 1963. In the early morning light, shaped like a tadpole with its bulbous head pointing west toward the South China Sea, Corregidor sleeps. Nearly forgotten. In this age of man shoots and keyholes in the sky. Nearly forgotten, but never quite. There are those who will remember. But now in these hushed moments between the dark and the dawn, Corregidor lives with her ghost. They cannot talk. They speak only through the legacies they have left behind. Mute reminders of men who ate and drank and slept here in these ruins, who once swam and played on this stretch of beach and who fired these guns in the defense of their lives. Corregidor. This, too, was Corregidor. Twenty-two years ago, peaceful, quiet. Suddenly at Pearl Harbor, the peace and quiet exploded, and war echoed across the sea. For the people on Corregidor, as well as the whole of the Philippine Archipelago, noon had become high noon. Time and fate in the form of a victory-swollen Japanese war machine were inexorable. Manila fell. Batan was driven to her knees. The Filipinos and the Americans on Corregidor dug deep into their fortress of rock and awaited the lash of the gathering storm. In April of 1942, the island of Corregidor was a fortress besieged. The defenders fought back with the little they had, but it wasn't enough. After six straight days of a brutal battering from the skies, the people of Corregidor plunge deep into gloom and unabashed fear. The once quiet lagoons and the gently wooded slopes sent forth an impassioned cry. Corregidor calling. Corregidor calling. Corregidor calling. Corregidor calling. Corregidor calling. The fall of Fortress Corregidor seemed imminent. The suddenness of the attack was disconcerting. Rumor had it the Americans were abandoning the rock and MacArthur was leaving. Chief nurse Ann Meeler Giles recalls her feelings on that day. She seemed today as she worked from the garden of a San Antonio home with her daughter, Sally Ann. It looked pretty bad to some of us who were there. We knew deep down inside that it couldn't be true. When the initial shock wore off, we learned the truth that General MacArthur had received direct orders from Washington to fly immediately to Australia. That was all we needed to know. So we set ourselves to staying alive there in Melinda Tunnel until they did. The enemy bombs missed very little on the island that day. We got right down to work. I tied my hair up in a piece of gauze and checked the shock ward to see if they had adequate help. Then I went to the operating room where I gave anesthetics to one casualty after another. When all the casualties had been cleared, I realized that we had not eaten since morning. Our water supply had been hit during the bombings, which caused us to have to ration our water to one drink a day. Not a drop could be spared for brushing teeth or washing the faces of our feverish patients. The sea water that had been filtered and flavored with coffee made us more thirsty. We dreamed of fresh cool water running over stones, green grass and fresh air. And it was like that for 26 days of continuous bombing. Well, the plain and simple truth was that nobody was giving up. In order to give up, a man has to be willing and he has to be beaten. The people of Corregidor weren't willing and they weren't ready to stay beaten. But it was true that some of them were leaving to come back and fight another day, and so the enemy came. General Jonathan M. Wainwright surrendered the Rock. General Wainwright had made his final report before meeting with the Japanese commander, with broken heart and head bowed in sadness, but not in shame. I report that today I must arrange terms for the surrender of the fortified islands of Manila Bay. Please say to the nation that my troops and I have accomplished all that is humanly possible and that we have upheld the best traditions of the United States and its army. Some things were hard to swallow, but they were a part of the time. It was going to be a long wait and they knew it. But in the endless time of waiting, one pulse ringing hope was left to boy and sustain them. A legacy in the form of a man's voice, that of General Douglas MacArthur. The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan. The primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return. A legacy and a prophecy as well. But so much to be done before those words were to become a fact. So much of what a famous Englishman was to call blood, toil, tears and sweat. And so it began, the arduous road back. Headquarters of the Southwest Pacific was established in Melbourne. It was necessary now to build a force in the South Pacific that would combat the Japanese threat to Australia as well. Much was required and much came. Men, material, supplies, ammunition. All the elements of air, land and sea quickly fused together on the same allied forge to become an effective weapon. A single lifeline that would lead to ultimate victory. It also followed that the road back should be a reversal of the enemy's pattern for conquest. Where the men of the Orient had come like a giant octopus with clutching tentacles outstretched to swallow its opposition whole, the Allied military plan was comparable to the movement of a great spinning wheel with the spinners patiently laying up strands in a master web to ensnare the enemy. But it wasn't easy. Wars never are, not even for spinners of webs. A strand can break if a weave is tight. A timetable can go wrong when pressure is applied. And all hell can break loose with a wrong guess. There was no room in this war for second guessing. Decision. Command decision. There was one burning question. Should the road back begin with Formosa a great strategic prize? Or should it be Luzon which could hasten the end of the war? Luzon, the fateful die was count. It was back to the Philippines. Slowly the spinning of the great web was set into motion. Island rocking decisions were being made in Melka. While on Corregidor, more fundamental decisions seemed important. We tried to maintain some semblance of normality. But this is hard to do when you're dirty, hungry, and completely exhausted. Performing operations by lantern lights can be trying on the nerves. And after three or four days of this, we were numb. Besides the wounded, many fell sick. Malaria was the killer. As the GIs used to say, the mosquitoes had air to tear already. All around us, the Japanese officers inspecting our equipment and making pictures of us. We never knew why. They never notified our families that we were prisoners. The nurses fell ill with dysentery, which made it even more difficult for us to do our jobs. And all around us are officers and soldiers streaming in from the hot sands of the beach where they had been placed in camp by the enemy. All suffering from dysentery, skin infection, and just plain exhaustion. Even so, I was glad that I had turned down General Wainwright's offer to evacuate me and decided to stay there with them. There in that tunnel, choked with shallow smoke and misery, was a group of people that meant more to me than anything else. It simply seems like a bad dream now. But then, an endless nightmare. For living through her nightmare, nurse Ann Mealer Giles earned the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star. Away from Corregidor, a shooting war goes on. The web spins and the first strand reaches out for Guadalcanal. Lovely and bloody. The orders were taken and they did at a high price. Raval. Raval was neutralized with day-to-day pounding from the air. We bypassed Raval and went forward. The road a little bit shorter, but still a lot of miles to go. Another strand in the web laid in place. The Gilbert. One more island at all reaping his human toll. A circular chunk of coral. A ring of flaming death. But Tara was taken. The marshals. Quadjolene. One base mirror. Another strand in a fast growing web. The Marianas. Hypan. Another airstrip. But how do you count the cost when it has to be paid in blood? Palau. Only one thing to keep in mind here. Palau was only 500 miles from Pader, Mindanao in the Philippines. They were back to where it all began. This was the curve in the long and weary road. The memory of the Philippines was still fresh. An open, still festering wound that refused to heal. Remembering, the web spinners cast out their strands of flesh and steel toward the next objective. To drop them over the curved spine of the Philippine archipelago. Latex. His feet therefore softened up the enemy. Then the infantry hits the beaches. They won. More than they lost. Luzon. The crux of an earlier command decision. Was it really going to save more lives and shorten the war? It was time now to find out. Endpoints of death. Opening the door to Manila Bay. American lives were saved. And those who lived found their own ways of being grateful. Pearl of the Aureus. Enmeshed now in a death grip, fresh forces squeezing its tights. Manila is a burial ground. It was said the enemy commander gave one last order to his men. Old Manila was burned. The pearl fell into allied hands. The web was tightened. There was good reason to remember Batan. Men died. And those few who lived through the infamous death march became the walking ghosts of Batan. Ben Minota survived and drives his cab in Brooklyn, USA. I was one of them. I was with the 803rd engineers. When we got captured it was a heck of a mess. I mean none of us knew what it was all about. But it sure didn't take us long to find out. That's for sure. We were in Marvellus when that march started. It was hot and San Fernando was 90 kilometers away. We had to do away with our stuff and carry theirs. Machine guns and ammo cases. No food and water. Our guys were dropping like flies. It took five days to get to San Fernando. When we got there, God knows how, they shoved us into box cars and slammed the doors. Four hours, stinking dirty filth and jammed in like sardines. But that march, I cannot forget it. Even the three years after, in the prison camps, that as they were, it was that march that still gives me nightmares. And so they took back Bhutan. But for these men, this was no death march. It was a march back to life and the living. The web spins on. It's determined strands reaching out hungrily for Corregidor. The rock. Sometimes called the Gibraltar of the East. Other military objectives may have been more important from a strategic point of view, but none meant more symbolically than this hunk of rocks sitting on the sea. Officers and enlisted men alike, urgently awaited the next move. They wanted Corregidor and fast. The strategy decided on was the one of surprise. The web spinners gambled on an enemy attitude that no one in his right mind would even consider dropping a regiment of paratroopers on such a small target. They would more likely anticipate an approach from the sea. The Allied High Command decided to go for brooks, naval bombardments, aerial attack, amphibious landings, and a parachute drop. The 500th regimental combat team was the jump regiment picked to do the job. Brigadier General George M. Jones was a colonel when he commanded the 503rd in that memorable jump. I suppose historic is about as good a word as any to describe what happened that day. Corregidor is a little island that lies in the mouth of Manila Bay. And as such has historically controlled the entrance to Manila. I think the troops of the 503rd were enthusiastic about the jump. Of course any veteran paratrooper knows that when he jumps into an operation that he's jumping into the unknown. He expects to be surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. And the realization of this of course certainly makes for individual tension. But I think at the time of the drop the troops were really ready to go. We had two drop zones and two series of planes that came in single file over each drop zone. The wind was blowing. We actually didn't know prior to the jump what the weather was going to be. But we knew that the wind was effective. And this really was the weather part of the operation that had made us off of our plan somewhat. We started off jumping eight men at about I believe 550 feet jump altitude. Which is a fairly low altitude for a parachute jump. As each plane in the serial would come over a pre-arranged point, we would give the word to count a certain number of seconds. And then the first man of that stick would go out. We started off jumping eight people on the stick. At a stick meaning the number that it's going to jump at that pass over the drop zone. But because of the wind, which turned out to be about 22 knots, we had to lower altitude successively from 550 to 500 and then finally 400 feet. Each plane had as I recall about 21 or 22 paratroopers. This whole jump was controlled by Colonel John Lackey, the troop carrier commander and myself who were flying above the formation and giving specific instructions to the jump masters in each plane. Because these drop zones were pretty small for a normal parachute dropping. We normally thought in terms of a drop zone of about a thousand yards long at least and several hundred yards wide. These drop zones were small, the largest one being about 200 yards long and about 100 yards wide. They were surrounded by rubble and rather high buildings. All of these things added to the hazard of the drop. Of course we had a few casualties on the jump, not as many as I had anticipated, horrible. Prior to the jump I estimated that we might have as many as 50% casualties. As a matter of fact my estimates ran between 10 and 50% because of the nature of the drop zone, the wind and the other factors. We got by with 12 or 13% casualties on the jump. Actually the losses however did justify having operations because we accomplished our mission. We secured the island of Craigador, eliminated the control mines which would have kept our ships from coming into the harbor and opened up the harbor of Manila. As far as the surprises, of course this operation was short, as fast and full of surprises. From almost the word go, we had surprises. There were countercars, operations. The third day they blew up Belenna Tunnel where they had a great number of explosives stored. The jump was dramatic and successful. The enemy was hit around the clock in every way he could be heard. From the sea, on the beaches, in the streets. The end was in sight and suddenly as it had begun it was over. The web indeed had overtaken the rock. I believe that the most lasting memory is Gerald MacArthur's visit to the island of Craigador. After the operation was all over, Gerald MacArthur visited what was always considered by many people as one of the soft spots in his heart. He had a great affection for Craigador. He came back and a little ceremony with a few troops from each of the units that had participated. We formally returned the island to him. And I shall always remember that now very famous quotation when Gerald MacArthur looked at me and said, I see the old flagpole still stands. Have your troops horse the colors to the top and let no enemy have a haul them down. Craigador sleeps with her ghost. They cannot talk. They speak only through the legacy they have left behind in this fortress in the sea.