The men began to doubt the promises of reinforcements and rescue. Each morning, lookouts scanned the South China Sea looking for the convoys, but, of course, there were none. In late February, President Roosevelt addressed the nation in one of his famous “Fireside Chats.” He told the American people that the Japanese had blockaded the Philippines and that “complete encirclement” was preventing “substantial reinforcement.” And because the United States was at war in two large theaters, the country would have to concentrate the fight in “areas other than the Philippines.”
The men on Bataan were listening too, on shortwave radios in their foxholes and tanks, and now they knew the truth. There would be no rescue.
At home, the Bannings had received no letters from Pete in almost two months. They knew he was on Bataan, but had no idea how grim the situation was. They, too, listened to the President, and for the first time began to grasp the extent of the danger. After the broadcast, Stella went to her room and cried herself to sleep. Liza and Joel stayed up late, talking about the war and trying in vain to find a reason to be optimistic.
Each Sunday morning when Dexter Bell began the worship hour, he called the names of the men and women from Ford County who were off at war, and the list grew longer each week. He offered a long prayer for their well-being and safe return. Most were in training and had yet to see battle. Pete Banning, though, was in a horrible place and received more prayers than the others.
Liza and the family strived to be courageous. The country was at war and families everywhere were living with fear. An eighteen-year-old kid from Clanton was killed in North Africa. Before long thousands of American families would receive the dreaded news.
Chapter 25
Without horses, the Twenty-Sixth Cavalry no longer existed as a fighting unit. Its men were assigned to other units and given tasks they were not accustomed to. Pete was placed with an infantry and handed a shovel with which to dig himself a foxhole, one of thousands along a thirteen-mile reserve line stretching across southern Bataan. In reality, the reserve line was the last line of defense. If the Japanese broke through, the Allies would be shoved to the tip of the peninsula and routed with their backs to the South China Sea.
In March, there was a lull in the fighting as the Japanese tightened the noose around Bataan. They regrouped and reinforced with fresh supplies. The Americans and Filipinos knew what was inevitable, and dug in even deeper.
During the days, Pete and his comrades shoveled dirt around bunkers and breastworks, though labor was difficult. The men were sick and starving. Pete estimated he had lost at least forty pounds. Every ten days or so he punched another notch in his only belt to keep his pants up. So far he had managed to avoid malaria, though it was just a matter of time. He’d had two mild bouts of dysentery but had recovered quickly from both when a doctor found some paregoric. During the nights, he slept on a blanket beside his foxhole with his rifle by his side.
In the foxhole to his right was Sal Moreno, a tough Italian sergeant from Long Island. Sal was a city kid from a large, colorful family that produced a lot of good stories. He had learned to ride horses on a farm where his uncle worked. After a couple of scrapes with the law, he joined the army and found his way to the Twenty-Sixth Cavalry. A severe case of malaria almost killed him, but Pete found quinine on the black market and nursed him back to decent health.
In the foxhole to Pete’s left was Ewing Kane, a Virginia blue blood who had graduated with honors from the Virginia Military Institute, as had his father and grandfather. Ewing was riding ponies when he was three years old and was the finest horseman in the Twenty-Sixth.
But their horses were gone now, and the men lamented the fact that they had been reduced to infantry status. They spent hours together talking and their favorite subject was food. Pete described with relish the dishes prepared by Nineva: battered pork chops, raised on his farm, and smoked ribs, and fried okra, fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, potatoes fried in bacon fat, fried squash, fried everything. Sal marveled at a style of cooking that involved so much grease. Ewing described the joys of smoked Virginia hams and bacon and all manner of pheasant, dove, quail, hens, and Brunswick stew. But they were amateurs compared with Sal, whose mother and grandmother prepared dishes the other two had never heard of. Baked lasagna, stuffed manicotti, spaghetti Bolognese, balsamic pork scaloppine, garlic tomato bruschetta, fried mozzarella cheese, and on and on. The list seemed endless, and at first they thought he was exaggerating. But the depth of his detail made their mouths water. They agreed to meet in New York after the war and do nothing but binge on Italian delicacies.
There were moments when they managed to laugh and dream, but morale was low. The men on Bataan blamed MacArthur, Roosevelt, and everybody else in Washington for abandoning them. They were bitter and miserable and most were unable to resist complaining. Others told them to shut up and stop the bitching. Complaints did nothing to help their rotten conditions. It was not unusual to see men weeping in their foxholes, or to see a man crack up and wander away. Pete kept his sanity by thinking of Liza and the kids, and the sumptuous meals Nineva would one day cook for him, and all those vegetables in Amos’s garden. He wanted desperately to write some letters but there were no pens, no paper, no mail service. They were thoroughly blockaded with no way to correspond. He prayed for his family every day and asked God to protect them after he was gone. Death was certain, either by starvation, disease, bombs, or bullets.
While the Japanese infantry took a break, its artillery and air force never stopped pounding away. It was a lull, but there were no quiet days. Danger was never far away. To wake things up each morning, Japanese dive-bombers strafed at will, and as soon as the planes disappeared the cannons began unloading.
Late in March, 150 big guns were positioned near the American line and began a ferocious bombardment. The assault was continuous, around the clock, and the results were devastating. Many Americans and Filipinos were blown to bits in their foxholes. Bunkers thought to be bombproof disintegrated like straw shacks. Casualties were horrendous and the field hospitals were packed with the injured and dying. On April 3, after a week of nonstop artillery fire, Japanese infantry and tanks poured through the gaps. As the Americans and Filipinos fell back, their officers tried to rally them into defensive positions, only to be overrun within hours. Counterattacks were planned, attempted, and destroyed by the vastly superior Japanese forces.
By then, an American general estimated that only one soldier in ten could walk a hundred yards, raise his rifle, and shoot at the enemy. What had once been a fighting army of eighty thousand had been reduced to an effective fighting force of twenty-five hundred. Low on food, morale, ammo, and with no support from the skies or seas, the Americans and Filipinos battled on, throwing everything they had at the Japanese and inflicting horrendous casualties. But they were outnumbered and outgunned, and the inevitable soon became the reality.
As the enemy continued its relentless push, the American commander, General Ned King, huddled with his generals and colonels and discussed the unthinkable — surrender. Orders from Washington were clear: The American and Filipino forces were to fight to the last man. That might sound heroic when decided in a comfortable office in Washington, but General King now faced the awful reality. It was his decision to either surrender or have his men slaughtered. Those who were still able to fight were putting up a resistance that grew weaker each day. The Japanese were within a few miles of a large field hospital that held six thousand wounded and dying men.