My son loved my father, Weyman L. McGuire, and before he died, he told my son many stories. I would like to share with you what he told my son about

“THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR."

“Back in August of 1941, I re-enlisted in the Air Corps. I was assigned to the 19th Bombardment Squadron while they were still at Hickman Airfield, Hawaii. I was 'lucky' enough to be assigned to the advanced party, because the whole squadron was fixing to move to Clark Field in the Philippines. So I was put on an Army transport ship heading for the Philippines.

What pissed me off was they made me take an Army transport the “President Cooledge”, an old luxury liner. It was an old boat, probably from before World War I! It used to be a cargo ship some time before this. They had opened up the hold and made bunks, stacked 5 high. It sure wasn’t any luxury liner to us! It was a twenty-two day voyage. It was so old, if you left anything on the floor, (over night) it was soaking wet in the morning, because the lower floor flooded. I guess they would pump out the water but not good enough, because there sure was a lot of water still there in the morning. You would wake up in the morning to find all kind of stuff floating around your bunk. And the ship was crowded too! All most of us did was stand in line. You awoke in the morning, rushed to get in line for breakfast. By the time one finished eating the morning meal, you had to rush to get in line for lunch. This routine would get to anyone. I couldn’t go back to my bunk because it was so hot. Not only because of all the people there, but since the hold was converted there was no ventilation there. It is an understatement to say that I was happy to get off that ship.

About a day or two after I got to the Philippines the whole squadron flew into Clark. I sure wished I could have flown over with those guys instead of twenty-two days of hell on that transport. What was funny was that I talked to some of those pilots and they said that I was lucky because I came over on a “Luxury Liner!” Those planes didn’t have any kind of air-conditioning so the flight wasn’t the most pleasant. I guess it’s all in the way you look at things.

After I had been there a couple of days the command was trying to assign me a duty. They needed waist gunners so I was assigned as a waist gunner on a B-17s bomber. Not the kind you see in the movies, but one of the earlier models before they had tail-guns or chin turrents. Those early B-17s were deathtraps because of this lack of armament.

DECEMBER 8, 1941

On this day, our mission was to bomb the Japanese Naval base on Famosa. The four planes in our squadron didn’t hit much of anything with our bombs. It was before we had any radar. So we just eye-balled the drops. I guess that’s a good excuse as any for not hitting much. Coming back, we were about 10 miles from Clark Field when we were jumped from behind by Japanese’s Zero’s. These Japanese pilots could pull in right behind the tail of our plane (because there were no tail guns). So these pilots would just pull in as close as they wanted to and cut loose with all their guns a blazing. And they could take their time doing it too. That was what was nerve-racking, just sitting there wondering when this pilot was going to do something.

Of course, we were shot down. And being only ten miles away from the Field, just about everybody saw all the action. We were all yelling pretty Damn loud in all the excitement. I wouldn’t be surprised if they heard us (even without the radio). We were yelling that loud!

For some reason I hadn’t buckled up my parachute right, (unknown to me at the time) the straps were around my leg wrong. It must have been hot, I was lazy, or something; I don’t know. When the attack started, I was too busy to buckle it up. It was busy defending my side of the plane. The next thing I know the plane is exploding and the tail falls off. When I bailed out, the strap caught me in the balls. It sure hurt. The next day my groin was so black. it looked like someone painted it black or something. Of course later I hurt a lot. In all the confusing during the following days, I really didn’t have too much time to think about it.

After being shot down, they had all of us from our squadron out cleaning up the airfield of all the debris from the Japanese bombing raids. One old boy named Ard (I never will forget his name) must have had an injury of his foot or something. He was walking around with a little limp. We were out on the field when the air-raid sirens started wailing. So we all start out scrambling for cover. That’s the normal procedure, you get out of the way when planes are going to start shooting and dropping bombs around you. Old Ard starts a hobbling. He is not doing to good of a job of going anywhere. Of course he’s in my way of safety, so I started yelling at him, “Come on Ard! Come on Ard!” I’m yelling at him and he just stops. He stops and say, “&%#@^% I’m not going any further.” I yell back at him, “But they are gonna to bomb us!” He says, “$%#@^&& Let them Bomb. I’m not going another step.” I finally go on, diving into a bush or something.

After the Japs left and everyone is dusting himself off we all looked up in amazement! Here come old Ard with not one scratch on him. Of course it wasn’t funny then, but I guess it seems like it now.

There were four aircraft in my squadron. On the Dec. 8th, they got two of them in the air (mine and another one). The next day, the Japs got the remaining two B-17s on the ground. The first day we had air support. But those fighters had all been shot down as well. It was suicide to go up after that. Of course we didn’t have any more planes. Eventually our squadron was assigned to help evacuate Clark Field down to Bataan. It was one hell of way to start a war!

After a few days of “evacuating," I was pretty much exhausted. I remember that I was with my squadron when there was some delay up ahead on the road. I decided that I would just lie down on this pile of rocks beside the road until somebody got the mess straightened out. The next thing that I remember was waking up and looking around and nobody was in sight. After awhile I noticed a convoy coming up the road. I stopped one of the trucks and asked on of the drivers if he knew where my squadron was? At that time I thought that they must be just a little way up the road. After being told that he didn’t know anything. I then asked him what time was it. He told me that it was about 8 in the morning. Then I asked the guy what day it was! To my amazement, I had slept over two) for over 24 hours!

So here I was, in one hell of a situation. I was cut off from my squadron and in all the confusion, there was no way of getting a hold of them. I caught a ride with these guys on down to Bataan. I did see some of the guys from my squadron, but everybody had been split up by then. In all the confusion, I hooked myself up with a medical detachment. I didn’t have any orders to do this, in this situation you really didn’t need orders. Nobody really didn’t care what anybody else did. The thing that everybody was thinking about was getting to Australia.

When MacArthur left, General Wainwright was left in charge of all Allied Forces in the Philippines. When Wainwright gave the order to surrender there was so much confusion that some people just wanted to surrender. What Wainwright did was give certain points, on each island to formally surrender to the Japanese’s. The point on my island was about a three day walk. We had to walk because all vehicles of any kind had already been assigned somewhere else. Of course thoughts of court-martials ran through my head, because this could be considered as deserting during war time. There were also rumors going around about how the Japanese’s were treating Prisoners of War. These thoughts were running through my head then. First, there was so much confusion, then the rumors, and then with the fact that I would have to walk for three days made up my mind that I wasn’t going to surrender. There were a lot of fellows with this thought, so there were a lot of soldiers heading up into the mountains to hide”.

This is the end of the story of the beginning of WAR II that my father gave my son. There may be mistakes, but these are stories of an old man telling his grandson about the war. My father keeps a diary while he was hiding in the jungles, and that is how my father meets my mother. If anyone is interested, I can write some more accounts of my father adventure in WAR II.

Becky Miller from Oklahoma.

Weyman L McGuire