Free Behind Japanese Lines by Ray C. Hunt, Bernard Norling

not. At length I arose alone and began to call out. Across the stream some Filipino farmers heard me, and one started toward us. He walked up onto a log that lay across the ditch, with his eyes turned downward. Iasked him if there were any Japanese around. Fortunately, he understood some English. He told me to stay down, and slipped into the underbrush. A few minutes later he returned and motioned for us to follow him.

Chapter Four
In and Out of the Fassoth Camps
    Our Filipino savior took us a short distance to a
bahay
, a house on stilts. It was close enough to the road for us to watch the Death March through slits in the woven bamboo walls. When I saw an American run through with a bayonet by a Japanese guard, it added nothing to my sense of security.
    The house already contained another escaped American, a Lieutenant Kiery. His fate was tragic, yet similar to that of all too many in the war. He managed to avoid capture for another two and a half years, only to drown off the east coast of Luzon late in 1944 when he took one chance too many. Al Hendrickson, with whom I was subsequently closely associated, told him to follow a difficult foot trail down the coastline to meet a submarine. Rather than hike through the mountains and jungle, Kiery decided to try a rubber boat in a rough sea. He never made it.
    As always throughout the war the Filipinos here treated us warmly and generously, at dire risk to themselves. Various of them brought us rice, water, and crude sugar several times a day. One boy begged me to let him hide me amid fishponds in Manila Bay, promising that he would make me well again and would keep me safe until the Americans returned in perhaps three months. Little did he or I realize that it would be three years. Another Filipino told us that an American civilian owned a nearby hacienda and said he would take us there. This offer we accepted.
    The Death March, it must be recalled, did not usually consist ofan unbroken string of marching men but of different groups of about four hundred men, each with two guards, separated by a quarter to a half mile or more. Thus, it was sometimes possible to slip away safely when one contingent had passed and another one had not yet arrived. We waited for one of these breaks about nightfall and started off. As soon as we had put a few sugarcane fields between us and the road, we were loaded onto a cart that had two solid wooden wheels. Then we were covered with rice straw. In this conveyance, pulled by a carabao, we rode all night northwestward toward the Zambales Mountains. I could not have made it on foot. All my previous life I had been strong and healthy, but diseases and starvation had so sapped my flesh that when I looked at my emaciated body I could hardly believe it was my own.
    We had a great stroke of luck on the way. Three times our Filipino driver was stopped by Japanese who questioned him in English about whether he had seen any escaped Americans. Since he could not speak English, he was able to answer only when the Japanese questioner happened to be accompanied by a Filipino interpreter who knew the Tagalog language. The Japanese never searched the cart, apparently on the assumption that anyone who could not speak English would be unlikely to harbor Americans. Finally we reached our destination, a cluster of grass-roofed houses under some shade trees. Here some Filipinos fed us and washed our clothes. They also offered us a haircut and shave. I accepted both eagerly, but soon regretted my zeal to be shaved. The barber was a Filipina who commenced operations by dipping her fingers into a coconut shell filled with cold water and patting this on my whiskers. Then she took up a straight razor that had clearly been put to many uses other than shaving. It pulled out at least two hairs for every one it cut. As she scraped away unconcernedly, the tears rolled down my cheeks and I prayed for survival.
    While I was undergoing this memorable shave, a muscular, bronzed man