BY THE GRACE OF GOD

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 247, 20 October 1942, Page 2

BY THE GRACE OF GOD

ESCAPE FROM PHILIPPINES AMAZING V'OYAGE IN LEAKY BOAT. TWO U.S. OFFICERS REACH AUSTRALIA.

P.A. Special.

SYDNEY, Oct. 20.

Twq 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 15 minutes they lay flat in a nativebuilt motor-boat while a Japanese plane riddled their craft with machine-gun bullets. The officers are Captain William Lloyd Osborne, of Los Angeles, and Flight Lieutenant Damon Gause, of Georgia. Their escape began the day Bataan fell. In their jouraey they eharted a ,1500-mile course with a compass that worked only in still water. They survived a two-day typhoon, and stopped at some 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 cut of sight of land in an old 22-foot 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.

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, and 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." It took months of travel for them to meet, and another month to plan their escape. Their sailing time to the Australian coast was 58 days. Their first meal after 159 days of rice and coeormts was a tin of sliced peaches. Their great worry was that the Japanese might have arrived in Australia before they did.