PHILIPPINES- EPILOGUE chapter 4...

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot....
Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi

Pre-1940s = paradise.  Jungles.  Beaches.  Very few people... note- we stayed in some of the most beautiful, peaceful beach resorts while here (tinges of guilt... head spinning with the irony - dichotomy of it all)

1940s = for a few years war comes... changing the landscape - and the lives of all .... tour guide noted vegetarian in area was relatively new... versus virgin jungles....   have seen some pics of post battle areas... trees all gone.. craters from the mortars

Since....  escalating population explosion and associated change / debris

Maybe not totally appropriate “theme song” for the situation, but it popped into my brain and stuck during our visit to “zig zag pass”.   I sometimes use the analogy of the human species being just like the ants I used to spends hours watching in my youth.  Busy building their roads and cities.  Forever expanding and changing the landscape. The world of our youth is not the same world we now live in.  And the world Irvin stepped into on the other side of the world 3/4 of a century ago has changed tremendously.

What was predominantly then a wild jungle... with a dirt “road” (then called highway 7) following the path worn in by wild hogs... is now a regular highway you might see in any developed part of the world.  In this case surrounded  on most sides by the squalor of the lower end of the economic spectrum.  Our guide said he had been through area once a few years back and was still a smaller, mostly 1 narrow lane road.  A more modern “interstate” type elevated expressway passes by a little further away.

Throughout the past days our guide helped play detective as we did a Watson/Holmes duet to piece together what we each knew.  And it all came together the evening before.  Still not, and probably never will, complete the whole puzzle of the details of all of Irvin’s journey, but fairly certain we have nailed down the couple of weeks that mark the epicenter of his experience.

January 24, 1945 Irvin boards troop transport ship and leaves Leyte

January 29, 1945 Irvin's ship arrives at Luzon - "Battle for the Recapture of Bataan"

We met up with our guide at breakfast and he said he had figured it out.  Irvin landed on a beach to the north of where we staying = San Narcisco and proceeded inland to San Marcelino... then headed up “highway 7” toward the zig zag pass area.  All in an area not much further than like driving from Ferdinand to Jasper... maybe Haysville... 20 miles or so.

February 1, 1945 ?? Irvin's Purple Heart injury - ZIgZag pass (not sure of exact date... battle ran from January 31 - February 11)

Irvin’s 96 years and 311 days all come down to the roughly 2 week period he spent there.  (Taking nothing away from Mary and family - his home or his work). His stories, the few times you could get him to talk about it, always came back to this.  A long journey before and after, but in hindsight now, his Life was anchored in that one short, intense, traumatic period.  He kept it buried within, but can only imagine that it was never far from the surface.

He never bluntly stated... but he saw his comrades die... and his enemy... google  the history of zig zag pass... “one of most brutal battles”... “2400 of 2800 Japanese died”... Irvin was a 30 caliber machine gunner.   In the middle of a jungle, on an island in the middle of the pacific... on the other side of the world.  Almost 10000 miles and over 4 years away from his home... following orders.. fighting for a concept called freedom... for all.

We drove through the road around the twisting bend then known as “horseshoe bend” part of the zig zag pass.  Stopped in a small square with a memorial peace marker.  One of few places we encountered on this trip with fully equipped military guards.  They pointed us to a spot we could pull off.

As we reviewed the statue, I said we need to do 2 things yet. Find some beer.. and then walk  back around the bend. We walked across the street into a... Seven -Eleven store (queue up the opening lyrics / song).   1 beer for me, 1 for Irvin, and I asked guide if he would share 1.  He said yes... and if could I also buy 4 for the driver.    Went over my head at first (only thought I had was if driver can have 4, then I can have a few more).  Our relationship with the guide was great... humor and all.

Cheryl encouraged us to walk all the way back to middle of the bend.  The guide asked local if OK to have a seat in front of his house. On a pile of old skids.  The area was really “trashy” and epitome of poverty.  The world has evolved... the ants have done their thing.

We probably did not find exactly the spot where the needle in the haystack was... but in the overall big picture we were “there”.

Drank our beers (I had Irvin’s) and called the driver to come pick us up.  We continued on the rest of what was then highway 7 back to where we started our loop a couple days earlier.

Told Cheryl “we can go home now”.  

RIP.. and thank you...Irvin..and your comrades ... RIP and eternal thanks to those who gave all...  we visited the American military cemetery in Manila after to end the day....  thousands of names of missing and thousands of crosses of some of those who never will return home...