Evening star., 1945-10-22
Gen. Woinwrieht's Own Story:
Shells Shake MoInto Tunnel Hospital, Refuge
For 900 Wounded Defenders Of Coreqidor
(Sirteenth OF Series.l
BY GEN. JONATHAN M.
WAINWRIGHT.


BY the middle of the tragically
unequal artillery duel with the
Japs, during the fight for Corregidor,
which lasted from the fall of
Bataan on April 9 until May 6,
1912, I itched to use our two best
guns on the pitiless enemy.
These were our 12-inch modern
rifles, two of the last guns with
which we could defend ourselves.
But the Jap artillery batteries
that were assaulting us from the
tip of Bataan, less than 2 miles
away, and from Cavite, miles
across Manila Bay to the south OF
us, were almost impossible to locate
We had no artillery observation,
as had they. Yet, just to have shot
those two 12-inch guns of ours at
the wisps of smokeless powder haze
which sometimes drifted up from
the Jap gun positions would have
helped our morale.
But it would have been fool
hardy to expose the positions of our
two best guns. We fired them only
at night, for they were to be our last
defense in the heavy gun line.
Thanks Gen. Kilbourne.
Malinta Tunnel saved thousands
of us on Corregidor, and often
we had cause to thank old Gen.
Charles Kilbourne for having had
the foresight to build it back in the
early l930s. With an eye to long
distant war with Japan, Gen. Kill
bourne ordered the tunnel dug
through Malinta Hill and sealed in
such way as to enable it to take
beating of the kind it was forced
to take decade later.
The tunnel is about 750 feet long,
running east and west, and at its
center it has a 100-foot thick ceiling
of concrete, rock and vegetation. 1t
is perhaps Is feet wide and Is feet
high through the main portion. Of
its main wing run a number of
laterals, one of them emerging from
the north side of the hill and an
other, not completed, coming out
on the south side. The other lat
erals are much more shallow. They
served as storerooms before the war
but became hospital, MacArthur's
Office, a minute bedroom and sit
ting room for Macarthur, and were
put to other uses.
1t was damp in the tunnel and
the ventilation often was bad. The
living quarters I took over from
Macarthur consisted of two rooms,
each 7x9, whose rough walls and
rounded ceiling were painted white
by paint borrowed from the hospital.
Handled 1000 Wounded.
BY April Is the tunnel hospital
had been Expanded until it was
handling 1000 wounded men. It
made you want to weep to see them
in there, trapped, while the place
shook from the bombing and she'll
ing outside. More than once the
tunnels shaky lighting system,
thought protected by Brig. Gen.
Beebe's improvisations with small
generators, failed and cast all of us
into the most Stygian blackness
imagineable-a fearful hardship on
the6 hospital, where blood stained
doctors and nurses worked night and
day
I spent as much time as I could
with the wounded, giving them what
small comfort I could extend. And
those visits to the hospital made
me determined that I would get as
many of the nurses away from
Corregidor as was ahunfaiily possible
1t was not easy to- do The Japs
now had a firm hold on the islands
lying athwart our escape route to
Australia. So I radioed Macarthur
and got from him the promise that
he would order his only two Navy
flying boats to attempt to get to
Corregidor and be used as escape
planes. Macarthur also wanted GER
tain valuable personnel removed
from The, Rock to his Australian
headquarters He sent me a list of
their names, and left the rest of the
selections to me.
Believe me, it was a hard list to
make up. 1t was not an easy thing
to be a judge of whether man or
woman will go free or stay in He'll.
ATOP this was the worry over wheth-