HQ, Bataan
Japs pounding the front heavily, continuously, mercilessly. The boys are standing firm, fighting with the littler strength left in their sick, hungry, weary, bloody bodies.
What is happening in Bataan today is phenomenal. Here are inexperienced youngsters –schoolboys, trainees, academy undergraduates– fighting veterans of many campaigns who are numerically and materially superior. “And,” adds the General, “stopping them!”
Saw truck after truck of the wounded, dying and dead being rushed to the hospitals. One truck stalled and the wounded had to be jammed in one of our jeeps. I saw the stalled truck parked near the curve of the HPD. Only the driver was there trying to fix the dust-covered engine. What I noticed on the seats of the truck sent a cold shudder in my spine: it was bathed with blood. Brave blood.
Met a QM officer, of one of the frontline divisions. We did not have a chance to talk for a long time. I shouted to him across the creek if he could still send supplies to the front. He just made a gesture with his hands and shook his head. That was more eloquent than words.
Met an artillery officer. He said most of the cannons have been blasted by bombs. “The end is near,” he said.
Leonie left for Corregidor. He could hardly walk. In his condition, with the bombing, it is better for him to go to the Rock.
(later)
Fred just arrived. Reported that the Hospital near the HPD was bombed. He said: “Many were killed.” I asked him “How many?” and he answered: “I don’t know. I just know there were many, very many.”
He said that he was visiting a friend when the Japs bombed the hospital. He said he ran to the left side in the direction of the road. Those who went towards the hillside ran to their deaths because there is were most of the bombs fell. “Up to now the hospital is burning,” he recounted.
Fred’s uniform was covered with mud and dust. He was visibly nervous not because of his narrow escape but because of the bloody sight he saw: wounded men rolling in the dust, others shouting with pain, many dying…