H-AGOL-ERamsey

Ed Ramsey American Guerrilla on Luzon

Fifty years ago this month President Franklin Roosevelt ordered Gen. Douglas MacArthur to abandon his army, besieged by Japanese forces on Bataan, and leave the Philippines. MacArthur departed on March 12, 1942 with the pledge "I shall return.” The Allied army soon had to surrender. But a few men decided not to lay down their arms. They broke through Japanese lines, made contact with the Filipinos and formed a guerrilla army. For 2 1/2 years, waging a war as desperate as it was heroic, this ragtag army kept the nation's hopes alive. This is the incredible saga of Ed Ramsey, the man who led that army.

            In early January 1942, almost 100,000 Allied troops were crowded onto the rugged Bataan peninsula in the Philippines. We had ammunition and food sufficient to last no more than six weeks. But every day brought assurances that a convoy of ships was steaming to our relief; we just had to hold on. The fact that no such convoy existed -- or was even possible, given the destruction at Pearl Harbor -- was kept from us.

In his command headquarters on the island of Corregidor, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was directing the final, desperate defense of Bataan, while flooding Washington with requests for relief. As ammunition and food ran out, our rations shrank daily, and both men and horses were growing leaner.

I was in the cavalry. I had come to the Philippines at the age of 24, seeking my dream of an exotic foreign post, rich with tropical plants, polo ponies, fawning servants and dusky women. Instead, with the Japanese invasion, I got the merciless realities of war.

In mid-January I went on reconnaissance with my platoon for two days, threading the steamy jungle trails, pausing only long enough to swallow a fistful of rice and let the horses forage. My mount bore the hardship bravely, and I winced as I watched his head and haunches begin to droop.

There was no activity to our front, so we made our way back to headquarters, where Capt. John Wheeler, who relieved our troop, was planning another reconnaissance mission. I was desperately tired, yet I heard myself saying cavalierly, "I've been in a lot of combat, but I haven't gotten any medals. How would you like me to stay behind and help out?"

Captain Wheeler put me in charge of the first platoon, 27 weary Filipino scouts. I bivouacked with them that night, and next morning supervised the feeding and watering of our horses. At midday Lt. Gen.  Jonathan Wainwright, then I Corps commander, rumbled into camp in an old sedan.

He was angry because the 1st Regular Philippine Army Division. had withdrawn from the village of Morong. This village, he declared, offered a good defensive position along the river that lay between us and the advancing Japanese. He wanted Morong reoccupied at once.

I was standing nearby, and Wainwright caught me out of the corner of his eye. "Ramsey, isn't it?" he barked at me.

"Yes, sir."

"You take the advance guard," he said. "Move out!"

I had broken the soldier's cardinal rule of never volunteering, and now I was paying for it. I saluted wearily and was about to start off when Wheeler spoke up.

"General," he put in, "Ramsey's just been on a long mission. Is it okay if I send someone else?"

Wainwright shot an angry glance. "Ramsey, move out!"

I ordered my men to spread out along the road to present less of a target, and after a few miles we reached the eastern edge of Morong. The village looked deserted. The thatched huts stood empty on their bamboo stilts. We moved carefully toward the village center, the horses maneuvering with their heads high among the huts, the men alert for movement. Suddenly there was an explosion. Automatic weapons fire burst from the other side of the village, sending jungle birds screaming.

I could see scores of Japanese infantrymen in brown fatigues firing from the village center, and behind them hundreds more were wading across the river. In a few minutes the main force would seize Morong.

Over rattling gun fire I raised my pistol. A charge would be our only hope to break up the body of Japanese troops and survive against their superior numbers. For centuries the shock of a mounted charge had proved irresistible.

I brought my arm down. "Charge"

Bent nearly prone across the horses' necks, we flung ourselves at the Japanese advance, firing into their startled faces. A few returned our fire, but most fled in confusion, some wading back into the river, others running madly for the swamps. To them we must have seemed a vision from another century: wild-eyed horses pounding headlong, and cheering, whooping men firing from the saddles.

In fact, this engagement at Morong on January 16, 1942, was the last mounted cavalry charge in U.S. military history.

Acceptable Losses

            The charge broke clear through the Japanese advance unit and carried on to the swamp. We had grenades but could not use them on the flimsy shacks without danger to ourselves. So after dismounting, we began moving from hut to hut, raking the walls with gunfire. By now the Japanese across the river were lobbing mortar shells into the village.

One platoon arrived to reinforce my men at the river, while another joined the battle among the huts. The air was alive with metal, whizzing bullets and whirring shrapnel, while the firing at the river was swelling to a full-pitched battle.

Troopers and animals were falling around me, from mortars and hidden snipers, even as I shouted directions over the noise. Suddenly I spotted an American officer taking cover against the church.  "Hey, you yellow son of a bitch!" I screamed.  "Get over here and fight!"

The officer seemed more stunned by me than the firing, and he hastily disappeared. I was about to yell after him when I was distracted by an explosion of a mortar in front of me. Meanwhile, Wheeler had arrived with the rest of the troop, and our men were driving the enemy back across the river. I could see the Japanese sliding down the bank and wading shoulder-deep, some being hit, throwing up their arms and disappearing under the dirty brown current.

Eventually, reinforcements from the 1st Infantry Division secured the village. I gathered my men. One of my troopers had been killed, and six were wounded. Of the Japanese, dozens lay dead and wounded all over the village and across the field toward the river.

Wheeler came up to me, his clothing matted with sweat and dust. "Ramsey," he said, "you've got blood on your leg."

I glanced down and saw the broadening brown stain where shrapnel had punctured my left knee. I laughed. "Look who's talking," I said, pointing at him. "What do you call that?" There was a hole clear through his calf, oozing blood from his riding boot.

Neither of us was badly hurt, so we supervised the evacuation of the wounded. Later, after my knee wound was dressed, I returned to our bivouac for some desperately needed rest, while Wheeler was evacuated to the hospital.

We remained in camp for several days, waiting for the next Japanese assault. I felt myself growing weaker, and my eyes and skin began turning yellow. It was jaundice, no doubt caused by the shrapnel wound and compounded by our diet, which was nothing but rice.

I was sent to a hospital on the southern tip of Bataan, a ramshackle affair of beds with mosquito nets, laid out in rows beneath the lauan trees. I had not been there long when I had a visitor -- John Wheeler, who was recovering from his leg wound.

"I thought you should know," he remarked to me, "that they've put you in for the Silver Star."

"Who?" I asked.

Wheeler smiled. "You remember that officer you called a yellow son of a bitch? That was Wainwright's chief of staff. He wasn't shirking; he'd just come up to report on the action. He's the one who recommended you."

"I suppose I'm the first soldier who ever got a medal for chewing out a staff officer," I said.

Wheeler then asked if there was anything he could do for me.

"Just look after my horse," I answered.

"Oh, I guess you haven't heard." He frowned and glanced away. "Quartermaster confiscated all the horses. Butchered them for meat for the troops."

"All of them?"

"They were going to die anyway. There was no fodder left, and the men were starving."

"Of course," I agreed. Wheeler, too, was a cavalryman, and there was no need to say more. I dared not mourn an animal when wounded men lay all around me. Besides, the cavalry had been finished long ago. The Army knew it; only we cavalrymen resisted in our pointless pride. Now the horses were gone and we were all alike.

I glanced down at my sallow arms and legs. I was jaundiced all right, in spirit as well as body. I shrugged off the deaths of men and horses. My attitude was a defense against despair, and, like the defense of Bataan itself, it was as necessary as it was doomed.

For me, it was my father's old problem. He had felt betrayed, desperate, locked in a losing struggle, and his brooding had destroyed him. I was determined I would not follow in his wake.

Fatal Flaw

            My father had been a tragic soul. A wildcatter in the oil fields, he had no education and no prospects except a bent back and dirty hands. But there was poetry in him, and he saw it in my mother. He courted her in the carefree days before World War I with flowers and verse and inexhaustible attention, and he won her over bankers' and -doctors' sons. She was the grace that his laborer's life lacked, the antidote to his sweaty, grimy toil.

But he was a brooding man, and, away in the oil fields of Texas and Oklahoma, he tortured himself with jealousy. When he came home to Wichita, KS, he searched the house for signs of unfaithfulness. He railed at Mother and accused her. Then he began to beat her.

One night my sister Nadine and I were awakened by shouts coming from our parents' bedroom. We both crept into the half-lit hall and listened. It was Father's voice, sounding more enraged than we had ever heard him. Suddenly there was Mother's voice pleading with him to, stop, and then we heard the word gun.

Father was grappling to get at the shotgun he kept hidden behind the headboard of the bed. We called to Mother from the doorway, but she yelled at us to run. Instead, Nadine and I threw ourselves at Father. I was ten, Nadine 15, and between us we barely dragged him away.

He stared at us in horror. He was gripping the barrel of the shotgun, his hands white and trembling. He glanced down at it, gave a groan of anguish, thrust it aside, and shoved his way out of the room. Mother lay panting in tears on the bed, and when we were sure that she was all right, Nadine called the police. They arrested Father near the house and told us they would hold him overnight. The next day they found him hanged in his cell.

My reaction was to affect a callous, defiant manner. But the truth was that the years of silent warfare and the sudden fearful outburst had shaken me to levels I did not know existed in myself.

My father's death also meant hardship. There was no pension, no insurance, so all three of us went to work. Mother enrolled in cosmetology school and got a job in a beauty shop. An enterprising woman, she soon had a large clientele and bought the business.

Nadine, too, was driven by purposeful ambition. She left school to work, but every evening she slipped secretly down to an airfield in Wichita to take flying lessons. It was her passion, and so unorthodox in the Kansas of that day that she made me swear not to tell Mother. She was the first woman in Wichita to get a pilot's license.

Meanwhile, I stumbled into my teen-age years, a source of concern to my mother, who watched my aimlessness with dismay. I discovered moonshine whiskey and girls, but they were no cure for the loneliness I felt.

One night after dinner my mother took me aside. "Buddy," she said, using my nickname, "I'm concerned about your grades and other reports I've heard." There was a pause. "How would you like to go to military school? I've inquired at the Oklahoma Military Academy. It's a cavalry school."

I loved horses; she knew that. "I'll think about it," I agreed. By midsummer I told her I would go.  She seemed quietly relieved.

From that point on the romance began to grip me: military school, a uniform, the cavalry. Riding was a risk that I relished and the kind of freedom that my nature craved. It was a chance to escape.

Active Duty

            Oklahoma Military Academy was a bastion of the old Army, the West Point of the Southwest prairie, with a righteous love for American military tradition embodied in the horse.

At OMA I learned to ride properly. I learned how to train my horse and train myself and then the two of us together until we were a unit. I studied military history and science, the handling of weapons and men. Cavalry officers were expected to set the direction and the pace. There were no equals, only followers, for the cavalry was always first, the cutting edge of steel and spirit.

OMA also meant polo, which I at first viewed with disdain. It was a pastime of snobs, of the idle rich, I thought. But I soon learned that polo was the game I was made for.

It was the perfect blend for my recklessness and the discipline I was acquiring. It meant teamwork and control, but also risk and danger. I was never a top player, but the game became my passion, and when I graduated, it led me to enroll in Oklahoma University law school. The law was largely incidental.  OU had a polo team.

By September of my last year of law, Nadine had declared her decision to make her living as a flier. Soon she was working as a stunt pilot in California and had become the first woman to fly the airmail. Then she was asked to represent a line of airplanes. On a sparkling San Diego morning in 1940, she took a potential buyer up over the bay for a spin. The passenger asked Nadine to buzz her home.

Nadine threw the plane into a dive, gathered speed and swooped in low over the housetop. It happened in an instant. A down draft seized the little plane and shoved it into the trees. Fabric ripped; the tail crumpled. The passenger was killed. Nadine, splayed among the branches, never cried.

The call came from my mother.  "Buddy," she said, "there's been an accident."

It took me four days to drive to California. Nadine was still critical when I arrived, her face bruised and lacerated almost beyond recognition. Her back was broken, as were most of her ribs. She had several concussions, and her left leg was bandaged from foot to thigh.

Nadine looked at me, her dark brown eyes clouded by medication. "I know I'll never fly again," she moaned. "And if I can't fly, I won't live."

But Nadine and I had a conspiratorial strength against adversity. I promised I would stay with her as long as it took to get her back on her feet, as long as it took to get her into the air.

I quit school, moved into Nadine's apartment, and she came home to begin the long process of recovery. She was a total invalid at first, and it was a difficult business for us both. But by Christmas she was walking, and by the end of January 1941 she could care for herself. Even with a cumbersome cast still on her leg, she was already making plans to fly. On a gray February afternoon I drove her to an airport, and she took off, cast and all. She was whole again.

For me, it was too late to return to law school. Under normal circumstances I could have waited until fall and finished my studies, but circumstances no longer were normal. There was a war in Europe, and I was sure we would be drawn into it. So I entered active duty with the 11th Cavalry on the California-Mexico border. In April 1941, just before my 24th birthday, I volunteered for transfer to the 26th Cavalry Regiment, Philippine Scouts. The Scouts had a reputation as tough, flamboyant fighters-and for having the best polo team in the service.

Like most Americans, I was not even sure where the Philippine Islands were. When I mentioned this jokingly to the officer processing my transfer, he replied pointedly, "They're damn near Japan."

Death March

            The wound I got at Morong kept me out of action through February 1942. On President Roosevelt's orders, General MacArthur escaped to Australia on March 12 to take supreme command of Southwestern Pacific Forces. MacArthur had been told to organize America's offensive against Japan, he said, and a main objective was the liberation of the Philippines. "I shall return," he promised.

He left General Wainwright in command, to hold out until MacArthur's promised return. But few of us doubted what would happen when the Japanese mounted their final assault. Four-fifths of our men were suffering from malaria, three quarters from dysentery, a third from beriberi.

What was left of my own troop, now without horses, had been assigned to Capt. Joseph Barker. Our miserable ration of rice and tinned fish had left him emaciated; it was a brotherhood we all shared.

The Japanese assault started in early April. In the following days, under attack by Japanese infantry, artillery or fighter planes, we moved constantly. Surrender came on April 9, though no official orders ever reached our unit. Technically, we were missing in action, lost behind enemy lines. We had the option of surrendering, or breaking up into small groups and trying to escape -- ultimately, we hoped, to Australia.

Joe Barker and I had already made up our minds, and the two of us set off at once, carrying only a few rations and a .45 Colt automatic each. Our first goal was to get out of Bataan. For two days we threaded the jungle, keeping to mountain ridges, stumbling, falling, growing weaker. At last we reached what had been the main battle line bisecting Bataan. Our goal was to cross the road that ran along the line from the South China Sea to Manila Bay, but we knew it would be thick with Japanese.

Before sunset we eased down the mountain, keeping under cover. We could hear the rumble of engines and the shuffling of troops. Finally, the road was revealed to us-an unbroken stream of Japanese infantry and artillery. We watched for an hour, but there was no end to it. Crawling on hands and knees, we moved farther back up the slope.

"We'll wait until dark," Barker said. "Then maybe we can find an opening."

Night came without a moon. About 10 p.m., we crawled to the road again, scouting left and right until we found a place with cover. There we lay on our bellies, timing the intervals between Japanese units as the boots and wheels passed not a dozen feet from our faces.

"Trucks, then infantry, then a few seconds before artillery," Barker whispered. "That the way you make it, Ed?"

I nodded. "After the next infantry column, we go."

Half a dozen trucks went by, followed by a company of infantry. If the pattern held, there should be a break of several seconds. Barker rose to his knees. "This is it," he said, and slipped out to the road. I followed in a crouch. For a few naked seconds we were exposed; then we dropped down almost on top of each other on the far side and lay still, breathing hard. We were undetected.

At dawn we edged northward, keeping low. In a few miles we came to open country with overgrown rice paddies. Wading among them was a Filipino farmer.

The man took us to his village. He killed the last of his chickens, and while we ate, he talked, repeating phrases over and over so that we could understand. For days, he told us, thousands of American and Filipino prisoners of war had been marched at gun point along the Bataan highway. Many were little more than skeletons, scarcely able to stand, yet the Japanese prodded them on, day and night, without rest. When one collapsed, he was immediately bayoneted. Others who stopped to drink from the filthy roadside puddles were shot. Civilians who gave the prisoners food or water were killed.

It was a death march, the brutality and suffering of which had shocked the local people and given rise to the first stirrings of resistance. Already, the farmer told us, small groups were forming in the countryside, and he offered to take us to one of them.

The next day we reached a village where four men greeted us -- three Filipinos and an American enlisted man. Like us, he had chosen not to surrender, but instead of escaping he had decided to stay and help organize a resistance. He told us about an underground army being put together by Col. Claude Thorpe, a cavalryman who had been sent out of Bataan by MacArthur to establish a guerrilla movement.

Up to this time I had thought of the Philippines only as a post; now I began to see it as a place, and a people. All along our escape route, Filipinos were wonderfully kind to us, sharing what little food they had and risking their lives to help us. I might escape, but they still had a war to fight, and I began to wonder whether I should volunteer to join it.

Barker shared my feelings, and we discussed what we should do. The question centered on our status as officers of a surrendered army.

"We never received orders to surrender," Barker reasoned, "so we still have a duty to go on fighting."

I pointed out that soldiers who continued fighting after a surrender were subject to immediate execution.

We talked out the decision at great length, but at bottom we were cavalrymen. It was not in our tradition to turn our backs on a fight.

"It's settled then?" Barker asked me.

"It's settled," I said. "We're volunteering for the guerrillas."

Close Call

            I had developed a sore on my foot that became infected, so when Barker went to Colonel Thorpe's camp, I remained behind. Soon after, partisans reported that the Japanese were planning raids in the area. I set off for the remote mountain slopes.

It was May 9, 1942, my 25th birthday, when I started back down the mountains after a long bout of malaria. I selected a site and began constructing a headquarters. It was nearly finished when Colonel Thorpe arrived in our area. He explained that the guerrilla force would be divided into four parts. One of the sections -- the central Luzon plain, including Bataan and the city of Manila -- would be under Joe Barker's command. I was to be his deputy.

We started making contact with civic leaders and charged them with recruiting cadres. The great majority of the people, we discovered, were actively anti-Japanese and eager to cooperate with us. Soon Barker and I were continually traveling from village to village to address local leaders and swear in new units.

Our job was to prepare for MacArthur's promised return. To do that we had to build our credibility and get the people on our side. We would avoid taking on the Japanese directly. Instead, we would concentrate on organizing, gathering intelligence, and sabotage. There were few weapons to train with and even less equipment. None of our soldiers had uniforms at the outset. It was a peasant army in the truest sense, sustained by patriotism and a determination to resist.

The principal obstacle we faced, besides the terrain and the weather, was a lack of communications equipment. Messages between us and Thorpe or our cadres had to be sent by courier, a dangerous and slow process.

We traveled on foot, keeping as far as possible from roads and towns. Barker and I took a long time to accustom ourselves to the insects, snakes and suffocating heat.

More insidious, however, were the Huks, the military wing of the Philippine Communist Party. Our intention had been to consider them allies and work with their leadership. We had even managed to borrow from them Mao Zedong's book on guerrilla warfare! But the Huks soon proved untrustworthy, and tensions between our forces became acute.

To create cadres in Manila, we sent two agents into the capital. It was dangerous work, but within a few weeks a network formed across the city, including many civilians who were employed by the Japanese. These courageous men and women soon began funneling to us invaluable information about Japanese strength, organization and intentions.

As our actions expanded, so did our exposure, and the Japanese came to know more about us. Our agents informed us that a "wanted" list had been created, headed by Colonel Thorpe and naming other U.S. officers in the resistance, including Joe Barker and me.

Joe and I each had bodyguards whom we trusted with our lives. Mine were Processo Cadizon and Claro Camacho. I didn't move without these men, nor could anyone approach except past their bolo knives and submachine guns.

One evening, as we returned from a guerrilla meeting, Cadizon and I stopped at a farmhouse. The terrified farmer told us that a squadron of Huks had entered the nearby village a few moments before, and had announced their intention to spend the night.

Naive as I was, I took this encounter as an opportunity to meet with the Communist leaders and reason out a settlement between us. Cadizon and I made our way to a hut where we saw some Huk officers squatting around a lantern. I poked my head inside. When they caught sight of me, there was stunned silence in the room.

I smiled and asked to speak with the senior officer. The lieutenant demanded to know who I was.  When Cadizon explained, their surprise turned to amazement. "Stay where you are," the lieutenant ordered. "I will get my superior."

I stood among the men, fighting a numbness I felt creeping over me. I knew I could not show weakness among these people, yet the weeks of sickness and travel had worn me to the point of collapse.

Then, from outside the hut, the lieutenant called me. I went out, and suddenly a dozen men appeared from the darkness, pointing their rifles at me. I looked at them in disbelief -- and passed out.

When I regained consciousness, I was lying with my head in Cadizon's lap. I cautiously opened my eyes and squeezed my bodyguard's arm to let him know I was awake. An armed Huk guard stood inside the hut, his back to us. An argument outside became so animated that the guard left the hut to get a better look. Cadizon listened in. "The lieutenant says you are a German spy," Cadizon whispered to me. "He claims he has an order for your capture and execution."

I told Cadizon that we must get away. There was a small back entrance to the hut, and Cadizon dragged me to it. Then he helped me to a sugar-cane field at the edge of the clearing and we slipped in.

The cane was higher than our heads, and it whipped and slashed at us as we hurried through. Every few dozen yards I had to stop and hang on to Cadizon to keep from blacking out. Suddenly we heard shouts from the village. Our escape had been discovered.

I was swaying between nausea and collapse. Then Cadizon whispered in my ear, "There, look!" He was pointing to a stream. We hurried forward, dropped to our knees, and slid into the water. We were dragged and tossed wildly along, then thrown up against the bank. We crawled up onto the earth and hid ourselves in the jungle until we felt sure that all was safe.

Most Wanted

            My collapse among the Huks, I began to understand, had been a mild stroke. While I recuperated, Joe Barker did most of the traveling. Typhoon rains turned the trails into mud, and mountain streams swelled into torrents, making even short trips hazardous. Nonetheless, by October, our army numbered more than 2500 men.

To regain my strength I spent several weeks at a camp where there was an American doctor. Barker, meanwhile, began preparations for a trip into Manila and set off at the end of the month.

I heard nothing from him until December.  He was in the capital, based in a shantytown overrun with refugees and bandits. He made recruiting and intelligence gathering forays across Manila, dressed as a Catholic priest.

There was bad news, however. Barker had learned that Colonel Thorpe had been captured and was being tortured mercilessly. Barker wrote that he would take Thorpe's place in command of the entire guerrilla force. I would now be in charge of the east-central region. "I ought to congratulate you," he closed, "since, according to our agents, you are now No. 2, behind me, on the death list."

Even as the occupation took hold and became more brutal, the volume of intelligence flowing from us to Australia increased, and our cadres began to engage in acts of sabotage. Whenever a convoy could be isolated in the hills, it was attacked, the guerrillas then melting into the countryside. Supply dumps and ammunition depots were frequent targets, while vehicles and airplanes were disabled whenever possible.

The chief of Japanese counterintelligence, General Baba, launched an all-out effort to annihilate us in January 1943. Our camps were raided continually. Japanese soldiers descended on villages, burning everything and arresting anyone who looked suspicious.

 

The growing pressure did not frighten the Filipino people from us. Having recovered much of my strength, I traveled throughout Bataan, recruiting cadres and appointing new officers. At Morong, where I had led the cavalry charge, our group was welcomed as heroes by the mayor and the entire population. In a matter of weeks, the whole west coast of Bataan had been organized. From that point on, no ship could enter or leave Manila Bay without our knowledge and without reports being sent to MacArthur.

January was nearly over when we returned to camp. Waiting for us was an officer from Manila, and I could tell he bore bad news.

On January 8, Barker's bodyguard had been captured. He was tortured steadily for three days until he gave up the whereabouts of one of our agents, who in turn was seized, along with most of his staff Barker had fled, stopping for the night at the home of one of our operatives. But at dawn, dozens of heavily armed troops surrounded the house. Joe had no chance. They burst in and arrested him as he slept.

I was now commander of the guerrilla force. As such I became the most wanted man on Baba's death list. The price on my head was a quarter of a million pesos, some $100,000.

Harrowing Train Ride

            Our network in Manila had been dealt a heavy blow. I wanted to go there at once, but it was too dangerous. I decided to move north instead. We made the trip on foot, mostly at night, skirting Japanese encampments.

            In the village of Bayambong, the hometown of my bodyguard Claro Camacho, we established a new base, and I sent word to Lt. Bob Lapham, one of the two American officers in command of the region, that I had arrived. He was a handsome young man, with a wide grin and a casual manner. His men referred to him as Major, and when I kidded him about it, he told me that both of us were indeed Majors. Before his arrest, Thorpe had put us in for a jump of two grades. "Took a few months to get through to Australia," Lapham explained, "but MacArthur confirmed it. Congratulations."

Throughout April and May 1943, the two of us traveled the northern provinces, recruiting more leaders and creating cadres. We were asked the same question everywhere: when is MacArthur coming back? His name was like an invocation, a holy word that had special power. We said honestly that we did not know. We had no radio and could contact his headquarters only through the long and perilous process of hand-carried messages. But we assured everyone that the invasion would come.

In camp one night, Lapham told me about a group of prominent Filipinos who had formed a clandestine network to help the prisoners and escapees. One of its most energetic members was a young Manila socialite named Ramona Snyder. The widow of an American POW who died in captivity, she had nursed Lapham through a bout of malaria the previous year. Now she was to come up from Manila to help him celebrate his birthday.

When she entered our hut, the gloomy shack was transformed. She wore a simple white dress that made deeper and more delicate the gentle brown of her skin. Her face was oval and open, her dark eyes filled with cheer.

I could not take my eyes off her. Like me she was a guerrilla, exposed to every bit as much danger. Yet she laughed and chatted as amiably as if she were on a cruise. I savored every moment of her company. By evening's end, I was in love with her.

Mona spent two days with us, telling us the latest news from Manila. As she prepared to leave, she offered to forward intelligence to me from Manila. It was a dangerous game she was playing -- even the rumor of a connection with me could cost her dearly -- but later that summer she returned to our camp with a report. The vacuum created in the Manila underground by the January raids remained unfilled, and I decided to visit the city.

I mentioned my plans to Claro Camacho. It was a long trip, and I didn't want to walk. "I need a boxcar," I remarked half-jokingly. Sure enough, a few nights later a boxcar had been arranged.

At midnight on November 23, we made our way to a railroad siding in a nearby village. We brought food for two days, and three machine guns. The boxcar sat hulking -- among the weeds. We pulled back the door and were greeted by the odor of fresh palm leaves, normally used as packaging around cargo. After hefting up the machine guns and tripods, I climbed in with two men Camacho had hand picked. Camacho himself would be aboard the locomotive.

We piled the bales of palm leaves chest-high against the door. Then Camacho slid the door shut and padlocked it. There was no exit unless someone opened the door from the outside. If it was the Japanese, we would have to shoot our way out.

It was near midday before we reached the first checkpoint. In a few minutes the sounds of Japanese voices told us the train was surrounded. The three of us froze. There was pounding on the walls of the car, and then bayonet blades came jabbing in at the cracks. We could hear them ripping through the palm leaves as the Japanese made their way along the side of the boxcar.

Suddenly a blade sliced in at the door, missing my leg by inches. There was a grunt from outside, and another blade poked in, followed by another. The bayonets had not met any cargo, and one of the Japanese soldiers gave a shout. There was a hurried conversation at the door; then we could hear men running for the head of the train. We lifted ourselves to the machine guns, certain we would have to fight.

At that moment the train gave a lurch and began moving forward. We soon overtook the soldiers, who were still running and gesticulating toward our car.

For the next two hours we waited anxiously, sure that the Japanese had telephoned ahead. There was no sign from Camacho, so we sat helpless, the machine guns off safety.

At last the car grumbled to a stop, and the three of us trained our guns on the door. We heard voices approaching. We strained to listen, but they passed by quickly. For five minutes more we waited, then ten, expecting the padlock to be smashed any second.

The train's couplings clanked, and we were moving again. There had been no search. Why the Japanese hadn't signaled ahead we could not guess; we could only be grateful.

Mad Charade

            That night we set up temporary headquarters in a village outside Manila. Our immediate concern was my lack of papers. The problem had been delegated to one of our key people, a Swiss national named Walter Roeder, technical director of the Manila Gas Co. Using his knowledge of chemicals and dyes, Roeder made over his Swiss passport for me.

On the evening of December 20, an old sedan pulled up, and I climbed into the back seat between two guards. Each of us carried a concealed automatic pistol.

All along our route we passed Japanese soldiers. The farther we drove into the city, however, the less apprehensive I became. It was nearly Christmas, and though there were shortages of everything, some of the shops were decorated and people were out strolling. I felt transported to a different world.

For the next few days I conferred almost continuously with leaders of the Manila resistance. On Christmas Eve, Mona Snyder came to fetch me. She was the loveliest Christmas present I could have hoped for. "You are well?" she asked me, her brown eyes smiling.

I held out my arms like a scarecrow. "As you see," I said.

            "We will do something about that," she laughed. "We are invited to dinner at my relatives'. They have prepared a Christmas feast in your honor."

They greeted me with a hug before I was even introduced. There were no formalities, and I was made at once to feel at home. The meal was exquisite, and we ate and chatted and sipped wine until Mona motioned that it was time to go. It was far too soon for me, but we could not risk being on the streets beyond curfew.

Over the next few days I continued my meetings. Then Mona arrived with unsettling news. General Baba not only knew I was in Manila but also roughly where I was staying. All roads out of the city were blocked; I would have to find another hide-out at once. Mona and I left immediately in a horse-drawn carriage. We crossed town and took refuge in the home of another of her relatives.

That evening Walter Roeder appeared at the door. He had ridden his bicycle from the gasworks, bringing a spare bike for me. His plan was audacious. I would stay as a guest in his home, under the eyes of hundreds of Japanese soldiers garrisoned in the company's compound. Since Roeder was some 20 years older, and our passports bore the same last name, I was to be his son, visiting from Zurich.

Roeder asked if I spoke any German. I did not. "Well," he said, "I will teach you a few words, yes? Please repeat after me: so . . .

"So," I said.

"No, not so, ZO."

"Zo," I mimicked.

"Yes, it will do," he muttered. "Now, wie." I repeated it.

"Very good.  Now say ja, so wie so.

“ja," I said.  "So wie so."

He made me repeat it several times. "Now," he said, "I will carry the bulk of the conversation, yes? You will contribute what you can."

It was a long way to the gasworks, but the whole time Roeder chatted with me in German, while I parroted, “ja, so wie so," over and over to everything he said. It was a mad charade, but I felt the unlikeliness of it was a safeguard.

However, I was dismayed when I saw the compound. It was a huge tract of machinery, storage tanks and houses in the heart of Manila. Crowded everywhere among the buildings were rows of tents, swarming with Japanese soldiers.

We pedaled through the gates, where sentries waved us past, I all the while replying “ja, ja, so" to Roeder's chatter. We maneuvered among the tents and pulled our bicycles onto his porch. Soon we were safely in his living room.

For the next nine days the Japanese conducted a manhunt for me that virtually closed down Manila. Every vehicle leaving the city was searched, while patrols made random checks of pedestrians. By the first week of January, our informants reported that Baba had reluctantly decided I had slipped out of the city, and he began reducing the surveillance.

On the evening of January 7, 1944, Walter Roeder and I got out our bicycles. Once again enacting our charade of father and son, I made good my escape into the countryside.

Tempting Offer

            We had been without a general headquarters for a long time and needed a command post within a reasonable distance of Manila. North and west of the city were the plains of central Luzon -- flat, exposed ground. To the northeast, however, rose the rain forest of the Sierra Madre. Its ridges were steep, its canopy of trees and jungle impenetrable. Yet it was not too far from the capital. We went there to look it over.

From the foothills the ground rose sharply. We struggled up a rise to a clearing and surveyed the scene. Below us, across the foothills and plains, lay Manila. Behind us bulked a mountain of remote jungle with a waterfall rushing down a gash of white stone. Near the top of the falls was a shelf of rock, and beyond it a forested valley at the base of the mountain's summit.

"What mountain is that?" I asked our guide.

"That?" he said.  "Balagbag."

It was the perfect place. The ledge was an ideal defense position, the valley beyond would be the campsite, and the rise above that our observation post. We spent the rest of the day exploring, and finally climbed up to the rock. "This is it," I said. "We'll set machine guns here."

Meantime, in Manila, I had learned that a radio for our group had been brought to Mindoro Island by submarine. But I would have to go get it.

I spent over a month on a long, difficult trip, first by boat across Manila Bay, then by land through southern Luzon, then across a strait to Mindoro. I arrived in the local guerrilla camp, and a few days later a man dragged himself out of the jungle. He was Warrant Officer David Wise -- his hair matted and filthy, his skin caked with dirt and dried blood. The Japanese had found their outpost, opened fire and killed most of the men. Wise had escaped into the jungle, leaving all the supplies behind.

"What about the radio?" I asked.

"We lost it in the raid," he said.  "I'm sure the Japs got it."

The next morning, as we prepared to leave, we received a communication. A submarine would arrive in two weeks at the southern tip of Mindoro, bringing money and equipment for the guerrillas. And there was a message for me.

"The sub can take you out," the camp commander told me. "But you'll have to leave at once."

It was tempting, but I knew I could not leave. I was the leader. My people counted on me. It was my war as well as theirs. I had volunteered for this job; I would not give it up now.

"Tell them no, thanks," I replied.

The commander smiled and nodded. "I should not give you this," he said, handing me a folded piece of paper. "My instructions were to show it to you only if you decided to leave."

I opened the paper and read it. It was from Australia, addressed to me. MacArthur to Ramsey, it began, Request that you return to Luzon and command of your resistance forces. It was signed by MacArthur himself.

When I got back to Balagbag, there was tragic news. The previous December, Joe Barker and other officers had been taken from their cells to an old cemetery in Manila. There they had been made to dig graves for themselves in the pouring rain, and then forced to kneel over the graves. One by one, they were beheaded.

It had put an end to a year of cruel suffering. I was living proof of their fortitude, for any one of them might have given information and names sufficient to lead to my death. They had behaved like soldiers, and died like martyrs.

I recalled how part of cavalry lore was that our elitism extended even to the afterlife. The legend was that, while foot soldiers trudged to the inferno, troopers would get a last drink and a final visit with friends on Fiddler's Green, a meadow on the border of hell.

I walked out of my hut under a steady rain and turned my face up to it. "Good-by," I said aloud. "I'll see you on Fiddler's Green."

Blazing Triumph

            It was somewhere around that aching, fitful time that a scout arrived from the southern islands. The trip of nearly 1000 miles had taken him four months. He had crossed some of the roughest terrain in the Philippines, dodging Japanese patrols, to bring me a gift -- a radio.

For us it was the beginning of a new phase of the war. There would be no more runners risking their lives, no more endless delays to receive replies.

The camp at Balagbag now boasted half a dozen palm-leaf huts, plus an airy mess hall and a hospital. Everything was overarched by towering trees, making the buildings invisible from the air. The approaches were thick jungle slopes, vertical ravines and a dizzying climb up the waterfall. At the top we had posted two .50-caliber machine guns salvaged from a downed U.S. fighter plane.

I gave orders for a communications hut to be built on the bluff behind the camp, which we christened Signal Hill. The men strung the antenna wire in the trees, while my signal officer set up the radio on a bamboo table, its hand-cranked generator nearby. Suddenly a high pitched whistle broke into a series of rapid dots and dashes. We were in business. From that evening on, we broadcast regular intelligence reports that were relayed to MacArthur's headquarters.

Up to this point our guerrilla forces had engaged in sabotage only with great care. By midsummer 1944, however, I felt the time had come for a display of strength. I sent secret orders to Manila to prepare for an offensive. A message to Walter Roeder asked him to devise an explosive. He came out to Balagbag to demonstrate his bomb-two lead cylinders, one containing the explosive, the other a crude timer.

Roeder supervised the construction of the devices and the training of the sabotage teams. I gave the order for the bombs to be placed July 15, with the fuses set to go off at midnight.

At around 9 p.m. on the 5th, Roeder arrived to report that the explosives were in place. But the timing mechanisms bothered him. "This is not a Swiss clockwork device, major," he said.

I patted his arm reassuringly. ”ja, ja,”  I said.  "So wie so.'

Near midnight Roeder and I took a telescope and climbed to Signal Hill. There was no moon, and we sat in total darkness. When midnight came we looked expectantly toward the city. Twelve-thirty passed, and 1 a.m. After another hour I turned to Roeder. Was it possible that none of the devices had worked?

Suddenly a column of flame shot into the sky. More explosions followed, spraying fire and flares across the startled city, and the boom-rumble-boom echoed off Balagbag and back over the bay.

Roeder snatched the telescope and trained it on the flames. "Tanque," he said and turned to me with a grin. Tanque was the main Japanese fuel depot, and it was exploding in a broadening fan of fireworks. Then from the edge of the city rose a fence of flame. One orange picket after another spiked up, merging into long rows of fire. These were tanker cars in the Manila railroad yards going off one by one.

Behind me, Roeder burst into a raucous German folk song, jumped to his feet and started dancing. All through the night one explosion followed another. just before dawn, tanks at the Philippine Manufacturing Co. went up with a tremendous roar, raining burning debris onto the length of the river.

Then, as first light came, there was a blinding explosion in the bay. For a moment the docks were thrown into amber relief as flames shot hundreds of feet into the morning sky. A device dropped into a 50 gallon oil drum had been loaded onto a Japanese tanker, and now the whole 10,000 ton ship heaved up at once.

When the sound reached us, it was a thunderous blast. Berthed next to the ship as it sank was another tanker that caught fire and began rumbling. Then a third ship ignited from the debris.

We remained atop Balagbag celebrating the spectacle until 8 a.m., and then started down to camp. Beneath us, as I encoded a message for MacArthur, fires burned all over Manila.

The Breaking Storm

            In the wake of this sabotage, pressure to find us intensified. Mona Snyder had taken the precaution, at my urging, of joining us in the mountains, but many of our people were swept up by the Japanese and sent to join the hundreds of other torture victims. Yet after the fireworks of July 15 the spirit of resistance was lifted, and our minds were set more than ever on victory.

Through the summer of 1944, Balagbag remained inviolate, but my own health took another blow. In September I developed acute appendicitis. A doctor poked at my mid section. It felt as if he were touching an electric switch inside me, and with every jolt I howled. "You must be operated on immediately," he told me.

I told Cadizon to go to my quarters and get a bottle of rum, which I'd been keeping for a celebration of MacArthur's return. He returned and poured a deep mug ful and held my head as I drained it.

While Mona and Cadizon held me down, the doctor sliced open the flesh above my groin. I winced with the sudden stick pain. Then he began cutting through the muscles of my abdomen. I screamed and groaned and bit at Mona's arms.

The doctor reached in with his gloved hand, and I could feel his fingers pushing aside my organs. I

swore as loudly as the pain would allow, in protest and indignation. I cursed and snarled, but by now I was slipping beyond protest, stupefied by the fever, pain and rum.

At last he located my appendix and snipped it clear. Then he dusted my insides with sulfa, pinched the flesh together and sewed it shut.

Afterward I lay for a week in my hut, tended by Mona, slowly regaining strength. On the eighth day I had a guard whittle a cane for me and began exercising outside my hut. I had to be ready.

The Japanese finally found us on January 2, 1945. Between radio triangulation’s and clues tortured from agents, Baba pieced together our location. Patrols were sent to scour the area. When they got to the waterfall, we opened fire.

The Japanese fell back, and we waited, keeping up our radio transmissions, but ready to move. On the 4th the enemy returned, an entire battalion backed by mortars. All that day and the next they continued their attack, gaining a foothold on the rocks.

Next morning they began an all out push. Shells burst in the trees overhead, and bullets ricocheted noisily through the huts. Mona, the doctor and a squad of men began carrying the sick and wounded into the jungle. When everything was out but the combat troops, I sent orders to Signal Hill to pack up the radio. Then one last check, and we all began to pull back.

I was clutching my stomach now, barely able to breathe for the pain and dizziness. I made it into the jungle among the bursting shells, joined my staff, and we started the trek down the slopes. Soon I had to be carried, and after a few miles I could go no farther. I told the others to continue; I would come down with the machine-gun crew. I hoped by then to have rested enough to go on.

I lay under cover, listening to the crackling of the battle. I had not eaten for two days and could not summon the strength to sit up. It began to occur to me that perhaps I had reached the end. Once the machine-gun post was out, all my people would be safe; they could reestablish headquarters and carry on until the invasion. My work was done, I told myself as I drifted into sleep; I simply could not go on.

I was awakened by boot steps on the trail. I drew my pistol and listened for voices. It was the machine gunners, and I called to them. The first face I saw was that of Cadizon, my bodyguard.

"Are you hit?" he asked, kneeling beside me.

No, I assured him, just too bushed to go on. Cadizon decided to remain behind with me, as I sent the machine gunners on. He held my head as he fed a few handfuls of rice to me. "It will not be much longer," he said. "The Americans will be here and everything will be over. That will be strange. I can't remember what peace is like, or life without hiding and fighting."

As the daylight faded, we talked about people who had become close to us in the resistance. We remembered the friends we had lost. Then Cadizon asked about my mother and sister.

I thought of them aloud-how they had survived their own struggles, Mother fighting for years to sustain her family, and Nadine battling back from the crash.

"You are all fighters," Cadizon said. "And your father? He, too, must have been a fighter."

I had never spoken of him and, indeed, except as a warning to myself, had scarcely thought about him for the whole length of the war. Yet I realized that Cadizon was right: he had been a fighter in a long and lonely battle of his own. It must have been every bit as terrible as my war, for its isolation and its unequal odds. In the end he had succumbed to desperation.

I asked Cadizon to give me a hand, and I rose to my feet. The night was coming on. I took a few steps, nearly fainted, grasped his shoulder, and we made our way down into the dense sea of grass. I was not finished yet, and neither was I alone.

Last Battle

            By January 8 we found new quarters, and our radio was back in operation. That afternoon I received an urgent message from MacArthur: starting immediately, destroy enemy communications, railroad tracks, trucks, planes, ammunition, oil and supply dumps.

The very next morning MacArthur's battleships and planes started pounding the shore, and early on January 10 the Sixth Army clambered down to their landing craft.

The Japanese withdrew into the mountains, and our soldiers poured inland, meeting little initial resistance. There was much fighting yet to be done, in the mountains and in Manila itself, where some Japanese made a desperate last stand.

When it was over, I was summoned to see MacArthur. As I was led into his office, a voice from across the wide room said "So you are Ramsey."

Gen. Douglas MacArthur was tall, with penetrating eyes, yet in a moment he had put me completely at ease. "We never doubted that you'd come back, sir," I said.

He nodded his thanks. "I'm sorry it took so long."

We talked for more than an hour as he questioned me exhaustively about my forces, the key commanders, the civilian leaders. I was especially concerned about the integration of my men into the regular U.S. forces. "I'm anxious that my people know their service is recognized and they'll be treated as equals," I said.

MacArthur assured me he would attend to it.

"There's another thing, General," I continued. "I've breveted a lot of officers during the past three years, including some colonels . . ."

"You haven't made any generals, have you?" He laughed.

"No, sir," I replied, "but I'm anxious that their commissions stand up."

            "Do you vouch for these people?" he asked.

"Every one of them, sir."

"Then you have my word on it."

I started to thank him, but he cut me off. "Ramsey, you helped me keep my promise to the Filipino people. The debt is mine."

MacArthur made good on all his promises. Meanwhile, to assist in the processing of the guerrillas, and in their new training, I worked all through April and into May. I now weighed scarcely 90 pounds and still suffered from dysentery and, increasingly, fatigue.

On May 9, 1945, my 28th birthday, I woke to the sounds of a native band and the sight of colored streamers rippling from the trees outside my window. Mona, in a fresh khaki uniform with gleaming captain's bars, beamed and looked mischievously content. My staff was assembled, dignitaries began to arrive and the band played into the night. I danced with Mona. I consumed quantities of brandy and rum, and before long the world was swirling around me.

Then morning came. I started trembling. I got to my feet, but collapsed and lay shaking violently on the floor. Camacho and Cadizon carried me out to my car, and I was laid on the back seat, my head lolling, moans gurgling from my throat.

For ten days I remained in a hospital, then another ten days in Manila. When I returned to work, I tried for a week to get back into the routine, but everything I did was wrong.

The second breakdown was worse. I was sitting at my desk when suddenly I watched the pencil start shaking in my hand. The spirit dissolved within me. There was nothing I could do except withdraw to a little pinpoint of consciousness in my brain from which I watched in safety as my nervous system fell to pieces.

I lay in a hospital bed day after day. And yet deep within me was that pinpoint of light. Everyone was safe, I told myself; no one was in danger, no more raids, no hiding out, no alarms. I had not surrendered on Bataan, nor had I succumbed to disease or General Baba or the acid residue of the deaths of friends. I had helped the Philippines fight for liberation from fear and torment and death. Now I would have to fight for my own.

The day of my second release from the hospital I received orders to return to the United States. Accompanying the orders was my promotion to lieutenant colonel.

On June 13 in Manila, MacArthur stooped down to pin a Distinguished Service Cross on my shirt and to thank me again. Three days later, I said good-by to my staff, taking each man's hand in turn and thanking him for his loyalty and courage. Camacho and Cadizon -- I could not say good-by to them. We hugged one another.

Mona rode with me to the airfield. I closed my eyes and lay my head back. She held my hand.

"Come and visit me," I told her when we arrived.

"I will," she said. She brought her kind brown face close to mine. "Get well," she said, and she kissed me. "Be happy and well."

Nadine met me at the airfield in San Francisco. She seemed more serious to me, the old toughness in her having matured to assurance and poise. "Hello, Buddy," she said as she embraced me. No one had called me that in years, and I felt tears start into my eyes. Nadine, too, was fighting them.

"Does Mother know?" I asked.  Ever since the fall of Bataan I had been listed as missing in action.

"They called her from Washington a few weeks ago, I guess when you were safe."

"You okay?" I asked.

"I've been having a swell time," she answered. "I've been ferrying planes for the army-fighters and bombers. Training crews too." She took a long sideways look at me. "How about you?  You okay?"

"I don't know," I answered truthfully.

"You're a big hero, you know. But God, how did you get so skinny?"

"It's a long story," I said.

We climbed into her plane. As I buckled myself in, my hands were shaking. Nadine noticed it but said nothing. "All ready?" she asked. I nodded, trying to return her smile. She took off, snapped the plane into a steep bank, and headed east.

Mother was waiting at the airport in Wichita when we landed. Nadine taxied the plane up to her car. I climbed down, and Mother opened her arms.

"Oh, Buddy," she said. "Oh, my God, Buddy - - - ."

After spending two days at home I checked into a hospital in Topeka. I weighed 93 pounds; the diagnosis was malaria, amebic dysentery, anemia, acute malnutrition and general nervous collapse.

            It would take 11 months and all the faith and love I had learned in Luzon, but I was determined that this war, too, I would win.

            In addition to the Distinguished Service Cross, Ed Ramsey received the Silver Star with Cluster, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and numerous awards from the Philippine government. He became a vice president for Hughes Aircraft, in charge of the Far East area, and is now retired and living in Los Angeles with his wife.