ESCAPE FROM PHILIPPINES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 20 October 1942, Page 2

ESCAPE FROM PHILIPPINES

ADVENTURE OE TWO US. OFFICERS ARRIVAL AT AUSTRALIAN COAST j (Rec. 1.15 p.m.) Sydney, This Day. j Two American officers who have arrived in Australia after dodging the Japanese for 159 days while escaping from the Philippines came closest t<> death off the Australian coast. For 15 ■ minutes they lay flat in a native-built j motor-boat while a Japanese plane rid- j died their craft with machinegun bullets. The officers are Captain William Lloyd Osborne of Los Angeles ancl I Flight-Lieut. Damon Gause of Georgia. ( Their journey began the day Batan fell. In their journey they charted a 1500-mile course with a compass that ! worked only in still water. They sur- | vived a two-day typhoon and stopped at islands to plug holes in their leaky ! craft. “We are not here by navigation, but 1 by the grace of God,” declared one of the men. For as long as 16 days they [ were out of sight of land in an old 22- i foot motor boat whose Diesel engine' ran finally on a mixture, including j coconut oil collected from island natives. They had only two gallons of | this left on 11th October when an Aus- j tralian motor launch encountered them ( and guided them to a remote harbour. For as long as three days they had i gone without food, and sometimes for j two days without water, but both ar- i rived in the best of health. The two officers escaped separately after the fall of Batan. 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 tho 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 and 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.—P.A. Special Australian Correspondent.