GRIM STRUGGLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 57, 8 March 1944, Page 2

GRIM STRUGGLE

ORDEAL IN JUNGLE

ESCAPE FROM PHILIPPINES

(0.C.) SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 18. Grim details of an 18-month struggle of men against the jungle were just told at Hemet in Southern California by Sergeant Cyril Grohs, "who fled from the Japanese conquerors of the Philippine Islands and cheated a grave that had been opened for him. He has returned home after being reported missing for more than two years. Never a prisoner of war, Sergeant Grohs fought at Batan after Clark Field, near Manila, where he was stationed, was demolished by Nipponese bombers and dive bombers. When American forces surrendered, Sergeant Grohs and several companions escaped to the lower islands grouped themselves in threes and fours and pitted their wits against jungle, Japs and hostile natives. Blinded for six months by 36 attacks of malaria, Sergeant Grohs was cured by native medicine while his companions, despairing of his life, dug a grave near by in which to bury him. The men lived on bananas, wild sweet potatoes, jungle plants and occasionally were given food by friendly natives. Once they entered a deserted native. village where-the-only living thing they saw was a cat —which they Rilled and ate. Frequently they ate monkeys and snakes, including huge pythons, and they devoured dogs when they could find them.

During the entire 13 months Sergeant Grohs was barefoot and he lost 85 pounds in weight. Sergeant Grohs witnessed Colin Kelly's fatal crash landing and Lieut.-Col. W. E. Dyess. whose story of Japanese brutality has been running in American newspapers, joined the jungle refugees after fleeing from a Jap prison camp. Col. Dyess lived with Sergenat Grohs and his comrades until he escaped from the islands.

How Sergeant Grohs left the islands is a military secret and he is not permitted to say how many American soldiers survived in the jungle after Batan fell. The means of their rescue is a well-guarded secret. Sergeant Grohs was flown to Washington for War Department interviews immediately upon his return to the United States.