No planes left to fly, for two weeks we of the 21^st Pursuit Squadron stumble across Agoloma Bay on shaky legs, our bodies weak from dysentery and a diet of rice mashed with the occasional monkey or lizard. We’ve cleaned out the west coast of the Bataan Peninsula; nights, the Japanese have been trying to clean us out across Bataan’s neck, sending invasion barges along the China Sea and Manila Bay coasts. They’re closer to cracking our front lines every hour. Agoloma Point, Captain Dyess announces one night, back on base at Marivales. Grubby-kneed, he sways, slaps a mosquito from an arm already dotted pink with bites, then the map. There’s about fifty holed up there, plenty of snipers to boot. We gotta strike from behind enemy lines if we’ll have any chance in hell. That means land on the beach, surround their headquarters cave, and blast them out. We’ve got some old Lewis guns, pretty banged up and they heat up real bad, but that’s all. This is no milk run. I need twenty volunteers. Happy Easter.  

Before daybreak, he and I split twenty-two men between our rowboats—ten soldiers under each of our commands, four Air Corps fighter pilots, some infantrymen and artillerymen, half a dozen Filipino scouts and some naval raiders who tag along for the action. From Marivales two naval whaleboats deliver us in darkness to the western rim of Manila Bay. A faint glow lightens the sky at our backs as we glide into the peninsula’s shadow; in silence we drift except for the soft slap of waves against hulls and the grumble of bellies, nothing to fill them but bitter saliva and salt air. We bob beneath the clear morning sky, two hundred yards offshore, breeze rippling our skin, shoulders cramping beneath the leather harnesses we’ve rigged up so we can fire the Lewis guns from the hip. Captain Ed Dyess sits tall in the first rowboat, slightly closer to shore at two o’clock, watching enemy headquarters on the edge of the peninsula through badly scratched field glasses, his tan pilot’s shirt untucked. Across from us lies the steep jungle of the point, where Japanese marines hidden by camouflaged green perch in the trees, leaves plastered to their bodies. Through field glasses they squint back at us, crane to hear radios. Sniper rifles at their sides, they await, amorphous, above the paths from the beach to the point. Our fists sweat in the tattered oven mitts stolen last night from the kitchen. We need them to fire the Lewis guns.

A Japanese dive bomber flies over the beach below the cliff, and a big rock painted white. She opens her belly and a supply crate drops, landing just shy of the sharp rock. The bomber tips her wing and a few Japanese scale down the cliff face to the beach, quick and sure, without rifles, as if to taunt us. They run out to the rock and fetch the crate. Sunlight gleams off a saber at one’s waist.

The men in the rowboats shift in their seats and pray. One of the Filipinos says, “Mother of God, there better be only fifty of them and not a hundred.”

The two naval whaleboats, armed with thirty-seven millimeter canons and twin fifty-caliber machine guns, lead us in first. Ed signals to our boat, shouts for us to get ready.

The whale boats cut us loose offshore and we let go with everything we have toward the headquarters cave and the cliff at the end of Agoloma Point. The Lewis guns turn piping hot. Nine Japanese dive bombers stream in, sink one of the whale boats, then dive down and fire at us. Our men abandon the rowboats, running for shore, the Filipinos firing back at the bombers flying low, as if they could bring down all of them.

One of the other pilots, the First Lieutenant, says, “Eddie wasn’t kidding when he called it a damn suicide mission.”

The gunfire blasts huge sprays of sand, stinging our faces.

Climbing out of our boat¸ a Filipino scout is hit. One of the naval raiders runs back for him. As the raider drags the scout over the side, a bomber drops low and strafes them both dead. The rest of us keep charging for shore.

Phist, phist, hisses the sand. Daylight shines fiercely now, illuminating slivers of jungle. Smoke from the Japanese machine gunners plumes out, shrouds the brush along the cliff, traces to mist in the trees above.

Ed Dyess sprints for the right side of the beach with his men, skinny legs churning. The Lewis gun jostles against his hip. Oven mitt swaddling the barrel, his flesh pokes through a fraying hole. He opens fire and yells, “Come on out, you pillaging lizards! We’re back and sick of eating goddamn rice cakes!”

We cut left, head for the cave from the other side of the cliff, but one of our men blocks the path, says, “The Captain needs us.” A bullet strikes his neck and he sinks to the ground, blood spurting in a crimson arc. The scout behind us checks him but he’s gone.

Only seven of us remain from the eleven in our rowboat.

We hack through the vines and fronds, bolo knives in hand, trembling in the heat. Chugging gunfire chases ghost-like rustles. Where is Dyess? The Captain alone embodies what we feel, the gravity and absurdity, stripped of bravado, we mythical sky-creatures stranded on land, without our winged steeds. Metallon pegusi. He’s our Savior, half-man, half-god; one pilot even calls him Aeneas. We’ll follow him to the ends of the earth and into hell, which is how we find ourselves here. Bullets eat up two others from our boat. But if Ed gets killed, none of us will make it off Agoloma alive.

Then he appears on the path ahead—“they’re hunkered in the brush by the cave, gotta circle round,” he shouts, and then the Second Lieutenant gasps and drops. The four of us hit the dirt, roll into the brush, and drag the lieutenant over by his feet. No use: the bullet hole gapes from his forehead like a third eye. The Filipino makes a quick sign of the cross over the dead lieutenant’s chest. Ed swipes the oven mitt and stuffs it in the back of his waist.

“For good luck?” I ask.

“Seat cushion,” he replies.

The Filipino snorts with laughter.

Hips bruised from the Lewis guns, we creep up and circle around, serrated fronds snagging like fishhooks. Light shines down in patches. Everything seems certain and tangled. We made it to this same spot yesterday, when at noon we yelled over the cliff toward their cave and promised them an admirable surrender with all the honors of battle. In return we received a barrage of gunfire. They raised flags showing that these troops had fought in every Japanese campaign in China since the Great War. Surrender they cannot imagine, only death. Now they fire over the cliff into the brush: phist, phist against the sandy rock, grains exploding. We split up and approach the cave from opposite sides.

For four hours we fire at any movement in the brush. A ledge, too steep to climb, covers us on the left. The enemy bullets ricochet off and into the sea, thankfully. Ed ducks behind an uprooted stump for cover on the flank. The gunners keep aiming but miss him.

“Think this might end like some Greek tragedy?” I ask between rounds.

“Why?” Ed says, and huffs. “That how you want it to end?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just want it to end.”

He returns a burst of gunfire, then, panting and sweat-slicked, says, “Bullshit, you could have invented some disease. Brittle bones or eyes like a fruit bat, and you could be roasting chestnuts and feeling up your girl’s tits right now. So why are you here?”

Pow, pow, pow! The First Lieutenant, struck in the spine, screams and falls. I poke Ed and point toward some trees. The sniper has a leaf over his face for courtesy as his stomach rises in and out. The Filipino nods and aims. We all three blow the sniper’s head off.

The First Lieutenant doesn’t move. Only three of us left. Gunfire bites the ground a few feet in front of us. The Filipino clutches his crucifix and eyes the Captain. What do we really know of each other’s souls, these men who we’ve crouched beside and witnessed final breaths, whose asses we cover from death while they tromp off to shit in a thicket?

How spirited and primitive we are, in the roles we’ve cast ourselves.

Green uniformed bodies slump behind the thirty-seven millimeter cannons, officers cradling army cameras. The dying moan, sabers drawn and guts spilling onto their knees.

“Let’s get the rest of them,” the Filipino cries, peers over the ledge and is blown away, staring. He scrolls down the cliff, limbs outstretched like a starfish. At the bottom his body joins the driftwood washing up alongside the white rock they use as a drop zone marker. The Japanese rain a storm of gunfire at the ledge.

Ed signals that he sees three in the cave, motions that we move in. The Japanese have stopped shooting. We raise our guns, our hands cramped from firing and the blackened mitts so hot that the metal still scorches skin. Ed charges, shouting, “Surrender to your new emperor, boys!”

One of them throws down his saber and raises his arms outside the cave; his comrades ignore him and aim. The traitor grabs his sidearm and shoots them each in the back, then sticks his palms overhead.

I leap forward, snag the saber and hurl it into the brush. Ed snatches the POW’s field glasses and slings them around his neck, prods the man’s little green uniform with one hand, the other still tucked inside the oven mitt. The POW stares at the mitt, scorched and threadbare, as if Ed maybe has a stump for hand, some reason for a strange disguise. In the cave we sift through intelligence, seize maps that prove they know every detail of our rear air defense. Near a smoking fire, a few pans still have rice and fish stuck to the bottom. Ed tears off his mitt, shoves a handful in his mouth. I do the same. The POW grunts in protest, and Ed nudges him with the Lewis gun between swallows.

We pick our way down to the beach, the POW out front, arms raised. Ed says, “They got everything prepared down to the last tiny detail. But I don’t think they expected to be jumped by two skinny cats with Lewis guns and oven mitts.”

Three weeks later we Air Corps fighter pilots are back flying. The Japanese bust our lines open and Bataan falls. Trucks burn along the road and fighting breaks out on the edge of our aerodrome. Ed Dyess is our commanding officer. We run to our planes in the field, choking on smoke and fumes, our eyes watering. Phist, phist, scheew, schoom the bullets sing. We’re scheduled to fly a mission but Ed meets us at the planes. Helmet missing, armed only with a .45, he rides up in his jeep, eyes bloodshot and sunken.

My crew works fast, every couple of minutes taking cover from an explosion. The chaplain pulling double-duty as maintenance mechanic prays aloud for us as he works, promising we’ll be absolved of our sins by the time they pull chocks. Ed climbs onto my wing, leans over the cockpit. The oven mitt is tucked into his waist. He tugs it out and hands it to me, says, “Fly like hell—it won’t be as easy as wiping them off that rock, but good luck.”

“You take the mission,” I tell him, taking the mitt but rising out of my seat. “You’re a captain, you’ve got every right!”

On the edge of the aerodrome an explosion rocks the plane, flames and dirt cascade over the trees. The heat stings my face; my ears ring. Ed clings to the cockpit, his bony face and chest framed against the evening sky glowing orange and the black artillery smoke. He says, Drop your fragmentation bombs on whatever Japanese you see. Strafe them. Then head south and don’t come back.

The chaplain shouts for him to get off the wing, thumps the side of the plane that it’s time to go.

We killed snipers in the jungle of Agoloma Point without knowing it, Ed and me. When we returned a few days later to collect the remaining maps and intelligence from the cave, the treetops reeked of rotting flesh and flies clustered thick on the leaves. Now, in a few minutes, the dead men’s comrades will swarm the aerodrome, killing and maiming and taking prisoner the Filipinos and Americans who remain.

Why does Ed choose to stay behind, to burn, face torture, or starve? Am I less of a brother by taking this mission and leaving the rest of us, fate be damned? Our squadron of P-40s lifts over those below; at the field’s edge the enemy shoots away at our landing gears and hydraulic systems. Farther north, we drop our bombs on a Japanese concentration streaming across a bridge and empty our machine guns on them in low-level strafing. Our guns empty quickly, not out of revenge or duty, but love. I don’t care about home, about who we might become—newspaper editors, Hollywood actors, ranchers, lovers, parents. Only those moments in the jungle, an arm’s length apart from one another, the two dozen of us inching forward, pupils dilated and lungs tight, humidity so thick you can barely breathe. Lizards dart up the trees: vine-draped, primeval. No time. To feel fully alive isn’t proximity to death as many believe, but this unspoken togetherness of the tribe. For that I hope that we kill many Japanese, strangers who meant nothing to us before and still don’t. Which is all we can do. But if we reach the south and can hitch a ride out of Ilo Ilo on General Royce’s bombers, to Darwin, we’ll be back soon to strafe and bomb, and to kill.

– Vanessa Blakeslee   

Note: An earlier version of this piece appeared many years ago as “Ed Dyess, Hero of Agoloma Point, April 22nd, 1942” in now-defunct journal Segue (Fall 2011).