HQ, MIS, Bataan
Brought Sgt. Sinculan with me during my visit. Sinculan’s ankle was badly hit. He is also on furlough. He was given three weeks but he said that two weeks would be enough.
Sinculan talked with the other Pampangueña while I talked with her. She told me that my sergeant had visited the other girl four times already. I told her that Sinculan had kept it a secret.
We sat on the grass again under the cenniguela tree. I told her that the cenniguela tree reminded me of home because in our garden there was a big cenniguela tree outside my mother’s window.
She was wearing the same short shorts and the same ‘bakia’. She explained that most of her clothes were left in Dinalupihan and that the shorts she was wearing belonger to her younger brother.
We ate the last can of jelly and she was very happy. She stated that even before the war she liked jelly so that the jelly I gave her was a real treat.
She asked me when the convoy would arrive and what were our chances of pushing the Japs back if the convoy never does arrive.
She said she felt helpless seeing all these Jap planes flying at will over our lines, bombing and strafing whenever they felt like.
I asked her why she was so anxious to have the war over. I said: “When all this is over I will no longer see you, maybe.”
She started to laugh. She embraced her knees with her hands and then stretched out in the grass again.
She told me to lie down too and watch the clouds floating in the skies. She said that some clouds looked like Santa Claus.
I laid down beside her and I felt like kissing her but I did not have the nerve although I was very tempted lying down there in the grass in the sunset.
Then for the first time I told her that I thought she was beautiful and that she was the best medicine to a war weary soldier trying to recover from a bullet wound.
“Is that all?” she asked and she turned her face towards me.
“Yes,” I said, “that is all I can say.” And that was the truth.
She sat up and she placed her face between her knees. I liked the whiteness of her legs and the smoothness of her complexion.
I told her as she sat beside me whilst I lay on the grass, as I watched her against the background of a darkening sky that she was the type of girl that makes men forget themselves and lose their hearts.
She suddenly talked of my dirty clothes and asked when I was going to have my uniform washed.
It was better that she changed the subject.