Evening star., 1943-06-22
CHAPTER XIII.

surrendered, thousands of our
troops clung to the hope that help
was on the way.
Even when the JapS broke
through on the east coast and their
eirplanes and artillery were pound
Ing the main road and the airfields,
and Gen. King was going forward
under a white flag to surrender.
most of our troops didn't give up.
They walked back along the dusty
road to Mariveles, now jammed with
wrecked or fuelleSs trucks and jeepS
and artillery mounts.
They still hoped that by some
miracle our planes would dive out
of the sky and check the advancing
Japs and give us a chance to re-
organize at the last minute and
start to win. Failing that, they
hoped to get to Corregidor and hold
there until help came. For most of
them MariveleS was the end of the
road.
On Corregidor, too, they held on
to their hope to the last day. All
they knew, when the end came. was
that help had not reached them.
They did not know. and would not
have believed, that no help was
going to be sent. Some one thought
it couldn't be done.
Sometime shortly after Decem-
ber 8, perhaps Immediately, the
decision was reached in Washing
ton that the Philippines could not
be reinforced, even with airplanes,
and that Macarthur and his men
would have to do the best they could
with whatever they had on hand.
Some time in January it was
decided that even though the
Philippines were lost some effort
should be made to send medical
supplies and ammunition to the
forces holding out in Bataan May
be if We had been in Washington
we would have seen the reasons for
that decision.
Anyway, the decision was made
and Brig. Gen. Patrick j. Hurley,
former Secretary of War, was
called to Washington. The Presi-
dent told Hurley h chad a job for
him.
Pat took the job and also the
funds that the President gave him
and got in an airplane and flew
across the Pacific. He went to Aus
tralia and flew up north to Port
Darwin and then over to Java.
Hurley chartered five ships and
loaded them with .50-caliber am
munition, hand grenades, 3-inch
antiaircraft shells, aspirin, band
ages, quinine and sulfanilimide.
and some canned goods Two of
the ships were lost near Darwin
Harbor when the JapS staged their
first big raid of the war there,
catching us by surprise and inf1ict-
ing heavy damage on big convoy.
The three others all got through to
the Philippines. That meant that
all three ships that started, made
it. There may have been other
ships too. because Secretary Stim-
son, on the basis of information
given to him, announced after the
fall of Bataan that for every ship
that got through two ships were
sunk.
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Hurley mounted some .50-caliber
guns on his three ships Tor protec-
ton against dive bomberS and got
American soldiers to man the guns.
The ships crews were given bonuses.
but it would be unfair to believe that
they made the trip in order to make
money. Nobody who saw the ships
sail northward thought the crews
would live to spend their bonuses.
Those ships made the trip just
at the time when huge japanese
eXpeditionary forces in transports
and warships were coming south
through MaScasSar and Molucca
Straits.
While those ships were on their
way running north to the Philip
pines, Macarthur had already set
up a BLOCKADE running" organiZa-
ton functioned because in the first
three months of the war there was
not any fixed japanese blockade of
the Philippines. Occasionally the
Japs sent a warShip into Philippine
waters.
Macarthur had about a dozen
ships which had been engaged in
inter-iSland trade before the war
and which had survived the bomb
ingS None of them was armed The
largest was the LegaSpi, modern
3000-ton passenger and freight ship
The others ranged in size down to
10 and 30 foot motor launches, but
most of them were fairly roomy with
three or four decks.
Macarthur sent one of the ships
out through Corregidors mine fields
one night late in January. 1t was
the Don Esteban. Two weeks later,
with the Philippine Army's three
Q-boats guiding it, it came back
into Manila Bay. 1t had been to
1loilo and it brought back sorely
needed supplies; rice and a little
fruit and some medicine.
Then Macarthur sent the Legaspi
and it got through. Then the Prin-
ceSa made it.
When the first boats came back
1t was tremendous uplift to the
morale of the men in Corregidor and
Bataan. The reports of what they
brought were exaggerated. The ar
rival of one small ship was enough
to cause rumorS that our convoy at
last had arrived Soldiers at the
Bataan front refused to believe that
only one ship had come in.
Capt. Arthur Wermuth got mad
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