&# This is the eighteenth in a series by George Weller of the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service on the "Cruise of Death" taken by some 1600 American prisoners from Manila to Southern Japan. Approximate/v 300 men survived the ordeal. Their stories were gathered in prison camps, rest camps, on hospital ships and at U.S. bases in the Pacific.

Japan was near. The Americans on the Jap hell ship originally had fought to keep from going there, and later they had fought to stay alive to reach there. Most had failed.

Of some 1600 who had left Bilibid prison in Manila for what they thought would be a seven-day trip to Jap prison camps, about 1000 had died. Death had come in many forms during the 49 days the trip did take. American bombs took some - thirst, illness, madness, starvation and disease took others.

The pitiful handful left were hardly men. Once civilized beings, they now were little more than animals fighting the great, ultimate fight for survival.

Once Ted Lewin, a Los Angeles reporter and promoter, approached the commanding officer, the Marine Lieutenant Colonel Curtis Beecher of Chicago and Saratoga, Calif., as he sat in his bay.

"What are you thinking about Colonel?" he said. "I was remembering a fellow I heard talk at the Explorer’s Club in Chicago after the last war," said the grey-haired Colonel. "He described how the Armenians made their march of death with the Turks driving them along. I was wondering whether it could have been any worse than this."

For a new infraction of his rules -- the theft of sugar -- Mr. Wada, the Jap interpreter, threatened to cut off all provender. "It doesn’t matter," said Beecher wearily, "because if you don’t give us some water and food we’re all going to pass out anyway."

By this time Beecher looked, in the words of an aide, "gaunt, matted, grey and weak."

As the voyage drew into its second week the prisoners lost all discretion and robbed sugar from the hold at will. In the ship’s hold the price of sugar fell so that one could now get six spoonfuls for one spoonful of water. The Formosan rice they were now eating was rough and full of hulls; it increased diarrhea, while brown sugar seemed to make the diarrhea chronic.

The violent rages, the blood sucking and murders of’ the Manila-Olongapo trip were no longer possible. The men were too weak, They were broken or at least submissive. For them it was no longer their affair; they belong to God or fate.

Father William Cummings of San Francisco and Ossining, N.Y., still carried on his evening services. His Protestant colleagues, the red headed Episcopalian Navy chaplain Lieutenant Quinn and the Army chaplain Lieutenant Tiffany, were both gone.

Gone, too, was the spectacled Jesuit missionary Captain Joseph G. Van der Heiden, whose suede jacket had fallen to someone else. Lieutenant Zerfas, a priest from the 26^th Cavalry, who had given many last blessings, was able to help a little, and Lieutenant John E. Duffy of Notre Dame was in such condition that he insisted on being brought ham and eggs.

Major F. Langwith Berry of Burlingame, an 86^th Cavalry officer, (sic – his actual unit was the 86^th Field Artillery Battalion) remembers these services thus: "Often at evening the call `at ease’ would be given. The hubbub of talking would diminish, but still continue. Then we would hear above the noise, `It’s the chaplain, boys; it’s the chaplain.’

"The clear, penetrating voice of Father Cummings was unmistakable. Immediately complete silence would fall in the blackness of the hold. First he would give a few words of encouragement, and then he would say the Lord’s prayer. During those few seconds we thought of home, of our mothers, of gardens, lakes and mountains in America. And then – `That’s all, boys’ -- and our vespers are over."

Then came an evening when Father Bill was unable to stand up. Forty-three years old, he was weakened by severe dysentery and thirst. Eventually he lay on the hatch where he had blessed so many others, a body departed by the spirit. His body was hoisted high, and the Japanese delivered him to the sea.

The only Negro aboard was Sergeant Robert W. Brownice, a genial, cheerful and diligent soldier, who had been much prized as the top mess sergeant of the 26^th Calvary. He had a family of five children awaiting his return to Manila. Having helped many others on the ship, he contracted both dysentery and cerebral malaria and died 14 days out of Formosa.

An athlete, sometimes called West Point’s greatest football center, Lieutenant Colonel Maurice F. "Moe" Daley, wounded in the Takao bombing, passed away from acute dysentery.

A Strange Suicide

A young soldier was weeping and saying, "lf I could only make my life worth four Nips before I go."

One man kept saying, "l have such pain in my chest I can’t stand it, I simply can’t." A companion in the same bay would soothe him with "Hold out just another two days." This dialogue went on until the wounded man managed to save a half-canteen of water. Making his complaint with a new note of determination, he suddenly held the canteen off at arm’s length and with all his summoned force struck himself in the brow.

"We could not believe that there was any way that a man could commit suicide with a canteen," said one survivor, "but we saw it done."

Commander Frank Bridget had been fading rapidly. He had an extreme case of diarrhea, so acute that he sometimes moved in a daze. Once, wandering on the open deck, he must have clashed in the dark with a sentry. He was found at the bottom of one of the forward holds, beaten up but with his clothing still intact. When death came, like many of the prisoners, he probably did not even know that he was going.

Lieutenant Colonel George Hamilton inherited the gray gabardine breeches Bridget had worn, washed them out in seawater by special permission of a guard and the aid of Boatswain Taylor, and drew them on with pride. These famous breeches made Hamilton the best-dressed prisoner after Major Robert V. Nelson, an Army dentist who possessed the warmest wardrobe in the pit.

Yet when the prized clothing reached Japan, it was worn by other men, the secondary owners having gone to join the originals.

An air force warrant officer, William Keegan, had gone through bombings and thirst with unbowed head, and had been strong enough to help hear the dead ashore at Takao, Formosa. Suddenly he collapsed of malnutrition and thirst and died.

Lieutenant Arthur Derby, a Harvard graduate from New York City and Virginia, had been suffering amoebic dysentery when he left Bilibid. Often he said, "I’d give $1,000 cash for just two sulfaguanadine pills." Though unwounded, he drooped away with malnutrition and finally faded out…

A field artillery officer, Lieutenant Dwayne W. Alder of Salt Lake City, who had become unbalanced after the Takao bombing, recovered his reason but passed away. Lieutenant Colonel Louis D. Barnes of Massachusetts of the Army Medical Corps, had been able to help his fellow physicians a little. "A tough-spirited and charming old man," a younger officer called him. His 240 pounds shrank and he died of exhaustion and exposure.

The Navy Senior Lieutenant Douglas, nephew of the famous tree ring historian of the University of Arizona, showed himself particularly unselfish, giving his strength to wash the befouled wounded and cheer them up. "God is looking after us – we’ll make Japan safely, I know." Some of his patients did, hut not Douglas.

Cold and starvation erased the perpetual game grin of Lieutenant Arthur M. Bryan.