Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [97]
The next day they turned the plane around and we sped down the runway, heading toward the water. Suddenly, I realized we had a problem. The plane should have been airborne but wasn’t. With the wind against us, the runway was too short for a big craft, so heavily loaded. I rushed to the bomb-bay window and looked out. There was the water, right in front of us, and a mound of dirt; I guess they’d bulldozed sand into a small dike to keep the ocean from flooding the runway. I thought, Oh no, after all I’ve gone through, now I’m dead? Then the B-24 hit that bump at the end of the runway, bounced into the air, and settled down so low that whitecaps came through the ill-fitting bomb-bay doors and soaked us. Fortunately the plane never dipped below that level.
Not long ago, after my story was on national TV, I got a phone call. A voice said, “You’re Louis Zamperini?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“How did you get from Okinawa to Manila?” he asked.
“Well,” I replied, “in a B-24, but we didn’t actually go to Manila first.” Then I told him this story.
I asked him why he wanted to know, and he said, “I was the pilot. I almost crapped in my pants. I knew we’d had it. That plane just barely, barely stayed above water.”
Nice to know that all these years later we were both still among the living.
MANILA, UNFORTUNATELY, WAS more of the same situation I’d encountered on Okinawa—and worse. I’d gotten a bottle of rare and valuable whisky as a present on Okinawa, but someone stole it from my tent in Manila, and yet again I couldn’t get food or clothing. So I did what I’d done before: head to the Red Cross tent and tell my story. The girl there set me up with Joe Laitin, a big wheel with Reuters in the Pacific. (Clearly, the Red Cross gals in the Pacific had the system wired and knew how to work it.)
“I’ve got a big problem,” I told Joe. “I’m damn hungry, and I can’t get a meal ticket.” When I told him my story he got so uptight that he immediately took me to headquarters, talked to a colonel, and got me squared away. For a war correspondent he had lots of pull. He even had me on his NBC radio show.
When the Japanese vacated Manila, they left a hundred thousand dead bodies and an impoverished, bomb-ravaged shell of a city. The place was entirely unappealing. Boring. At least on Okinawa, after the POWs left, I was the only former prisoner there; I was singled out, taken care of, unique. In Manila I was nobody. I just walked around, in rain that never let up, and the world was caked with mud and misery. I wanted out quickly, but I had to wait for a flight. Joe Laitin tried to help by getting me an application, but the functionary at headquarters said, “Are you kidding? There are eighty-one colonels ahead of him, trying to get a flight home.”
Joe took the application anyway, and I filled it out, waited a couple days, didn’t get a call. Joe and I went to headquarters. He found a stack of applications on a desk and went through them until he found mine—on the bottom. He put it on top and told the desk officer, “He goes on the next plane.” The officer didn’t argue. Reuters could ruin you, if they wanted to. (Later Joe spent years as a journalist in Hollywood and worked as a deputy press secretary under President Lyndon Johnson.)
I got off easy. Normally it took a bottle of whisky or a box of cigars—the next most precious commodity—to move up the list. The ATC—Air Transport Command—had a racket going. Their job was to haul goods for the rank and file, plus airplane parts. They also took liquor and cigars all over, charged a bundle, and got away with it because money is meaningless to a soldier in combat, stationed on some far-out atoll. A hundred dollars for a bottle of liquor? Sure! Twenty-five dollars for a cigar? Okay! The ATC got that stuff free from guys like me, who wanted to get on a plane without waiting.
The ATC also hauled commodities for the upper brass. I ran into several officers who were alcoholics. Some people believe that if the Pacific generals hadn’t gotten so much liquor, the war would have been over two years sooner.
I FLEW OUT