They spent only one night in Bilibid, marching down to the docks the next day and boarding a ship, formerly a U.S. ship, SS Erie, and now Erie Maru. Loading one thousand men into an eight-thousand-ton freighter already full with barrels of aviation gasoline led to the usual orders for the POWs to squeeze themselves into tight confines belowdecks. When the ship pulled away from the dock, the guards relaxed. Shifty and his friends Mike Dobervich and Jack Hawkins worked their way back on deck. They climbed onto the top of large rice sacks, with fresh air and a modicum of room. It was immediately decided that one of them would remain there at all times to protect the space from other POWs. They had found a space that improved their chances of survival ever so slightly. They would fight to keep it.

THE BATTLES RAGED DAILY AROUND THE #4 GUN SQUAD. TO THE SOUTH, THE ARMY had fought off another banzai attack and killed sixty- five, capturing one POW. To the west, at the Matanikau, the marines had killed eight hundred to nine hundred and taken no prisoners. This latest struggle for the Matanikau had, according to Deacon's calculations, nearly equaled in ferocity their Battle of Hell's Point, but it had only lasted eight hours, whereas the 2/1 had fought for sixteen hours. Shells from the big artillery guns on both sides swished over their heads by the hour.

Sid Phillips and Deacon hiked to the wreckage of a downed Zero. They "dug out part of the pilot's body." Deacon took the pilot's cigarette case. Sid found a coin in his pocket. It wasn't much of a haul, but it had been something to do other than waiting and watching. Mail call came that day. The return of a fairly regular mail service encouraged all of them to write home more. It was around this time that Sid wrote his friend Eugene Sledge back in Mobile. "Don't join anything," Sid advised him, "not even the Boy Scouts or the Salvation Army."

A working party went to the airfield and the beach and returned to the #4 gun squad with a load of chow, chocolate, and gossip. The navy boys at the field had boasted of sinking "three battlewagons, fourteen destroyers, two transports, six cruisers, two aircraft carriers and one aircraft tender." More mail was expected, more IJN ships were expected, and the First Marines were departing November 11. After reading his copies of the Mobile newspaper, Sid let the others read them. Everyone was in a good mood because they were going home soon.

MICHEEL RESPONDED TO THE CONSTANT TENSION BY EATING. "I MADE THE MESS hall every chance I could get because I was losing weight like mad. I had the trots. It's amazing I could make the flights and never have any problem, but the minute I get out of the airplane I had to run." He kept his strength up by eating, but the combination of physical and mental exhaustion dropped his weight to 127. He found himself hoping he'd get off Cactus soon and back on a carrier.

It was about this time that Dick Mills, who had gone down near Russell Island, returned. Mike took one look at his friend and realized Dick looked better than he did. "So I asked him how he gained so much weight. He said, 'I had chicken every day.' " Whatever concern Mike had had for him evaporated. Dick had obviously been well cared for. At the ops tent, Dick advised his friends that if they went down, not to kick off their boots as they had been told. They would need their boots to climb out of the rocky shoals. Dick said he had cut his feet. Having endured three weeks of constant strain on the Canal, Mike had lost about twenty pounds. He just could not take this advice too seriously. He started teasing Dick about his crash, telling everyone Dick had gone "cuckoo and . . . shot off all his prop."

Of all of the pressures Bombing Six faced, the enemy's artillery drove them crazy. It had become known as Pistol Pete, even though the IJA had several big 150mms. Pistol Pete could fire at them at all times, day and night. Although "he" dueled with the marine artillery and sought out troop concentrations, Pistol Pete obviously enjoyed shooting at planes during their most vulnerable moments, during takeoff and landing. The sporadic fire and excellent camouflage had so far prevented anyone from locating the gun, but a five-inch field piece was too big to be ignored.

One of the Bombing Six pilots came up with an idea. "Let's see if we can get that guy to shoot at us. We'll take a plane up there and circle over the top like you're looking for him, see if he'll shoot at you, and then we'll have the attack airplanes over here watching. As soon as he fires, they've got him spotted, they'll attack him." It was worth a try. Mike agreed to be the decoy. As he had done for some time, he took whichever rear seat gunner agreed to go. Airman Spires volunteered. When the other airplanes got in position, Mike started making passes over the general area, west of the Matanikau River. It worked. "Every time I'd come at him it was okay and then as soon as I'd turn away, POW! He'd let go. My rear gunner would say, 'He's shooting at us! He's shooting at us!' " Each time, Mike got on the radio to his friends and asked, "Did you see that?" and each time came the reply: "No . . . try it again." Mike had been circling up there almost an hour when he finally heard, "We've got him." Mike cleared out and the others bombed and strafed the area. When he landed, the rear seat gunner told him he quit. "I'm not flying anymore! You're making a guinea pig out of me!" As it turned out, Spires did not mean it. He flew again. As for Pistol Pete, he was out of commission for about five days.

Bombing Six had the watch one evening in early November when word came of another ship unloading in the Japanese area. The pilots and their leaders had had it with the Tokyo Express avoiding them by sneaking in at night and getting away before dawn. Dauntlesses had begun to attack the Tokyo Express at night by glide bombing--making an approach decidedly less steep than a dive--when possible. A few days before, on November 2, three Dauntlesses had taken off at dusk to chase three enemy destroyers, which the IJN used to bring in men and supplies because of their speed. None of the aircraft had returned.¹⁷⁵ Ray Davis decided it looked possible on this night, and to prove it, he would make the first run.

As Mike checked out his Dauntless, preparing to make the second run, he looked into the dark sky above him. He had flown night missions before, one just a few days previously against a destroyer near Russell Island.¹⁷⁶ He had had some training in night flying, and had flown through plenty of bad weather. These missions depended on visibility. With a bright moon over a clear sky, he could see the horizon. Even with good light, a pilot had to rely more on the plane's instruments than on his own perception. Relying upon the altimeter, the airspeed indicator, the compass, and a few other key instruments to stay on course took concentration, experience, and steady nerves.

Flying on a night like this, though, when there was no light, scared Mike. A black sky meant no horizon, and no horizon, Mike told himself, meant "you'd get vertigo real easy. You figure you're turning, the seat of your pants tells you you're turning and you look at your gauges and you're going straight ahead." Reconciling one's senses with one's gauges often led to panic, or worse, dizziness. Lieutenant Micheel eased the plane along the taxiway and out to the end of Henderson Field. He waited for Ray to return, his engine idling.

Landing at night on a carrier demanded great skill, but glide bombing at night--on a dark night--came close to impossible. Trying to drop a bomb "on top of a black object and pull off of a black object" caused vertigo in even the most experienced pilots. Executing such a maneuver at high speed, as the pilot coped with spinning dials, sweeping needles, and the powerful impulses of his own perception, just demanded too much. In the past, men had hung flares over the target and these had made it easier to hit it, but the flares also caused the pilot to lose his sight. A flare made pulling up and flying home an even bigger challenge.

Ray's plane landed at the far end of the great runway. It rolled toward Mike, not turning onto the taxiway, until he stopped within a few feet. Ray's gunner jumped out and ran over and jumped up on Mike's wing and yelled over the idling engine, "Skipper says cancel the flight. Don't go." A wave of relief hit Mike. His guardian angel had landed on his shoulder. The two airplanes taxied back to their hardstands. Walking back to the operations tent, Ray said he had flown over the target at five thousand feet, yet "it was so dark you couldn't see the ship from the air. . . ." He concluded "it wasn't worth risking aviators. . . ." No one back at the tent questioned the decision.

ALONG WITH THEIR COMMANDING VIEW OF MUCH OF THE BATTLE, SID AND HIS friends heard all about it. The movements of units, the body count, and the number of rounds expended--a great deal of it rumor, they knew all too well. The army over in Sector Three had killed enemy troops by the thousands and had not only pulled German Lugers and Samurai swords off the bodies, but the doggies were supposedly holding fencing duels with the Japanese sabers. The marines' shortwave radio had picked up enemy transmissions and it had been deduced that the enemy planes that had flown in so low a week earlier had been sent to land on the empire's new airport--Henderson Field. The news was met with hoots and catcalls of "Too bad, Tojo." Transcripts of the interrogation of four Japanese POWs were circulating, though. These prisoners stated that they "wanted to quit the war and especially fighting the 'bloodthirsty' marines." Out in the harbor, the #4 gun squad could see increasing numbers of U.S. ships. On November 2, working parties unloaded seven 155mm guns, known as Long Toms; the word was the Long Toms could fire a shell ten miles.

All of the ships arriving off Lunga Point also meant that the Eighth and the Twenty-second marines were landing soon. "Rumors are we leave Sun or Mon for Tulagi--have a chemical bath--shots--New Zealand." They waited for the next big push by the enemy, who continued to send air strikes. Attempts by the Tokyo Express to reinforce its troops were now often turned back. So many Japanese ships had been sunk, Deacon joked, that Prime Minister Tojo needed "a diving bell to inspect his navy now." For the enemy troops already on the island, "Our planes run those japs crazy over on the other point, strafing and bombing." On November 7, a number of new squadrons landed at the field, including not just more Wildcats and dive-bombers, but also B-17s. The word was Guadalcanal would soon become the United States' biggest B- 17 base in the Pacific. When the radio broadcast from San Francisco announced the plans for relieving the 1st Marine Division off of Guadalcanal, it sounded to the jaded marines of the #4 gun squad "too good to be true." Another marine told them he had heard that Admiral Nimitz had been relieved of duty. Sid's squad didn't know what to believe.

THE ORDER TO MOVE OUT CAME IN THE LATE AFTERNOON ON NOVEMBER 3. THE 2/7 had encountered a large number of enemy a few miles east of the perimeter. Sergeant Basilone distributed ammo and rations, his men grabbed their gear and heavy machine guns, and they walked down from Bloody Ridge.¹⁷⁷ Instead of waiting inside the perimeter for an attack, the 1/7 would help the 2/7 take the offensive.¹⁷⁸

More than a dozen Higgins boats met the marines at Lunga Point just after six p.m. They motored eastward, toward Koli Point. The shore ran along to their right, monotonously dark. Hours passed. The officers obviously were having trouble locating the landing spot. They saw lights onshore but could not tell if it was the enemy or the 2/7. Chesty and his other officers knew they had to get out of the boats before they ran into an enemy sub or even one of the navy's torpedo boats. All the landing craft went back to Lunga Point to get reorganized. The officers radioed the 2/7 and agreed upon a light signal to give one another. The 1/7 motored back to Koli Point. Around midnight, the landing craft dumped the 1/7 on the beach near a river. After posting the guards, everyone slept on the beach.¹⁷⁹

The landing made for an inauspicious start to what Manila later called the Seventh Marines' "jap hunt."¹⁸⁰ The 1/7 and 2/7, joined by battalions of the army, spent almost three weeks chasing the enemy through the swamps and across the rivers east of Koli Point. It began with destroying the abandoned weapons and equipment they found and progressed into brief, intense firefights. They chased the IJA so far east that they walked off the maps they carried. Not having a map didn't bother Chesty in the least, so it didn't bother his men. In one of the latter skirmishes, the shrapnel from the shell of an enemy field cannon cut into the indefatigable Colonel Puller, who had been up near the front as usual, and he allowed himself to be evacuated after the crisis had passed. It was not a severe wound and it did not affect the outcome. The U.S. forces slowly boxed in the enemy force. The marine artillery, miles away inside the perimeter, ignited a firestorm inside the box. Most of the enemy escaped due to the difficulties imposed by the terrain and--according to the marines--the inefficiency of the army units.

It had taken as much brute strength as bravery to make the operation a success and the marines could be happy to have destroyed the threat. A number of days passed, though, while they waited to return to the perimeter; days spent "eating cold rations out of a box," as Manila described it, dampened their spirits.¹⁸¹ Although the recent foray had not caused many casualties in the 1/7, only 75 percent of its original men walked back up to Bloody Ridge upon their return to the perimeter. The battalion had begun to lose a lot of men to jungle diseases, like malaria, including the skipper of Charlie Company. Each man still standing had lost a great deal of weight since his arrival.

Good news awaited them back in Sector Three. They had missed another shellacking delivered by imperial warships on November 11-12. Chesty Puller had recovered as much as he was going to allow himself to recover and had taken back his command of the battalion. Another regiment of marines, the Eighth, had landed. Individual replacements had come ashore to bring the 1/7 back up to strength. Mail call had begun to be sounded with regularity. That meant the possibility of a letter to Manila from Stephen Helstowski's sister, Helen. John had gotten in touch with Helen because their correspondence brought a little something else into his life. Manila, however, convinced J.P. or Richard to write his letters to her for him.¹⁸²

Best of all, the supply ships had brought in good chow. The battalion mess served pancakes, nice big pancakes with great big piles of strawberry jam on top of them. After eighteen days of cold rations, hotcakes were a wonder.¹⁸³ Sometime during the next few days, someone discovered an enemy soldier in the chow line. The marine dungarees he wore, which had allowed him to get into line, now put his life in imminent danger as men guessed how he had come to have the clothes and helmet. They brought him before Puller, who "had him on the ground and was cursing him up and down," to no effect.¹⁸⁴ The prisoner was taken away.

SINCE THE JAPANESE HAD NOT MARKED ERIE MARU AS A POW SHIP, THE POWS hoped that a U.S. submarine would slam a torpedo into her. Any alternative, even taking their chances in the ocean, seemed preferable to further incarceration. From their perch high atop a pile of rice sacks, Shifty and Dobervich and Hawkins could tell they were sailing south and took heart. They evaluated the guards to see if they could be overpowered in a coup de main, but decided against it. They debated jumping overboard when they sailed within a mile or so of an island. They watched as the ship pulled into port on November 7 and the disembarkation began about one p.m.

The guards put the POWs' baggage with the camp's stores on the trucks and they set off. They walked through the afternoon and into the evening. Men began to fall out of the column, unable to continue. No one was allowed to stop walking. The question had to come: Was this another Bataan? Hawkins and Dobervich fell out somewhere close to midnight. Shofner and the others arrived at the camp gates at three a.m., having hiked twenty- nine kilometers.

Trucks brought in the men who had quit the march, unharmed. The first morning, Sunday, the men were given a chance to rest. A former penal colony, the POW camp still held about 150 of the original 2,000 civilian prisoners. Another 900 American POWs, officers and men who had been stationed on Mindanao, were also held there. From them they learned the camp took its name, the Davao Penal Colony, from the large city about fifty kilometers away on the coast of Mindanao, the most southern of the Philippine Islands.

The barracks were large, tin- roofed buildings with solid wood floors. Each held 250 men. At night the sleeping men crowded the floor space. No decks for sleeping had been built above them, though, so Shifty found it easier to breathe than in his last barracks. Davao also had a mess hall that seated almost half the prisoners at one time. Having a place to sit for meals and, on Sundays, worship, seemed like luxuries to the men from Cabanatuan. At the noon meal and at the evening meal the rice included cassava or camotes. There was fresh water for drinking, washing, and bathing.

At the first assembly, Major Maida shouted that he had "asked for prisoners capable of doing hard labor," but he "had been sent a batch of walking corpses."¹⁸⁵ The major informed them that all officers were required to work. The Davao Colony produced foodstuffs for Japan on several thousand acres of rich farmland around them. " The first day of each month," he ordered, the "entire American prisoner complement had to appear in military formation and salute the Japanese flag, and salute throughout the 'Rising Sun' ceremony." Major Maida, however, had made no mention of "shooting squads." Shifty knew right away that as long as the POWs worked hard and produced the required amounts of food, they would be provided enough food to become healthy once more. He had gambled and won.

THE NEW SQUADRONS ARRIVED ON CACTUS READY FOR ACTION. RAY DAVIS offered to have them fly wing on Bombing Six until they got the lay of the land. They took one flight. In the ops tent for the debriefing, Ray warned them to stay away from the floatplane base about a hundred miles away. Bombing Six had not attempted to bomb the floatplane base because they had had other priorities and because the enemy planes could be expected to fight back. Dauntlesses had not been designed for aerial combat--they had been designed to fight off an enemy fighter, to survive an attack, but not to initiate aerial combat. The new guys dismissed the warning. Mike worried they were too "rambunctious," but Ray said, "Okay, they want to go on their own, let them go on their own." Some of the new guys did not come back from their first mission. No one knew for sure what had happened. Bombing Six assumed they had gone looking for trouble.

Even with all the reinforcements, Ray decided his squadron would not slack off. "We'll fly our flights right down to the end," he declared. On November 5, Ray asked Mike to fly his wing on search up the slot and around New Georgia. As they walked out to their planes, Ray said, "When we get up to the end of that island, there's no use . . . making that dogleg through that channel. We'll just fly over the top of the mountains." Mike nodded his assent and away they went.

After flying up the slot, they made the left-hand turn over the top of New Georgia. A cloud bank obscured their vision. So Ray led them down to drop out of the clouds. When they popped out, they saw ten ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Even pulling back on the sticks, their dives took them down to where Mike felt "we were right in the middle of them." Ray dodged and jinked, Mike followed, and they flew toward the open sea. Ray got on the radio and alerted the strike force. Instead of gaining altitude and arming their bombs, Ray led Mike back to Henderson Field. Mike did not ask his skipper why they had not turned around. Ray had proven his courage so many times that Mike figured it was something else. He was still wondering when, three days later on November 8, he and Ray and the remaining members of Bombing Six boarded an R4D and started the long journey back home. They flew to Efate and then to Noumea, New Caledonia. They could relax. Their only job was to await transportation home.

UP ON THEIR HILL, SID'S SQUAD WATCHED ANOTHER ENEMY AIR STRIKE COME IN on a Wednesday afternoon, only to be met by a tremendous barrage of AA guns. So many fired, it "looked like an asphalt highway across the sky." A lot of Zeros and bombers fell prey to the dark clouds bursting around them. Then the bad news came: "the biggest jap convoy in history is three hundred miles off " and due to arrive Friday, November 13, at two thirty a.m. Deacon prayed, "Please God, give us the strength to face and overcome the enemy and gain peace." His prayers seemed to be answered the next day, when three battalions of infantry landed at Lunga. Some of the marines were also replacements, and a few made their way to the #4 gun squad. They looked like Navy Yard marines, though--men more accustomed to filing papers than firing an 81mm. All hands turned to, preparing themselves, their fortifications, and their weapons for battle. That Thursday, way out to sea, the shit hit the fan. They watched the great warships fire shells and watched the shells tear through the air for miles. The next morning, Friday, the word passed that the United States had won the battle out at sea, but the emperor had landed sixty- five thousand men eleven miles from the marine perimeter.^p

WHEN MIKE HEARD ABOUT ANOTHER BIG NAVY BATTLE RAGING IN THE WATERS off Cactus, he thought, "Oh God, we're going to get called back up there." Hours passed, then days, but the call did not come. One afternoon, Ray called his guys together. The skipper said a big decision had to be made, and rather than make it himself, he wanted all the guys to hear the options and take a vote. Option number one, they could take a passenger ship back to Pearl Harbor, then pick up another ship for the States. "Or," he said, "we can get on a Dutch freighter and go back straight to the States." The freighter would take a lot longer to get home and it would travel unescorted. The pilots weren't worried about enemy submarines, though. To a man they "were afraid if we got bumped off at Pearl, we'd turn around and come right back down to where we were. So we said, 'We'll go all the way to the States.' "

After the vote, Ray went down to COMSOPAC to make the arrangements. New orders arrived for each man of Bombing Six. But they all began the same. They were to report aboard the freighter Tabinta for transportation to the West Coast. Upon arrival, they would report to the commander of the "nearest Naval District." They set sail on the sixteenth. At four p.m. Mike heard an unfamiliar signal over the ship's PA system. It heralded, he found out, the daily liquor ration. He had his choice between a can of warm beer and a shot of spirits. This came as a happy surprise to the weary men of the Bombing Six. The U.S. Navy banned alcohol on its ships, but not the Dutch.

That evening the men were seated for dinner and had an even better treat. "They gave us fresh salad. And then they gave us spaghetti and meatballs. And that was delicious. We hadn't had anything like that, so we stuffed ourselves with spaghetti and meatballs. Then the stewards came around and said, 'How would you like your steak, sir?' 'Well,' we said, 'we're too full to eat the steak. We'll get it tomorrow.' So we did."

Since Tabinta made only eleven knots, heading east across the great ocean all by herself, the pilots settled in for a long trip. Unlike a carrier, though, the ship did not go to general quarters every day. Day after day, Bombing Six had all the peace and quiet they could stand, and a ration of liquor every afternoon at four p.m.

WITHOUT WARNING, A GUARD BROUGHT SHIFTY INTO A ROOM. HE WAS GOING TO be questioned. This was always a risky situation for a POW. A Japanese naval officer asked him to be at ease, offered a cigarette, and asked if Shofner had ever known any Japanese naval officers. Shofner replied, "Sure, I have quite a few friends in the Japanese Navy and I've found them to be all gentlemen."

"Where?"

"At Shanghai." The officer admitted he had not visited Shanghai. Shofner complimented the officer on his command of English and then, sensing an opening, he started to play upon the IJN's disdain for the IJA by looking his questioner square in the eye and telling him all U.S. forces wanted to be POWs of the Imperial Japanese Navy because they knew them to be gentlemen. It worked. The interrogator agreed and soon sent him away.

The next time he went in for questioning, he had already heard from another POW that the camp's leadership wanted to know about each prisoner's skills and training. Shifty, who had seen enough of the camp to know that being a worker in the fields would allow him the chance to steal lots and lots of food, wanted no part of reassignment. By the time he walked into the room, he was ready.

"What do you do?"

"Well, I'm a Marine." The officer clarified himself. He wanted to know if the prisoner had any specialized training. Shifty knew a good liar wouldn't just say, "I have no education," nor would he provide a reason to be reassigned. He replied, "I graduated in banking. I [am] capable of operating a bank." There was little danger of the guards asking him to manage their accounts.

"What else do you do?"

"I'm a football player."

"Other qualifications?"

"That's my two qualifications."

"Get out."

Plenty of work awaited him and the others. The Davao Penal Colony ran a plantation of several thousand acres. There were about seventy- five acres of bananas, a large portion of papaya, citrus fruit, avocados, jackfruit, coconuts, and other tropical fruits. Several hundred acres grew grains. Herds of carabao and cows had to be tended, and the eggs from ten thousand chickens harvested.

MORE RUMORS ABOUT THE GREAT VICTORY OVER THE ENEMY FLEET CONTINUED filtering up the hill to Sid's squad the next day. According to the scuttlebutt, eleven imperial warships had been sunk, including three battleships. The transports had been forced to beach, whereupon the fleet and the navy planes had savaged the troops in them. By Sunday, U.S. ships in the slot were trying to pick up the survivors out of the water. This idea met with derision in the mortar platoon. If the situation was reversed, would the IJN be picking our men up? "No" was their emphatic answer.

In another surprising gesture, two enemy officers and two of their enlisted men who had been captured were released on November 19. They were asked to go negotiate the surrender of the remaining troops. Airplanes dropped messages over the enemy positions. The marines and the army now had 137 pieces of artillery, and before they laid waste to the enemy areas, they were giving the enemy a chance.

The IJA ignored the peace offering, so the fighting continued. While enemy planes and enemy snipers continued to cause casualties, the great batteries of artillery owned the area around the marine perimeter. The batteries of marine artillery made a large- scale ground offensive against them all but impossible. Sid's mortar position, being well behind the line, had grown relatively safe. So he watched and he waited. The squad sang their favorite songs most nights; they called it a "jam session."

A rumor made the rounds that two Japanese colonels, who had known Colonel Cates, the CO of the First Marines, before the war, had radioed him. "If we catch you we won't have any mercy, although we were once friends." This struck everyone as odd, since every day more men and supplies and planes and equipment were arriving, whereas the marines had known for some time that the Japanese were "on their last legs." Cates supposedly had radioed back, "Remember Hell's Point." On the same day, November 23, Cates announced that they would be leaving soon. The rumor of celebrating Christmas in Wellington, New Zealand, after a brief stop in Espiritu Santos, now seemed possible. Bottles of whiskey had been shipped in for officers, some of whom proceeded to get drunk and fight, whereas the enlisted men got better chow, including steak and eggs.

A few days later, another enemy air raid came over, killing six and wounding nineteen. The enemy infantry, however, endured a rain of artillery shells and air strikes. Seventy enemy soldiers, out of water, tried to surrender. A sergeant "shot them down like the damn dogs they are," Deacon heard. The atrocity elicited only a statement of fact. " They extend no mercy to us, so need not expect it."

UP ON BLOODY RIDGE, MANILA'S MEN HAD GOTTEN A LITTLE ORNERY. THE 1/7 HAD decided they had done their share of offensive work and would leave the chore of long patrols to the fresh army battalions. In the meantime, they manned their line and waited for the day when they left this awful place. In late November, Chesty signed Basilone's promotion to platoon sergeant.¹⁸⁶ Manila, who had experienced the prewar years as both a soldier and a marine, would have been delighted to see the war greatly speed up the promotions process. A few days later, an attack of malaria overcame him so badly he was sent to the hospital.

THE YEAR 1942 HAD SEEMED AN ETERNITY TO EUGENE SLEDGE.¹⁸⁷ MOST OF HIS friends, including his best friend, Sid Phillips, had gone off to war. The nearest he had gotten to the action was Marion Military Institute, a junior college a few hundred miles north of Mobile. Beginning in September, Cadet Sledge had chosen chemistry as his major. Although he wore a uniform and observed the forms of military organization, his enthusiasm soured. He wanted to make his career in the Marine Corps. Further study, even though it included a class in military science, seemed pointless. He needed his parents' permission to enlist and he pursued it relentlessly. During the Thanksgiving break, he at last wrung a concession from them. Dr. and Mrs. Sledge agreed to sign the consent form if Eugene agreed to attend the USMC's new V-12 program. The V-12 program would give him a college education, which they wanted, and it put him on a path to becoming an officer. His father, a leading physician known across the South, secured his son a place in the program.

After he returned to Marion Military, Eugene Sledge volunteered for the Marine Corps' reserve on December 3, 1942. The enlistment contract to "serve in the Marine Corps in time of war" required him to "solemnly swear" to "bear true allegiance to the United States of America"; to "serve them honestly and faithfully against all enemies whomsoever"; and to "obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me. . . ." Being a reader, Sledge read every word with growing delight. This was exactly what he wanted. He signed his full name, Eugene Bondurant Sledge, and received a promotion to private first class. A few weeks later, he underwent the standard physical examination. In all respects, the examiner found him normal: Private First Class Sledge had 20/20 vision, brown hair and brown eyes, stood a shade under five feet eight and weighed 132 pounds. Passing the physical did not bring change, however. His course work would continue until he entered the V-12 program in the summer.

TABINTA DOCKED IN SAN FRANCISCO ON DECEMBER 6, 1942. ITS PASSENGERS disembarked the next day, December 7. Lieutenant Micheel had survived one year of war. The first thing to do was get paid. So he and the others visited the bursar of the Twelfth Naval District. Mike picked up $220, which included his $6 per day travel allowance. He and Ray and the others had a few days of fun in the city, though it was crowded. Mike preferred the quiet hotel bars and stayed away from the rowdy places. Reporting to the Alameda Air Station on the tenth, each pilot got in line to be processed. The first thing Mike received was his orders home on leave for thirty days. He told the navy where he'd spend it, at home, and the navy let him know what he could say and what he could not say while there.

As Mike made it down toward the end of the table, a man asked, "Where do you want to go next?"

"What's your options?"

"Well, you can go to the same squadron or you can go to another squadron; you can be a Landing Signal Officer; or you can do something else." Mike could feel the men behind him crowd him--everyone was anxious to get out of here and get home. He said, "I'll just go with the same group." His preference was duly recorded and he was informed his next assignment would be mailed to his home. As he was walking away, it irritated him that he had had no time to consider his options, much less learn anything about the other choices.

He took a train back to Davenport, Iowa, wearing his dress navy uniform. Along with the welcome from his parents and family and all the uncles and aunts came interviews with the local newspaper and an invitation to speak at the Rotary Club. It surprised and pleased him to find out he "was a big hero when I got home then because I'd been in the Battle of Midway." He accepted several invitations to speak at local clubs and answer questions about what was going on out there. His audiences would have soon understood that they were not going to get much about his role. Mike had a way of turning aside such topics. He told them the marines would win the battle for Guadalcanal if they got the support they needed. When asked if he had gotten a hit on a carrier, he'd say he didn't know, he never had turned around to look.

One afternoon he went to visit the parents of his friend John Lough. They lived across the river from his house. He had met them briefly when he and John had shared rides home during their flight training. It must have been very difficult for Mike to walk up the path to the front door, and even more difficult for John's parents to receive him. The Loughs had known of their son's disappearance for six months. They had received the telegram informing them that he went missing in action on June 4, 1942. The telegram said they would be informed as soon as more information became available.

Mike told them some of the things they needed to hear. During the launch on June 4 a malfunction in the plane ahead of John's had forced it to be struck, so by happenstance, John had flown in Mike's section that day.¹⁸⁸ Three planes made up a section: Lieutenant ( Junion Grade) Norman West led the section. Mike flew the number-two wingman spot, and then John was the number three. They and their gunners had launched off the flight deck of USS Enterprise to stop a gigantic Japanese fleet from invading the island of Midway. Mike would have told them of the long flight out to maximum range, of a chance flash of white wake that had led them to the enemy. None of the enemy's carriers had been damaged when Scouting Six arrived overhead. Using his hands to illustrate how a Dauntless dove, he said, " The section leader went first, I went second; John came over here and went third." The last step Mike had made before pushing over had been to salute his friend John. " That was the last I ever saw of him."

Mike explained that the Zeros had not been a problem for him as they had for others. The big problem had been getting back to the ship. He had landed with enough gas "for one more trip around the carrier." A lot of the planes behind his had failed to return. His friend Bill Pitman had been back there and had had a large hole taken out of his wing by a Zero. "So they may have all gone down someplace. I don't really know." He assured them the navy had searched the ocean for days and days with their big PBY flying boats. And then the story came to an end. He had told them the truth. Never much of a talker anyway, Mike struggled to find the words. "John . . . had . . . the same training I had, had the same ability I did, and it just was bad luck." For their part, the Loughs refused to accept the loss. The navy had listed Ensign Lough as MIA, missing in action. They maintained their hope that their son had gone down "on one of those islands out there . . ." in the Pacific. John would make it back to them.

ONE LAST GREAT RAIN POURED DOWN UPON THEM, FLOODING THEIR BUNKERS. Water rose over their beds in their shacks, sweeping mud into their weapons and equipment. The #4 gun squad spent the morning of December 3 shoveling it all out. When the Eighth Marines arrived, though, they turned it over, grabbed their gear, and departed for Kukum. Hoping for an immediate departure, they waited a day before setting up their tents. Of course, such things rarely happened in the United States Marine Corps. For days on end, they loafed, read mail, and played cards. The news about the battle continued to reach them, and they could certainly hear the artillery and the airplanes, but they paid more attention to who had left and who was on deck to leave. Units from the Fifth Marines boarded ship and departed for Espiritu Santos and then on to Brisbane, Australia.

Deacon made sergeant and moved out of Sid's tent and in with other NCOs. Sid got put on another working party. On December 11, he and W.O. were out on a barge, unloading supplies to bring into shore, when an enemy air strike came in. The supply ship cast off the barge "and left them to their mercy." So he watched the air raid as a sitting duck in a channel of water so loaded with sunken ships it had become known as Iron Bottom Sound. After the all clear, they got a tow back to the dock and learned how funny the rest of the mortar platoon thought they were.

After two weeks, on December 17 they learned their departure was another nine days away, so they set up their tents. Two days later, the officers read off the embarkation orders. The assembled marines of the 2/1, like all the units of the 1st Marine Division, were told that no member of the First Marine Regiment, upon departure, "will have or keep in his possession any article of Army clothing or any item of Army equipment that has not been properly issued him by an authorized Marine Corps Quartermaster representative, or for which he does not hold a proper receipt of purchase."¹⁸⁹ Read to the men at three separate assemblies, the order made clear that all of the M1 Garand rifles marines were carrying around were not getting on the ship with them.

Sid and his friends paid a visit to the division cemetery the next day. They walked back to Hell's Point, along the banks of the Tenaru River. According to their count, in five months they had endured 257 air raids, 163 shellings, and nine banzai attacks. They watched a movie that night and boarded ship the next day, December 21.^q

DEPENDING UPON THE TYPE OF WORK DETAIL, THE WORKDAY BEGAN AT EITHER six a.m. or eight a.m. at the Davao Penal Colony. Lunch break lasted for two hours. The workday ended about five p.m. Shifty's first job had been moving rock for a railroad bed. He found it curious that the Japanese not only had so little in the way of machinery that they expected to handle this problem with teams of men, but also that they were so obviously unfamiliar with machinery. When the engine of the train broke down, the guards forced the men to move it back to the station. Pushing, pulling, heaving, Shifty thought this was a stupid waste of energy.

At least he received more fuel for the hard work than the handfuls of rice at Cabanatuan. Along with pieces of a varied selection of fruit, including exotic ones like jackfruit, the POWs also enjoyed a meat stew once or twice a week. Beyond the meals served in the mess hall, many men working in the fields supplemented their diet with whatever came to hand. The prisoners still ate a lot of rice, though. A few weeks after their arrival from Cabanatuan, another group arrived. These men, both American and Filipino, had been captured on Mindanao and surrounding islands. The new guys arrived in fine condition and it made Shofner's group feel like "scare-crows." ¹⁹⁰ As the weeks passed, though, some of the men--particularly the younger men--began to feel their strength return.

Work ceased on December 24, when the POWs received two days off. In the mess hall, a group of Americans and Filipinos provided some entertainment. The Filipinos gave all Americans a small casaba cake. The Japanese officers gave each POW a package of Southern Cross cigarettes. Not to be outdone, the U.S. officers--army, navy, and marine--pooled some of the money they had to give each man a Christmas present of one peso, enough money to buy tobacco through the black market.

During the party, Jack Hawkins told Mike Dobervich that he did not intend to spend another Christmas in prison. The subject had been discussed on and off since their first meeting with Austin Shofner in Cabanatuan, but when they told Shifty of their decision, they delivered it with a new seriousness. Escape meant survival. It meant freedom and the pride of being one's own man. After all they had been through, though, another reason was just as important. "Our mission," as Shifty stated it, "was to reach Allied territory and report the treatment of Japanese prisoners of war so that something could be done to save the lives of many American prisoners."

While the mission's objectives could be clearly stated, the method of reaching Allied territory, which meant Australia, fifteen hundred miles away, seemed irrational. They would have to steal a plane or a ship. A plane seemed preferable, since the Imperial Japanese Navy might catch up to a wayward ship. The one thing they had in their favor: they had heard from the other Americans that the Empire of Japan controlled mostly port cities. Great swaths of the wild backcountry of Mindanao remained unoccupied.

The three marines shelved the plan and focused on the team. The team would be comprised of men with requisite skills: a navigator, a mechanic, a pilot, a medic if not a doctor, and someone who knew Mindanao to serve as their guide. The three marines would be responsible for any combat. Every member needed to be in top physical condition. Supplies and equipment also had to be gathered and safely stored. The details of the actual day of escape had to be worked through with great care.

Shifty knew an army pilot who had fought with great bravery in the air war over Bataan, Captain William "Ed" Dyess, and approached him. He suggested another pilot as well as an aviation mechanic. Dyess and his two army air corps men had been in the Philippines for a month before the war began; the three marines, a week. None of them knew anything about the island of Mindanao or how to get from it to Australia. They knew they were ready to think through all of the problems, prepare themselves to the extent possible, and go.