The Luckiest Guerrilla

A True Tale of Love, War and the Army

“The people were loyal, went without food so we could eat, and suffered torture and death at times to protect us. I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for their support. Certainly our guerrilla action couldn’t have succeeded without them.” - Arthur Philip Murphy, 18 August 1964

Following the surrender on Bataan, 1942, brutal Japanese captors marched these poor unfortunates sixty-eight miles in the blazing sun, without food or water, north toward a filthy prison at Camp O’Donnell. Without weapons and without hope, the prisoners could only put one foot in front of the other and try to keep up. Thousands never made it.

As the grim enemy occupation took shape in mid-1942, approximately one hundred Americans remained loose in North Luzon. Some had fled into the jungle at the time of the surrender on Bataan. Others had managed to escape from the Death March. A few had gotten away from the hell that was Camp O’Donnell. Those who never reached Bataan had disappeared into the mountains. Gradually a few leaders emerged among them, and the guerrilla movement was born. Over the next three years, right under the noses of the Japanese occupation forces, the movement grew as disparate pockets of American and Filipino guerrillas were organized into an army totaling more than 22,000 men, poised to attack the hated enemy from the rear when General MacArthur finally made good on his promise.