barney, who grabbed it, threw his head back, and tried to get all that was left. “That’s not enough,” he gasped. He bolted toward the water.
Wally grabbed Barney, pulled the cup from his hands, and tried to muscle him back into the middle of the crowd. But Barney twisted his shoulders and slipped past Wally, who had no strength to hold the big man. Barney strode to the water, dropped to his knees, and plunged his hands into the water. Wally slipped to the edge of the line of men but stayed on the road, and then he looked both ways. He was about to go after Barney when he saw guards hurrying up the side of the road.
Barney had gotten a drink and was after another. “Barney!” Wally whispered.
But it was too late. The guard raced forward and slammed the butt of his rifle into the back of Barney’s head. Barney grunted and fell on his chest, his face in the little pond. Then the guard spun the rifle and plunged the bayonet into Barney’s back. Wally heard a cracking sound as a rib must have broken, and he heard a quick, sharp cry of pain as Barney’s head jerked upward, out of the water. But someone was pulling Wally back into the line of men and then shoving him toward the middle of the group.
And that was that. Barney was gone now, and Wally was still alive. The Japanese soldier was shouting violently, warning the men in words they didn’t understand but in tones that were not difficult to decipher.
Wally tried to think about Barney—about the days they had spent together in Manila when Wally had first arrived in the Philippines in 1940. Wally had been away from his Mormon parents for the first time and had tried his wings a little; he hadn’t considered it a great sin to indulge himself in a few beers with his new friends from his Army Air Corps squadron. Wally tried to draw on those memories now. He wanted to feel some grief, but the buzzing continued in his head, the ache in his stomach, the overwhelming exhaustion. “Bless him, Father,” Wally prayed, and in his own mind, it was a kind of funeral. He knew of nothing else he could do.
Wally waited for a time, and then as the full light of day came on, he spotted Warren and Jack ahead of him. He worked his way past a few men to get to them.
“Did you guys get some water?” Wally asked them.
“No.”
“How are you doing?”
“Okay,” Warren said. “We’ll get some next time.”
But Jack said, “I’ve got to get something soon.”
He meant more than water; he needed food. Wally knew that Jack was more on the edge than Warren or Wally and that they had to do something to keep him going.
The dust was deep on the road, and the shuffling men kicked it up until it filled the air like smoke, which only added to the choking heat and the grimy discomfort. The wooded area to the left—the thick jungle and the rising hills—were lush with spreading banyan trees, palms, and the dense growth of ferns in the shadows, but the closer the jungle was to the road, the thicker was the humidity. The screech of monkeys in the trees, the cries of birds, were mere background sounds that Wally rarely noticed. Out
to the right, the east, lay the waters of Manila Bay, sometimes visible to the men. The water looked tantalizing, inviting, but it was not worth thinking about—just a blue-green patch in the unreachable distance.
Several times along the way the prisoners marched past severed heads hoisted on poles or hanging from trees. At one point a disemboweled Filipino soldier had been draped, backward, over a barbed-wire fence. These depredations were clearly intended as warnings to those who left the road, but they hardly made a difference anymore. A severed head was no more gruesome than a swelling body, baking in the sun.
Wally almost never looked at anyone. The hollowness of the men’s eyes, the wasted, dirty faces, were all an ugly reflection of himself. It was better to stay within himself and not see the death in others’ eyes.
“Father in Heaven, help me,” Wally kept saying. “Please help all of us. Let there be some food today.”
He had been praying since that first night of the march, when he had realized that the Japanese had no apparent plans to feed the prisoners. When he was younger, he would have concluded that the Lord was not listening, that his prayers had not been answered. But that was not what he felt now. He was still alive. He was putting one foot in front of the other. He would make it through this day. His strength was coming from somewhere—whether he was worthy to get help or not. All Wally’s life he had been too quick to give up. His father had called him a quitter once, and that statement had hurt him as few things had in his life—partly because he suspected it was true. But he was not quitting now, and so he felt grateful he had made it this far.
He also tried to concentrate on another source of strength: his family. Wally’s father was a stake president in Sugar House, on the south end of the Salt Lake Valley, in Utah. Wally knew his family would certainly be praying for him, and he knew they would all suffer if he were to die. He thought how he would feel if something happened to one of his brothers or sisters, and he told himself he couldn’t let them down.
