The second order was to locate Lieutenant James M. C. Whittaker of the Army Air Corps and, if he was still alive, order him to Corregidor.
Hear Abucay, Bataan 1330 Hours 10 March 1942
First lieutenant James M. C. Whittaker, United States Army Air Corps (Detailed Cavalry), late of the 414th Pursuit Squadron (disbanded IO December 194 1) and late of the 26th Cavalry (which had been dismounted and for all practical purposes disbanded 16 January 1941), was wearing pink cavalry officer’s breeches and kneehigh riding boots. Most of his uniforms had been destroyed when BOQ at Clark Field had been bombed out on 9 December. The cavalryman’s breeches and boots had been in the apartment in Manila.
On 12 December 1941 he had managed to get to the apartment enroute to Clark Field, where he had been handed a message informing him that Chesty Haywood Whittaker, Jr., had died of a stroke. While still terribly shaken by that, his turn came to appear before a hastily convened board of officers.
“The situation, gentlemen,” an Air Corps major told thirty-three young Air Corps officers, fliers and nonfliers, “is that we have a surplus of Air Corps officers and a critical shortage of ground force officers. You have been selected for detail to ground duty. The board will determine where your past experience will permit you to best in.
His appearance before the board, four field-grade officers of the combat arms and the Signal Corps, had been brief.
As Whittaker was still in the process of saluting, a cavalry officer smiled and turned to the others.
: UKAFFIN “We’ll take this one,” he said. “How are you, Jim?”
Two weeks after the cavalry major, a fellow polo player in happier times, had welcomed Whittaker into the “gentleman’s branch of service,” he was killed by mortar fire on the Bataan Peninsula. And just two weeks after that, an even more informal board of officers, convened to reassign what was left (not much) of the officer corps of the 26th Cavalry, had assigned Lieutenant Whittaker to the Philippine Scouts.
That assignment hadn’t lasted long either. Lieutenant Whittaker, who had let it be known that he had had summer jobs in construction, where he had learned to handle explosives, became commanding officer of the 105th Philippine Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal Detachment. The unit consisted of two Americans, himself and a Regular Army staff sergeant, George Withers, and eight Philippine Scouts, one second lieutenant, one master sergeant, and six technical sergeants. Lieutenant Whittaker had unit promotion authority to technical sergeant, and he had promoted all of the Scouts, none of whom had previously held rank above corporal.
Lieutenant Whittaker’s tall riding boots were highly polished. They formed an interesting contrast to the rest of his uniform: a peasant’s wide-brimmed straw hat, a short-sleeved white (nonuniform) polo shirt, and a Colt Model 1917.45 revolver (manufactured for the last war) stuck in the waistband of his breeches.
For a number of reasons, Lieutenant Whittaker was highly thought of by his subordinates. For one thing, they were all eating well. Lieutenant Whittaker carried with him a strongbox containing gold coins. One of his missions when assigned to the 26th Cavalry was to visit a rural branch bank and relieve it of its gold before the bank fell to the Japanese. When he returned with the coins, the officer who had sent him was dead, and he decided that he could put the gold to better use keeping his troops fed than it would serve in a box sent to Corregidor.
The natives on Bataan did not trust paper money. But they would sell rice, eggs, chickens, and pigs for gold, and Lieutenant Whittaker had kept first his Filipino troopers of the 26th Cavalry and now his Boom Boom Boys well fed with the coins from the bank. The gold had also purchased transport, when other units had none, and gasoline. The Boom Boom Boys had two pickup trucks and one fenderless 1937 Ford convertible. Some of the fuel came from dwindling Army stocks (because getting Explosive Ordnance Disposal people where they were needed enjoyed a high priority), but most of it Whittaker bought from the natives.
He was regarded highly even by Staff Sergeant George Withers, who did not ordinarily have much respect for officers who were not West Pointers with fifteen years’ service. Staff Sergeant Withers was a highly skilled Explosive Ordnance Disposal expert, and Whittaker readily acknowledged Withers’s superior technical skill when it came down to taking the fuse from an unexploded 105 or 155 shell.