MODERN ODYSSEY OF PACIFIC

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 22, 21 October 1942, Page 4

MODERN ODYSSEY OF PACIFIC

Americans Arrive From Bataan

MANY MONTHS’ TRAVEL (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) ‘ (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received October 20, 7 p.m.) SYDNEY, October 19.

Two American officers who have arrived in Australia after dodging the Japanese for 159 days while escaping from the Philippines came the closest to death off the Australian coast. For 15 minutes they lay flat in a pativebuilt motor-boat while a Japanese plane riddled their craft with machinegun bullets. The officers are Captain William Lloyd Osborne, Los Angeles, and Flight Lieutenant Damon Gause, Georgia. Their journey began on the day Bataan fell.

In their journey they charted a 1500mile course with a compass that worked only in still water. They survived a two-day typhoon, and they 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 16 days they were out of sight of land in the old 22ft. motor-boat, whose Diesel 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. Both arrived in the best of health. The Main Worry.

Tlie 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 other’s presence by “bamboo wireless,” but it took a month’s travel for them to meet and another month to plan their escape. Their sailing time to the Australian coast was 5S days. Their first meal after 159 days of rice and coconuts, was a tin of sliced peaches. Their great worry was that the Japanese might have arrived in Australia before they did.