Word Celebrity Blog

The Raid At Cabanatuan


In presenting the story about what happened to the survivors of the Batan Death March, I found it necessary to include some small stories about some of those who were participants in that story. In these stories (and others) you will find that I keep using the individuals' names over and over instead of his, him, them, their, etc. This is to reinforce the person or persons' name in our memories, so that we might always REMEMBER what they have done.

(If you so desire, you can view the graphics in their original size by clicking on it.)























The Map of the War In The Pacific.


Philippine Massacre

A full account of all massacres of Filipino people by the Japanese troops would fill several books. In Manila, 800 men women and children were machine-gunned in the grounds of St. Paul's College.  In the town of Calamba, 2,500 were shot or bayoneted. Around 100 were bayoneted and shot inside a church at Ponson and 169 villagers of Matina Pangi were rounded up and shot in cold blood.  At the War Crimes Trial in Tokyo, document No 2726 consisted of 14,618 pages of sworn affidavits, each describing separate atrocities committed by the invading Japanese troops.  The War Crimes Tribunal listed 72 large scale massacres and 131,028 murders as a bare minimum.

























American surrender of troops at Luzon.

























General Wainwright announcing the surrender of Corregidor.



















Identification of some captured American Generals on the Philippine Islands.


Battle of Bataan

After the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 by Japanese forces, it entered World War II to join the Allied forces in their fight against the Axis powers.

American forces led by General Douglas MacArthur, were already stationed in the Philippines as a deterrent against a Japanese invasion of the islands, were attacked by the Japanese only hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.














General Douglas MacArthur and Staff on Corregidor.



On March 12, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur and a few select officers, on the orders of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, left the American forces, promising to return with reinforcements.

Any Ameican or Phillipine soldier that was captured, before the official surrender, was executed.


























The 72,000 American and Filipino soldiers, fighting with outdated weapons, lacking supplies, and stricken with disease and malnourishment, were eventually ordered to surrender to the Japanese on April 9, 1942.


















Surrendered American Troops.


















Surrendered American Equipment and Materials.


The Japanese had initially planned for only 10,000–25,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war (POWs). Although they had organized two hospitals, ample food, and guards for this estimate, they were overwhelmed with over 72,000 prisoners.






















On the "Bataan Death March", those that could not keep up the pace were clubbed, stabbed, shot, beheaded or buried alive.





















By the end of the 60-mile (97-km) march, only 52,000 prisoners (approximately 9,200 American and 42,800 Filipino) reached Camp O'Donnell, with an estimated 20,000 having died from illness, hunger, torture, or murder. Some of the imprisoned soldiers were diverted to the Cabanatuan prison camp to join the POWs from the Battle of Corregidor.


















Once the prison camp had been reached, disease, malnutrition and brutality claimed up to 400 American and Filipinos -  each day.
























*****

HENRY ANDREW MUCCI


























Henry Andrew Mucci was born on March 4, 1911,  in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to parents who had emigrated from Sicily. His father worked as a horse salesman in the Bridgeport area.

Two years after graduating high school, Henry Mucci entered West Point, from which he graduated in 1936. Henry Mucci was 246th in his class at West Point. He was on the Acadamy's equestrian team, largely because of his early years growing up around horses.

Henry Mucci survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

In February 1943, the United States Sixth Army put Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci in charge of the 98th Field Artillery Battalion, previously a mule- drawn pack artillery unit. Henry Mucci announced that the Battalion was being converted from Field Artillery to a Ranger Battalion.


























The battalion was downsized from 1,000 men to 500, and held a training camp in New Guinea where he utilized commando type training techniques for over a year. 

Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci was both loved and feared

Sometimes there are men that are larger than life. Tough, ambitious, and incredibly charismatic, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci was one of those men. His soldiers could not say enough about him. They loved him, they feared him, they would follow him anywhere. Even on what seemed like a suicide mission.























During the liberation of the Philippines,  General Walter Kreuger, the 6th Ranger Battalion Commander. and one of his top G-2 men, Horton White, chose Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci to head the liberation of the Cabanatuan Prison Camp due to both the difficulty and the peculiar needs of such a mission. As General Krueger and Horton White considered the raid, they knew they would need an elite fighting force.

Hampton Sides, the author of "Ghost Soldiers", wrote: "[They] would need a group of men trained in stealth techniques and the tactics of lightning assault. The expeditioners must be in exceptional physical condition, as they would have to walk some 30 miles on foot in each direction, marching around the clock. They would have to be versatile, self-reliant, and extremely proficient with light arms, as the odds were better than good that they would encounter major enemy resistance along the trek."






















Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci had just such an outfit. In fact he had trained them: the 6th Ranger Battalion. Colonel Mucci was a man of vision. It was he who took the unit of Army mule skinners and turned them into the elite jungle fighting force known as the Army Rangers. For one year, in the mountains of New Guinea, Lieutenant Colonel Mucci trained his team, one of the first American special operations fighting forces.

The men Henry Mucci had started with were for the most part boys from the farms and ranches of middle America. They were big, strong men, known as "mule skinners." They had been recruited to train in the mountains of New Guinea with heavy artillery carried on the backs of pack animals.  By 1944, the Army considered the mule skinners obsolete, and General Krueger was looking to train a new special unit. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci was his man.


Testing Physical Limits

Ranger training under Lieutenant Colonel Mucci bordered on inhuman. A boxer, judo-expert, athlete, and former West Pointer, Henry Mucci believed in training his men to the absolute limits of their physical capacities. He personally taught them all aspects of fighting: hand to hand combat, knifing, bayoneting and marksmanship. He led them on torturous exercises across the tropical New Guinea jungles, through treacherous rivers, and up mountainsides in the ferocious heat. Jungle combat, night combat, amphibious combat; Lieutenant Colonel Mucci taught and reveled in it all.

John Richardson, 6th Army Ranger, recalled: "I thought he was going to kill us. He called us rats, he called us everything but a child of God. And he told us, "I'm going to make you so damned mean, you will kill your own grandmother.... I wondered why he was putting us through so much, but before it was over, there was no question about it, I knew why. And once he got us trained and picked out, he loved us to death. And there wasn't anything too good for us.... He knew what he was doing when he was training us."

Bob Anderson, 6th Army Ranger remembered, "He worked us so hard that sometimes I'd think I hate that man and I'd double-time back to my camp and say, 'You can't kill me, I can do more. You can't give me enough, I can do more than you can give me.' So he had us in shape and once he got us trained he was the nicest man you ever saw. But he knew how to train men." No doubt, Lieutenant Colonel Mucci got his men in peak physical condition. They were ready for the raid. They were ready for anything.

Robert Prince said, "He made a Ranger battalion out of a bunch of mule skinners, and he inspired us and trained us -- and any success we had belongs to Colonel Mucci."

Sometimes the fit is perfect. Lieutenant Colonel Mucci was the right man to train and lead the Rangers. He had all the qualities of a superb military leader: he knew men, he had vision, and he was decisive.











Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci's 6th Ranger C Company.

In January 1945, Lieutenant Colonel Mucci led 128 Army Rangers in liberating the Cabanatuan Prison Camp with the loss of only 2 men killed in action. The raid was supported by some 250 Filipino guerrillas, many of whom were unarmed, who guided the Rangers through Japanese held territory and held off Japanese reinforcements while the American Rangers freed the POWs.

Lieutenant Colonel Mucci's actions and decisions on the raid were flawless. General Douglas MacArthur awarded Henry Mucci the Distinguished Service Cross and said that the raid was " magnificent and reflected extraordinary credit to all concerned." The Army promoted Henry Mucci to full colonel.

On Feb. 1, 1945, the American people learned, a small force of Army Rangers and Filipino guerrillas under the command of Lieut. Col. Henry A. Mucci, a 33-year-old West Point graduate from Bridgeport, Conn., had penetrated 30 miles behind Japanese lines north of Manila and rescued 511 men, most of them American soldiers, who for almost three years had endured an excruciatingly brutal confinement in a camp named for the nearby town of Cabanatuan.

What stirred the public was not simply the modest persona of Colonel Mucci, whose signature pipe, mustache, and Colt 45 in a shoulder holster soon became familiar to millions of American newspaper readers, or the skill and courage of his raiders.It was mostly because of the identity of those he and his force of about 400 men had rescued: the tattered, often crippled and gruesomely emaciated remnants of the 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners captured by Japanese invaders in the opening months of the war.

The plight of the Cabanatuan prisoners had been a burning issue in the United States since October 1943, when word leaked out that 10 of the prisoners, led by Austin Shofner, a 25-year-old Marine captain from Shelbyville, Tennessee, had managed an almost impossible escape and brought out chilling accounts of widespread Japanese atrocities.

Their accounts, initially suppressed, told of how more than 15,000 prisoners had been shot or hacked to death during a three-day, 65-mile forced march up the Bataan peninsula that became known as the Bataan Death March, and of how thousands of others had died of disease or been shot, beheaded or starved to death at the camp, which once held 10,000 prisoners. Although Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright and several thousand other prisoners had been transferred to other Japanese work camps throughout Asia, to get to the Cabanatuan camp and rescue its last 511 prisoners, Colonel Mucci's men had to crawl over or past the shallow graves of more than 2,500 prisoners.

The escapees' reports outraged the American public and altered the course of the war.

When Colonel Mucci returned home he was treated as a national hero in his home town of Bridgeport. In 1947, he married Marion Fountain, with whom he had four children.

He ran for Congress in 1946 but he was unsuccessful. He became the President of the Bridgeport Lincoln Mercury Co. as well as becoming an oil representative for the Sunningdale Oil Company of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, which had a firm in Bangkok, India.

He lived for many years in Singapore, commuting frequently to Saigon and dismissing rumors that he was working for the Central Intelligence Agency. The rumors persisted, however, partly because Mr. Henty Mucci was at work at his Saigon office until a day before the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces on April 30, 1975, and partly because it seemed exactly the sort of thing a war hero might do.

In November 1974, the portion of Route 25 between Bridgeport and Newtown was named the Colonel Henry A. Mucci Highway.

Colonel Mucci's Years of service in the United States Army were from 1936 to 1946.


























During World War II, Henry A. Mucci fought in the Battle of Pearl Harbor, the Second Battle of the Philippines, and the  Raid at Cabanatuan

He was awarded his Nation's 2nd highest honor, the Distinguished Service Cross

Henry Andrew Mucci died on April 20, 1997, at the age of 88, in Melbourne, Florida. His death was the result of a stroke. The stroke was a complication of a fractured hip that he sustained while swiming in rough surf near his home, two years earlier. He was 86 at that time.

He is survived by two daughters, Senga Mortimer of Manhattan and Marcia Marsland of Worcester, Mass.; a brother, William, of Phoenix, Ariz.; two sisters, Marjorie Allen of Yarmouth, Mass., and Grace Finley of Stratford, Conn.; six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

The raid on Cabanatuan was depicted in the 2005 film "The Great Raid", which featured actor Benjamin Bratt as Colonel Henry Andrew Mucci.



 *****


Robert Prince 




































Captain Robert Prince was only 25 when he was hand-picked by a man he deeply admired, Lt. Col. Henry Mucci, to lead 120 Rangers of the 6th Ranger Battalion, Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas to rescue the POWs from a Japanese prison camp near the town of Cabanatuan.

The time  for the raid was urgent. It had to be quickly and stealthily carried out behind enemy lines, because the Japanese War Ministry had issued a "kill all policy" to cover up war crimes by executing witnesses, in this case prisoners of war.

Planning the raid was a monumental task which fell to C Company commander, Captain Robert Prince, a 25 year old Stanford graduate. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci knew his men; he chose Robert Prince. Young and reserved, "Bob" Prince was in many ways the opposite of Lieutenant Colonel Mucci. They were perfect partners.

It was Lieutenant Colonel Mucci's job to lead the men, getting them to the edge of the compound; it was Robert Prince's job to figure out how to get the Rangers in and out of the compound safely with all the sickly prisoners. "Bob" Prince had less than 48 hours to come up with a workable plan.

"I was very apprehensive," he recalled. "Any commander's greatest fear is the fear of failure. It preys on you. You have to keep your focus. You have to consider all the things that could go wrong, but then you have to banish them from your mind. If you think about them too long, you can't go forward - you're paralyzed."

Robert Prince built his plan around his two best weapons - surprise and confusion. He wanted to get his team in and out as quickly as possible. And, of course with as few casualties as possible. The raid, he predicted, should be over in 30 minutes. He was to send two groups of guerrilla fighters - one group under the command of Captain Juan Pajota and one under the command of Captain Eduardo Joson - in opposite directions, to hold the main road that passed by the front of the camp. He also split the Rangers into two groups, one for the front gate and one to come through the rear. He himself would personally ensure that all of the barracks were clear and all the prisoners accounted for.

One of Captain Robert Prince's fears was that the surrounding countryside was too flat. He knew his men would have to crawl through a long open field on their bellies - right under the watchful eyes of the Japanese guards. Captain Pajota, Lieutenant Colonel Mucci, and the United States Air Force took care of that. They had arranged to have a P-61 night fighter fly over the camp just as the men would be crossing the field. Captain Robert Prince recalled: "The P-61 was one of the biggest factors maintaining our surprise... And they did a wonderful job of it, including cutting out an engine to make it sound like the plane was in trouble."

The biggest challenge of the raid was choreographing so many groups that didn't know each other. All together, there would be over 1,000 people participating in the raid. There were two different Filipino guerrilla groups, the United States Army Rangers, the Alamo Scouts, local Filipino villagers, the Air Force, and, of course, the POWs themselves.

Captain Robert Prince credited the success of the raid and the successful collaboration of all these groups to the fact that they were operating in friendly territory. Robert Prince  recalled: "It was such a complex group of people, none of whom had any real dealings with each other before, not on such a scale... The main thing that made it conceivable to think we could succeed was that we were in friendly territory with friendly people. Trying to do that somewhere else, I don't think you could even come close."  All the men involved agreed, without the Filipino civilians, the whole thing would have been a lot tougher, if not impossible.


























The raid was a tremendous success. In all only two Rangers were killed, 512 POWs were liberated and an estimated 523 Japanese were killed or wounded. There were no Filipino casualties.

On March 3, 1945, General Walter Krueger presented the men with awards: Mucci and captain Prince both received the Distinguished Service Cross, the other American officers received the Silver Star, and the American enlisted men received the Bronze Star. All the Filipino officers and enlisted men received the Bronze Star.

Colonel Mucci, Captain Prince, nine other Rangers and their wives were sent on war bonds campaigns, and to meet with President Franklin Roosevelt.

The Rangers' moment in history faded from the public eye. The event was eclipsed with the invasion of Iwo Jima a month later.

Colonel Mucci and Captain Prince both received the Army's highest award, the Distinguished Service Cross, which next only to the Medal of Honor is the nation's second highest award for valor. The two also were named to the United States Army Ranger Hall of Fame.


























Major Robert Prince


Robert Prince, who was originally from Seattle's Madrona neighborhood, returned home to Seattle, Washington and his wife Barbara, in February 1946. He was discharged from the Army with the rank of major.

The couple settled in Wenatchee, Washington, where they raised two sons and focused on getting on with their lives. Robert Prince's son, Jim, has said his father never talked about the war or the mission to him or his brother until once, when their mother urged "Bob" Prince to tell them.

Robert Prince carved out a business career marketing Washington apples in Seattle and Wenatchee for 40 years. He retired in 1985 as president of Gwin, White and Prince Inc., and held several leadership positions in the fruit Industry.

Robert Prince not only knew war as a veteran but also  as a parent.  His son, Spc. 4 Stephen Robert Prince, was killed in action Aug. 11, 1969 near Quang Ngai, Vietnam while serving with the Army's 11th Light Infantry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. Stephen Prince had graduated from Wenatchee High School and attended the University of Washington before he was drafted.

Robert Prince  and his wife Barbara retired in Kirkland until 2003, when Barbara died, Robert Prince moved to a condominium in Port Townsend to be near his family.

In 2005, he was invited to speak in 2005 at a Ranger function at Fort Lewis.


























Robert Prince's family told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that Robert Prince died at his home in Port Townsend on on January 1, 2009, at the age of 89.

In addition to his son, Jim, a commercial fisherman from Port Townsend, Robert Prince is survived by daughter in law Mardee Stadshaug, grandchildren Amy Murray and Andrew Prince, and a brother, John, of Seattle. He was preceded in death by brothers Ken and Dick of Seattle.



















At Robert Prince's request, no services were held. Remembrances were asuggested to give to the Children's Orthopedic Hospital or a charity of ones choice.

"He will be lovingly remembered by his family and friends as a warm, generous, but reserved and humble man," Robert Prince's family said in a funeral notice.

Robert Prince was a Garfield High and Stanford graduate, "a lifelong student of history, an avid follower of politics, and until recently, an enthusiastic Husky football fan," according to his family.

























Robert Prince's humility extended to the mark in history that he made as a soldier. His obituary says simply, "He served in the Southwest Pacific in New Guinea, the Philippine Islands and in Japan. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his role in the rescue of the Bataan prisoners of war from the Cabanatuan Prison Camp on January 31, 1945."

In an April 16, 1945 interview that Robert Prince gave while he was home on leave, he said: "People everywhere thank me. I think the thanks should go the other way. I'll be grateful the rest of my life that I had a chance to do something in this war that was not destructive. Nothing for me can ever compare with the satisfaction I got from freeing those men."

Captain Robert Prince's quiet yet brilliant leadership defined the Cabanatuan raid, but the Cabanatuan raid could never define him.  Robert Prince was so very much more.



























Captain Robert Prince is an example of that mystery of the "accidental soldier who accounted for great things".

The death of Robert Prince on New Year's Day  reminds me at the beginning of each year of what it is to respect your country and honor her by doing your very best.




*****

POW Camp




















The Cabanatuan prison camp was named after the nearby city of 50,000 people (locals also called it Camp Pangatian, after a small nearby village).  The camp had first been used as an American Department of Agriculture station and then a training camp for the Filipino army. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines, they used the camp to house American POWs.  It was one of three camps in the Cabanatuan area and was designated for holding sick detainees. The camp occupied more than 25 acres. The rectangular-shaped camp was 800 yards deep by 600 yards across, divided by a road that ran through its center. One side of the camp housed the Japanese guards, while the other side included bamboo barracks for the prisoners as well as a section for a hospital which.was nicknamed the "Zero Ward".


















Cabanatuan - Zero Ward, drawn by Medical Officer Eugene Jacobs.


At its peak, the camp held 8,000 American soldiers (along with a small number of soldiers and civilians from other nations including the United Kingdom, Norway, and the Netherlands), making it the largest POW camp in the Philippines.  This number dropped significantly as able-bodied soldiers were shipped to other areas in the Philippines, Japan, Formosa, and Manchuria to work in slave labor camps. Geneva Convention provisions were ignored as POWs transported out of the camp were forced to work in factories to build Japanese weaponry, unload ships, and repair airfields.

Eight-foot high barbed wire fences surrounded the camp, in addition to multiple pillbox bunkers and four-story guard towers.

At its peak, the camp held 8,000 American soldiers (along with a small number of soldiers and civilians from other nations including the United Kingdom, Norway, and the Netherlands), making it the largest POW camp in the Philippines.  This number dropped significantly as able-bodied soldiers were shipped to other areas in the Philippines, Japan, Formosa, and Manchuria to work in slave labor camps. Geneva Convention provisions were ignored as POWs were transported out of the camp were forced to work in factories to build Japanese weaponry, unload ships, and repair airfields.

















The imprisoned soldiers received two meals a day of steamed rice, occasionally accompanied by fruit, soup, or meat. To supplement their diet, some prisoners were able to smuggle food and supplies hidden in their underwear into the camp during Japanese approved trips to Cabanatuan.  To prevent extra food, jewelry, diaries, and other valuables from being confiscated, items were hidden in clothing, latrines, or were buried before scheduled inspections.  Prisoners collected food using a variety of methods including stealing, bribing guards, planting gardens, and killing animals which entered the camp such as mice, snakes, ducks, and stray dogs.

The Filipino underground collected thousands of quinine tablets to smuggle into the camp to treat malaria, saving hundreds of lives.  When the Japanese had an American radio technician fix their radios, he would steal parts, allowing the prisoners to have several radios to listen to newscasts of the war efforts outside the camp.  One group of Corregidor prisoners, before first entering the camp, had each hidden a piece of a radio under their clothing, to later be reassembled into a working device.  The radios were able to pick up a San Francisco-based radio station, allowing the POWs to hear about the status of war outside the gates of the prison.  A smuggled camera was used to document the camp's living conditions. Prisoners also constructed weapons and smuggled ammunition into the camp for the possibility of securing a handgun.


























Multiple escape attempts were made throughout the history of the prison camp, but the majority of them ended in failure. In one attempt, four soldiers were recaptured by the Japanese.  The guards forced all prisoners to watch as the four soldiers were beaten,  forced to dig their own graves, and were then executed.




















Japanese Soldier executes POWS in retaliation for one of them attempting escape.

Shortly thereafter, the guards put up signs declaring that if other escape attempts were made, ten prisoners would be executed for every escapee.   Prisoners' living quarters were then divided into groups of ten, which motivated the POWs to keep a close eye on others to prevent them from making escape attempts.   One week later, after two Americans attempted to escape, guards collected 18 other soldiers and lined them up against a fence. The 20 men were executed as the other prisoners watched.

The Japanese permitted the POWs to build septic systems and irrigation ditches throughout the prisoner side of the camp.  An onsite commissary was available to sell items such as bananas, eggs, coffee, notebooks, and cigarettes. Recreational activities allowed for baseball, horseshoes, and ping pong matches. In addition, a 3,000-book library was allowed (much of which was provided by the Red Cross), and films were shown occasionally.  A bulldog was kept by the prisoners, and served as a mascot for the camp.  Each year around Christmas, the Japanese guards gave permission for the Red Cross to donate a small box to each of the prisoners, containing items such as corned beef, instant coffee, and tobacco.  Prisoners were also able to send postcards to relatives, although they were censored by the guards.













Conditions at the Mitsui Miike coal mine in Fukuoka and some Allied POWs in Japan after liberation.

As American forces continued to approach Luzon, the Japanese Imperial High Command ordered that all able-bodied POWs be transported to Japan. From the Cabanatuan camp, over 1,600 soldiers were removed in October 1944, leaving over 500 sick, weak, or disabled POWs.  On January 6, 1945, all of the guards withdrew from the Cabanatuan camp, leaving the POWs alone.

The guards had previously told prisoner leaders that they should not attempt to escape, else suffer the consequence of being killed. When the guards left, the prisoners heeded the threat, fearing that the Japanese were waiting near the camp and would use the attempted escape as an excuse to execute them all. Instead, the prisoners went to the guards' side of the camp and ransacked the Japanese buildings for supplies and large amounts of food.  Prisoners were alone for several weeks, except when retreating Japanese forces would periodically stay in the camp. The soldiers mainly ignored the POWs, except to ask for food. Although aware of the consequences, the prisoners sent a small group outside the prison's gates to bring in two carabaos to slaughter. The meat from the animals, along with the food secured from the Japanese side of the camp, helped many of the POWs to regain their strength, weight, and stamina. In mid-January, a large group of Japanese troops entered the camp and returned the prisoners to their side of the camp. The prisoners,  fueled by rumors, speculated that they would soon be executed by the Japanese.


A Survivor's Story

On December 14, 1944,  Japanese soldiers forced 150 American prisoners of war at a compound on Palawan into an air-raid shelter.  Then they doused them with gasoline and threw in a match.












Conditions at the Mitsui Miike coal mine in Fukuoka and Allied POWs in Japan after their liberation.

As American forces continued to approach Luzon, the Japanese Imperial High Command ordered that all able-bodied POWs be transported to Japan. From the Cabanatuan camp, over 1,600 soldiers were removed in October 1944, leaving over 500 sick, weak, or disabled POWs.  On January 6, 1945, all of the guards withdrew from the Cabanatuan camp, leaving the POWs alone.

The guards had previously told the prisoner leaders that they should not attempt to escape, else they would suffer the consequence of being killed. When the guards left, the prisoners heeded the threat, fearing that the Japanese were waiting near the camp and would use the attempted escape as an excuse to execute them all. Instead, the prisoners went to the guards' side of the camp and ransacked the Japanese buildings for supplies and large amounts of food. Prisoners were alone for several weeks, except when retreating Japanese forces would periodically stay in the camp. The soldiers mainly ignored the POWs, except to ask for food. Although aware of the consequences, the prisoners sent a small group outside the prison's gates to bring in two carabaos to slaughter.  The meat from the animals, along with the food secured from the Japanese side of the camp, helped many of the POWs to regain their strength, weight, and stamina.  In mid-January, a large group of Japanese troops entered the camp and returned the prisoners to their side of the camp. The prisoners, fueled by rumors, speculated that they would soon be executed by the Japanese.


A Survivor's Story

On December 14, 1944, some Japanese soldiers forced 150 American prisoners of war at a compound on Palawan into an air-raid shelter. Then they doused them with gasoline and threw in a match.





 A few of the Americans, a very few, survived. Army PFC Eugene Nielson was one of the survivors. He later described the atrocity to U.S. intelligence officers:

"The trench smelled very strongly of gas. There was an explosion and flames shot throughout the place. Some of the guys were moaning. I realized this was it - either I had to break for it or die. Luckily I was in the trench closest to the fence. So I jumped and dove through the barbed wire. I fell over the cliff and somehow grabbed hold of a small tree... There were Japanese soldiers down on the beach. I buried myself in a pile of garbage and coconut husks. I kept working my way under until I got fairly covered up... The Japanese were bayoneting [prisoners on the beach]. They shot or stabbed twelve Americans and then dug a shallow grave in the sand and threw them in."

PFC Eugene Nielsen hid in the garbage until the Japanese left. He then made a break for it, but the Japanese saw him and started firing. He jumped into the sea and was shot several times. Miraculously, PFC Nielsen lived and managed to escape - swimming for nine hours and eventually finding his way through the Philippine jungle to American guerrilla forces.


























It was PFC Nielsen's story that helped convince the American Army Command to rescue the prisoners at Cabanatuan prison camp. It was also his story that made the prisoners of Cabanatuan particularly terrified.





















In early January 1945, General Douglas MacArthur unleashed hell on the Philippines. The storming of the island of Luzon by United States forces was one of the largest land invasions of World War II.























As General MacArthur's troops advanced south toward Manila, American Army officials learned that approximately five hundred American prisoners of war were still being held at a Japanese work camp in Cabanatuan in the central Luzon plain.  The prisoners were among the last of the twenty thousand American soldiers who had surrendered to the Japanese in April and May of 1942, and many were survivors of the Bataan Death March, which had claimed the lives of more than a thousand Americans.  Cabanatuan became the largest American POW camp in the Pacific.


























Pvt. John Franklin Ross was sent to work as slave in Japan.


Most of the thousands of prisoners who passed through were sent to other Japanese work projects in the Philippines and Japan. But these remaining inmates, "the ghosts of Bataan," were the sick and the dying, the leftovers, the ones too weak to work.



























Major Robert Lapham, American guerilla leader on Luzon 1945.

Major Robert Lapham, a local American guerrilla leader, issued a warning to Army officials: As the Japanese forces retreated, they would certainly massacre these POWs rather than transport them. It had just happened in a smaller camp in the Philippines near Puerto Princesa, where 141 prisoners were burned alive and shot as Imperial forces fled.



























General Walter Krueger

On January 26, Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, head of the U. S. Sixth Army, ordered an eleventh-hour mission to rescue the Cabanatuan prisoners. Krueger assigned the mission to Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci, commander of a new, highly trained but little-used elite unit of Army Rangers, the Sixth Ranger Battalion. Lieutenant Colonel Mucci and Captain Robert Prince, commander of the Ranger C Company, were instructed to lead their men behind enemy lines ahead of MacArthur's advance, rescue five hundred prisoners, carry them back, and turn them over to the Sixth Army. No one but Krueger and the Rangers themselves knew anything of the mission. Its success or failure banked on 100 percent surprise.


Planning And Preparation





















On October 20, 1944, General Douglas MacArthur's forces landed on Leyte, paving the way for the liberation of the Philippines. Several months later, as the Americans consolidated their forces to prepare for the main invasion of Luzon, nearly 150 Americans were executed by their Japanese captors on December 14, 1944 in a POW camp on the island of Palawan. These Americans were herded into air raid shelters, sealed in, doused with gasoline, and burned alive.  One of the survivors, PFC Eugene Nielsen, recounted his tale to U.S. Army Intelligence on January 7, 1945. Two days later, MacArthur's forces landed on Luzon and began a rapid advance towards the capital, Manila.


























Major Robert Lapham

Major Robert Lapham, the American USAFFE senior guerrilla chief, and another guerrilla leader, Juan Pajota, had considered freeing the prisoners within the camp, but feared logistical issues with hiding and caring for the prisoners.] An earlier plan had been proposed by Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Anderson, leader of the guerrillas near the camp. He suggested that the guerrillas would secure the prisoners, escort them 50 miles (80 km) to Debut Bay, and transport them using 30 submarines. The plan was denied approval as MacArthur feared the Japanese would catch up with the fleeing prisoners and kill them all. In addition, the Navy did not have the required submarines, especially with MacArthur's upcoming invasion of Luzon.

On January 26, 1945, Major Lapham traveled from his location near the prison camp to Sixth Army headquarters, 30 miles (48 km) away. He proposed to Lieutenant General Walter Krueger's intelligence chief Colonel Horton White that a rescue attempt be made to liberate the estimated 500 POWs at the Cabanatuan prison camp before the Japanese possibly killed them all. Lapham estimated Japanese forces to include 100–300 soldiers within the camp, 1,000 across the Cabu River northeast of the camp, and possibly around 5,000 within Cabanatuan City. Pictures of the camp were also available, as planes had taken surveillance images as recently as January 19.

Colonel White estimated that the I Corps would not reach Cabanatuan City until January 31 or February 1, and that if any rescue attempt were to be made, it would have to be on January 29. Colonel White reported the details to Krueger, who gave the order for the rescue attempt.




















Ranger CPT Bob Prince (left) speaks with COL Horton V. White, G-2, Sixth Army.

Colonel Horton White gathered Lt. Col. Henry Mucci, leader of the 6th Ranger Battalion, and three lieutenants from the Alamo Scouts—the special reconnaissance unit attached to his Sixth Army — for a briefing on the mission to raid Cabanatuan and rescue the POWs.  The group developed a plan to rescue the prisoners. Fourteen Scouts, made up of two teams, would leave 24 hours ahead of the main force, to survey the camp.  The main force would consist of 90 Rangers from C Company and 30 from F Company who would march 30 miles behind Japanese lines, surround the camp, kill the guards, and rescue and escort the prisoners back to American lines.  The Americans would join up with 80 Filipino guerrillas, who would serve as guides and help in the rescue attempt.  The initial plan was to attack the camp at 17:30 PST (UTC+8) on January 29.

On the evening of January 27, the Rangers studied air reconnaissance photos and listened to guerrilla intelligence on the prison camp. 

1. 
   

Alamo Scouts on Leyte.

Group photo of Alamo Scouts following an awards ceremony on Leyte. Back row L-R: Harold Hard, Vernon Miller, Gil Cox, Francis LaQuier, Galen Kittleson, Robert Sumner, Andy Smith, Sabas Asis, Wilbert Wismer. Middle row: John Geiger, Bill Nellist, Tom Rounsaville, Paul Jones, Mayo Stuntz (supply officer), John Dove, Harry Weiland, William Blaise.
Front row: Thomas Siason, Edward Renhols, David Mackie (supply sergeant), Alfred Alfonso, Lawrence Coleman, Franklin Fox.


The two five-man teams of Alamo Scouts, led by 1st Lts. William Nellist and Thomas Rounsaville, left Guimba at 19:00 and infiltrated behind enemy lines for the long trek to attempt a reconnaissance of the prison camp.  The Scouts were armed with a .45 pistol, three hand grenades, a rifle or M1 carbine, a knife, and extra ammunition.  The next morning, the Scouts linked up with several Filipino guerrilla units at the village of Platero, 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the camp.

The Rangers were armed with assorted Thompson submachine guns, BARs, M1 Garand rifles, pistols, grenades, knives, extra ammunition, as well as a few bazookas.  Four combat photographers from a unit of the 832nd Signal Service Battalion volunteered to accompany the Scouts and Rangers to record the rescue after Mucci suggested the idea of documenting the raid.  Each photographer was armed with a pistol.  Despite Geneva Convention restrictions on armed medical personnel, surgeon Captain James Fisher and his medics each carried pistols and carbines.  To maintain a link between the raiding group and Army Command, a radio outpost was established outside of Guimba. The force had two radios, but their use was only approved in asking for aircraft support if they ran into large Japanese forces or if there were last-minute changes to the raid (as well as calling off friendy fire by American aircraft).





















Ranger Captain James Fisher's memorial at Barrio Balangkara, Cabanatuan.


Behind Enemy Lines




































Robert Prince


Shortly after 05:00 on January 28, Mucci and a reinforced company of 121 Rangers under Capt. Robert Prince drove 60 miles (97 km) to Guimba, before slipping through Japanese lines at just after 14:00. Guided by Filipino guerrillas, the Rangers hiked through open grasslands to avoid enemy patrols. In villages along the Rangers' route, other guerrillas assisted in muzzling dogs and putting chickens in cages to prevent the Japanese from hearing the traveling group.  At one point, the Rangers narrowly avoided a Japanese tank on the national highway by following a ravine that ran under the road.

The group reached Balincarin, a barrio 5 miles (8.0 km) north of the camp, the following morning.  Mucci linked up with Scouts Nellist and Rounsaville to go over the camp reconaissance from the previous night. The Scouts revealed that the terrain around the camp was flat, which would leave the force exposed before the raid.[87] Mucci also met with USAFFE guerrilla Captain Juan Pajota and his 200 men, whose intimate knowledge of enemy activity, the locals, and the terrain proved crucial.  Upon learning that Mucci wanted to push through with the attack that evening, Pajota resisted, insisting that it would be suicide. He revealed that the guerrillas had been watching an estimated 1,000 Japanese soldiers camped out across the Cabu River just a few hundred yards from the prison. Pajota also confirmed reports that as many as 7,000 enemy troops were deployed around Cabanatuan City located several miles away.[90] With the invading American forces from the southwest, a Japanese division was withdrawing to the north on a road close to the camp. He recommended waiting for the division to pass so that the force would face minimal opposition. After consolidating information from Pajota and the Alamo Scouts about heavy enemy activity in the camp area, Mucci agreed to postpone the raid for 24 hours, and alerted the Sixth Army Headquarters to the development by radio. He directed the Scouts to return to the camp and gain additional intelligence, especially on the strength of the guards and the exact location of the captive soldiers. The Rangers withdrew to Platero, a barrio 2.5 miles (4.0 km) south of Balincarin.

At approximately five o'clock on January 28, 1945, 121 Rangers pulled out of Calasio, aiming east toward a ripening sun. At the head of the column, in a staff Jeep, rode Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci, tobacco smoke pouring from his pipe, his Colt .45 tucked in a sidearm holster. The convoy came to a halt at Guimba around 9:00 that morning. From here, they'd be on foot for thirty miles - and then for thirty more, if all went well at Cabanatuan.

The Rangers faced a twelve-hour march across roads patrolled by Japanese tanks, across Japanese-held bridges, across open country infested with Japanese pillboxes. Getting there sounded chancy, and getting there was the easy part. The return was what had them worried. The men preferred not to dwell on all the things that could go wrong. They had to keep their minds fixed on the prisoners, let Lieutenant Colonel Mucci and Captain Prince sweat the details - and then pray for bucketfuls of luck.

In such wide-open country, it would have been impossible for the Rangers to camouflage themselves, yet they were unobtrusive enough, stitching like a dull green thread across the fields. They sported no rings or jewelry or anything else that might glint in the sunlight. They all wore faded fatigues that bore no insignia of rank, nothing unusual that might catch the eyes of Japanese snipers, who generally preferred to shoot officers and noncoms first.

Likewise, the Rangers wore fatigue soft caps. Lieutenant Colonel Mucci had stipulated that there would be no "brain buckets" on this mission: Metal helmets were too heavy, they made too much noise, and sometimes they gave off a faint sheen when the sun hit them just right.

Many of the Rangers had two bandoliers of ammo slung over their shoulders, several fragmentation grenades, and trench knives strapped to their legs. Each man carried the gun of his choice.








Most Rangers, like Captain Prince, opted for the M1 Garand, the standard-issue semiautomatic infantry rifle, a light and loyal weapon fed by an eight-round clip. Lieutenant Colonel Mucci brought only his .45-caliber pistol, while the medics carried carbines, which were lighter versions of the M1.








Some of the noncoms preferred the Thompson submachine gun, the "tommy" of Prohibition fame, hopeless for long-range targets but murderous close-in. Specialists assigned to the weapons section carried the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), heavy as a barbell but with a range of more than a thousand yards. Hold down the trigger and it could spit out more than five hundred bullets in under a minute.










M1A1 Bazooka.

There were also the bazooka men, with their big pipes folded in half as they marched. The bazooka was an unlovely, fire-breathing thing with an electric fuse, a newfangled rocket launcher not even dreamed of during the dark days of Bataan.

The men squished across the dry grassland in their soaked fatigues and soggy boots, heading toward a barrio called Lobong. The village dogs snarled on the outskirts, and the men could see clusters of pigs dozing in the cool shadows thrown by the high, stilted shacks.

Just outside the barrio, Lieutenant Colonel Mucci called his Rangers to a halt. "Captain Joson?" he cried out. Standing before them were Eduardo Joson and more than eighty of his Filipino guerrillas, who would guide the Rangers to the next barrio, where they would be met by a second, and even larger, contingent of guerrillas.

Behind him, the guerrillas casually tipped their straw buri hats and grinned. They were a ragged band--rice farmers clutching bolo knives, teenagers straddling ponies, a few old-timers stooped alongside their mud-streaked carabao. Many of the men were unarmed and barefoot, wearing sturdy peasant clothes, their teeth stained with betel. Among them stood sixty or seventy well-trained soldiers, men hardened by three long years of fighting the Japanese. Their khaki uniforms were threadbare and faded, and they carried old Springfield bolt-action rifles from the battlefields of Bataan.

Joson was a short, generous-spirited man in his mid-thirties, a natural politician with a knack for gentle persuasion and a broad smile full of good teeth. Joson couldn't count the run-ins he'd had with the Japanese over the past three years--skirmishes and ambushes and moonlight raids. He thrilled to the idea of attacking Cabanatuan.

Without their help, the raid was scarcely even possible. The guerrillas were intimately familiar with the backcountry trails, the size and location of every Japanese garrison, which snakes were poisonous, and which pools were drinkable. They knew all the easiest places to cross the rivers and streams. Joson and his men would flank the Americans all the way to Cabanatuan and all the way back.

At daybreak, the long line of Rangers and guerrillas stopped to rest in the barrio of Balincarin, located five miles north of Cabanatuan. The colonel had intended to keep marching another forty minutes to the village of Platero--the last barrio before the camp--but he could see his men needed a good rest. Footsore and frazzled, the Rangers lay down to rest in the shadows of two decrepit school buses. They'd been up twenty-four hours, marching about twenty-five miles from their drop-off point at Guimba.

Lieutenant Colonel Mucci, Captain Robert Prince, and Captain Joson were gathered in a grove of trees, discussing the raid, when their confab was interrupted. "Lieutenant Colonel Mucci?" a Filipino man called out in a soft voice. The Rangers wheeled about to behold a guerrilla riding bareback on a tiny horse. His shoulders were crisscrossed with bandoliers of ammo, and he seemed perfectly at ease with the M1 carbine that was strapped over his shoulder. He was small-statured and unassuming, yet something about his presence, an air of steely competence, of quiet menace, made him vaguely intimidating. "Captain Juan Pajota," he said with a crisp salute. Behind him was a force of several dozen guerrillas. "Captain!" Lieutenant Colonel Mucci said, brightening just a little. "It's a pleasure to meet you."


























Captain Juan Pajota dismounted and shook hands with Lieutenant Colonel Mucci, Captain Prince, and Captain Joson. All told, Captain Pajota could commit a guerrilla force of about 90 armed soldiers and another 160 unarmed men to help with logistics and aiding the prisoners. Captain Pajota was a stern-looking man of thirty years. He wore an old khaki uniform of the U. S. Army Forces of the Far East with a .45-caliber automatic pistol at his side. He had a round, high-cheekboned face and a penetrating stare. His voice was grave, his English clipped and richly accented but quite fluent. Captain Pajota had spent the past three years perfecting his skills as a saboteur, a hit-and-run artist the Japanese could never catch. Captain Pajota knew every inch of this neck of Nueva Ecija - knew it not only as an itinerant soldier and insurrectionary but as someone who had spent his entire military career there. The POW camp was squarely in his backyard.

As the day wore on, Lieutenant Colonel Mucci, Robert Prince, Joson, and Captain Pajota remained huddled in Balincarin with their crimped and annotated maps spread out on the grass. The conversation turned to the worrisome matter of transportation. What would they do with all the prisoners who couldn't walk? Springing them was one thing; ferrying five hundred semimobile, sick, and weak prisoners thirty miles back to American lines was something else. "I think I have an answer to that problem," Captain Pajota offered. "Carabao." The colonel was a little confused. "Water buffalo?" Captain Pajota nodded enthusiastically. "I can send the word out to the barrios. We can have carabao carts waiting at the Pampanga River. Now that the rice harvest is over, the animals aren't being used. Each cart can carry about five or six prisoners."

The idea seemed laughable at first. The sluggish beasts would be dragging rickety wooden carts with massive knotted wheels the size of dinner tables, their creaking wagon beds lined with rice straw. Captain Juan Pajota's plan seemed ludicrously low-tech. Yet the more Lieutenant Colonel Mucci thought about the idea, the more it struck him as irresistible. It was settled. Captain Juan Pajota would get the word out around Platero and the neighboring barrios and have the carabao, wagons, and drivers at the ready. They'd be waiting en masse at the banks of the Pampanga at eight o'clock that night.

Around four o'clock in the afternoon, the Rangers packed up their belongings and headed for Platero, which lay a little more than two miles to the south. As they walked, Joson's guerrillas flanked the right side, Captain Pajota's guerrillas flanked the left. Now they were a force of about three hundred armed men fanning out over the rice fields. Despite Pajota's well-lodged caveats, everything remained set to begin at sunset that night--about three and a half hours hence.

Captain Robert Prince didn't radiate the conspicuous verve of a war hero. He had none of Lieutenant Colonel Mucci's athletic grace or strutting physicality. At twenty-five, Robert Prince simply wanted to get back to his new wife in Seattle. But he was blessed with the rarest of gifts: steady nerves. Cool, was the word used to describe Robert Prince.

Captain Prince's plan was intricate. At Lieutenant Colonel Mucci's signal, the Rangers would clear out of Platero and march south toward the camp, flanked by two hundred of Captain Pajota's men on one side and Joson's eighty men on the other. Just before reaching the Pampanga River, the two guerrilla groups would break off from the Rangers.

















Cabu River Bridge


Captain Juan Pajota's forces would bear sharply to the left and set up a massive roadblock on the Cabanatuan highway, about a mile northeast of the camp, near the Cabu River bridge. At precisely 7:40, they were to destroy the bridge with land mines set among the span's log pylons. Just across the river, more than one thousand Imperial Army soldiers would still be bivouacked down in the bamboo thickets. Should they charge toward the POW camp upon hearing the Ranger fire, Captain Pajota's two hundred guerrillas would be there, waiting in ambush. Captain Joson's forces would peel off toward the right and erect another roadblock on the highway, this one southwest of the camp, to stop any Japanese troops coming from Cabanatuan City.

The two forces were to function as a synchronized pair of shutoff valves in a great water main, temporarily blocking the flow in both directions so the Rangers could go in with little worry of a surprise surge in the pipe. For the Rangers, though, reaching the camp would pose a much more immediate problem. As they approached the highway, which passed directly by the front gate of the camp, thirty members of F Company would break left from Prince's larger group to sneak around to the back of the camp, creeping along a dry ravine that was, they hoped, deep enough to conceal them from Japanese sentinels. The F Company men would position themselves to fire on the rear guard towers and pillboxes, as well as on the Japanese barracks, which were believed to house a few hundred soldiers. F Company would fire first, just as the sun was setting - at about 7:30 - and this opening salvo would serve as the cue for Prince's C Company to leap across the road and kill the guards in the forward towers while simultaneously storming the main gate.

What worried the platoon leaders most was the approach itself. For the last mile beyond the Pampanga, on the bald plain, they had to crawl on their stomachs in the hope of escaping detection. That long, slow crawl to the gate gave off the faint whiff of suicide. The Japanese would still have ample light to see the Rangers as they wriggled to their final positions in the fields. It seemed an insoluble problem.

Here, Captain Juan Pajota spoke up. Over the past few weeks, he said, his guerrillas had noticed that the Japanese guards at the camp were unusually agitated by American planes flying overhead. Why not call in a few to buzz the camp in the last moments leading up to the raid, purely as a diversion? It might distract the Japanese sentries just long enough for the Rangers to sneak into their positions. Instead of looking down, the guards would be looking up. "No shooting, no bombs," said Captain Pajota. "Just fly over."

Lieutenant Colonel Mucci instantly liked the sound of it. As with the carabao carts, the idea was novel, even a little odd, yet at the same time compellingly simple. Mucci felt it was worth breaking radio silence to request that Sixth Army headquarters scramble a plane. The mighty United States Army was not always known for its lightning reflexes, but Lieutenant Colonel Mucci decided it was worth a try.

The Pampanga River spills from the mountains of northern Luzon and courses south through the rice country before emptying into Manila Bay. Much of the year the Pampanga runs swift and wide and deep, but in the dry days of January, the river braids quietly through the long reaches of the central plain, the turbid water swirling around sandbars, skimming low along the banks.

As the Rangers approached the Pampanga at a quarter past five, they were pleased to confront the river in its more placid, winterized state. Standing at the banks, Lieutenant Colonel Mucci realized that the raid would not have been possible in any other season. While the Rangers slipped across the river, Captain Pajota's force split off to the left and Joson's men to the right, each group vanishing into the bamboo thickets along the banks.

After fording the warm, brown waters of the Pampanga, the Rangers found an almost giddy sense of release in forward movement, in the simple camaraderie of marching again. As the men walked, Lieutenant Colonel Mucci strode up and down the column, slapping backs, rallying with his staccato pep talk. More than anything, Henry Mucci loved to march men. He took obvious pleasure in the élan, the sweaty effort, the sheer kinetics of it. For him, commanding achieved its highest form when it was on the hoof.

After a half mile, the tallgrass fields turned into rice paddies, a quilt of blond stalks and black mud stretching to the high-way. The men adjusted their gazes. All conversation, all joking, stopped. They squinted and shielded their eyes with cupped hands to break the glare. There it stood, a tattered city of thatch and razor wire swimming in the heat waves. The Rangers were startled and at the same time a little relieved to affix an image to the strange word they'd been uttering since Lieutenant Colonel Mucci first announced the mission: Cabanatuan.

Captain Prince gave the signal, and the men fanned out over the rice quadrants in broad waves. Their boots crumped over the hard, cracked floors of the paddies, scattering flocks of field birds and reedy insects. Rice stalks rustled in a fickle breeze. The men were silent but for the random clicks and rattles of their weapons, the low friction of rubbing canvas.

The men of F Company's second platoon were led by a young lieutenant from Springfield, Massachusetts, named John Murphy. He was a cautious, understated leader in whom Lieutenant Colonel Mucci and Captain Prince had implicit confidence. Prince glanced over at John Murphy and with a crisp wave sent the men of F Company on their way. Prince figured Lieutenant Murphy's group would need about an hour to skulk around to the back of the camp. If all went according to plan, the next sign of F Company would be the deafening report of their weapons firing on the rear guard towers - the unmistakable fillip that would set everything in motion.

At approximately 5:45, Lieutenant Colonel Mucci, Robert Prince, and about ninety C Company Rangers resumed their march to the south, aiming directly for the main gate. They had drawn within less than a mile of the camp, with the guard towers not only visible but beginning to take on definition. Prince lowered his hand in a sweeping gesture, and all the Rangers fell to the ground. For the remaining three quarters of a mile, they would chart a slow, steady advance, like an army of snakes.

Lying on the crusty paddy floors, the Rangers strapped their rifles to their backs or held them out in front, loosely cradled in their arms. Then they dug their knees and elbows into the dirt and began inching forward through the long, straight rows of dried rice. The ground was strewn with old carabao dung, and the flat expanses were occasionally interrupted by shallow puddles spluttering with tadpoles and schools of tiny fish. Their necks ached, their shoulders burned, their arms trembled from a hard hour's game of playing serpent. At one point, a group of Rangers disturbed an unseen nest of red ants that skittered over them by the score, darting under their clothes, leaving trails of welts on their skin.


















Prince glanced at his watch - 6:40. Dusk was fast approaching, with a blood-red sun half sunk in the Zambales Mountains. As they crept ever closer, less than a half mile from the gates of Cabanatuan, Captain Prince's fear of being detected deepened immeasurably.

From the northwest, they heard the metallic hum of prop engines. A fighter plane was moving across the sky toward them at low altitude, coming from the direction of Lingayen Gulf. Soon the plane was on top of them. It was a strange looking black fighter. It had a long, capped snout, a swollen body set with cannons, and sweeping black tails - two of them. There was a hooked needle stuck in its nose that looked like Lucite housings. On the side of the nose was painted a zaftig nude, in the style of Vargas, with the hand-sketched moniker "Hard To Get.

Army headquarters had come through with the most impressive new fighter in the U. S. Air Force - the P-61, better known as the Black Widow. As it approached the camp, most of the prisoners of Cabanatuan were squatting outside their barracks in their G-strings and burlap rags, enjoying the stillness of the gathering twilight.

















Then an airplane seemed to appear out of nowhere. It was black, futuristic, sleeker than any plane they had seen before. As it flew overhead, some guards up in the tower hurled themselves upon the floorboards.

The plane flew exceedingly low, low enough that Abie Abraham thought he could "easily hit it with a rock." All about the camp, the prisoners stared up in awe. The plane looked so different from anything else they'd seen that at first they thought it was German or possibly Russian. Other prisoners described it as a "black barn swallow," a "War of the Worlds rocket," and an "angel of death."
















The Japanese were terrified. At first the guards and transient troops thought they were being attacked and scrambled for cover. But once the shock wore off and the Japanese realized this probably wasn't an air raid after all, they simply stared up at the Black Widow, stared in wonder, consternation, and disbelief.





















The pilot performed a series of taunts and feints, wheeling and stalling and reversing directions. At one point, he killed an engine and let the plane falter, as though it were crippled. On and on it went for twenty minutes, this coquettish dance in the twilit sky. The ruse appeared to be working precisely the way Captain Pajota hoped it would: The guards were looking skyward instead of groundward, and the Rangers were inching forward.


















Captain Pajota and his force of two hundred guerrillas had already taken their positions along the highway to the northeast of the camp, spread out on either side of the road in a great V. Crouched low in the field stubble, holding Springfields and BARs and manning large water-cooled .30-caliber machine guns set on tripods, they could see the Japanese camps clustered in the miasmal bottomlands of the Cabu, just a few hundred yards to the east. Large numbers of enemy tanks and armored vehicles were visible across the river, parked in the feathered thickets of bamboo. At times, in the shifting breeze, the Filipinos could hear muffled fragments of Japanese conversations.

Approximately one mile away from Captain Pajota's location, straight down the highway toward Cabanatuan City, Joson's forces had assumed their positions without incident. They were crouched in the irrigation ditches lining either side of the road, poised to annihilate anything that blundered down the road. Joson scanned the empty highway and realized that, most likely, his was an all-or-nothing situation: Either he would see no action whatsoever, or he'd encounter an overwhelming force. Cabanatuan City was four miles away, close enough that a convoy of Japanese vehicles could arrive within minutes should the garrison receive a distress call. Once the assault began, Joson could only hope that the Japanese inside the camp would never get a chance to telephone their comrades for help.

While Joson and Captain Pajota held their corresponding roadblocks, Lieutenant john Murphy and thirty Rangers from F Company crossed under the highway, one by one. They crept through a culvert and emerged on the other side in a dry wash that coursed along the east edge of the camp.

As the column of men writhed through the ditch, smaller groups fell out and took positions beneath two pillboxes and two guard towers, each manned by two or three Japanese guards. The F Company plan was one of simple and decisive violence: Upon hearing the signal shot fired by Lieutenant Murphy in the rear, the men intended to annihilate these various positions simultaneously and with such concentrated force that the Japanese would have no opportunity to return fire.

At approximately 7:30, they emerged from the ravine and crawled a final two hundred yards on hard, open, well-mown turf. To reach their firing positions, the last remaining F Company men had to crawl, without realizing it, over the shallow, unmarked graves of untold numbers of Cabanatuan prisoners - coffinless graves that had long since been plundered and disturbed by dogs and rodents. Sprawled among the grass were remains of their countrymen.

The gravity of having to fire the first shot began to weigh on Lieutenant Murphy. He glanced at his watch - 7:40, ten minutes past the scheduled starting time. It had taken a little longer than expected for him and his men to sneak all the way back to the rear. He braced himself for the thunderous ferocity of a hundred American weapons replying at once to his cue. He drew a deep breath and settled his sights on a Japanese soldier inside the barracks, resting his index finger on the cool crescent of metal.

Captain Prince's C Company Rangers had slithered the last quarter mile to the highway and were resting in a shallow, brushy ditch directly across the road from the padlocked gate. They'd been in attack position for about twenty minutes. The men grasped their weapons, with the barrels resting in the weeds just inches below the level of the road. As the minutes ticked slowly  by, the raiders kept still as mannequins, pressed low against the ditch wall. As they faced the gates of Cabanatuan, their nerves were impatient.  Ranger Roy Peters would later say: "We felt like they could hear us breathing, They were just thirty feet away. We sat in the dark listening to them talk and talk, wondering which of them would be the first to die."






















As night fell on Cabanatuan, the airplanes vanished and the camp seemed naturally quiet and dark. Except for a few flickering coconut-oil lamps lighting up the interiors of the medical wards, the grounds were thoroughly blacked out, in accordance with a standing Japanese policy to prevent air raids.

A few seconds later, the stillness was filled with the crack of gunfire erupting from the rear of the camp, a roar of mortars and machine-guns. Instinctly, everywhere, prisoners hurled themselves into latrines, crawled under their barracks, or burrowed into anything that felt like a hole.


























Dr. Ralph Hibbs dove into an irrigation ditch and listened to the sound, as he put it, of "whistling slugs, Roman candles, and flaming meteors sailing over our heads."

John McCarty jumped off a chair outside his barracks and hit the dirt. "The bullets were thick as swarms of bees," he said. "And flying so close I could feel their heat on my bare skin."

On the south end of camp, Tommie Thomas rolled into a drainage ditch, his heart thudding in his chest. "I heard screaming and moaning all around us," he said. "And I thought the Japs were finally massacring us."

If the slaughter could have been viewed without sound, one might have called it beautiful. In an instant, the entire fence line lit up in a corona of frenetic glitters, each burst crisp and discrete against the black night. Gold stars streaked across the field and ended abruptly in warm blooms of yellow and vermilion, leaving the sky crisscrossed with trails of smoke.

Yet the sounds, shrill and fulminant, were at odds with the majestic visuals--splintering bamboo, the whine of stray slugs, glass fracturing into shards, sputters of pulverized dirt. The blunt sound that bullets make when they enter flesh, sending up aerosol clouds of blood.

Once the crack of Murphy's rifle rang out, the vast fusillade was unleashed from one end of the compound to the other. Within fifteen seconds, all the towers and pillboxes had been neutralized or obliterated altogether. The Japanese were unable to reply. The surprise was so complete, the firepower so massive, that the enemy was left paralyzed.

The barrage from C Company, hunkered along the front road, was so immense it was plainly overkill. As one Ranger described it, "We mowed them down like hay." Since there were only a few visible human targets, they hit them with absurd amounts of fire. The sentry in the front pillbox was riddled with so many bullets that his head and upper body were "atomized," as one Ranger put it. A guard in the northeast tower was ripped completely in half at the waist. His torso dropped over the ledge of the guardhouse window and landed with a sodden bounce, smoke rising off the flesh.

In the midst of this lashing gunfire, a C Company Ranger named Teddy Richardson leaped up from the ditch, bounded across the road, and tried to bash open the gate's padlock with the butt of his tommy gun. This proved impractical, so he fished out a .45 automatic from his side holster with the intention of blasting the lock open.

Just as he drew this weapon, a Japanese guard from somewhere within the compound fired a volley at Richardson. Incredibly, the bullet missed him but glanced his pistol and jarred it from his hand. He responded impulsively, squeezing off a few rounds from his tommy gun in the general direction of the guard, who was never heard from again.

Teddy Richardson retrieved his pistol from the ground, and with a single shot, the padlock clicked open. Now all the Rangers jumped up from the ditch and poured through the breached gate, scurrying to their assigned positions inside.

Following the camp's central thoroughfare, Private First Class Leland Provencher and several others raced back to the Japanese officer quarters and raked the buildings for several uninterrupted minutes. Leland Provencher's BAR was set to automatic so that he had to depress only once - Brrrrrrrrrrrphttttttttt - and the flimsy barracks were chewed to pieces. He heard screams and groans inside but didn't see the enemy.

Encountering no resistance whatsoever, Leland Provencher moved on to what appeared to be a utility shed. He raised his rifle and started to fire when he heard a voice cry out: "Don't shoot! Please, I'm an American." Leland Provencher was skeptical, but for some reason he held his fire. The man turned out to be an American after all, a Navy engineer whom the Japanese had impressed into doing maintenance work. PFC Provencher came within a heart beat of killing him.

With mincing steps, the man emerged from the shed holding up an old Life magazine he'd just been reading that was now lanced with a fresh bullet hole. "Get to the main gate!" Leland Provencher cried. The prisoner, still blanched with fright, stumbled nervously fashion toward the front of the compound.

While the riflemen maintained a constant wall of fire, a bazooka team led by a staff sergeant from Texas named Manton Stewart sprinted farther down the central road and came to a halt directly across from the corrugated sheds that the scouts had spotted earlier in the day. Staff Sergeant Stewart crouched in the gravel and hoisted the ungainly steel pipe to his shoulder.

He swiveled the launcher in the direction of the sheds and was about to press the trigger when he detected movement in his peripheral vision. A long-bed truck, packed with Imperial Army soldiers, was chuffing beside the shed. Manton Stewart squeezed the trigger, which ignited the electric fuse, and the arching rocket fizzed across the compound, striking the body of the truck and piercing its engine block. Within seconds the vehicle had been reduced to a pyre of exploding fuel, shattered glass, and melted rubber. Several dozen injured men, some of whom had been set aflame, crawled half alive from the carcass of the truck only to be finished off by Ranger gunfire.

Then Manton Stewart turned back to the galvanized metal sheds. With several bursts, the structures warped and yawed in the billowing flames before collapsing into mangled heaps. In the waxing light of the fires, some of the Rangers thought they glimpsed the outline of several tanks. Staff Sergeant Stewart fired and scored a direct hit.

A group from C Company ran toward the American section of the compound, brandishing wire cutters. A Ranger named Lester Malone ran up to the main American gate and inspected the lock. He took two steps back and fired his M1. Then he yanked off the lock and opened up the gates. "We're Yanks!" Lester Malone yelled. "This is a prison break! Head for the main gate!"

At first, the prisoners failed to understand. They were too mentally brittle to process the chaos. Fearing the worst, they took refuge in the barest and most pitiful of hiding places. To one Ranger, the inmates of Cabanatuan looked like "scared vermin scattering for cover after you switch on the kitchen lights." They huddled in corners, cowered in black-water ditches, lurked behind frail bamboo posts, praying for a slimness that even they could not effect. Some were literally scurrying from their deliverers. At least one prisoner wet himself. Still others "were praying and running around in circles," as Abie Abraham recalled, "because they didn't know where to run to." "Buddy, you're free," a voice said. "Up quick and get over to the gate! You're a soldier again!"

To the prisoners, the Rangers looked exceedingly strange. They wore unfamiliar uniforms, carried unfamiliar guns. To starved men, the strapping soldiers looked impossibly huge, even menacing. Ralph Rodriguez was thoroughly frightened by the first Ranger he encountered. "This guy looked like a giant. I thought, What kind of a man is this? He had guns everywhere. Big hands. He could have been a man from Mars. He yelled out, 'Any more Americans?' I was trembling when I raised my hand - Here!"

Even when their fear had passed, even when most of the prisoners understood that the Rangers were Americans come to liberate them, many were still curiously reluctant to go. Colonel James Duckworth was digging in his heels, refusing to leave, even refusing to let the Rangers escort others out. Ranger Alvie Robbins was almost shocked by Colonel Duckworth's belligerence. "He says, 'I'm Colonel Duckworth, and I'm in charge here! Who the hell are you?' I said, 'We're Americans. We've come for you.' He said, 'You can't do this! You're going to get us killed. The Japanese told us no escapes! No one leaves here until I say they do.' I said, 'You go see Captain Prince,' and I went on about my business."

Finally, another Ranger grabbed him by the arm and said, "With all due respect, you are not in charge here, General MacArthur is. Now I suggest you head to the main gate before we kick your ass there. I'll apologize in the morning." Still grousing about the situation, Colonel Duckworth shambled out the American gate. Plagued by night blindness like so many others, he promptly fell into a ditch and fractured his right arm.


























John Cook


John Cook, wearing only a G-string and leather high-top shoes, practically interrogated his liberator. "I said, 'Hey, who in the hell are you?' The guy had the funniest uniform on, with a funny-looking cap, and he was carrying something that looked like a grease gun, like he was going to grease up a car. He said, 'We're Yanks. Get your ass out the main gate.' This guy is trying to save my life, and I'm sitting there carrying on an argument with him. I said, 'No Yank ever wore a uniform like that.' He said, 'The hell we don't!'?"


























Bob Body was similarly combative with the first Ranger he met. "I was lying on the ground, and all of a sudden I looked up, and there was this huge guy looming over me. I said, 'Who the hell do you think you are?' 'We're U. S. Army Rangers. Get out of here.' "I said, 'What's a Ranger ' He said, 'Never mind. Get the fuck outta here. We've come to get you outta here. Don't ask any more questions - get out, get out!' " Alvie Robbins found one prisoner muttering in a darkened corner of one of the barracks, tears coursing down his face. "I thought we'd been forgotten," the prisoner said. "No, you're not forgotten," Robbins said. "We've come for you."

Even though they had prepared themselves for the worst, the Rangers were truly appalled at the grotesque condition of many of the prisoners. A nearly full moon had just risen, flooding the countryside and making it possible for the Rangers to get a vivid picture. It was a ghastly parade - amputees, consumptives, peg legs, men without hair or teeth, men with the elephantine appendages and scrotums indicative of wet beriberi. One Ranger described them as "sickly old birds that had just been plucked." The half-naked prisoners were dull- eyed and louse infested, and they seemed old beyond their years. Most were barefoot, or they hobbled around on homemade sandals fashioned from string and slats of cardboard. Their hair was greasy and raggedly shorn close to the scalp with blunt knives. Lesions and battle scars marred their skin, and many had tropical ulcers as big as dinner plates.


























Some of the Rangers welled with tears at the hideous procession and tried to offer comfort. "They tucked our men under their arms like babies," said Dr. Hibbs. "They shook their heads in disbelief and cried at the sight of these emaciated countrymen so far down the starvation trail."

Standing next to the young, strapping Rangers, the prisoners realized how sorry they must have looked, and some were overcome with self-pity and shame. "The pallor of death shone on our faces," Abraham later wrote. "Our hip bones protruded sharply through our thin underwear. We stared vacantly, unable to believe we were no longer prisoners of the Japanese." The POWs were light enough that some Rangers were able to carry two prisoners on their backs at once. "With some of them," said Lester Malone, "it was just like you were carrying a ten-year-old kid."

In one of the medical wards, Corporal Jim Herrick found one of the sick POWs curled up on a bamboo mat. He pleaded with the man to try and stand up. "No, no," the prisoner replied. "I'm a goner. Go save the others." Jim Herrick gathered this faintly breathing husk into his arms. Even though the two young men were about the same age, Corporal Herrick felt he was carrying a frail old wizard in his eighties, bony and light, a man aged on some strangely accelerated scale of time. A few moments later, the prisoner lost consciousness. Corporal Herrick checked his pulse - nothing. He was the raid's first POW casualty. It was too much excitement for him. Corporal Jim Herrick reluctantly set him on the ground again, twenty feet from the gate.


























While the prisoners of Cabanatuan haltingly made their way to safety, Captain Juan Pajota was engaged in the fight of his life near the Cabu River bridge. As the American guerrilla leader Robert Lapham would write, "It was Captain Pajota's finest hour." As Captain Pajota's men began to take aim, they could hear the Japanese laughter, the lilt of their conversation. The beads of their rifles leveled on individual Japanese soldiers. Once the Filipinos heard the stutter of Murphy's F Company, more than a mile distant, they let loose. They fired with a hatred and a vengeance that had steeped in three years of mostly unexpressed resentments. For the Rangers, the killing was necessary and perhaps momentarily enjoyable, but not an especially gratifying aspect of the mission. For the Filipinos, it was personal, tribal, national; they considered it a blessing of fate to strike back at the invaders with all they could bring to bear.

At first, the Japanese withered. They were utterly taken by surprise. Just as they were trying to launch their first sortie over the Cabu bridge, the ponderous log structure was ripped by a terrific explosion. The land mines secreted beneath the span had detonated as planned.

When the dust cleared, however, Captain Pajota's scouts discovered with some alarm that the blast had destroyed only a portion of the bridge. The damage was enough to stymie any tanks or other armored vehicles that might attempt to pass over, but the Japanese foot soldiers could still step around the ragged fissure and race across the bridge.

This is precisely what they tried to do. Approximately fifty Imperial Army soldiers gathered on the bridge and mounted a charge, issuing cries of "Banzai!" But Captain Captain Pajota's men, spread out in a great V athwart the highway, were ideally positioned for the ambush. The first barrage lasted no more than thirty seconds. To the last man, the Japanese were cut down by the enfilading fire. The Japanese commander, Tomeo Oyabu, responded by sending another wave of men over the bridge. When they too were sawed down, he dispatched a third and a fourth, each squad sending up spirited battle cries before meeting certain death. Their shrieking became an open invitation for the Filipinos to shoot.

On and on it went for a half hour, a scene of revolting carnage, with bodies piling up by the hundreds. Many of the corpses fell through the bomb crater and plunged into the river, while others ended up draped in queer postures over the supporting timbers beneath. As they raced across the bridge, the Japanese had to climb over the bodies of their comrades.

Captain Joson, fortunately, had not engaged the enemy forces; in fact, he hadn't seen a hint of them. With the phone lines cut, the commanders of the seven thousand man Japanese garrison in Cabanatuan City had apparently remained unaware of the raid. Not having to worry about defending himself, Joson could thus heed Prince's flare announcing withdrawal and easily remove his forces to Platero.

The prisoners left their burning prison behind and tore out, many of them barefoot, across the stubbled fields. Their spirits soared with an optimism they hadn't known in years. A hundred yards out, the escaping prisoners were met by the radiant countenance of Henry Mucci. The colonel had spent the opening moments of the raid crouched in the rice fields, carefully watching the fireworks go off. Now he rose up and made his considerable presence felt.  Lieutenant Colonel Mucci projected just the sort of steady confidence and air of authority that the skittish prisoners needed as they emerged into the world. He came across as his usual stentorian self, offering bright words of praise and encouragement, taking the more tentative prisoners by the hand, doubling back again and again to greet each wave of newly freed men.

For a half hour this ungainly procession of the halt and the blind worked its way north. Finally,  Lieutenant Colonel Mucci led the men down to the banks of the Pampanga, where he rejoiced to learn that Captain Pajota's lieutenants had made good on their promise: In the bright moonlight,  Lieutenant Colonel Mucci could clearly see a dozen carabao carts parked down in the riverbed, the great yoked beasts stamping along the muddy margins. One POW thought the train of prisoners approaching the Pampanga looked like the Hebrews of Exodus "waiting for the Red Sea to part before Pharaoh's warriors arrived in hot pursuit." With the gunfire roaring as loud as ever at the Cabu bridge, Henry Mucci didn't waste any time getting the prisoners moving.  Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci would lead the vanguard toward Platero, a pied piper.

"We would have followed him to hell that night," said Ranger Thomas Grace. "And when we got there, he would've opened up the goddamn gates."

*****

Francis R. Schilli

























This is about the role Francis R. Schilli, formally of Farmington, played in one of WWII most daring missions. The 6th Ranger Raid on Cabanatuan has been the subject of several books and now a newly released film "The Great Raid." This  was first published in the "Daily Journal" in March of 2003 and was written by the late Joe Layden.

In January of 1945 Francis Schilli, a farm boy from Ste. Genevieve County, found himself in the steaming rain forest of the Philippines. He had enlisted in the Army in September of 1940. This was more than a year before the outbreak of war.

It was a different time ... a different war but any discussion of "Special Ops" brings memories flooding back for Schilli who was part of a daring special operation of World War II. It was an operation so important, General Douglas MacArthur would say at the time, "No incident in this war has given me greater pleasure."

Schilli's outfit had started as mule skinners called 98th Field Artillery Battalion, Pack." The mules just didn't work out in the jungle and rain forest. The trucks, like 6x6s, could move better there than the mules, so they disbanded that outfit," Schilli said.

Seated in the visitor's room at St. Francois Manor on Old Jackson Road in Farmington where he now lives, he recounted a story of men in war. (Schilli is now a resident of a nursing home in Perryville.)

By January 1945 the former Pack Battalion had been training for more than a year as a Ranger group patterned after the British Commandos. Led by a rock-hard Lt. Colonel named Henry Mucci, they now proudly carried the title of the 6th Ranger Battalion.

Mucci and the men had been itching for a fight. Mucci once sent a message to headquarters that said, "Here we are with the goddamn bullets and no Japs." So it is no wonder when called to 6th Army headquarters by Commanding General Walter Kurger, Mucci jumped at the chance for a real mission.

The Mission

That mission was to travel almost 33 miles in four days behind Japanese lines. They were to bring back alive more than 500 prisoners of war held in a hellish camp deep in the jungles and rice paddies of Luzon. Among these POWs, barely able to hold onto life, were some of the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March, men who had been captured in 1942 on Bataan and Corregidor.

Escapees from other Japanese POW camps had described massacres in those camps. American officials became convinced that as their drive to take back the Philippines moved forward, the men held by the Japanese faced a certain death.

Schilli remembers the day Mucci addressed his men. "He told us where we were going. He said it would have to be secret. We could not tell anyone about it. Then he told us he would not force anyone to go. He asked for a show of hands of the men who would be a part of it," Schilli said.

"Every hand in the place went up including mine," Schilli added with a clear sense of pride.

"Even when Mucci told the married men that they really did not have to go, not one man backed out," he added.

Mucci left his men that day by saying, "One other thing, there'll be no atheists on this trip. I want you to swear an oath before God. Swear that you'll die fighting rather than let any harm come to those prisoners."

Why would anyone volunteer for a mission so clearly filled with danger in every step?

To men like Francis Schilli the answer is easy. "I was there to serve my country and do my duty. These men had suffered a long time at the hands of the Japanese. It was our duty to our country to free them!"


The March.

Francis R. Schilli and 120 of his fellow 6th Rangers stepped off on their mission at 2 p.m. on Jan. 28, 1945, into the 100 degree heat with 90 percent humidity heading for a fight at a place called Cabanatuan (KA-ba-na-TWAHN) Camp in the northern part of the island of Luzon.

Their mission was to travel almost 33 miles in four days behind Japanese lines. They were to bring back alive more than 500 prisoners of war stuck in a prison camp deep in the jungles and rice paddies of Luzon.

The rangers were lead by Lt. Col. Henry Mucci and were pledged to "die fighting rather than let any harm come to the POWs.

It was hard going. They had to drink a lot of water to stave off dehydration in the tropical heat. They ate K-rations and carried with them some chocolate bars to give the prisoners in the camp. They formed a single line that stretched back 100 yards.

Looking at a photo of the men crossing a river, Schilli who in 2003 lived in St. Francois Manor on Old Jackson Road in Farmington, pointed to the line of men and said, "I'm in there somewhere but I have no idea where. I do remember crossing that river. We were worried about being out in the open like that."

The river crossing was a major concern to Mucci and the other officers of the battalion. It meant that men were out in the open with little cover should they be attacked. A single lone observation plane could doom the entire mission.

The route was difficult. If they were not in the forest they were making their way through muddy rice fields. Mucci felt staying off the roads reduced the chance they would be discovered.

Dressed in dull green and soft caps, the men carried weapon of their choice along with two bandoleers of ammo, some grenades and a knife.

During the march the men encountered many events that could have doomed the mission. There were the over friendly Filipinos who Mucci was sure would give away their position. There were also barking dogs warning the locals that the men were coming.

"The people (Filipinos) were very nice to us. They gave us food and water and even found places for us to stay. But Mucci was always afraid that all this attention would attract the Japanese or some of the pro-Japanese natives who would lead the enemy to us. It didn't happen that way but the Colonel was worried," Schilli said.

Mucci was so concerned that he told the Filipinos to stay away from the troops and stop being so friendly. When the dogs came barking, the Filipinos put them in canvass bags to quiet them.

"We trusted him (Mucci) and Captain (Robert) Prince. They were both good men and did a good job for us." Prince would serve as the assault commander during the raid.

"I do remember one thing that happen on the way there.

"We were walking along and suddenly we heard a sound like 'fezzzzzzes' and then a 'blop' We hit the dirt. The same sound came again. We thought they had spotted us and these were incoming rounds. When nothing exploded, I got up and started looking around and there... about five feet from where I hit the dirt... was a dead bird. Several had fallen in the area. They were large birds... I don't know what kind.

"I read not long ago that even today the Army can't explain where those birds came from or what caused them to die.

"We really thought that was the start of it," Schilli said, remembering it with a bit of a smile.

Even when they got to the final stop before the raid, they faced yet another a major snag. It seems that several thousand Japanese troops had moved into the area of Cabanatuan Camp to spend the night. A band of guerrillas had been working in the area. The Japanese had been moving up troops to fight the advancing Americans. Many of them had been using the camp for a base. Luckily for the Rangers, the major force that moved into the area, moved out the next day.

It was here the Rangers teamed up with a group of Filipino guerrillas. These guerrillas played a vital role in the mission, including holding off a sizable Japanese force while the Rangers took the POWs and headed back. These brave men would hold a bridge and a road that blocked the Japanese from bringing in tanks and troops to destroy the raiders.

So here they were... 121 Americans and maybe 100 Filipino guerrillas, 33 miles behind enemy lines with little contact and no support from the outside world. In the 10 miles around them there were thousands of Japanese troops moving to fight an advancing American force. But the Rangers had made it, and the enemy had no idea they were there.

The Raid

It was time for the 6th Rangers to move, Commanding office Lt. Col. Henry Mucci decided. The sun had set. The calm of the light blue tropical sky belied the violence that was about to rip through rice fields just outside the Philippine city of Cabanatuan on the island of Luzon.

The 6th Rangers were about to pull off the most daring rescue of World War II. There, in the POW camp they were moving to attack, were more than 500 men who had survived the Bataan Death March only to end up for three years in a hell called Cabanatuan Camp.


























Francis R. Schilli, who just two years before had been an Army mule skinner, was in the 30-member Company F about to play a key role in the raid. Company F was sent to cover the back of the prison camp along the east fence. "We went in through some high congo grass ... it was sharp and tough and would cut you just like a knife. Then we moved under a road and into a ditch alongside a road that ran on the side of the camp. The road was used by the Japanese and the Filipino so they (the Japanese) were used to seeing movement.

The Ranger's Commanding office had one more trick in his bag. At the suggestion of a Filipino guerrilla leader, the Colonel had arranged for a fly-over of American planes to distract the guards while the Rangers moved into place for the attack.

"I remember seeing those planes. They were P-61. They were kind of funny looking and as they flew over we just smiled at each other because we knew what they were doing," Schilli said.

"At one point we were near a guard tower and I looked up. There was one of the guards leaning out of the tower looking down. He was so close I could see he had glasses on. I would have shot him right there but they had told us not to make any disturbances. I guess he didn't see us and we slipped on past him.

"There were two pillboxes at the back and we moved past them and took up positions at the back of the camp. It took .... I'd say about an hour and a half to make our way back there." Schilli said. The planes made their last pass and all was ready.

Schilli, looking out the window of the room in Farmington Manor, where he (lived at the time of the interview) seemed to relive for a moment those minutes before the attack. "I was looking through a fence like that one," he said as he viewed the scene outside the window.

"I was looking into the building... 35 to 40 feet away. They had the windows open. I could see them (Japanese soldiers) talking and drinking. They were getting ready for bed and some were playing games. They were just a few, 35 to 40, feet away."

It was up to Schilli's Company F. Lieutenant John Murphy to fire the first shot. Murf, as he was known, "was just a few feet away from me. When he fired, we opened up and riddled the buildings with all kinds of fire. Whenever we would get some fire back we would open up in that direction and silence it.

"The buildings were on fire and you could see the Japanese against the light. It didn't take long to put them down," he said.

While the fighting was going on, Captain Robert Prince and his men rushed in the front gate shooting at the Japanese and at the same time running to get the Americans out of the camp.

"I never got into the camp. Our job was to cover the rear because they did not want any surprises while they were getting the prisoners out.

"I did talk to some of the guys after the raid and they said they had a hard time convincing the prisoners that this was real and that they were now free," he said.

There are many accounts of the POWs refusing to go because they could not grasp who these invaders were. The Rangers, not dressed nor carrying weapons used by the forces in 1942, appeared to be strangers to the POWs. In addition, many of the POWs suffered from night blindness.

One story tells of a POW refusing to go until he heard a voice with a Midwest accent. "Where are you from," he asked a Ranger. "Oklahoma," came the answer. "Oklahoma is good enough for me. Say give me a lift, I can't see a thing," shouted the POW as he now rushed to freedom.

With Schilli during the entire operation was his long-time buddy Roy Sweezy. The pair would play another role in the battle.

A Japanese soldier had gotten to a knee mortar and starting firing it. The first shell hit near the gate and wounded the company doctor. He would later die of those wounds. Several other Americans were hit by flying shrapnel from the shell.

Schilli and Sweezy quickly moved into the area of the mortar and sent blasts of gun fire toward the mortar position.

"We hit him right away and silenced the mortar," Schilli said.

The battle raged for a little more than a half hour. "They shot off a red flare and it meant we were to pull out. I was fighting the rear guard and was about the last man to leave the camp area," he said.

The Loss of a Friend

It was then the darkest part of the raid took place for Schilli.

"We ran down through the rice field and jumped into a ditch. It was about that deep in mud and water," he said holding his hand about two feet off the floor. "Someone yelled 'Where is Roy?' and I said 'He's right behind me!' "

"I looked around and saw him standing on the top of the ditch.

"I can still see him there," he said, as his mind flashed back nearly 58 years.

"There was shooting from behind us. We turned and fired back. We must have hit them because it stopped. Roy and I stood up. Then a few feet away I saw the flash of a gun and Roy Sweezy fell".



























Rangers TSGT 5 Francis Schilli (left), CPL Roy Sweezy, and unidentified man a few weeks before the raid.  Roy Sweezy died on the raid on Cabanatuan.

"The fire came from one of our own men. He was nervous and I guess when we stood up he just fired out of reaction. I was about a foot away from Sweezy when he was hit. It could have been me.

"It was clear Roy was not going to live, but I made up my mind he was not going to die without being baptized. The other guys agreed and I poured some water over his head and said a prayer. The other guys said some prayers... I don't know what faith they were," Schilli, himself a devoted Catholic, remembered. You could see that even after nearly six decades, the loss of his friend still hurt him deeply.

The others took off, but Schilli stayed with his friend not wanting to leave him there for the Japanese. "There were a couple of Filipinos there. I asked them if they would get him out of there and they said they would.

"That's the last time I saw him. I never knew what happened to him, that is until a few years ago when I saw a photo of a grave stone there with his name on it in a cemetery. I guess they kept their word and brought him out," Schilli said, still deeply troubled, but with some closure knowing his buddy had come back.

The Return to Base

The loss of his friend had hurt Francis Schilli but he knew he must go on. He like the other men in the 6th Rangers had sworn an oath to "fight to the death rather than let any harm come to the prisoners."

No matter how much the former farm boy from Ste. Genevieve wanted to stay behind, he could not. The raid had freed the POWs, now the job was to bring them home.

Spending that time with Roy Sweezy, his fallen buddy, meant Schilli was left behind.

"When I came out of that ditch I was lost for a time. I didn't have any idea where the others had gone, but I knew to just keep moving. After a while I found them and we started the trip out," he said, with a bit of a smile on his lips.

Once out of the camp, hundreds of Filipino farmers showed up with ox carts and loaded the freed POWs on board for the trip back to safety. Many of the former prisons refused the ride because they wanted to "walk to freedom!"

It took about 20 to 30 hours to get back to American lines. Returning was a somewhat shorter trip. The 6th Army had taken another town a few miles closer to the convoy of Rangers and former POWs. The line of men now stretched almost 600 yards along the trail.

The trip was somewhat uneventful... that is as uneventful as a 33-mile trip with hundreds of men deep behind enemy lines can be.

"There was one thing that happened, I remember," Schilli said.

"We were nearing the American lines when we came upon a village. We were stopped there because the village was held by a group of pro-Japanese Filipinos guerrillas. They were not going to let us through the village.

"After some time the colonel told them that either they let us all through or he was going to call in the American artillery and 'This village will be leveled.'

"Well, they opened the road and we moved through," Schilli said.

Then with a quick smile he said, "A few years ago at a reunion I was talking with the colonel and asked him if he would have called in the artillery. He told me it was all a bluff. We didn't have artillery support because our radio wasn't working." Colonel Mucci has since passed away.

Schilli didn't have much contact with the rescued POWs. "I was part of the group providing protection around them. Our job was to make sure if there was an attack that it did not reach them.

"I did see them. They were just skin and bones. It was hard to believe." he said.

"I do remember a couple of times after we got back to base, a few of them came over from the hospital to visit us. One was a Hawaiian who had been there (in the Philippines) working. He came over one day. I was in a group he was talking to. I remember hearing him tell some of stories about the camp," Schilli said.

If you ask Francis Schilli how he feels today about the raid he tells you, "I'm very proud to have had a part in it. I am proud to have helped in the rescue of those men. I am proud to have done my duty to my country."

His pride clearly shows when he is asked to sign one of the several books written about the raid. "Sixth Ranger Francis R. Schilli," the autograph reads.

The raid was carried out with two Rangers being killed, the company doctor and Schilli's buddy Roy Sweezy. Several wounded Rangers made it back and recovered at the base hospital.

LTG Walter Krueger congratulates Harry D. Weiland after awarding him the Bronze Star for Valor for the mission on Pegun Island. Leyte, P.I., 28 Dec 1944..jpg

Sixth Army commander General Walter Krueger later decorated all the Rangers with Lt. Col. Mucci and Captain Prince receiving the Distinguished Service Cross. The other officers were awarded the Silver Star and the enlisted men, the Bronze Star. A few of the Rangers and Alamo scouts were sent back to the US to meet President Roosevelt, Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall, and made numerous speeches throughout the United States.

Returns Home

After the war Schilli left the Army in August of 1945 and returned to the Ste. Genevieve area. He married and had four children. He moved to Farmington in 1965. Schilli operated his own farm equipment repair business. "I worked in Ste. Genevieve, Farmington and even in Fredericktown over the years," he said.

Like so many World War II veterans, time has taken its toll. Today (in 2003 when this story was first written) at 86, he travels about the nursing home in a wheelchair. While his hearing is reduced, his mind is still sharp. When he tells the story of the raid, he is modest, yet you can sense the pride of the accomplishment he holds.

Schilli has attended several reunions of the group. "Each time there are fewer of us. I lost one of my best friends recently. I'm not going to the next reunion. It is in Michigan and that's a little too far for me now," he said with a tinge of sadness in his voice.

Francis R. Schilli clearly fits to the mold of his generation. He was a common solider who, like so many others, displayed uncommon courage. He refuses the title of "Hero" saying, "We had a job to do and we did it. It was our duty."

*****

James Hildebrand


























Prisoner of war James Hildebrand had left dinner early that night, going back to his bunk to work on some "shoes." He was a cobbler of sorts, trading his skills fixing shoes for cigarettes and food. He was working alone in his shack when the roof literally exploded over his head. Totally confused, he ducked and ran straight into the biggest man he ever saw. Scared, he turned to run the other way, wondering what the hell that men was wearing and why he smelled like... American cigarettes. He ran back to ask, "Who the hell are you?" But it was clear - bullets were zinging everywhere - that the Americans had come to save them.

Hildebrand remembers: "God Almighty, there were bullets like crazy. As a matter of fact, when they hit my building, they took the top off of it, it all landed over the top of me... I thought it was a massacre. I thought this is exactly what the Japanese are going to do, because Uncle Sam was getting close. That's exactly what happened at Palawan... I got panicky. I started to run. And I ran into what I classify as a 'very gentle brick wall.'"

The brick wall turned out to be Lt. Murphy of the 6th Army Rangers.

Hildebrand was not alone in his confusion. Most of the POWs were entirely stunned. The American soldiers looked huge. They were wearing strange outfits and had strange guns. Tommie Thomas recalls, "All hell broke loose. And boy, [there] were shots in every direction, they came over the top of my head."

*****


John Cook

John Cook recalls, "there was a lot of shooting, fireworks, and tracer bullets. It was like Fourth of July many times over... and all I could think was, how was I going to cook the lugao in the morning if they are shooting up our cookware?... We were stunned... and then this man spoke.... He looked like Pancho Villa, with bandoliers of ammunition strapped across his chest and hand grenades hanging off his belt. It was the weirdest sight. He just looked huge."

The thought dawned - they were being rescued. Through the chaos, the POWs got moving. The men couldn't take anything with them: diaries, photographs, letters, jackets, coats, shoes. They simply had to flee. Most were next to naked, wearing just their Japanese underwear - g-strings. They were evacuated in 30 minutes; only one was left behind to be rescued later.

The Rangers and Alamo Scouts assisted the POWs out of the camp. Some could walk, others had to be carried - piggyback or on makeshift stretchers. Water buffalo carts provided by Filipinos in the area were a godsend. Most of the men were far too ravaged to walk through the night.

Rescued POW Through that long night, as the Rangers and POWs walked and rolled to safety, the men got to know each other. Former POW Tommie Thomas recalls, "We wanted to know where they had been and what they had seen. And they were anxious to know how it had been with us, and whether it was a rough as they had heard. We regarded them as heroes. They regarded us as heroes. It was a mutual admiration society."

The next day, the POWs got their first taste of freedom. They arrived in San Francisco a week later. John Cook said, "When we got the pier, every one of us bent down and kissed the earth and then we really let out an exhale and said, 'We're finally home.'" To a man, they remained thankful throughout the rest of their lives to all those who contributed to rescuing them.

*****

Sgt. Abie Abraham

For four months on Bataan, Abie Abraham and the 31st Regiment fought a seemingly hopeless, but valiant battle against overwhelming, Japanese air, sea and land forces. Totally surrounded, without  re-supply, the 31st was overpowered by tank cannons and small arms.

The next six days were spent in the 90 mile infamous "Bataan Death March", from Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, under brutal murderous Japanese guards.

Abie Abraham watched some of his Comrades beheaded, bayoneted, skulls fractured, and the more fortunate, shot. For the next 1,000 sunrises (April 1942 - February 1945)  SGT Abraham watched helpless as 4,100 of his fellow prisoners die from crushed skulls, samurai sword, bayonets, bullets and torture. All the while suffering (some dying) from malnutrition, dysentery, malaria, beriberi, dengue fever, lice, bed bugs, hard labor, depression, food and medicine depravation. This was the daily routine of human forms stripped of their dignity.

SGT. Abie Abraham began recording names, origins, and messages from the prisoners, especially those who were in their  death throes.  Records were kept on can labels and paper scraps. Since the incarceration was meant to insure death beginning with a starvation diet of 800 calories daily, record keeping would have earned Abie an agonizing death if he had been caught.

After rescue of the 6th Rangers in January 1945, in the office of General Douglas MacArthur in Manila, Abie Abraham agreed to stay in the Phillippines and exhume the remains of KIA's and murdered Americans, many of whom SGT Abraham knew in person. The next 2-1/2 years were spent in the jungle eluding mines, booby traps, natural dangers, communists, and the Ghosts of Bataan.. Sgt. Abraham had to walk the fine line between sanity and insanity.

Sgt Abraham was the key witness against Supreme Japanese Commander Lt. General Matasura Homma who was found guilty of war crimes and shot by a firing squad. 

While he was exhuming graves on Bataan, a Japanese-Filipino came over to Sgt. Abraham stating that the Japanese in the jungles wanted to surrender knowing the war was over and many were sick.

Sgt. Abraham promised the Japanese Major protection from the Filipinos. Abraham called the Army camp at the San Fernando, telling them about the Japanese wanting to surrender two days later a platoon from the anti-tank company arrived and took the Japanese to a prison camp. At a ceremony Sgt. Abraham accepted the Japanese Samarai saber.

Sgt. Abie Abraham was the only soldier who fought on Bataan to see the Japanese surrender.

*****

Honored, At Last

In August 2000, ex-POW John Cook honored the 124 Rangers, three Signal Corpsmen, 14 Alamo Scouts and two Filipino officers - Joson and Pajota - through the installation of a monument in their honor at the Ranger Hall of Fame, Fort Benning, Georgia.

There’s a Memorial Plaque down at Fort Benning honoring the men and leaders of the 6th Rangers. It reads: “In Honor of the Men of the 6th Ranger Battalion who liberated the 512 Prisoners of War at Cabanatuan, Philippine Islands, 30 January 1945. This list courtesy of John Cook (POW) who honored the 6th Rangers & Alamo Scouts at the dedication of a Memorial Plaque located at Fort Benning, GA 1999.”

Led by:
LTC Henry A. Mucci, Ranger Hall of Fame 1998
CPT James C. Fisher
CPT Robert W. Prince, Ranger Hall of Fame 1999
1LT John F Murphy
1LT William J O'Connell
1LT Melville R Schmidt
1LT Clifford K Smith
1SG Robert G Anderson
1SG Charles H Bosard
1SG Ned H Hedrick
TSGT Melvin H Gilbert
TSGT Daniel H Watson
TSGT Ralph C Franks
SSG Floyd L Anderson
SSG Lyle C Bishop
SSG Charles W Brown
SSG William R Butler
SSG Thomas H Frick
SSG Clifford B Gudmunsen
SSG Clifton R Harris
SSG David M Hey
SSG James V Millican
SSG Norton S Most
SSG Richard A Moore
SSG Cleatus C Norton
SSG Preston N Jensen
SSG Mike Koren
Tec 5 Bernard L Haynes
Tec 5 Edward L Biggs
Tec 5 Patrick H Marquis
Tec 5 Francis R Schilli
Tec 5 William A Lawyer
Tec 5 Robert W White
Tec 5 Dalton H Garrett
Tec 5 Alymer C Jinkins
Pfc Vernon N Abbott
Pfc Donald A Adams
Pfc Warren M Bell
Pfc John D Blannett
Pfc James W Conley
Pfc William F Crumpton
Pfc Carlton O Dietzel
Pfc Virgil S Dixon
Pfc Waverty R Duke
Pfc Eugene H Dykes
Pfc Edwin G Enstrom
Pfc Howard R Fortenberry
Pfc Mariano Garde
Pfc William H Garrison
Pfc Thomas A Grace, Jr
Pfc Paul J Grimm
Pfc Merrie K Purtell
Pfc George H Randall
Pfc James M Reynolds
Pfc John B Richardson
Pfc Alvie D Robbins
Pfc Edgar L Rubie
Pfc Roy D Sebeck
Pfc Melvin P Shearer
Pfc Charles Q Snyder
Pfc Conrad J Solf
Pfc Buford K Spicer
Pfc Frank R St John
Pfc Robert C Straube
Pfc Peter P Superak
Pfc Charles S Swain
Pfc Russell J Swank
Pfc Ronald R Thomas
Pfc Gerhard J Tiede
Pfc Alexander E Truskowski
Pfc Jasper T Westmoreland
Pfc Ray E Williams
Pfc Joseph O Youngblood
SSG Lester L Malone
SSG John W Nelson
SSG Theodore Richardson
SSG August T Stern Jr
SSG Manton P Stewart
SSG James O White
SGT Claude R Howell
SGT Harry C Killough
SGT Milo C Mortensen
SGT Albert F Outwater, Jr
SGT Vance R Shears
SGT James M Tucker
SGT Leo M Wentland
SGT Arthur T Williams
Tec 4 Homer E Britzius
Tec 4 Robert L Camp
Cpl Martin T Estesen
Cpl Waymon E Finley
Cpl James B Herribk
Cpl Marvin W Kinder
Cpl John G Palomares
Cpl Roy F Sweezy
Cpl Robert L Ramsey
Pfc Howard J Guillory
Pfc Dale F Harris
Pfc Norman F Higgins
Pfc Clarence W Heezen
Pfc Andrew J Herman
Pfc Frank C Huboda
Pfc F J Hughes
Pfc Edward N Knowles
Pfc Eugene J Kocsis
Pfc Edward Littleton
Pfc Joseph Lombardo
Pfc Alfred A Martin
Pfc Billy McElroy
Pfc Alfred J McGinnis
Pfc Ralph C Melendez
Pfc Leroy B Myerhoff
Pfc John V Pearson
Pfc Joseph M Pospishil
Pfc William H Proudfit
Pfc Edward Paluck
Pfc Jack A Peters
Pfc Roy B Peters
Pfc Alva A Polzine
Pfc Leland A Provencher


Additional Members of the Liberation

547th US Air Force Pilots
The Night Fighter, P-61 of the US Air Force to distract the Japanese Guards so the Scouts and the Rangers could get into positions around Camp, for the Raids.

Photographers of Combat Photo Unit F, 852nd Signal Service Battalion
1LT John W Luebddeke, OIC
Tec 4 Frank J Goetzheimer
Pfc Robert C Lautman
Pfc Wilbur B Goen
Capt Kenneth R Schneber
LT Bonnie B Rucks

6th US Army Alamo Scouts: "The Alamo Scouts preceded the Raid as to the surrounding of the camp and the approximate number of Japanese personnel in and around the camp"

Pfc Alfred Alphonso
Pfc Sabas Asis
Pfc Thomas Siason
1LT Thomas Rounsaville
1LT William Nellist
1LT John E Dove Pfc Rufo Vaquilar
Pfc Gilbert Cox
Pfc Francis Laquier Pfc Wilber Wismer
Pfc Andy Smith
SGT Harold Hard
SGT Galen Kittleson
Pfc Franklin Fox

Philippine Guerillas
Major Robert Lapham
Capt Juan Padota, Leader
Capt Eduardo Joson, Leader
- There were approximately 284 Philippine Guerillas whom helped with the Raid on Cabanatuan, without their help who knows what may have happened, that night, Liberating 512 Prisoners of War after 34 months in prison.