Tears in the Darkness by Michael Norman

and ammunition and heavy equipment throwing them off balance in the pitch and roll.
    Now the boats were heading toward shore, the wind blowing them south toward the beach at Santiago. Ryotaro Nishimura noticed debris in the water ahead of them, round metal casings floating off the bow. Mines!
    At almost the same moment, he could hear the
ping
and
snap
of bullets passing overhead, then came the
sh-h-h
and
whump
of mortars or perhaps small artillery shells landing around them.
    As the boat approached the heavy surf it started to founder, and the company sergeant jumped over the side and ordered the men into the water.
    They were bobbing about now in their life belts, beginning to separate, and the lieutenant threw the sergeant a rope from the boat. He was a good man, this sergeant, a very clever man, and he told the men in the water to grab the rope, and then he began to tow them to shore, through the roiling surf toward the beach and the sandy bluffs and earthen re-doubts where the enemy was waiting.
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    ONCE ASHORE and driving toward their objectives, the invaders knew they would be outnumbered but they did not feel overmatched. They had air and naval power, and the enemy did not. More tanks, too. Mostof all, they were sure they had better troops. The Japanese estimated that 130,000 Filipinos and Americans would be dug in against them at various places on Luzon and the other islands, but they believed that an Imperial Army force less than half that size would be more than enough to carry the campaign. 3
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[Pre-invasion Report] The Americans have the makings of excellent soldiers, but due to the torrid zone, there is a tendency to physical and mental laxness and subsequent lack of eagerness. 4
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    And they were right. According to a U.S. Army report, “the average enlistee” in 1941 “was a youth of less than average education, to whom the security of pay, low as it was, and the routines of Army life appealed more than the competitive struggles of civilian life.” They resented their officers, the army’s remote upper class, and saw their sergeants as crude overseers promoted more for their mindless forbearance, their time in uniform, than their merit. They thought the training rote and stupid, drill for “nitwits”: marching in formation, scrubbing barracks floors, shining shoes, standing frequent inspections. Instead of
esprit de corps
—a “moral force,” Ardant du Picq said, that wins battles—the average soldier in the Army of the United States had
esprit étroit,
narrowing self-interest. “Don’t stick your neck out,” he would tell his buddies, then reach for another beer. 5
    In their pre-invasion reports, the Japanese thought even less of the Filipinos: “Their military ability is lower than the Americans’.” 6
    In 1934 when the U.S. Congress voted to grant the Philippines full independence (effective in 1946) and created a Commonwealth government, the first president, Manuel Quezon, asked his American sponsors to help him plan for the islands’ defense. Quezon wanted his old friend Douglas MacArthur, soon to retire as U.S. Army chief of staff, to be his military adviser, and Washington approved.
    MacArthur’s staff drafted plans for a “citizen army” of trained Filipino reserves ready to be mobilized in an emergency. By July 1941, the Philippine Army and the American garrison in the Philippines had been combined under one command, and MacArthur told Washington that 120,000 Filipino reservists had been trained and were ready to fight. “The Philippine Army . . . is progressing by leaps and bounds,” he wired the War Department. 7
    In truth, the Commonwealth Army was more of a
levée en masse,
a force of reservists being quickly mobilized, than a standing army. The Filipinos were without adequate equipment or quarters. Their guinit helmets were fashioned from coconut husks and varnish; some had combat boots,