When some of our friends evacuated to the Batangas coast, Nasugbu and Calatagan, I was urgently invited to join them. There’s quite a little colony down there. I refused, one reason being I wanted to be right on hand in Manila when the Americans arrived. Now, I hear the Americans have landed in Nasugbu first and am I jealous, thinking they are free and getting all the first-hand dope—probably eating apples and cheese, too!
Today, with the American troops less than twenty miles away, advancing down the great Pampanga Valley at top speed, we crouched over the short-wave radio and heard that the prisoners of Cabanatuan had been rescued in a fantastically spectacular raid on the camp. A real swashbuckling, D’Artagnan job. It must have
been a real thriller-diller. Some of the men were flown out on planes and had broadcast earlier but I did not hear them myself, but someone told that Rosie Roseveare had spoken. I hope Edgar was among them but I am fearful. Radio said only a few hundred men out of thousands were in Cabanatuan.
I have had no direct news of Edgar since June. I had pretty good contact with him until then. Each time that someone came to me, claiming that he had seen Ed and Ed wanted such and such things sent up, I sent them. But each time I sent stuff without a written note from Ed, it never reached him. That was a racket that reached major proportions. I am bitter about that, for I know how badly they needed help up there.
We are all uneasy about the boys from Cabanatuan. It seems pretty certain that a good many of them were shipped to Japan. The Japanese announced the sinking of one prison ship by the Americans. We can only hope that isn’t true.