Major Tom Briggs liked the jungle of the Philippines. He was comfortable in his sweat-soaked uniform. The earthliness of the jungle’s petrichor and the sounds of its exotic creatures enchanted him. Briggs liked the Filipinos who tolerated his high school-level Spanish and taught him local dialects. He felt at home among them and in the jungle of the American-owned archipelago. So, when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded, the tall, blonde-haired lanky army officer and several of his men escaped into the torrid jungle rather than participate in the Bataan Death March.

They met with a small contingent of Filipino soldiers of like mind, and Major Briggs combined the forces into a guerrilla unit. Briggs had read every army manual in his local National Guard office. Believing the navy had nothing to do with him, Tom Briggs ignored the naval manual on the shelf with all the rest.

Briggs gave his Filipino friends a list of things to scrounge up from nearby villages. Some, like curtain rods, appeared useless, but the Major had learned from those army handbooks back home how to make projectiles out of curtain rods that fit the chamber of their 30-caliber rifles. He knew how to use TNT effectively if he could ever find some.

There were times as he and his men plodded through the dense rain forest, either moving toward or away from the enemy, their machetes switching as they hacked at the underbrush or decapitated the occasional venomous snake when Tom Briggs would let his mind wander back to Betty Lou Parker.

On their final date, before the Major reported to Fort McClellan for overseas duty, Briggs told the petite redhead to date others while he was gone rather than pine her time away waiting for his return.

“It is not what I want,” he said softly, “But given our circumstances, I think it will be for the best. We can always get back together when I return.”

“I don’t understand,” Betty Lou Parker said with tears in her eyes. “I thought you loved me.”

“I do. That’s why I am doing this. I want you to be happy.”

Did he do this to avoid the commitment of marriage and allow himself to be a conscientious free libertine? Pangs of regret would run through him whenever he thought of her making out with some other guy who, for whatever reason, was not serving his country as he should. Whenever he pulled his thoughts away from Betty Lou and back to the jungle, he found himself excessively beating the jungle vegetation with his machete.

Tom Briggs was no longer sure exactly where on the calendar he was. But he was reasonably sure it was sometime in 1943 when his Filipino scouts reported the presence of Philippine bandits led by Paco Aguinaldo, a gregarious soul, quick to laugh and equally quick to kill. The two leaders’ meeting began with alpha tension but soon found common ground in mutual loathing for the Japanese. Both had friends die at the hands of the invaders.

The two men developed a working friendship that generated great fear and consternation among the Japanese occupying the Philippines. Hiding in the tropical rainforest foliage with Brigg’s men on one side of a path and Aguinaldo’s on the other, they would catch Japanese patrols in crossfires and destroy them. The guerillas took no prisoners and looted the bodies.

One of their boldest escapades involved a compound set up to house a battalion of Japanese with a single mission, find and destroy the guerrillas. With both hands behind his back and flanked by two of his men posing as traitors, Aguinaldo approached the guards at one end of the Japanese camp while Briggs and his men waited in the jungle at the opposite end of the compound. The rest of Aguinaldo’s men hid in the bush, ready to fire when given the signal from Aguinaldo’s two pistols in his concealed hands. He kept his head bent as though defeated.

The two men holding him told the Japanese guards they were bringing in the notorious criminal for a reward and wanted to see the prize before turning him over. The two soldiers on duty, unsure of what to do, summoned the camp commander. When the commander arrived on the scene, Aguinaldo shouted.

“Ahora!”

And pulled his pistol-loaded unbound hands to the front and fired four shots at the commander. The two “traitors” turned their guns away from him and opened fire on the guards and any soldiers they saw. Shots rang out from the jungle, and Japanese soldiers fell. Aguinaldo and his escorts ran as fast as they could until they reached the cover of the jungle and then lay prone as return fire from the Japanese flew over their heads.

On the other side of the Japanese facility, Tom Briggs and his team moved in, charging the opposite gate with rapid gunfire and Molotov cocktails. The attack was successful, and from their hideaway, the two leaders watched with pleasure as the Japanese buried their dead. Those jungle graves become lost graves, never visited by loved ones.

While their success pleased him, Major Briggs realized they could inflict extreme damage if they had bombs more potent than gasoline-filled bottles.

“The mission was successful,” the Major said as he and Paco Aguinaldo shared a bottle of expropriated Sake under a thatched roof at a table made of bamboo. “But we could do so much more if we had access to TNT.”

Aguinaldo looked at his friend quizzically, and Major Briggs then described the dangerous nitroaromatic compound. When he understood his comrade, the Filipino brigand stood up and waved his hand.

“Follow me, amigo.”

The two men walked down a partially overgrown footpath as a bright green Bataan viper watched them from a nearby bush. The path led to a cave.

“These are my prize possessions,” the bandit told the Major as he pulled back a tarp with a flourish revealing three spherical-shaped objects, each with two horned-like protrusions.

“Japanese mines plucked out of the sea by a brave, if not a bit stupid, fisherman. I confiscated them but compensated the man by promising that no bandits would raid his village or molest his daughters. What can you give me for them?”

Major Briggs looked longingly at the mines. There was enough TNT in one of them to punch a hole in the hull of a destroyer. If he could extract the explosive material, he could make bombs for his guerillas and wreak havoc on the Japanese troops in Bataan. An army manual had shown him how to build such bombs. In his mind’s eye, he could see that manual on the shelf of the National Guard office back home. Next to it stood the naval manual, and a wave of regret came over the young officer. It may or may not have had the instructions for dismantling a mine, but it would have at least had descriptions. Briggs had no idea what was under the explosive’s shell. Nevertheless, he believed the mines were better off in his hands than with Aguinaldo.

Tom Briggs had little to offer in exchange for the ocean mines and the explosive material they contained. So, he appealed to Aguinaldo’s sense of nationalism, pointing out that the mines served no purpose unless deployed in some way against their mutual enemy. He told Aguinaldo that no one from the United States or anywhere else would show up in the jungle with money to buy ocean bombs.

Tom Briggs had only promises for currency. He promised Aguinaldo he would teach some of the bandit’s men how to make bombs if the outlaw pledged to use them only on Japanese troops. The American also promised to put a good word in for Aguinaldo when the Americans retook the Philippines. With the right kind of messaging, he could make the gangster into a hero. At least get him a pardon.

“You are right,” Paco Aguinaldo told Tom, a broad grin spreading across his brown bearded face. “We cannot use them without knowing how. So, I will give you one with the promise you teach four of my men how to make bombs.”

Tom wanted all three mines but knew better than to push his luck.

The following day, he sat at the makeshift table with one of the mines and a handful of tools, the complete collection of all such items in the two encampments. He disassembled the mine alone and examined the explosive device’s inner workings when the cover was off.

Which do you regret more right now? Tom Briggs asked himself, breaking up with Betty Lou or not reading the naval manual? When he lifted the packet of TNT, he tripped a detonator.

The sound of the explosion made the monkeys in the jungle scream, and flocks of startled parrots created a moving green wall across the sky. Paco Aguinaldo buried what remained of his American friend in the jungle, a soon-to-be-lost grave never visited by Betty Lou Parker.

– Steve Bailey