ESCAPE FROM PHILIPPINES

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 October 1942, Page 6

ESCAPE FROM PHILIPPINES

U.S.A. OFFICERS’ ORDEALS

(N.Z.P.A. Special Australian Correspondent)

SYDNEY, October 20. Two American officers who have arrived in Australia, after dodging the Japanese for 159 days, while escaping from the Philippines, came closest to death off the Australian coast. For fifteen minutes they lay flat in a native-built motor-boat while a Japanese plane riddled their craft , witn machine-gun bullets. The officers are Captain William Lloyd Osborne, of Los Angeles, and Flight-Lieutenant Damon Gause, of Georgia. Their journey began the day Eataan fell. In their journey they charted a 1500-mile course with a compass that worked only in still water. They survived a two-day typhoon and stopped at islands to plug holes in their leaky craft. “We are 'not here by navigation, but by the grace of God,” declared one of the men. For as long as sixteen days they were out of sight of land, in an old 22-foot motor-boat, whose Diestel engine ran finally on a mixture including coconut oil, collected from island natives. They had only two gallons of this left on October 11, when an Australian motor launch encountered them, and guided them to a remote harbour. For as long as three days they had gone without food, and sometimes for two days without water, but. both arrived in the best of health.

The two officers escaped separately after the fall of Bataan. Osborne lived for two months as a hermit near a volcano. Gause was once captured, stripped of his clothes, and herded with 300 other American prisoners, but managed to escape. After some weeks the men learned of each others’ presence by “bamboo wireless.” It took months of travel for them to meet, and another month to plan their escape. The sailing time to the Australian coast was 58 days. Their first meal after 159 days of rice and coconuts was a tin of sliced peaches. Their great worry was the Japanese might have arrived in Australia before they did.