He found himself facing the dilemma of many officers in that he loved these grimy goddamned men, had even come to respect and appreciate the Filipino fighters, but he had no choice but to order them back into the meat grinder of battle. Their work here was far from done and the clock was ticking. The ruins of Intramuros beckoned, possibly waiting to swallow them whole.
“Now what, Honcho?” Philly wondered.
“Now we go after the bastards and free those hostages, that’s what. Let’s move out.”
The chase began. This old, central heart of the city literally existed within walls entered through several gates interspersed along those walls. The gate that Patrol Easy entered through now was called the Gate of Saint James. Deke thought the gate was a wonder, unlike anything he had seen before, intricately carved in stone, featuring a warlike sculpture that intrigued him.
He couldn’t have known that was an image of Santiago Matamoros, or Saint James the Moor-killer — patron saint of Old Spain. He was depicted crushing Muslims, traditional enemies of the Spanish Catholics, under his horse’s hooves. Above it all presided the royal seal of Spain. There was certainly no ambiguity here. This gate and stone carving were a projection of long-ago colonial power. The weathered carvings seemed so ancient and foreign, however, that any meaning was lost on the average American soldier.
If the soldiers hadn’t been so tired or more given to consider the philosophical nature of things, rather than trying simply to avoid getting shot, they might have reflected on how history simply repeated itself, war and violence being the common denominator. Like Mark Twain once said, history might not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
They weren’t the only ones preparing to enter the city. Ahead of them, a rumbling Sherman tank bulled its way through the rubble. When it couldn’t go around the chunks of rock and scattered timbers, or even a twisted bicycle or two, it stubbornly went right over top of them. The presence of a tank always made foot soldiers feel better, like a big brother backing you up with a baseball bat.
“We’ll let those boys go first,” Steele said, referring to the tank. “If there’s a welcoming party, I’d rather have a tank crash it than us.”
“Honcho, I like how you think,” Philly replied. “Maybe those boys can track down those Japs for us?”
“Don’t push it, Philly.”
Ahead of them, the sturdy Sherman tank squeezed through the gate in the walled city, its steel flanks nearly scraping the stone. Not so much as a single rifle shot greeted its arrival.
The question was, Where had the Japanese gone? They had last seen Major Tanigawa and his men slipping away through the city before being forced to temporarily retreat. Deke was reminded of rats scurrying to hide when the door of a corncrib back home was flung open. Unfortunately, the rats in this case were herding prisoners. Both the Japanese and their hostages had simply melted into the landscape.
The tank and the GIs parted company, with the tank having to keep to the more open areas of the streets so that it could navigate between the piles of rubble. Patrol Easy struck out in the direction where they had last seen Tanigawa’s contingent. There was no sign of them anywhere. How could they have disappeared so quickly?
It was Danilo who spotted it, just when they were feeling lost. A Red Cross nurse’s cap hung from the branch of a shattered street tree. This was the best kind of breadcrumb that they could have hoped for. In fact, Deke guessed that one of those brave nurses had done this on purpose, leaving them a sign to follow.
The Filipino guide raced ahead, Deke and Philly trotting after him like hunting dogs with a whiff of the quarry in their noses. Danilo was as tough as monkey meat left to dry in the sun. However, Danilo was such a creature of the mountains and jungle that he looked out of place in the ruined city. But he was adapting, as they all were. Manila was just a stone and concrete jungle, after all.
They were reminded of this fact as they picked their way cautiously through the ruins. The shelling that had already taken place had left the city a mess. Deke moved down what must have once been a street, with the tall stone facade of a building to his right. Each block of stone must have weighed hundreds of pounds, all of it joined together with thick layers of mortar. No wonder the building still stood when the shelling had ripped its surroundings asunder.
If the street had once been paved, it was hard to tell because the surface of asphalt and cobblestones now resembled a freshly plowed field. Deke was reminded of the fact that he sure as hell didn’t want to be here when the big guns resumed firing.
The sun was still up, casting long shadows across the rubble. Although the artillery barrage had been suspended for now, much of this inner city had already been severely damaged by shelling and aerial bombardment.
