From the open windows, they saw Caucasian faces peering out from the lower levels. Maybe one of those prisoners was the boy’s father. The faces of Japanese soldiers looked down from the higher levels of the building. The Japanese soldiers were pointing rifles at them. The Japanese didn’t open fire, and neither did Patrol Easy. Instead, the two sides kept under cover, watching one another warily.
“How long do we keep this up, Honcho?” Philly wanted to know.
“Until the cavalry gets here,” Steele replied.
“When is that?”
“Whenever they decide to show up, that’s when,” Steele snapped. “Meanwhile, everybody hold your fire. I see those Japanese in the windows as well as you do, but we don’t want to hit any prisoners.”
That said, Patrol Easy settled down to wait for this so-called cavalry, which at that moment was several miles away, riding on a bucking steed.
Captain Jim Oatmire had ridden in a jeep from the beach to the outskirts of Manila. Although the ride wasn’t exactly comfortable, he reminded himself that he had nothing to complain about. Much of the military force descending upon the city had arrived in a beach landing that had been largely unopposed, so different from the reception they had received from the Japanese when landing on Leyte. The Philippines was a nation of islands, and on the island of Luzon, the Japanese had withdrawn inland and awaited the approach of Allied troops. This was going to be a defensive operation. In part, this was why Manila had become a battleground.
“This is as far as we go, Captain,” the driver said. Although it was usually the officer who delivered such announcements to enlisted men like the one behind the wheel, the driver in this case seemed to have decided that experience trumped rank. He was an older man who clearly wasn’t impressed with Oatmire’s captain’s bars or neatly pressed uniform.
“What are you talking about?” Oatmire asked. Their surroundings swarmed with activity as army troops pushed deeper into the city, so he couldn’t figure out why the driver had stopped.
Unperturbed, the driver nodded at the road ahead — which was largely blocked by rubble and the wrecked, burned-out hulks of civilian vehicles. It wasn’t exactly an open road. Oatmire got it then — there was literally no way for the jeep to proceed. Bulldozers worked to clear the debris, but they hadn’t made much progress. The only thing that seemed to be getting through was a tank, which was unlikely to give him a ride.
Above the grinding motors of the bulldozers, they could hear a few shots in the distance. The driver didn’t appear eager to get any closer to the shooting.
“It’s literally the end of the road, sir.”
“I can see that. So this is Manila, huh?”
“Not much to look at, is it, sir?”
He had seen postcard images of the elegant old city with its Spanish architecture that General MacArthur loved so much. That picture-perfect city was rapidly becoming just a memory as the war raged. He sighed. “No, it’s not.”
Oatmire climbed out of the jeep and grabbed his haversack. His only weapon was his sidearm, a fact that the driver noticed.
“Don’t you have a rifle, sir?”
“I don’t plan on doing much fighting, soldier. No need for a rifle.”
“You might change your mind about that, sir.”
“I hope to hell not.”
“There are still a lot of Japanese around.”
“Thanks for the ride,” Oatmire said. “You’d better get on back to the beach.”
The driver gave him a wave that may have been a half-assed salute, then turned the jeep around and headed back toward the landing area. As the sound of the jeep motor faded, he could hear the thump of artillery in the distance and rifle shots nearby. Maybe that driver had been right about taking a rifle along. Oatmire looked out at the battered city and thought,
Oatmire pulled out his map but quickly realized that he didn’t know what the hell he was looking at. The street signs were long gone, and any sort of landmarks on his map were unrecognizable, having mostly been reduced to rubble.
He began picking his way through the city streets, asking for directions to the University of Santo Tomas. Some of the men he asked had no clue; they knew they were in Manila and that was about it, so he kept asking. The areas that he moved through were more or less cleared of the enemy, but not completely. He dove for cover just twice, both times when sniper fire broke out. His clean uniform quickly got dusty, not to mention sweaty.
After two hours of tense movement through the city streets, knowing that each time he crossed open ground, he was making himself a target, he finally arrived at the university.
