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On the night of February 22 some of the mortar platoon spent the night in the old hospital. I was there. Lt. Ball was there, and he had the only razor. We cut cards to see the order we would shave with. Ball said, "Well, I hate to shave because it seems that officers who shave get killed," but he shaved anyway. I was the last to shave. I kept his razor, and I still have the razor today. On February 23 we took one 60mm mortar with us down to Searchlight Point and set it up with the fire base and then moved on with the fire base to the unnamed point after it was taken. Roscoe Corder's platoon moved on to the tunnel entrance at Wheeler Point where a great fire fight erupted. Hill moved forward to a curve in the road about half way between the fire base and Corder. Ball went forward as an observer for the mortar platoon up to where Hill was which was on the curve. He approached Hill's position by running a short distance and hitting the ground, and he got up and ran. He was hit in the forehead and stumbled forward ten or twelve feet and fell dead. Jandro was a new man, was a BAR ammo carrier when he jumped. By this time he was a gunner. Because of his inexperience, he stood up and was killed. This happened immediately after Ball died. At the fire base area the Jap sniper was spotted, and we fired and sprayed the area, and a Jap body fell down the cliff. When a patrol went down to pick up the bodies they were gone. I thought at the time the graves registrations had picked them up. I wasn't in the patrol the next day looking for the bodies, but that was my assumption until the last couple of years. I don't believe that Hill went to the cave entrance where Corder was. Hill was at the curve of the road where he could see Corder's platoon. The road was real rocky, and we stayed close to the back for cover. I don't know which time Corder was directing the zeroing-in of the destroyer support. The Naval FO was not with us at the fire base but up on top. After the destroyer fired a round Corder said "up ten-yards." After the next round was fired Corder said "down a thousand". This was the end of the naval support. The "down a thousand" became a joke among E Company men. The two mortar squads were running patrols as was needed with the rifle platoons, which we were out practically everyday with the two squads, rotating back and forth. I remember one afternoon some of us were sitting up on the second or third floor of the enlisted men's barracks watching a battle going on trying to take a hill down on the west end. 1 believe Marcus, out of my platoon, was carrying some hand grenades up to the people that were fighting, and the next thing I knew he was running with a box of hand grenades and, he was running, and he was pulling pins with his teeth and lobbing grenades. This was a regular show that went on with me sitting and watching. Saw one bazooka man shoot a Jap in the back, and you could see his arms and legs flying as the shell hit him. I remember one night I was guarding a machine gun which was on a curve in the road coming to topside. I was about eight to ten feet above the machine gun in the bend of the road dug in a fox hole - had some fellow with me. I forget who he was, but it was our job to guard this machine gun that night. Along about 10:00 o'clock the moon came out nice and bright. I raised my head up to take a look, and off to my left a Japanese machine gun opened up on me. Of course I got back down, and everytime I'd raise my head up he'd cut loose at me. So I really forgot about trying to guard the machine gun in front of me. Somewhere in the night, the first part, there was a terrific explosion. To our back was a cave. Oh, it must have been 150 feet from us. Fire shot out of the entrance of that cave, so we spent our time looking what was going to come out of the cave more than we did looking what was going to come down the road to the machine gun. Every now and then we'd see a Jap slip out of the cave, but it was a little bit far for us to be firing, and we didn't want to expose ourselves with a muzzle blast, so they'd run off down to the right of us. Just about daylight, when it started coming around, I figured business would pick up. I decided I'd had enough staying in that foxhole above the machine gun, so I told this fellow in the hole, "Well I'm going over the side down to the machine gun." He said. "Well it's too far." So I says, "Well I'll see you". I jumped up and I ran over the bank. No sooner had I hit than he came down almost on top of me. Man you talk about something, I was glad to get out of that deal. We moved over to the officers' houses and set up our two mortars behind the houses. We were over there quite a while. Man, the flies were so bad you couldn't eat, and they were just swarming, so we went inside of the houses. We'd knock holes in the plastered walls, stick our mouths in the holes, take our food and put it in our hand and slip it up to our mouth to keep from eating flies. I got dysentery. Man, I had it so bad I couldn't touch my butt with a powder puff. We'd fire our mortars all night long. We'd stack up ammunition in the day, and one man would crawl out on his stomach and fire both mortars and slip back. We were firing from Geary Point over to Wheeler Point, and this we were doing every night. I can't really remember how many mortarmen were left, but there were very few of us. That's why only one man would go out at a time and fire both mortars. We would reset the mortars so we could fire again. Every now and then we'd get hand grenades thrown up at us trying to knock the mortars out, but we didn't have anybody wounded or killed from that episode. Here's a man I'd like to mention, Roland Ferreault. He was a scout. I don't know what platoon he scouted for, but we estimated he killed between forty and sixty Japs on Corregidor. He was a loner - blond headed, slight built; he would wander off by himself and go into caves by himself. He was what you would call a real killer, and very few people remember this man because he was the quiet type, but: I think he really should be remembered. Hicks was transferred into E Company just before Corregidor. He was a buck sergeant. I believe he came in on the last shipment before we jumped, and I know I never really saw him after we left the plane. He was not acting as a sergeant because you know a lot of times those boys would come over, and they would give up their rank, so I don't know whether he'd given it up, but I do know he wasn't a buck sergeant. I still have a map of Corregidor which we used in the mortar platoon for our objectives. This may be of interest to you. Alfred Oakley was in E Company. After we came back from Corregidor he was notified he was to be sent home because of his age. He was either fifteen or sixteen years old, and recently I saw his name appear in our list for the first time. After retiring from E Company and the Army, I went on in civilian life to enter the insurance business. I became a vice president of an insurance firm, and later my own. Im my retirement I go fishing when I can get someone to go with me. |
