Pacifica Military History Free Sample Chapters.pmd

120 Pacifica Military History
When I awoke on the morning of August 20, I saw that I had come
ashore on a quite level, somewhat sandy area covered with very low
scrubby vegetation. There was no one around. Very close to me were
several trip wires for more mines. Knowing I was seventy-five or more
miles behind enemy lines, it seemed to me that there was no hope of my
being rescued. Having been raised a good Catholic boy, I said as good
an Act of Contrition as I could and resigned myself to dying there.
The truth is, few of those who made it through the war are luckier
than I am to be alive. By all odds, I should be dead.
On the morning of the second day, I tried to get a drink from the
canteen in my escape kit, but it was empty. For the rest of the day, I
alternately passed out and woke up. I was conscious for short periods
only.
During the third and fourth days—August 21 and 22—it became
apparent that I was going to die of thirst, if not from my wounds, so I
started moving toward a two- or three-foot rise that had a row of bushes
on top. The bushes were about fifty feet away. I would pick up one leg,
set it down, then move the other, all the while being careful not to hit
another mine or tripwire as I dragged myself along. Because I was
conscious for only short periods of time, it took me several periods of
consciousness to move the fifty feet. On the other side of the rise was a
six-inch-deep pool of standing water, and I gratefully drnk from it even
though it was dirty. I spent that night and the next day, August 23, by the
edge of that pool. As before, I was unconscious most of the time.
During one of the periods when I as awake, I became conscious of a
feeling of movement in some of my wounds. A check revealed that all
my open wounds were full of maggots, which caused me to think I was
being eaten alive. Each time I was conscious thereafter, I killed as many
maggots as I could. (It wasn’t until much later that doctors told me the
maggots were only eating the dead flesh, thereby delaying the onset of
gangrene.)
On the fifth day, August 24, I raised my head as far as possible to see
whether there was anything nearby that I could try to reach for help. To
the east, about a half-mile away, I could see the top of a tall wooden
observation tower. Surely, I thought it would be manned, and by this