ISBN-13: 978-0-9796822-1-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007924942
Copyright © 2007 by J. L. Kunkle
All Rights Reserved

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Cold.
  Lonely sage brush rustling in the dry wind from off of the Magdalenas; a desert winter. The gravel from the road’s shoulder is pressing into my knees, but I can’t even feel it. I am numb. Dim in the unlit miles behind I can vaguely sense the approach of headlights, a faint, barely discernable glow to the south as I crouch, head bowed.
  I am numb with dread, an icy grip on my shoulders and a roaring behind my forehead. Billowing clouds of dust released from the built-up grime of the trailer’s undercarriage have dispersed by now, an awesome silence replacing the booming sound of Robert’s Cadillac tumbling through space to a crunching halt somewhere in the darkness. It’s now quiet—a quiet like I’ve never felt before; a cold, dry quiet. A quiet not of peace, but of absolute emptiness.
  I am crouching here in the dark, on a desert highway miles from nowhere, fighting to try and make room in my soul for this huge and sudden void. My wife of fifty years lies fallen at the roadside, and I kneel here trying to make the connection.
  How can this be? She can’t be gone. All in my mind is confusion. Perhaps the grief comes later, right now all I can feel is a cold numbness locking my spine in a grip of ice and iron.
  The overloaded trailer burst a tire right in front of Robert’s restored 1952 Cadillac and then jackknifed across the center line, spilling firewood and catching the front end of Robert’s car going at 60 miles an hour, throwing it into the air like a crashing airplane, a projectile, a falling bomb. I stared through the dirty windshield in horror, watching events unfold; powerless to stop them. An instant in time is all it takes to shatter normality forever.
  Robert had been in El Paso for the horse racing, and on his way back to Albuquerque, a blizzard came rolling through New Mexico, forcing him to park his classic Cadillac at the roadside and get a ride home with someone else. A couple of days later, my wife Ophelia and I drove south with Robert to recover it. It was entombed in dirty snow at the roadside, but luckily none of the snowplows had damaged it. A tow truck pulled it from the snowbank like a cork from a wine bottle, and we were on our way back home to Albuquerque.
  We had just finished having dinner at a truck stop in Soccorro when Ophelia decided to ride in the Cadillac with Robert. It was settled that I would follow behind in our winterstained Buick sedan. I could understand; the Cadillac was much more comfortable and we still had a long way to go.
  It wasn’t until we passed a small town called Belen that we came upon the trailer. A rickety double-axle that looked like it had been built by children, it was loaded too high with firewood, and the battered pickup truck that was towing it was going way too fast for that heavy a load.
  The impact of Robert’s car hitting the logs had thrown open the passenger side door and Ophelia must have flown out, hitting the pavement hard, dying instantly, awakened suddenly to die, a brief spark of light, and immediate darkness; like throwing a switch. First you’re there and then you’re gone. A blink, a mote of dust, a word spoken to the desert wind.
  I found her there lying on the roadside gravel, curled up like a small sleeping animal. I patted her with my hands chilled to the bone as I crouched there. No response, utterly limp. When an actor is playing dead in a movie, even on film you can still sense the animus within. Real death is different.
  It’s been hours, or maybe just seconds since the accident and all that time I’ve been kneeling here, chaotic thoughts welling up in my mind like the undertow in a muddy river. Where is the meaning in this? To have moved through life together for so long, to have survived so much together. All gone in an instant. Ophelia is dead, and I’m alive. When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
  Around me, within me, sudden furies rise as if they have come for me from the windy blackness, the rage growing like it used to in the years after the war. Like a roaring video on an immense television that surrounds me and that I can never escape. Images circling like stinging flies through my head, insistent and ferocious.
  As the years passed since the war, to survive the peace I had learned to endure it, to sidestep it, to avoid the conditions which I knew would give it cause. I struggled not to forget, years of alcohol and VA drugs couldn’t do that. Despite the nightmares, I struggled to ignore this thing, this war. It never stopped, I just learned to pretend it wasn’t there.

To survive.

  In the gray shadows of early morning, the trees are just beginning to become defined silhouettes against the misty night sky. Painted rocks wrapping each canvas tent like the icing around a birthday cake. Strings of phosphorescent pearls, just now beginning to gleam in the predawn gloom of Camp Stotsenberg.
  A lone sentry paces through the camp between the rows of tents, kicking at a pebble, rifle slung over his shoulder, bored as hell. He has been on guard since 4:00 a.m. and the time for reveille is still an hour away. The signal light on the base water tower flashes solemn in the distance: green…white-white,…green… white-white… The camp generator chugs in the background, diesel clatter subdued by distance.
  Occasionally the raspy sound of snoring can be heard stemming from one or another of the tents, and the temporary light posts here and there throughout the camp reveal a dim circle of reddish-brown earth, disturbed by transient beetles and mosquitoes, flying particles of reflected light ardently destroying themselves against the cone-shaped reflector with a tick-ticking sound.
  The early morning stillness is suddenly annihilated by the coughing roar of a radial engine starting on the runway at Clark Field. Soon another engine coughs to life, followed by another, then another. More and more engines are heard rumbling in the cool morning air.
   The sound of aircraft engines from Clark in the early morning is normal, but this early, and this number of planes all running at the same time is highly irregular. The roaring climbs through the air, and the darkness inside of one of the tents is suddenly banished by the glow of a single light bulb hanging from the cross beam. It’s dim glow is blinding after the absolute blackness, and it rouses a sleeping young man; a Corporal in the U.S. Army named Carlos Montoya. He checks his watch: “Four? What the hell?” Dreams of home disturbed by the unexpected light and racket, he throws his forearm over his eyes and groans resignedly to himself. Is that reveille? Nope, that don’t sound like a bugle. He lies on his cot, waiting, but there is no further sign of activity, so after another moment, Carlos rolls over
and returns to sleep. Down at the airfield, the planes roar, every one of them that is capable of running warming up it’s engines in the predawn chill.
  The sound of airplanes from Clark at all hours is normal. Throughout the day and into the evening sometimes, they usually will have three or four planes either running, landing or taking off. But this many planes running at the same time is definitely not normal. With rumors of imminent attack, the Air Force might be preparing to move the planes somewhere else; down south maybe, like the B-17 bombers that left last week. The current rumor in camp is that the Jap Navy is close, and getting closer. Is it going to be a fight?
  It is a time of political uncertainty in the world, and Carlos is here in the Philippines, part of a National Guard antiaircraft unit, the 200th Coast Artillery from New Mexico. His hometown outfit had been converted to active duty several months earlier and after rigorous training, they were deployed to Camp Stotsenberg. Their mission, to protect the Philippines, America’s largest colony, from the possibility of invasion. More specifically, the U.S. Army Air
Force base at Clark Field in Luzon.
   It is now 5:00 a. m., and loudspeakers placed on posts throughout the large encampment are echoing the sound of a bugle playing reveille. Caramba that was a quick hour! Carlos slowly rises, perching sleepily on the edge of his cot, not yet awake. Others in the tent are also rising, groaning like zombies, shuffling about and dressing for the new day. There is not much talk, and between the uproar of the airplanes and the raucous bugle notes blaring from the loudspeakers, if any in the camp are still sleeping, it would be advisable to check their pulse, because if they aren’t deaf they are likely dead.
  Reveille has finished, and all the planes are all in the
air. They circle over the base like throaty hornets around a
huge green nest with the control tower at it’s center. Partially
dressed soldiers poke their heads out of tents to look at the
sky. It looks like it’s going to be another clear day. The
weather is warm but not too humid, cooler but with clear blue
skies, fluffy, high clouds, a bit of chill in the early morning;
December is the finest time of year in the Philippines.
  At morning formation, in the chow line, around the base, there is a tension in the air, a vibration like a balloon about to burst, like a mousetrap about to snap. The word is out that the planes are on alert status, but nobody knows why. As the morning advances, the coarse, rumbling sound dwindles to a droning background noise. At 10 a.m., Carlos steps from the regimental HQ tent and notices the absence of any smoke coming from a nearby clearing in the trees. Up to now a familiar sight, wood smoke coming from the campfire of the Nigarotes.
  They first appeared several weeks ago, pitching camp near the perimeter, tiny brown people in loincloths, toy men and women, and children like dolls. They would hunt monkeys and lizards with blowguns and their tiny bows and arrows. They came to trade with the soldiers, little knives, wood carvings, other crafts brought down from their mysterious homes up in the mountains. There is a rumor that they are cannibals, but that might just be a ruse told by the officers to keep the enlisted men away from them. The Nigarotes have enough English to get by, and they tell the soldiers stories about their mountains. Finding the neighborhood friendly, the Nigarotes built a little fire and camped for awhile. Now, for some unknown reason, they have vanished.
  Throughout the morning, the gun crews practice tracking the planes as they go by, the stove-pipes of their barrels sticking out from their nests of sandbags and camouflage nets. So far this morning, there are no new rumors from headquarters for the men manning the three-inch guns, just the usual practice drill. For the past several days, rumor after speculative rumor has circulated throughout the camp. Rumors like the one about ships with relief troops being prepared stateside, or the one about the 200th Regiment going home in time for Christmas. The current most popular rumor to arouse debate on the firing line is the rumor that President Roosevelt is going to surrender the Philippines to the Japs without a fight. That would be bad news indeed.
  A few weeks ago, Carlos had heard in the HQ that the General in charge of the Air Force had tried to get permission to bomb the Jap bases on the island of Formosa, but apparently nothing ever came of that. Maybe they got permission to do it now? With the alert on, the discussions and debates this morning have become very lively:

“I heard that MacArthur is planning to attack the Japs,” says a skinny private in his late teens, sitting on one of the huge transport arms used to move the guns.
“Where did you hear that crap?” his friend, a pimplyfaced kid replies, “MacArthur’s going to sit on his ass, just like any other General,”.
“What if he is?”
“Is what, going to sit on his ass?”
“No! planning to attack the Japs.”
“Where do you suppose he’d do that? What’ll we do, swim to Japan? Use your head! MacArthur can’t attack the Japs until the Japs come here."
“What about those planes? They could fly over and bomb the hell out of them anytime they want, I heard that the Air Force was gonna do that.”
“What do you know about it!” he slaps him on the head, “You ain’t Air Force, you don’t know anything about it. Those planes couldn’t fly all the way to Japan, gimme a break!”
“Where the hell is Japan anyway?” says the skinny private, irritated at being slapped.
“It’s a thousand miles that way,” he makes a vague gesture
towards the north.
“What about the B-17s?”
“Even those can’t fly a thousand miles, no plane can do that!”

  Around noon, the alert is cancelled and the base begins to stand down after the long, tense morning. The base commander has ordered the planes all grounded for lunch and refueling. Back from noon chow, Carlos is in his tent listening to Vincent Lopez and his Orchestra. Relaxing to the scratchy music coming over the camp loudspeakers, he is just beginning to drop off when the radio program is interrupted with a news flash from Don Bell, the N.B.C. Blue commentator in Manila. Bell is excitedly reporting an attack by the Jap air force that has just hit Nichols Field and Manila. He reports that the Japs have also bombed Clark Field, but no bombs have been reported as yet. Carlos yawns, and stretches. That doesn’t make any sense, the skies are clear in all directions! Someone at the radio station got their wires crossed.
  For a brief moment, he lies back enjoying the relative quiet on base after the constant rumble of airplanes all morning. Rolling over on his cot, he starts to drift off to sleep. Some guys outside his tent are talking about a beautiful formation of planes that they have spotted approaching Clark Field, the drone of their engines growing with their approach,
“Hey, would you take a look at that,” says a private knowingly. “Those look like a formation of Air Force planes”. he has been studying his Army playing cards, the ones that feature plane silhouettes that the gun crews need to recognize. The cards were given to the troops so that hopefully they could avoid shooting a friendly plane out of the air.
“Nah, those are Navy planes,” says another, more prone to playing cards than to studying them,“They are probably some Navy airplanes from Manila.”
  There is a moment of silence. They stand there, mouths open, squinting into the sun and shading their eyes from the glare. The droning grows.
“What are all those little black specks around them. Are
they birds?” They stand around outside, trying to decipher what their
eyes are telling them. After a moment, one of them manages
to connect the approaching planes with the radio report and
the black specks. He cries out, “Shit! Those are bombs! We’re
being attacked by the Japs!”
Suddenly, Carlos is wide awake.
  He jumps off his cot and fumbles around on the floor beneath it, looking for his helmet and rifle. He grabs his pistol belt, and quickly fastens it around his waist. He has to try a couple of times, kneeling by his cot, to get his doughboy helmet off the floor. When the helmet is on the floor with the rim down, it acts like a bell, resisting his finger’s attempts to get a hold. Frightened men are running through the camp and shouting. With a bellow and a frustrated bear swat, Carlos forcefully knocks the helmet out under the tent flap, where it flips over on to the ground. He grabs it as he runs past.
  Sprinting through rows of tents towards the center of the camp, he skids to a stop, trying to get his bearings. He looks up at the sky just in time to see cigar-shaped planes, huge and brown, moving overhead with bays open and bombs dropping out like flakes of pepper over the camp. They roll ominously past, hundreds of them; legions of black crosses moving like a river through the sky. The ground is darkened by the shadows of them.
   He hears the blaring sound of the air raid siren on the control tower, building in intensity in the warm, tropical air. He pounds across the camp, spotting the sewer trench bisecting it. It is eight feet deep and still unfinished after the four months that they have been at Stotsenberg. “Wow!” He pants as he dashes the final yards leading up to it. There are already soldiers crouching inside when he jumps in, head first, still carrying his helmet. It takes a moment for him to untangle his arms and legs from his rifle sling, and as soon as he gets to his feet with his helmet on his head, the bombs hit the ground with a distant boom like fireworks on the fourth of July.
  The first bombs hit the motor pool building over by the main gate, and the rest of them suddenly start hitting the ground so fast that there is no distinguishing individual blasts, rather, the blasts advance in a wave like a huge storm, a mixture of thunder, shockwaves, and fire. His heart is beating in his chest like a pile-driver behind his ribcage, his eyes wide like pale saucers as the wall of destruction approaches.
  The crackling loud booms of the heavy demolition bombs increase in intensity as they near the runway. The first rows of Jap planes have already dropped their loads and as they fly over, the men in the ditch can look up inside their green bellies as they pass, bomb bay doors open, freshly emptied of their deadly cargo.
  Many American aircraft on the runway are stuck sitting on the ground, some with gasoline trucks parked alongside. One of these, a Martin B10 bomber receives a direct hit, and plane and truck explode simultaneously, sending a huge fireball into the air. The next wave of bombers cuts through the growing smoke clouds that seems to part like a curtain for them to pass, the smoke whipped into spirals by their propellers.
  Everyone in the ditch is hunkered down under their helmets, muscles tense and eyes wide. A few are shakily loading their rifles, spilling cartridges on the ground. As the concussions rapidly increase in intensity, the shockwaves push the men in the ditch around like rag
dolls. The smell of high explosives, dust and cold sweat are overpowering as barrage after barrage of bombs hit the runway, raining debris over the entire camp. Carlos’ ears are ringing, but he can hear the three-inch gun batteries along the camp perimeter as they begin to open fire in retaliation. Jagged edged black spheres begin to appear in the sky overhead. The batteries are firing shell after shell, striving to reach the Jap bombers, to knock them out of the sky. 
  Though there are many cannon blasts, few have a resulting burst in the sky.
Duds.
It’s the old unreliable ammo that was stored around Clark.
  Fluid cascades of bombs hit the base as hangars explode in destructive fury. Collapsing, they burn with planes and men inside. There are planes on the flight line, parked in a neat row as if on display, all with fuselages ablaze. Dusky orange flashes of flame contained in foaming black clouds of smoke. They suddenly explode with redoubled violence as the armaments that they carry are detonated in turn. Through the smoke, huge craters appear on the runway. Multi-ton blocks of concrete rain down like meteors from the sky.

 Hishigi Yashimoto grasps the stick of his A6M2 Mitsubishi
Zero. He is elated. He always feels elated when he is flying,
and never more so than when he is in battle. He has an urge
to dodge his plane in and out of the billowing smoke clouds,
pivoting his wings like a butterfly, enjoying the godlike power
of destruction unleashed. A squeeze of the trigger releases
a maelstrom of fire like a thunderbolt, completely under his
control.
   Hashigi is no novice, he enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Navy from his hometown of Hiroshima in 1938. His first eighteen months were brutal of course, but a true Samurai can accept nothing less than perfection. Perfection of mind, and an intent that is noble and pure. He must be a perfect warrior, deserving of his position, protecting and serving his divine Emperor.
   His first time in combat was in China in 1940. Flying an A5N he shot down two Chinese Curtiss Hawk biplanes there. From that moment he knew that he was born a true warrior of the air. He eases the stick back and climbs above the bombers, waiting for any American aircraft to get off the ground. With all the secondary explosions, it is still too risky for strafing runs. Bucking a bit on the thermals generated by the explosions, he is thinking what a sad thing it is that Asia cannot band together under the rising sun, join with the Emperor in the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, and throw all the roundeyed mongrels out of Asia. Especially in the Philippines. 
  The Filipinos have exchanged the iron thumb of Spain for the equally oppressive grip of the Americans. The best their country has to offer stolen, shipped elsewhere, the people to whom the land belongs impoverished. No matter, the Emperor will prevail here as he has in China, and the victorious rising sun will destroy the Americans wherever they are found.
   The explosions move out from the center, shock waves rippling like raindrops in a puddle while the third wave of bombers arrives to attack the ammo dumps around the base. Looking at the layout of the target from his high vantage point, Hishigi can see that the maps they used to rehearse the assault were extremely accurate. The bombs are hitting bunkers that from the air you can hardly see. The bombs drop and just when you think that nothing is going to happen, the armaments within the bunker explode and a huge confl agration leaps
joyfully into the sky.
   He swings the nose of his plane around to the north, aligning his wing tips with the two other planes in his group. With a precision rehearsed constantly in training, the three planes drop, one staying straight, one veering left, and one veering right. From this starting position, each pilot knows exactly what his next move will be, and when to squeeze the trigger, strafing the ground with 38 millimeter bullets. These runs are made very fast, so it is often impossible to tell where the other planes in your group are, so to avoid collisions, the pattern and altitude of the runs must be unwavering and precise.

  Standing on a pallet leaned against the wall of the trench, Carlos sneaks a look over the edge of the ditch just as a lone bomb, dropped from the last bomber of the second wave, hits near the fire station. He can hear the crack and boom of the explosion and he watches as the fire station crumbles to the ground, a pile of flaming rubble. As the bomb goes off, the dust, dirt and gravel in the bottom of the ditch rise off of the ground in a blur, like heat waves on a desert highway.
  He drops back down in to the ditch just in time to avoid a flurry of bullets that strike the inside wall of the ditch. The bass staccato drumbeat of 38 millimeter machine gun fire roaring, dirt kicked up in dusty splashes as the approaching fighter planes begin strafing the camp. The lead plane passes the ditch, so low that Carlos can see the grinning yellow face of the pilot in the cockpit, exultant. Carlos aims his pistol and squeezes off a round after him. “Look at that Puto Mierda, grinning like that!”
  He furiously fires his pistol at the next plane as it roars overhead until his pistol is empty. The other men in the ditch have begun to open fire with their pistols and M1 rifles. The sound heard through ringing ears of tearing bullets like the crackling of popcorn. The tracer bullets from the Jap guns zip past the ditch, bright flashes seeming to fly in all directions simultaneously. Some of the machine gun fire from the fighters strikes a hill over by the golf course beyond the parade ground and the rounds bounce, glowing arcs hundreds of feet into the air before disappearing like firefl ies.
  There are American pilots out on the runway who are trying to get airborne in some of the P40 Warhawks that have escaped destruction, determined to take off and meet the Japs in a fair fight. With all the huge bomb craters on the runway, in order to take off they will be forced to lurch past the burning remains of a Douglas YB-13 reconnaissance plane, a flaming splash of jagged scrap littering the pavement.
   There is a momentary opportunity for them to get into the air while the Jap fighters continue to strafe the parade ground and base headquarters over Clark. A P-40 taxies down the runway, and while still pivoting his craft to align with a clear spot on the runway, the pilot opens up his throttle and the plane leaps forward. He bounces a few times but then he is smoothly moving faster in a diagonal course across undamaged sections of the tarmac. As he approaches the burning plane, he is fast enough to take off, his tail is up and his wheels are almost free of the runway. He must be airborne before he reaches the wreck.
   Still skimming the runway, gaining altitude, he is unable to get airborne in time, and his wingtip catches on the upturned fragment of an engine cowling. Caught, the plane spins flat sideways like a boomerang and he is thrown violently to the side of the runway. The plane explodes, sending burning parts scattering across the field. There is an instant when the pilot’s head and shoulders can be seen silhouetted on the cockpit window by the flames inside, but the silhouette quickly vanishes, engulfed in the blaze.
   The helplessness! To sit here pinned down waiting for death! The frustration is almost more than Carlos can stand. Enraged men are firing small rifles and pistols at the enemy planes! It is like field mice trying to throw pebbles at an eagle! He puts another clip into his pistol and continues firing. Though ineffectual, firing this way gives him at least some sense that he is fi ghting back.
   The Jap bullets spray down on the camp like a storm. They thump into the ground, they shred the vehicles, tents, and offices, and they slap into the sides of the ditch, causing some cave-ins. A few men are buried alive this way, but they are dug out again just as quickly as they were buried. The men must dig quickly because they have no way of knowing from which direction the next strafing run will come. Miraculously, the torrent of machinegun fire still fails to hit the men inside the ditch.
   The ammo bunkers scattered around the base are going up, one by one, and the shockwaves are heavy enough to make Carlos’ hair stand on end. The men are high on the gallons of adrenaline that are pumping through their veins, and cries of “Son of a bitch! Dirty rotten bastards!” and “Su Puta Madre!” can be heard. Some stand, personal safety forgotten in their rage, shaking fists at the passing fighters. The barrage of sound and shockwaves have left Carlos temporarily but completely deaf. He watches as the men in the ditch scream silently at one another, and fireballs quietly climb into the air, a wave of heat without a sound. The loss of hearing is mostly due to proximity to the cracking pistols and rifles in the confined space inside the ditch.
  The ammunition dumps around the airfield are being hit with suspicious accuracy, almost as if the Jap pilots know exactly where to drop. When a dump is hit, there is an enormous cataclysm and a shockwave that throws debris hundreds of feet into the air. This happens every few seconds until the sky is black with the smoke and dust of them.
   The antiaircraft batteries on the perimeter continue firing at the Jap bombers, but they are unable to make a dent in the onslaught. Their projectiles and fuses have a top altitude of 20,000 feet, and it would seem that the Jap pilots already know this. They fly over at 22,000 ft. and remain unharmed while dropping their bombs. You can actually see the black bursts underneath the passing bombers. The men on the guns frantically load, aim, and shoot, but if a round is a dud, there
is no explosion, the projectiles just drop back down, 20,000 feet to the ground, useless.

  Hashigi is enraged, he can see the mongrels in their ditch, impertinent, shaking fists and making obscene gestures, but he dare not break formation, to follow the ditch along it’s length, filling it with bullets, killing them all.
   He is halfway through his next strafing run when his machine guns run out of ammunition. He squeezes the trigger, but all he hears is the fast tap-tapping of the firing solenoids. His part in the attack is now over, he must fly back to the carrier for more fuel and armaments, but it is doubtful that he will be coming back for another attempt at the ditch.
   He radios his position and then peels out of the attack formation with a nice barrel roll, on the watch for enemy aircraft. He bids his fellows good luck and dips his wings in farewell. He is euphoric, “The destruction here is total, that is one thing I am sure of. The might of the Nippon empire is unstoppable.” He is grinning to himself, proud of his nation, proud to return to the carrier, alive, elated, victorious.

After forty-five minutes the attack is over.
The attackers have completed their task, and Clark Field lies in ruins. The runway is so damaged that even a small plane would have difficulty landing. The bulk of the American planes burn on the tarmac, creating occasional outbursts as the greedy flames find another fuel tank, or a full ammunition magazine. The men in the ditch are standing or sitting on the floor, silently listening for the sound of additional planes. A few of them have fallen asleep, the stress of the attack has utterly exhausted them. Complete overload.
   There are others who are still in a state of nervous agitation, moving about the bottom of the ditch aimlessly gesturing like a punch-drunk boxer, alert and unbalanced. Carlos is sitting on the floor, knees drawn up, his hand and arm holding the pistol hanging loosely over one knee, resting his head back against the muddy wall of the ditch. He is covered with dirt, sweat and the tangy smell of gunpowder residue. Medics are treating men with sprained or broken
limbs, and one of them who was nicked in the temple by one
of the machinegun rounds.
   “I guess he’ll get a purple heart for that," says a soldier next to him, his laugh tinged with just a hint of hysteria quickly subdued. A medic walks past, checking for wounded. “I’m alright.” Carlos replies to his passing query, watching through stinging eyes as the medic moves on down the ditch. If I don’t get moving, I’m gonna freeze in this position. He continues sitting back, feeling lightheaded, but is suddenly galvanized into movement by a Master Sergeant, a combat veteran with gray hair and stern eyes, who stalks past, bellowing, “Everybody up and out of the ditch! Find everyone who is hurt and find any unexploded ordinance that may be lying on the ground around here! If you find any, report it to your platoon leader, but don’t you touch it! Let the engineers
take care of it.”
   For the remainder of that day and into the night, the soldiers move about the base, work parties formed for tasks and then disbanded as soon as their task is complete, only to be included in another group working a task elsewhere. They struggle to put out fires, rescue men trapped in demolished buildings and vehicles, restore electricity and power, find any live explosives left from the attack, patch the runway, and any one of a thousand other tasks required to restore Clark Field to some semblance of function. They work hard to recover from the damage caused by the attack and they have little time to think about the meaning of it. It has yet to fully sink through the post-combat haze, the realization slowly dawning that they are now at war with the nation of Japan. No time to think, the immediate needs of restoring order are all that matters.
   The day after the Manila attack, the Japanese continue their invasion of the Philippines by returning to completely destroy Cavite Navy Base. After yesterday’s attack, American air power is broken, and the Jap planes can come and go pretty much unopposed. They are seen constantly in the air, and when they approach Clark, they are welcomed with another barrage of flak from the 3-inch guns, but no American interceptor planes.
   The soldier is trained not to think, but to follow orders mechanically. This is a saving grace for men whose nerves have been stretched beyond endurance. They all must work around the clock for the next three days, constantly on the lookout for another attack. They eat standing up, fall asleep sitting up, and roused, fall in and go right back to work. Carlos moves through this time in a walking daze, aware of his surroundings, but not fully participating in them. Any time he hears a Jap plane he is sure the explosions will start again. Every time he picks up a shovelful of dirt smelling of explosives, he is back in the ditch, helplessly awaiting death.
   Though he has been aware enough to try and keep his mental state a secret from others, he still feels as if his mind has slipped a notch, and in this dazed state, though he is capable of rudimentary function, he is retreating from the stark terror of full awareness. There are many in the regiment similarly affected; they don’t say so, but Carlos can tell. Throughout the days and nights, air raid sirens wail sporadically. Many are false alarms, but still everybody runs for cover. The constant uncertainty of war has arrived.
  On the afternoon of the third day, Carlos and his men have put the Headquarters offices back into working order. They are exhausted and it takes awhile before Carlos’ mind can groggily comprehend that for now, his work is done and he can sleep. His mind still pulses with the panic barely suppressed, the urge to fight, the urge to run, the urge to do anything but sit trapped in a hole, waiting for death to take him.
  He is leaning against a pile of ammo crates outside the HQ tent, his mind a blank. Suddenly, and without warning, the sounds and smells and colors of the attack start to spin through his mind, and his hands begin to shake. He nervously looks around the camp area in case anyone has noticed. He whispers to himself through clenched teeth, “Get a hold of yourself!”, he can sense that there is a growing panic within him.
   Currently there is nobody in the HQ area, and clasping his shaking hands together, he mutters to himself, “I better get out of here.” His equilibrium unbalanced from the beating his ears have taken, he staggers across the camp to his tent, and once inside, he lies down on his cot. The inside of the tent is exactly as he left it before the attack, and now that he is alone in the privacy of his tent, Carlos has a complete meltdown. His whole body spasms and shakes, releasing pent-up emotions accumulated during the most frightening forty-five minutes of his life.
   His eyes glaze over and he sits, hyperventilating ...The bombers are always coming, the bombs are always falling, bursting, roaring like a freight train. The bunkers detonate, the black smoke stripes the sky…
He curls up in a ball in the far corner of his tent, and
gradually the shaking and hyperventilating subsides. He falls into exhausted sleep. He dreams of a giant storm, flashing lightning bolts, flash floods in the arroyos and canyons near his old home in Peña Blanca, New Mexico. The Rio Grande is swollen, and lightning flashes and thunder booms while the water rises. His Grandfather’s house sits in a hollow below the levee, and the water rushing past begins to rise, the brown surface fractured into tiny sparks of muddy light. The waters begin to splash against the walls, greedily eroding the adobe bricks. The flood quickly rises until an entire wall collapses, spilling chairs, clothing, all their possessions into the swollen river. His eyes widen as he sees a child, arms waving helplessly, emerge from the collapsed wall. He is powerless to interfere as he watches the infant, his baby sister, carried away screaming by the flood. The house is destroyed as the waters continue
to rise, covering the ruins. He is standing alone on a barren hillside, exposed, vulnerable, without any place to dive for cover. The sound of a thousand airplanes drones inside his ears. Like a tropical storm, molten machinegun bullets are striking all around him, crackling into the ground with a hissing sound like water drops falling on leaves. He dodges this way and that, trying to avoid getting hit by the icy, red hot raindrops that are falling out of the gray and black striped
skies. The hillside is now dark and made entirely of water. He is standing on top of the perfectly flat surface of this water, and the water keeps splashing, spattering his face. The water gets in his eyes, stinging like salt. He can’t breathe, the flowing water is warm like blood. The tempo of the rainfall increases to a torrential downpour. Looking straight up, he watches as a bullet, glowing red and steaming, falls directly towards his forehead…

  He awakens with a start. It is night and in the dark of the tent he can hear raindrops outside, thrumming on the canvas. A tiny hole is dripping water on his head, and his hair is soaking wet, with more water running down over his face and onto his shirt. He shakes himself off, momentarily confused. The rain spatters on the muddy ground outside as he fumbles about in the dark, looking for a towel. He bumps into his cot, knocking over his flashlight while he gropes in the dark to find his footlocker. Finding it at the foot of his cot, he fumbles his keys out of his pocket, unlocking and opening it. He locates a small towel and dries himself off. He drops the towel on the floor, strips off his shirt, and flops back onto his cot. Soon he is asleep again.

  …He dreams of Jap fighter planes, thousands of them. In each cockpit there is a grinning Jap pilot and the planes circle him as if he were in the center of a vast merry-go-round. Behind the planes he can see bombs exploding and planes burning, fading silhouettes of dying pilots as the blossoming flames rise higher.

  Morning reveille sounds from the camp loudspeakers and Carlos wakes up, sore and ravenously hungry. He walks through the camp to the company mess area that was set up as a temporary kitchen for the men; the base mess hall was destroyed in the attack. His shoulders are hunched over and he walks slowly. There are bomb craters here and there that the engineers have filled back in. The overnight rains have turned these into huge mud holes.
   While eating, when performing his duties throughout the day, and even while sleeping, Carlos exists in an almost catatonic state. The experience during the attack was far beyond anything he could have possibly imagined before. He is not alone. Many of the men walk about the camp, not quite paralyzed, but not completely oriented either. Like distracted automatons. Some of the soldiers find a name for this look, they call it “the thousand yard stare.” The name catches on.
   Carlos spends these twelve days after the attack in constant dialog with himself. He has ceased talking to himself out loud, but at times his thoughts will break through, causing him to blurt out sentence fragments, startling anyone near enough to hear. The attack has left him with many new problems that he must work out. The attack playing and replaying constantly in his mind, are these sounds and images real?
   Since the attack he has begun to mistrust his perceptions. With his mind teetering on the verge of bedlam, he must struggle now to accommodate his new, altered reality. The reality of war. He must fit this into an intact perspective, or he is going to die here in the Philippines, paralyzed by fear. He spends the days sitting in his tent, in HQ, in the mess hall, his thoughts a cyclone threatening to dislodge the very foundations of his
sanity…

How in the hell did I ever get myself into this mess…?
I can’t believe it, is this what war is like…?
The noise, the smell, how on earth could this happen…?
If they had told me it would be like this, no way would I have enlisted…
What is wrong with me? I hear a cracking twig and I’m ready to jump out of my socks…!
My head is pounding and my stomach feels as if somebody ran over it with a steamroller…
I haven’t been able to take a shit since the attack…
These images constantly rolling through my head, are they ever going to stop…?
Those fighter planes could have killed everyone in the ditch, why didn’t they fly along the length of the ditch and kill every one of us…?
Why didn’t I die the other day? Lord knows there were ample opportunities for it…
What happened to me? I feel totally different now than I did before…
Now that I know how war is…
I’ll never feel safe again…
If this is what this war is going to be like, I might as well kill myself now and avoid the rush…!
Wait…
Why would I do that? Am I so eager to save those Nip bastards the trouble…?
It’s not that, I just need to understand why…
Why did the Nips attack us…?
They attacked us because they hate us, and they are jealous of us…
But how did they manage to beat us?..
We won the great war, how can our military have degraded so much since 1917…?
Weren’t the Nips on our side back then?..
If the Nips are this powerful, are they going to invade the U.S.…?
No one has ever invaded America before, have they…?
How is Ophelia going to take it when she hears about this…?
I gotta snap out of this, I gotta survive this thing, I gotta stay alive until I can get back to Ophelia, Soreida, everyone back home in Albuquerque…
If I can’t shake this off, I’m doomed…
I’ll end up cowering down in a hole, just like before, only the next time, the fighter plane will fly right down the ditch, killing me dead before I can even fi ght back…
That’s no way to die, cowering down in a ditch. I have to fight back…
There is no reason why we can’t hold them off until we can get some help from stateside…
The American Army has been fighting in the Philippines for decades…!
But why were our weapons so inadequate?...
How are we supposed to defend ourselves with this old, beat-up equipment?..
What is Roosevelt going to do now? He got his war like he wanted, but not in Europe…
The Germans never attacked us direct like the Nips have…
What is he going to do?..
He’ll have to start sending troops to the Pacific…!
The British will just have to hang on. We’ve got our own war now…
Now that we’re at war, how long will it take for the Army to get us better weapons, reinforcements…?
How long for reinforcements…?
Maybe months…
Can I survive that long…?
My brain is going to have to settle down if I am going to live through this…
Am I going to live through this…?
Probably not if I can’t shake off this fear…
What is this fear about anyway…?
The Nips sent out all those planes and all those bombs, but we’re still here at Clark.
Sure, they got our planes, but they didn’t hurt us as bad as they could have…
We still have our 3-inch guns…
We still got the stuff to hurt ‘em real bad if we want to…
That Nip pilot was too stupid to fly along the ditch!..
He could’ve wiped everybody out, but he didn’t see it…
They got better weapons than us, but they can’t think for themselves…
They’re like a bunch of ants…
They can’t think for themselves and this sneak attack hasn’t killed us…
With all those weapons and a dirty sneak attack, they still couldn’t kill us…
If I get trapped by planes and bombs again, I’ve been there and lived to tell about it…
And it will probably happen again before I’m out of this…
Like it or not, I’m trapped in this war now, and I’m going to have to stick it out…
There is no good reason to be afraid now…
Fear right now is actually very dangerous…
If I want to live, fear is a luxury I can’t afford…
Sure, the visions in my head are bothersome, but I can’t worry about that now…
I survived, we survived and America needs to beat the Nips…
And we’re here to do it. So what the heck am I scared for…?
The entire Nip Army tried, boy they tried!, but they still couldn’t kill me…!
Whether I’m scared or not, if this war is going to kill me, it tried in the attack and failed…
And I’m still alive. Being scared didn’t help a bit. It was only dumb luck that allowed us to survive the attack…
Being scared had nothing to do with whether I lived or died..
It just made me sick afterwards…
This fear was bad, but it wasn’t real...
My family back home is real…
So I’ll let them back home do the fearing, I’ll be too busy
fighting…
That’s all there is to it. I am going to survive and I am going to make it home in one piece…
I have decided that I am never going to be scared of war again…

I’m gonna survive.

---

 

Carlos - A Tale of Survival
ISBN-13: 978-0-9796822-1-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007924942
Copyright © 2007 by J. L. Kunkle
All Rights Reserved

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The characters and entities depicted in this story are representative of a specific time in history. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Though these entities may display certain traits and/or mannerisms that seem to suggest reality, the author makes no claim that these traits exist in any combination in any real person or entity, living or dead.

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