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They Were Expendable. W.L. White:

"Then I went out to this sympathetic American stranger's home, which was on the outskirts on a hill overlooking Cebu City and harbor. I went right to bed after supper, but first I turned on the radio by my bed. It said that Bataan had just fallen. Maybe if they could have been told that those seven fat interisland steamers were on their way loaded with food and quinine, maybe those poor, starved, fever-ridden guys could have held the line a little longer. Well, we in the torpedo boats had done what we could. And I wished that Peggy could know that, and that I could thank her for those two codeine tablets, and tell her how they let Reynolds sit out on the deck and really enjoy his last cigarette.


"Right now Peggy was probably standing in the tunnel entrance on Corregidor, where she and I had sat so many evenings, looking across the narrow waters to the tip of Bataan where the Japs now were, and back up from the water in the hills would be bright pin-points of rifle fire, where the Japs were hunting down like rats those few brave, silly expendables who still wouldn't admit they were expended, who still had a little fight left and so kept on fighting even after the generals had said it was done. Looking at this, probably she was, and knowing their turn on the Rock would come soon. Well, we in the MTB's were expended now, but we had done what we could for Bataan. and I wished that the swell brave gang on the Rock could know this. Oh, Christ! Oh, Christ! Finally I got to sleep. "