Oh, beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved,

And mercy more than life!

—Katherine Lee Bates, “America the Beautiful”

The Japanese attack on the Philippines was part of a series of carefully planned, coordinated, and nearly simultaneous attacks on the United States at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, on the British at Singapore and Burma, and on the Dutch at what is now Indonesia. The attacks succeeded beyond Japan’s most ambitious expectations—except in the Philippines. The synchronized attacks crippled the US Navy in the Pacific and the British in Singapore, and the Dutch in Dutch East Asia quickly fell to Japanese attacks, but the Philippines did not fall as the Japanese had planned. The Japanese had not anticipated the retreat to Bataan and were unable to quickly defeat the Americans. In what would become known as the Battle of Bataan, the Americans had temporarily halted the Japanese advance.

As part of the buildup of forces in the Philippines, US Army officers, including Captain Robert G. Davey, were embedded with the Philippine Army. With the outbreak of war and the retreat to Bataan, Davey was transferred back to a regular US Army division. On Bataan, he was assigned to the front line and was among those responsible for halting the initial Japanese invasion. For the next four months, Davey was never more than a thousand yards from the Japanese lines and was consistently under small arms fire.

While commanding an infantry unit, Davey had moved the unit into a densely covered thicket of trees where they would be hidden from the Japanese. They had just dug into their foxholes when Davey felt a strong impression to leave that area. He ignored it. His platoon was tired and hungry, and now, after much effort, it was firmly entrenched and safely hidden in the thicket; no one wanted to leave. The feeling persisted, however, and Davey eventually ordered them to move. The next morning, they marched back through that area and found that it had been heavily shelled. Apparently, the Japanese had seen them move into that thicket. Surveying their former position, Davey stared down at the large shrapnel lying in what would have been his foxhole. He realized, “Had I been there, I would still have been there.”[1]

On January 20, 1942, in connection with the formation of the 515th and the retreat to Bataan, Master Sergeant George Robin (Bobby) Brown was given a battlefield commission as a first lieutenant and put in charge of munitions.[2] At this time in WWII, the army allowed the promotion of a soldier to a commissioned officer on the battlefield in exceptional circumstances. A battlefield commission is granted apart from the regular commission sources, such as graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point, a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or the army’s Officer Candidate School. They are predicated on extraordinary performance of duties while serving in combat and are based on the commander’s assessment of the soldier’s actual performance in combat conditions in the field. Another officer who knew Brown referred to this battlefield commission as evidence of his “resourcefulness and intelligence.”[3]

What little was left of the US Air Force, a few battered P-40s, was based at the Bataan and Cabcaben Airfields at the southern end of the peninsula.[4] The 515th was assigned the mission of protecting the Cabcaben Airfield, where Brown was the munitions officer. On March 14, 1942, the Japanese again bombed the Cabcaben Airfield. But this time, the Japanese bombers successfully targeted the unit’s only ammunition dump.

The explosive and incendiary bombs started fires, which were surrounded by highly combustible dry grass and bamboo, and fires started in some of the ammunition piles. Despite the personal danger, Brown and his friend Staff Sergeant Jack Keeler rushed to extinguish the fires and saved the unit’s only ammunition supply. For this act of bravery, Brown would receive a Bronze Star.[5]

These were heroic and brilliant triumphs for the Filipino and American forces, and we should not fail to appreciate what these Americans and their Filipino allies, as poorly equipped as they were, had managed to accomplish. While the Japanese had achieved phenomenal success, sweeping away all resistance in front of them, only in the Philippines had they been halted. The Filipino and American forces had successfully guarded the bridges at Calumpit and Layac Junction and had kept open the strategic points of retreat into Bataan. They had defended the airstrips on Bataan; not one of the precious few remaining P-40s on Bataan had been lost to Japanese bombing.[6] On the front lines to the north, the soldiers had managed to halt the Japanese invasion.

These US soldiers had demonstrated that the Japanese were not invincible and that they could be stopped by determined soldiers ably led, even though poorly equipped and with the odds heavily against them. In the end, the Philippines would fall, and Bataan would ultimately possess no great strategic importance in the global war. But at a time when the Allies were in full, humiliating retreat throughout the world and the United States was largely consumed by despair and defeat, their courageous stand at Bataan was an important symbol of hope.[7]

Notes

[1] Springgay, “Robert Gray Davey,” 15–18: Davey, “Last Talk,” 1.

[2] Army of the United States, “Oath of Office (Temporary),” of George Robin Brown, January 20, 1942, NARA Records. See also Allan C. McBride, Brigadier General, GSC, Chief of Staff, Headquarters Philippine Department in the Field, United States Army, Special Orders No. 19, Extract, Paragraph 9, January 20, 1942, NARA Records (order identifies Brown as a first lieutenant and former master sergeant with the 515th Coast Artillery).

[3] Major Shoss specifically referred to Brown’s field commission as evidence of Brown’s intelligence and resourcefulness. “LDS Group in Jap Prison Described,” Deseret News, January 20, 1945, 11.

[4] Lt. Col. William E. Dyess, The Dyess Story: The Eye-Witness Account of the Death March from Bataan, Japanese Prison Camps and Escape (New York City: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1944), 35.

[5] Harry M. Peck, Col. CAC, to General Jonathan M. Wainwright, Headquarters Fourth Army, March 7, 1946, NARA Records (recommending a Silver Star). Army officials later determined to award a Bronze Star. Report of Decorations Board, War Department, May 21, 1946 (approving citation and award of Bronze Star Medal “V” to George R. Brown, NARA Records).

[6] Dyess, Dyess Story, 35–36; Cave, Beyond Courage, 152.

[7] Morton, Fall of the Philippines, 584.