Road to Purgatory

Prologue

Bataan, the Philippines

March 1942

Even before the banzai attack, the young corporal Captain Arthur Wermuth had taken under his wing, some months ago, was already something of a legend on the peninsula.

Michael Satariano of DeKalb, Illinois, had seemed so slight, such a child at twenty, that Wermuth had given in to protective feelings about his charge, which were not wise in war. The boy was about five ten and slender, his tanned skin due not to an Italian heritage but the tropical sun that they all endured; his hair and eyes were dark brown, his face blessed with such an angelic innocence that the Filipino Scouts — who were so impressed with the lad’s exploits — had taken to calling him un Demonio Angelico.

Any affection the captain nurtured for the soft-spoken, taciturn lad — any fatherly concern he might harbor — was offset by the deadpan ferocity Satariano brought to combat. The boy’s battle-field commission reflected his bravery during the withdrawal from Luzon to Bataan; Satariano — his behavior emblematic of General MacArthur’s “stand and fight, fall back and dynamite” strategy — had waited until the last moment to dynamite a key bridge.

Cut off from the demolition experts of the engineers, Wermuth had dispatched the young man to do his best, and witnessed from a safe distance images he would never forget: the little yellow men in brown uniforms halfway across the rickety, rotting suspension bridge, and the kid firing into the pile of leafy-branch-camouflaged wooden boxes (red-stenciled: DYNAMITE — DUPONT), followed by a thundering plume of orange and white and gray, wires snapping, planks flying like knocked-out teeth, enemy soldiers tumbling, those still alive screaming, arms wind milling, as they fell the fifty feet into a patiently waiting riverbed.

And the boy turning to trot back and rejoin the Scouts with an expression as coldly bland as a chilled glass of milk.

Wermuth — a heavyset dark-haired man of thirty-three whose nondescript features and tiny twitchy mustache masked a grizzled combat veteran, his 1918-vintage tin helmet worn rakishly to one side — led the 57th Filipino Scouts, also known as the Snipers. The boy from Illinois was the only other white in the 57th, which was not unusual on Bataan, where the American forces numbered around five thousand to thirty-some thousand Filipinos, about half of which were the well-trained Scouts, the rest rather hopeless untrained native recruits.

A two-man sprinkling of khaki amid the coarse blue fatigues of the Filipinos, Wermuth and his young sidekick supervised the Snipers, their usual mission reflected by their name, Satariano the keenest shot of them all, captain included. Of late their duty had shifted, as General Wainwright had sent them out on patrol in the no-man’s land extending across the breadth of Bataan, scouting for signs of enemy build-up or imminent attack.

Twenty-five miles long, twenty miles across, the peninsula of Bataan jutted into Manila Bay like a mini-Florida, its tip pointing to the nearby looming island fortress of Corregidor, MacArthur’s HQ. Like twin spinal cords, two mountain ranges thick with jungle ran the peninsula’s length — between them lay a narrow valley crisscrossed by streams, ravines, and gullies... on either side, narrow coastal plains.

To Captain Wermuth, Bataan seemed a primitive sort of paradise in which to be fighting a modern war. The peninsula had its share of vividly glorious vistas — terraced rice fields, shimmering blue rivers, purple-peaked mountains — with civilization represented by the occasional village of thatched-roof nipa huts on stilts, dogs sharing the interior, pigs snoozing below. Boys chased chickens around and around just within the stone-wall periphery of such villages, a thigh-high barricade that wouldn’t keep a monkey out, much less the Japanese.

The jungles through which Wermuth, his sidekick Satariano, and their Scouts patrolled were snarls of palms, ferns, snake-like vines, and brush, a steamy hot hell. But just when the rugged terrain was at its most unforgiving — the temperature and exhaustion and mosquitoes and hunger combining to test the limits of endurance — a cool stream could rush down out of the mountains, to make it up to you.

Such had been the case that muggy afternoon, and the captain instructed his dozen Scouts to catch some chow and some rest. They would take off their tin helmets and splash the refreshing stuff on their faces and arms and hands and drink as greedily as a desert wayfarer who discovered a mirage really was an oasis. Even as they ate, however, many of the Scouts at least half-reclined, their eyes on the trees...

...not enjoying the glimmering green tropical beauty, but rather keeping an eye out for the glint of a rifle barrel amid high branches. As snipers themselves, they had a practical paranoia.

These Filipinos had been in their nation’s army for years, virtually signing up for life. Well-equipped with M-1 rifles, gas masks, web gear, bed rolls, and fine leather shoes, they could all muster at least a reasonable English dialect. Their worst sin, Wermuth knew, was a lack of initiative — in their culture, a guy couldn’t get in trouble for something he didn’t do. But with guidance, they could deliver merry hell on the enemy.

The Scouts were the best soldiers on the peninsula, American and Japanese included.

“Fellas,” the captain said, as his men lolled back luxuriously, savoring their three-eighths ration of rice beside the babbling brook, “we should be within spitting distance of the perimeter defense line.”

With a nod toward the trees, Satariano said, “Light machine gun position up that way.”

“The corporal and me’ll just drop by and say hello,” the captain said. He pointed. “Take your latrine off thataway... Heading out, we’ll try ’n’ remember not to walk there.”

This was an old joke among these warriors; nonetheless, the Scouts all laughed at the thought of stepping in their own mess. They were easily amused.

Wermuth and his corporal stayed together, almost side by side, as they moved through the jungle, Satariano hacking with a Filipino bolo; despite the blade, big branches and vines slapped the faces of the men for their rude intrusion. Staying close was a necessity in such thick underbrush, visibility often less than a yard. The occasional scurry of animals was probably small monkeys and lizards, who moved as if word had spread that the rations-shy GIs were eating them; the jungles were said to be home to wild pigs, pheasant and quail, too, but you couldn’t prove that by Wermuth or just about any soldier on the peninsula. They did find the occasional water buffalo in a mud hole, though the flavor was about the same whether you ate the beast or the mud.

Satariano wore a shoulder-slung Thompson submachine gun with a black asbestos protective glove on his left hand; the weapon was like something out of a Cagney picture, the spare pair of round ammo drums like mini-canteens on his webbing belt. The kid had a sidearm as well, a .45 army Colt that had been his father’s in the last war. Neither soldier carried grenades, because such a high percentage were duds, and depending on them was more dangerous than not having them. Wermuth, like his Scouts, carried an M-1, and his sidearm was also a .45 Colt, dating to the “Great” War.

Wermuth wondered what it could be in the boy’s background to give him such a capacity for killing. Small-town kid Satariano had been one of the first group of recruits to arrive in the Philippines, back in April of ’41, and even trained here. He’d been a standout on the target range — obviously, somebody in the boy’s past had taught him to shoot; maybe he’d spent time on a farm.

Not long ago, the life of a GI in the Philippines had been damn near idyllic, training till noon with afternoons free (including an hour for siestas), and plenty of nightlife. American bucks went a long way — food was cheap, a bottle of gin thirty cents! The people were friendly, and this included the females. Then after Pearl Harbor the soldier’s life of wine, women, and song ran headlong into the reality of what they’d been training for...

That the Filipino Scouts could adjust to war came as no surprise, considering the violent history of the Philippines; it was harder on the American boys... though Satariano seemed an exception. Wermuth was well aware that the toughest thing about combat was learning to control your emotions. Fear and panic were bigger hazards than anything the enemy could throw at you.

And emotional control included getting over the psychological hurdle of learning to take lives in combat; killing another human being required an adjustment that most people could never make in the civilian world, and thankfully never had to.

How this kid, fresh out of high school, had developed that ability... from whence the boy had summoned it... Wermuth had no idea. The boy did not seem to be a psychopath; he had no meanness in him — he was, if anything, a sweet, quiet, generous kid, albeit one to keep to himself.

The only exception to that solitary streak was the corporal’s devotion to his captain. Strange that this kid who was such a loner behind the lines made the perfect sidekick at the front. But Satariano seemed to crave someone he could look up to. Someone he could please. And Wermuth fit that bill.

In less than ten minutes, Wermuth and Satariano had reached a small semblance of a clearing; whether the brush had been cut away or trampled into submission or cleared by mortar fire, Wermuth couldn’t venture a guess. Whatever the case, anyone who stepped out of the jungle into the relief of this open air would make an excellent target.

As if to confirm the captain’s opinion, a foxhole had been dug at the edge of the clearing between the flange-like roots of a banyan, home to a trio of Scouts manning a light machine gun. Wermuth knew the three men well — they were under his command — and he was smiling as he approached the position, a greeting on his lips...

...which froze into a grotesque grin as he and Satariano looked down into the foxhole, the three Scouts flung to its earthen floor, their bodies battered and ruptured from the butts of rifles, blue fatigues blood-soaked. Their heads were off and had rolled here and there, billiard balls unsuccessfully seeking a pocket.

Hardened combat veteran that he was, Wermuth was nonetheless horror-struck; his mind shouted, Goddamn samurai swords! But the words did not emerge.

Across from him, at the foxhole’s other edge, Satariano looked up sharply at the captain. “Fresh.”

Wermuth gazed down with new eyes, seeing the still-red blood, summoned from the gaping vacant necks, which spilled scarlet like kicked-over paint cans.

The boy’s face under the tin helmet was void of emotion, but a tightness around the eyes spoke volumes.

All the corporal said, in a whisper that was little more than lip movement, was, “Not a shot fired.”

Satariano glanced toward the clearing, then back at his captain, and their eyes locked in shared understanding: the Nips had killed these sentries without firing a shot, to avoid attracting attention. Why? To take full advantage of that inviting clearing...

Meaning, they’d be back — soon.

Satariano was the first to climb down into the foxhole, ducking below its lip; and then so did Wermuth, finding a spot between corpses, though the wetness of blood leached unsettlingly through his khakis.

The crunching of footsteps on beaten-down brush was followed by the sounds of laughter and conversation in that distinctive foreign tongue. When Wermuth risked a peek above the foxhole rim, he saw a sea of brown uniforms — at least twenty of them — as the enemy soldiers... in helmets, a few in puttees, most with bayonets at their side, some with shoulder-slung machine guns... relaxed and joked and smoked.

Ducking back down, Wermuth looked at Satariano, who whispered, “Turkey shoot.”

And there was no time for discussion, no chance to express a contrary opinion much less for Wermuth to exert his rank. The kid jack-in-the-boxed to a shooting posture and let rip with the tommy gun.

As Satariano’s machine gun thundered, Wermuth aimed his M-1; but the captain held his fire momentarily, as every potential target seemed to be busy taking the boy’s bullets, doing an awful dance for an unseen puppeteer. Spurts of blood, like ribbons flung in celebration, slashed the green landscape and streaked wrapping-paper brown uniforms with scarlet, and cries of agony and surprise made dissonant music in a jungle otherwise gone silent.

Toward the rear, the Nips were running for the jungle and Wermuth finally began to shoot, picking off one, two, three of them. A hot spent shell bounced off Wermuth’s cheek as the blank-faced boy went about his business.

It took a full minute for the corporal to deplete the drum of .45 cartridges, and the captain fired rapidly with the M-1 while Satariano plucked another round magazine of slugs off the webbed belt. But then the clearing was empty of the living, though around twenty of the dead lagged behind. They lay in various awkward postures, snipped puppets now, and the smell of cordite singed the muggy air.

The two men exchanged glances.

Was that all of them? Was it over?

“Cover me,” Satariano said.

The captain followed the corporal’s order, as the boy rose from the grave-like foxhole to thread through the scattered corpses, making sure no living surprises awaited among the dead. The boy made a thorough job of it, occasionally bending over a body to check, and each time Wermuth felt his guts tighten.

Satisfied, the boy began back, moving across the corpse-cluttered clearing in a cautious, circling-around manner, tommy gun ready, managing not to trip over any of the fallen. He was almost halfway when the jungle began to bleed brown uniforms.

Dozens of Nips poured out between the trees, on the run, guns blasting, rifles, sidearms, some with swords upraised, shrill cries cutting the air like verbal blades, shrieking the all-too-familiar “Banzai!”

Wermuth instinctively sprang to his feet and began firing the rifle at the onslaught, and when the bullet slammed through his chest and out his back, he tumbled back down into the foxhole, where he damn well should have stayed. He wasn’t in much pain, but couldn’t seem to get his hands to work, couldn’t get himself in place to offer supportive fire to his corporal, out there in the midst of the banzai attack.

But the boy did have that hot tommy and his cool head, and, at the rim of the foxhole, Wermuth watched in amazement as Satariano methodically mowed down the men, turning in ever so slow a pirouette to catch them as they came from all directions. There the young soldier stood, bullets flying all around him, carving into trees, ruffling fronds, lead bees zinging but not quite stinging, the corporal as yet unhit. Somehow Wermuth got his arms working and positioned himself and was taking aim when Satariano, finally, fell, dropping alongside an enemy corpse.

Dread rose like bile in the wounded captain, who nonetheless noted the almost comical sight as the twenty or more Nips momentarily froze, their eyes wide with their adversary’s apparent death.

And then Satariano rose up, firing — he’d only been out of ammo, and reloading! — and once again the enemy was toppling like dominoes, the choppy roar of the tommy gun echoing through the clearing, drowning out cries of war and pain.

Wermuth picked off a few with the M-1, but it was his corporal who continued to rain death on the horde. When the second drum was empty, the boy calmly drew his .45 automatic — by this time only half a dozen enemy remained — and when that was spent, he unsheathed the Filipino sword from his webbing belt, and met a Samurai-wielding foe blade for blade.

The would-be Samurai, however, did not know his way around the sword and missed Satariano in the most clumsy fashion. When the American swung around with the bolo, the blade met the enemy’s neck, and the soldier’s head went flying like a coconut shook from a tree.

The corpse stood there for a moment, a geyser of blood rising to the gods; the dead man weaved, as if trying to decide what to do next, and then made the obvious choice by toppling.

The remaining three fled toward the trees, but Wermuth got one of them with the rifle.

The sight of the boy standing in the midst of the corpse-strewn battlefield, Wermuth would not soon forget — unless, of course, the captain died right there in the foxhole. Corporal Satariano made a slow circle, while his machine-gun barrel traced a smoky question mark in the air, and — as casual and methodical as a merchant auditing his inventory — he again threaded through looking for fakers.

Then the corporal trotted over to his captain’s position, checked the wound, said, “You’ll live,” and hoisted the bigger man up onto his shoulders and hauled him into the thickness of jungle.

“I’ll... I’ll put you up for the Medal of Honor for this, lad,” Wermuth said.

“Let’s get back alive, first,” the boy said.

Wermuth passed out shortly thereafter, but he learned from his Scouts that un Demonio Angelico had refused to let any of them relieve him, personally carrying his captain to the aid station.

The next morning — a blistering, muggy replica of the day before — Major General Jonathan Wainwright, commander of the US Army Forces on Bataan, paid a visit to the recuperating Captain Arthur Wermuth at Base Hospital #2.

A tall, lanky fifty-nine (his friends called him “Skinny”), the general ought to have cut an unprepossessing figure — weak-chinned, beady-eyed, jug-eared, long-necked, stoop-shouldered, cueball-bald. His khaki uniform had long since faded and shrunk, the pants of the high-water variety, his knobby knees bulging. An old knee injury from falling off a horse prompted the use of a cane — in Bataan, a carved bamboo stick.

And yet the impression this man gave his troops was one of cool strength — strength of character, and even physical power.

An old-school cavalryman, Major General Wainwright of Walla Walla, Washington, never ordered his men to do anything he would not himself attempt. His near-daily trips to the front had made him beloved among the troops (though stationed on nearby Corregidor, General MacArthur had set foot on Bataan exactly once, and was widely known among the men as “Dugout Doug”). Wainwright fought side by side with the enlisted men, and he and Marco, his trusty Filipino driver, had once rushed and knocked out a Japanese rifle position.

But the soft-spoken general did not consider himself in any way a hero. He had the same job as his men: to fight.

Wainwright’s field headquarters were concentrated in Little Baguio, a flat area in the hills bordered by otherworldly trees with enormous trunks and vines extending from their tops to the earth. From Little Baguio, supplies, munitions, clothes, and food (such as there was) were distributed to the front line. The nearby small town of Cabcaben consisted of two palm-lined dusty streets leading to a bay-front stone jetty frequented by supply barges; this was the southeastern tip of Bataan, the beach smooth and low, barbed wire stretching out into the shallow water like nasty seaweed.

The laying of this barbed wire Wainwright had personally supervised; for all his apparent reserve, the general within himself was a restless, anxious commander who felt the need to check on every detail of his defensive position. He preferred to be at the front with his men, not weighed down under reports and memos behind the lines.

The general made the short trip — the hospital was just behind Cabcaben — in his command car driven by a temporary driver, a Filipino who drove so timidly, so slowly, Wainwright thought he would go mad.

The hospital was a mammoth open-air ward of some three thousand beds under a tin roof; foxholes had been dug under most of the beds, a practical notion Wainwright applauded — on two occasions, bombs had fallen nearby. The patients ranged from the badly wounded — arms and legs missing, one man with half his face gone — to sufferers of malaria and malnutrition... though many a man with either (or both) of those maladies remained at the front.

A hatchet-faced fortyish nurse in regular army khaki shirt and pants led the general to the captain’s bedside; the scent of disinfectant in the open-air ward made Wainwright’s nostrils twitch. The general took his time, acknowledging every solider he passed with a smile and a comment. Finally, midward, he was deposited at Captain Wermuth’s bedside.

His chest heavily bandaged, the gauze spotted scarlet, Wermuth was prone — the beds did not allow a sitting position, nor for that matter did the captain’s wound; but the dapperly mustached patient managed a chipper salute just the same.

“I hear you’re a lucky man,” Wainwright said, pulling up a metal chair, taking off his cap to reveal the brown egg of his skull. “If you have an extra rabbit’s foot, I’ll take it.”

“Skinny,” Wermuth said to his old friend, “if there was one spare rabbit’s foot in this hellhole, it’d be eaten.”

Wainwright smiled slightly, then said, “What’s the prognosis?”

“Well, as I guess you know, slug missed my lung and went out the back, clean as a whistle. Should be getting my boys in mischief again in a week, maybe less.”

“That your opinion or the medic’s?”

“We’re still... haggling.”

Wainwright let out air in what was part laugh, part sigh. “Quite a story going around, you and your corporal in that clearing. Never thought you fellas would top your antisniper-detail score.”

Last month Wermuth and his Scouts had cleaned out three hundred Nips who’d infiltrated the lines.

“Afraid we only got fifty-eight this time, Skinny. Personally, I only got eight. But my corporal bagged an even fifty his own self.”

“Fifty? Who is this boy — Jack the Giant Killer?”

“Michael the avenging angel’s more like it,” Wermuth said, and told the tale, which required no embellishment.

Wainwright whistled long and low. “He deserves a DSC.”

“Distinguished service doesn’t cover it, Skinny. I want to put the lad in for a Medal of Honor.”

Wainwright’s eyes tightened. “Perhaps we should, at that. That might well prove the first of this war, if it goes through.”

Wermuth smiled, savoring the favorable response. “Can I ask another favor, sir?”

“I get nervous when you don’t call me ‘Skinny’... but, of course. Ask away.”

“Don’t send the boy out without me. I’ll only be a few days. Find something for him to do, till then.”

Wainwright chuckled. “Arthur, this boy sounds like he can take of himself.”

“I know. Better than two old gravel crunchers like us. Just that... kid and me’ve been together through this whole damn campaign. We’re kind of each other’s rabbit foots. Feet.”

After a moment, the general said, “Despite it all, ill-advised as it is, you do form bonds in a war.” He nodded across the ward. “My next stop’s my driver.”

“Marco? He’s checked into this hotel, too?”

“Yes. And no, we didn’t crash or wind up in a ditch — simple dysentery.” Wainwright reached out and patted the patient’s arm. “Tell you what, Captain — I’ll take Corporal Satariano on as my driver for the next few days. My current replacement’s a Nervous Nellie whose goal seems to be driving slow enough to make a good target.”

Wermuth chuckled, but his face was quite serious as he said, “I appreciate this, Skinny. Owe you one.”

Arching an eyebrow, the general said, “Who’s counting?”

With some effort, Wermuth rolled to his side. His voice soft, to keep the conversation private, he asked, “What do you hear?”

All of the implications of those four simple words were immensely clear to Wainwright. A few weeks before, he’d been confident of victory; but now his command was running out of food, medicine, and even bullets — so hope was in short supply, as well.

The general said, sotto voce, “There’s a strong sentiment stateside that MacArthur should not be permitted to remain on the Rock.”

Wermuth’s face retained its bland expression, but his eyes died a little.

Wainwright chose his words carefully. “If America’s greatest hero were to be captured or killed, the home front would take a terrible hit.”

The propaganda value of a defeated MacArthur would be enormous — another indication, post-Pearl Harbor, that the Japanese were indeed invincible.

“But if he withdraws...” Wermuth began.

The captain did not complete the thought; he didn’t have to — both men knew that MacArthur leaving would be a clear signal to the Philippines garrison... and to the entire world... that the USA’s commitment to the islands was over.

“We’ll know more soon,” Wainwright said, rising. “The Old Man wants to see me tomorrow.”

“Tell him we can still win this.”

“You know I will... Now, where can I find this corporal of yours?”

The following morning — clear and hot, typical March Bataan weather — General Wainwright broke in his new driver, who’d been summoned to him from the bivouac of the Scouts.

“You come highly recommended by Captain Wermuth,” the general told the corporal, as they stood beside the open scout car. “And you’ll be back in action as soon as he is.”

“Good to hear, sir,” the boy said in a clear second tenor.

So this was the one the Filipino Scouts called un Demonio Angelico. My God but he was young-looking! Satariano — what was that, Sicilian?

“This isn’t a tommy gun,” the general said, handing his personal Garand rifle to the boy, “but I know it will be in good hands. And so will I.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Accompanying the general were his aides, Lieutenant Colonel John Pugh and Major Tom Dooley. Pugh, black-haired with close-set eyes and a spade-shaped face with perpetual five o’clock shadow, rode in back with Wainwright. Dooley — whose keen dark eyes in his narrow handsome face seemed to miss nothing — rode in front with the young driver. The Garand rifle leaned between them.

Dooley said to Satariano, “Keep an eye on the sky. It’s a perfect day for strafing.”

“Yes, sir,” the corporal said, and slipped on sunglasses.

In back, Pugh said to the general, “Do we know what MacArthur wants?”

“No clue.”

The drive to Mariveles — home to the naval base, or anyway the remnants thereof — should take an hour and a half, or would with a driver not afraid of his own shadow. The general was pleased the boy, taking the trip at a good clip, seemed an experienced wheelman.

The first leg took them along a single-track road down the rather bare hillside, and the lower they went, the thicker the underbrush, which seemed to swallow the great naked trees. Before long the command car pulled onto the main road.

As usual, Wainwright passed the time quizzing his two aides on cavalry tactics and military strategy. The war felt far away, distant firing punctuating the conversation, and giving weight to the points the general made.

The last leg of the journey took the open vehicle under a cooling canopy of foliage so thick, the sun was blotted out. Military traffic was light this morning, but the leaves nonetheless wore a coating of dust, as did the vines and bushes, reflecting the heavy use this main highway received.

“I will speak frankly,” the general was saying, “if I may have all of your discretion.”

Everyone but the driver, apparently not listening, nodded.

“Ranking officers failing to visit troops at the front lines,” Wainwright said, “is a blunder.”

The general did not have to mention MacArthur by name.

“All we have to offer our people right now is morale,” Wainwright continued, the vehicle finally exiting from under the canopy of foliage into bright sunlight.

General Wainwright’s lecture had the attention of everyone in the car, with the exception of Michael Satariano, who was looking directly at the sun through squinting eyes and tinted glasses.

The corporal, though he said nothing, had noticed a black speck on the sun, like a blemish on its fiery surface.

But then that speck grew larger, ever larger, as it hurtled down out of the blazing ball into the blue and — growing wings, which dipped from side to side — bore in on them.

Satariano said, “Brace yourselves!”

The brakes screamed, and the vehicle jerked to a stop, each man flung forward but restrained by his safety strap.

“Out of the car!” the driver yelled. “Now!”

For a split second, the general and his aides were frozen in shock.

As the engine/propeller thrum grew to a roar, Satariano turned and in a blur of motion unfastened the safety strap across the general’s seat and seized the man by the arm and pulled him from the car like a fireman’s rescue in a burning building. Locked in their sudden embrace, the corporal and general rolled down a ditch into a thorny bush.

Dooley and Pugh followed unceremoniously, diving in for cover just as machine-gun chatter joined the thrum and swoop, and the percussive music of bullets chewing up metal and shattering glass told the story of an empty vehicle receiving a welcome meant for all of them.

As the officers clung to the bushes, Satariano, rifle in hand, ran up and out of the ditch and into the road.

“Corporal!” Pugh yelled. “It’s coming back.”

“I know,” Satariano said, positioning himself just behind the shot-up car, taking aim.

And down the Jap Zero came, for another strafing pass, so close the Rising Suns on the wings and its retracted landing gear were vividly apparent, and bullets danced down the road, making powdery impressions.

Satariano stood his ground, aiming, and the plane was about at treetop level when the corporal fired three times and the Zero fired many more than that, chewing up the car. Then, behind spiderwebbed blood-spattered glass, the pilot slumped forward, swooping by.

This was a sight the general and his aides could see very well, from their front-row position.

The plane slammed hard to earth nose-first, just to the right of the roadside at the edge of a cane field, the crash both sickening and satisfying as metal met the ground, a sound that disappeared within the larger explosion as orange flame and billowing smoke marked the spot.

The general — giddy with the thrill of having survived this assault and witnessing a remarkable feat of courage — strode out of the ditch with his aides bringing up the rear.

But the boy was no longer standing.

Satariano remained in the road, near the bullet-riddled vehicle, though on his knees now, head down, in a posture that might have been prayer, or a man weeping. The “tears” that fell to the pavement, however, were red.

The general helped the corporal to his feet. The boy looked at him with one eye; shrapnel had removed the other one, leaving a torn, bloody socket.

“Got him, sir,” the boy said, and grinned, and passed out in Wainwright’s arms.

Within hours, the general was again at a bedside, this time in the hospital tunnel on Malinta Hill on Corregidor. Limping along in the shot-up vehicle until help met them halfway, they had brought Corporal Satariano — Pugh had performed first aid — to Mariveles and then, on the army’s appropriated Elco cabin cruiser, to the hospital on the Rock.

Save for the heavily bandaged side of his face, the boy looked his typical angelic self. He was coherent, despite morphine.

“No one was hurt, sir?” the boy asked.

“No one but you, son.” He placed a hand on the boy’s arm. “I won’t insult you by pulling any punches — you’ve lost an eye, Corporal. Your left.”

Satariano said nothing; neither did his expression.

The general summoned a smile. “You’ve got the Hollywood wound, son — a ticket stateside. You weren’t in this war long, but you already did your share.”

The bandaged head shook, slowly. “Nobody’s getting off Bataan, General. No matter how badly wounded.”

“You’re already off Bataan, aren’t you? This is Corregidor.”

The patient rose up on an elbow; the remaining brown eye was wide. “I can shoot with one eye. You sight with one eye closed, anyway, right, sir? I’m not through here!”

“Actually, you are. We can’t send you back into combat. You’d be a danger to yourself, and to others, much too vulnerable on your left side, and anyway, it’s a matter of regulations... No discussion on this point, son.”

“...Yes, sir.”

“But you’ll serve your country just the same.”

The exposed eye seemed slightly woozy, and the boy was clearly fighting the morphine’s effects, trying to stay focused and not float away. “How can I do that, sir?”

“You already have. You’re going to be a hero.”

For the first time, Satariano grimaced, as if pain had finally registered. “What?”

“I’m recommending you for the Medal of Honor for that little dust-up in the jungle. You’ll have to settle for a DSC for the more minor matter of saving my life... Having a hero come off this peninsula right now’ll mean a lot to a lot of people.”

“You make it sound like... like I’m...”

“You’re going home, son. You are going home... You see, I’ve just met with General MacArthur. He and his staff are heading out to Australia tomorrow tonight, and we’re taking advantage of that to get you to a better medical facility, and off Bataan.”

The boy, startled by this news, sat bolt upright. “MacArthur? Leaving?”

Wainwright did his best not to reveal his own bitter disappointment; taking over a command could hardly have felt worse. “Yes. It’s a direct order from the president.”

“But... the men...”

“The general’s determined to come back with reinforcements and air support. I’m afraid that’s not your concern now. If you want to undertake another mission for me, then by God be the one ordinary GI who got off Bataan to tell our story... and make sure we aren’t forgotten.”

“All... all right, sir.”

With an arm pat, the general said, “Now — get some rest, and get ready for a PT boat ride.”

Satariano nodded, the eye half-lidded.

The general rose. He nodded toward the Garand rifle, leaned against the metal nightstand. “You did well with my rifle, Corporal.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I want you to take that rifle home with you as a souvenir.”

“But General, it’s ordnance issue...”

“To hell with the pencil pushers back in Washington — it’s yours. Take it in thanks for spotting that plane. He’d have gotten us all, if you hadn’t seen him coming in out of the sun. We counted seventy-two bullet holes in that scout car, you know.”

Wainwright removed a small notebook from a pocket and jotted down the words: “To Michael P. Satariano, Corporal United States Army, for saving my life in a strafing attack by a Japanese Zero fight on Bataan, March 10, 1942. General Jonathan M. Wainwright.”

“Put these words under that gun,” the general said, placing the slip of paper on the small metal bedside table, “and hang that Garand over your fireplace, for your kids and grandkids to see. Promise me you’ll do it, son.”

“...I promise. Would you... do me another favor, General?”

“Name it.”

“Say good-bye to Captain Wermuth for me. And tell him this is not my fault.”

“Of course it’s not your fault,” the general began.

But the corporal had fallen asleep, his right eye fluttering till it closed, leaving the white gauze patch to stare accusingly at General Wainwright.

On March 17, after a harrowing journey, General MacArthur, his family and staff arrived safely in Australia by way of Mindanao. With them was the only American soldier to get off Bataan, the first Congressional Medal of Honor winner of the Second World War.

Michael Satariano of DeKalb, Illinois.