The Rescue of Tweed

SURVIVORS

On July 10 the U.S. fleet was softening up Guam for the invasion that was soon to come. But not all men on all ships were intent on the bombardment. On one warship, close in toward shore, sailormen had picked up the flashing of sunlight from a mirror. They watched, fascinated. What they were seeing was the end of one of the most extraordinary personal experiences of the war.

After a while the little bright eye of the mirror blinked for the last time. Then through the glasses, U.S. sailormen saw a ragged figure, a pair of wigwag flags. The flags began to flirt the air in the unmistakable, bent-arm style of U.S. signal men. They spelled out the message: "I have information."

Who could it be? Guam's garrison had been taken by the Japs almost 31 months before. The ship put over a small boat. The man on the beach waded out into the surf to meet it. In the strangely soft voice of a man whose vocal cords have not been used for months, he told his story. He was the last man of the Guam garrison and he had hidden on the island until the fleet came back again.

To the Hills. Radioman George Ray Tweed, 42, was one of 400 sailors and 155 marines stationed on Guam when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Tweed had just taken an examination for a rating as a chief radioman and was still waiting to hear the results when the Japs came.

Their bombs blew Tweed's house apart so that he had to drag his bed under a fragment of roof to keep out of the rain. He woke up in the night at the sound of firing but foggily decided that it was practice and went back to sleep. He did not realize that the Japs had landed until he heard their field guns firing. Then Tweed walked down to Government House to get the score and found that the Governor was going to surrender.

Tweed did not want to surrender. "So," he explained, "I got in my old 1926 Reo, packed some things and started up the road into the hills."

The onrushing Japs blazed away at him but Tweed rumbled off safely, picking up a fellow seaman on the way.

The Hunted. The two of them settled down in the hills to wait for the Navy to return for them--in two or three months, they figured. Tweed's companion wandered off. He got caught by the Japs, and was decapitated. Four other Americans had taken to the hills in defiance of a Jap order--surrender or be executed when caught. They were caught. Tweed stuck it out.

Natives helped him. One supplied him with rice and other food in his hideaways. He had a small lens which he used as a sunglass to light fires. He learned to squeeze the oil of coconuts and use it for cooking fuel. He shaved once a week, hus banding a scanty supply of razor blades. After a while "they almost pulled my face off."

He got a pair of shoes out of the hide of a deer he killed. He sickened once after a meal of wild fruit. But he fared pretty well most of the time. " I guess the mountain air agreed with me," said Tweed.

Hope Wanes. Occasionally he thumbed through his Bank of Guam checkbook, which showed he had a balance of $221.81, and idly figured up how much back pay he now had coming to him. He wondered how he had made out in his examination for chief. Frequently and anxiously he wondered too about his wife and two young sons, who must have given him up for dead. He wondered, too, about the where abouts of the U.S. Navy and had flags ready to signal although "after the first year I began to lose hope."

He made a crude calendar, carefully accounting for the days, calculating and recording the changes of the moon. "It was pretty important for me to know when the moon would be full and the nights would be dark," Tweed said reflectively, recalling how he had lived the animal life of the hunted. Not until the Jap Navy garrison declared Tweed dead (in order not to lose face with a Jap Army garrison that followed it), did the search for him cease.

Sailor's Reward. On June 11, 1944, Tweed's hopes suddenly soared. He saw Navy planes in numbers flying over Guam. Bombs rained down. Tweed happily hugged the earth while bombs exploded. "They were a long time coming but they're here at last," he thought.

He was right. The raid was a phase of the Navy attack on nearby Saipan. The bombers appeared often after that. Hysterical Japs began cutting off the heads of natives who even looked at the sky. Then one day at last Tweed saw what he had been waiting for two and a half years--the lean, grey ships of the U.S. Navy.

Awed and thankful, Tweed gazed at the sight, wondered where the Navy had got so many ships and rushed down to the beach under the bombardment to flash his glass and wag his flags.

A fortnight ago a calm, unruffled Tweed, his throat a little scratchy from so much unaccustomed talking, was reunited with his family in California. He had collected back pay amounting to $6,027 and an admiral out in the Pacific had made him a chief on the spot.

Nevertheless Tweed was mightily pleased to learn later that he had passed the examination which he had taken before the Japs came to Guam. It was a reward, after 20 years in the Navy.

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