The Leper Spy by Ben Montgomery Read Free Book Online Page A

definitely on the way,” he told the ragged soldiers. “We must hold out until it comes.”
    It did not come, not that day nor any day thereafter. There were now more than one hundred thousand soldiers and civilians crowded onto Bataan, and supplies were lower than ever. The men kept fighting, though, and through gritted teeth they sang made-up songs that captured the dire frustration of their lost cause:
    We’re the battling bastards of Bataan:
    No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam,
    No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces,
    No rifles, no planes, or artillery pieces,
    And nobody gives a damn.
    The simple fact that the men had held off Japan from conquering the peninsula as December turned to January and January encroached on February, despite the empire’s continuous supply of fresh troops and despite the fact that the Filipino soldiers were wearing coconut hulls for helmets, was noteworthy. Bataan was virtually the only spot in the Pacific where Japanese advancement had been stymied. They had found success everywhere else they had invaded: Singapore, Burma, Siam, Sumatra, Borneo, Wake, Guam, the Bismarks, the Gilberts. War planners knew Australia would be next. Japanese bombers had already made runs against the key port of Darwin. In less than two months, the Japanese Empire had grown to cover almost a seventh of the globe. The only real resistance was on the Bataan Peninsula, where American and Filipino troops had dug in to fight.
    Henry Stimson, the US secretary of war, told Philippines president Manuel Quezon, “Your gallant defense is thrilling the American people. As soon as our power is organized we shall come in force and drive the invader from your soil.”
    In the middle of December, Maj. Gen. George Moore, still on Corregidor, learned that Germany and Italy had also declared war on the United States, and each day that ticked past brought news that suggested the Axis powers, advancing across Europe and Africa and now the Pacific, had the war in hand.
    But by the end of the month, most of the US and Filipino forces had retreated to Bataan, and they were proving hard to dislodge. “A final stand,” is what Moore called it.
    President Roosevelt promised the full support of the United States in a special address to the people of the Philippines on December 28, 1941. He cabled Manuel Quezon after. “The peopleof the United States will never forget what the people of the Philippines are doing these days and will do in the days to come,” he wrote. “I give to the people of the Philippines my solemn pledge that their freedom will be retained and their independence established and redeemed. The entire resources in men and materials of the United States stands behind that pledge.”
    On December 29, just before noon, Japan rocked the fortified Corregidor in its first aerial attack, with eighty-one medium bombers and ten dive-bombers dropping three-hundred-pound bombs. There were no friendly planes in the air, and there wouldn’t be for the entire operation.
    The medium bombers came first in formations of twenty-seven; then those broke into three formations of nine planes each, all of them below twenty thousand feet, crossing the island lengthwise. The first bombs fell on the hospital, the antiaircraft gun batteries, the officers’ club, the Topside and Middleside barracks, the Topside water tank, the officers’ quarters, the garage, ships in Corregidor Bay, and the navy gasoline storage dump at the tail of the island. Fires broke out as wooden structures and gas depots burst toward the sky. Power went out. Communication lines were disrupted. The antiaircraft firing batteries on the islands thwacked all afternoon, bringing down thirteen enemy planes, until the bombers nosed up to higher altitudes, outside of the guns’ reach. The smaller strafing planes followed the bombers, hammering the antiaircraft gun batteries. Twenty men were killed and eighty wounded.
    The