above the ensign and the loud, jumbled mass of horses and humanity. Abruptly, it came into ful , horrific view: a mutilated human head, skewered atop a pike and veiled with a swarm of fat black blowflies and maggots crawling from vacant eye sockets and nostrils. “We’re in trouble,” Tonel i would say.
While their minds struggled to process the macabre, waking nightmare, Japanese soldiers leaned from trucks to spit on them or clobber them with rifles and bamboo poles. Others mockingly threw up their arms in imitation of the surrender motion. For Dyess, the ultimate insult was seeing hundreds of Fords and Chevrolets idling on the congested road. “It is hard to describe what we felt at seeing these familiar American machines, fil ed with jeering, snarling Japs,” he wrote. “It was a sort of super-sinking feeling.
We had become accustomed to having American iron thrown at us by the Japs, but this was a little too much.”
The demoralized, dehydrated prisoners, further weakened by hunger and disease—each prisoner was estimated to have carried between one and four diseases on the march—predictably began to stumble.
Temperatures soared and discipline al but evaporated. Men slipped from the columns and lunged for the artesian wel s, others for roadside carabao wal ows, the scum-covered puddles of brackish, bacteria-laden water in which floated the carcasses of dead animals and bloated corpses. Few reached either.
Fusil ades of gunfire reverberated, and, with measured proficiency, guards slashed stomachs with a sequence of Z-shaped cuts. After jerking their dripping bayonets from the slashed bowels, the guards wiped the instruments clean of the fresh blood.
As morning melted into afternoon and the fabric of reality unraveled before his eyes, Dyess could not shake the story of the beheaded Air Corps captain—he had known the man personal y. Dyess’s own head whirled in delirium and throbbed with splitting headaches. With each step, the normal y cool, col ected Texan grew dangerously more flammable. He longed to strike out against his captors, but quickly pul ed himself out of the emotional nosedive. “By going berserk now,” he understood, “I would only lose my own life without hope of ever helping to even the score.” Until the situation improved, Dyess could only bal his fists and continue along the East Road, al the while making a vow to live—and fight—another day.
In either direction, as far as Sam Grashio could see, the sad columns of shadows stretched along the East Road and vanished into the coppery twilight. Grashio prayed that one of those shadows was Dyess; they had been separated hours earlier when Dyess was beaten into a ditch by a hysterical Japanese soldier. Now he had only the charismatic officer’s words to sustain him. “Dyess … told me we had to survive if only to someday gain revenge on our torturers. As always when I was around Ed, some of his spirit rubbed off onto me.”
Though there was no logical explanation for the madness Grashio had witnessed, some predictable patterns and concrete constants were revealed. The earliest lesson involved the frequent inspections: the tremulous chorus of whispers that floated through the ranks—“Get rid of your Jap stuff, quick!”—would have to be acted upon immediately. And Grashio’s separation from Dyess revealed the guards’
penchant for committing acts of violence against tal prisoners. Insignias of rank also made inviting targets for torment: officers were forced to bow before Japanese privates. And Americans were often humiliated in front of Filipinos.
Grashio could see that in the eyes of the Japanese, stragglers were viewed not as sick, starving men who needed assistance, but as noncompliants and weaklings. Because of a scarcity of oil (most fuel was usurped by the Imperial Navy for its ships and planes), Japanese soldiers were conditioned to march long distances, and therefore few had sympathy for an enemy they regarded as
While their minds struggled to process the macabre, waking nightmare, Japanese soldiers leaned from trucks to spit on them or clobber them with rifles and bamboo poles. Others mockingly threw up their arms in imitation of the surrender motion. For Dyess, the ultimate insult was seeing hundreds of Fords and Chevrolets idling on the congested road. “It is hard to describe what we felt at seeing these familiar American machines, fil ed with jeering, snarling Japs,” he wrote. “It was a sort of super-sinking feeling.
We had become accustomed to having American iron thrown at us by the Japs, but this was a little too much.”
The demoralized, dehydrated prisoners, further weakened by hunger and disease—each prisoner was estimated to have carried between one and four diseases on the march—predictably began to stumble.
Temperatures soared and discipline al but evaporated. Men slipped from the columns and lunged for the artesian wel s, others for roadside carabao wal ows, the scum-covered puddles of brackish, bacteria-laden water in which floated the carcasses of dead animals and bloated corpses. Few reached either.
Fusil ades of gunfire reverberated, and, with measured proficiency, guards slashed stomachs with a sequence of Z-shaped cuts. After jerking their dripping bayonets from the slashed bowels, the guards wiped the instruments clean of the fresh blood.
As morning melted into afternoon and the fabric of reality unraveled before his eyes, Dyess could not shake the story of the beheaded Air Corps captain—he had known the man personal y. Dyess’s own head whirled in delirium and throbbed with splitting headaches. With each step, the normal y cool, col ected Texan grew dangerously more flammable. He longed to strike out against his captors, but quickly pul ed himself out of the emotional nosedive. “By going berserk now,” he understood, “I would only lose my own life without hope of ever helping to even the score.” Until the situation improved, Dyess could only bal his fists and continue along the East Road, al the while making a vow to live—and fight—another day.
In either direction, as far as Sam Grashio could see, the sad columns of shadows stretched along the East Road and vanished into the coppery twilight. Grashio prayed that one of those shadows was Dyess; they had been separated hours earlier when Dyess was beaten into a ditch by a hysterical Japanese soldier. Now he had only the charismatic officer’s words to sustain him. “Dyess … told me we had to survive if only to someday gain revenge on our torturers. As always when I was around Ed, some of his spirit rubbed off onto me.”
Though there was no logical explanation for the madness Grashio had witnessed, some predictable patterns and concrete constants were revealed. The earliest lesson involved the frequent inspections: the tremulous chorus of whispers that floated through the ranks—“Get rid of your Jap stuff, quick!”—would have to be acted upon immediately. And Grashio’s separation from Dyess revealed the guards’
penchant for committing acts of violence against tal prisoners. Insignias of rank also made inviting targets for torment: officers were forced to bow before Japanese privates. And Americans were often humiliated in front of Filipinos.
Grashio could see that in the eyes of the Japanese, stragglers were viewed not as sick, starving men who needed assistance, but as noncompliants and weaklings. Because of a scarcity of oil (most fuel was usurped by the Imperial Navy for its ships and planes), Japanese soldiers were conditioned to march long distances, and therefore few had sympathy for an enemy they regarded as
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