Last night's shelling eventually died down, but not entirely. It's still on today, mostly against the Walled City, City Hall or Post Office. The latter burned furiously all day — for the second time.

A week ago everyone predicted the Victory Parade would take place today on Washington's Birthday; now there's little interest. Everyone has enough problems taking care of casualties and friends. Water is still a tough proposition; the Army has started hitching up canvas bags of water for the people downtown. Food remains a problem despite ostentatious Red Cross figures; I saw only one tiny kitchen while touring the ruins of the city. Evacuees kept streaming in from Paco, Ermita and Malate through the pontoon bridge, looking like souls salvaged from the jaws of death, as indeed they were.

Left on a sad pilgrimage with Maurice but a flat tire put him out of the race. I continued alone to Santo Tomas, where I saw Bill Hurst out with a pass for the first time in a year. He had been "on guard" at 2130 that Saturday when he heard the roar of giant mortars and a tank suddenly crashed through the Santo Tomas wall near the entrance. It flashed its searchlight right to left then killed some Japanese sentries with its machine gun. More sentries ran out and met the same fate. The tank roared on to the main building, ending the long, long reign of Santo Tomas.

Bill said that on average, each man lost 56 pounds in the last three years. He went from 160 to 113 though he's already recovered 11 pounds since liberation. The diet at the latter stage was 80 grams of lugao for breakfast, a stew of own-grown vegetables for lunch, and rice and/or corn lugao again for supper except for the last days when the Japanese substituted soya beans. There was no store to buy food from in the last months. His 3-year old daughter went without milk or sugar in the final ten months. Last Christmas, 500 people showed up with food for the camp, but the Japanese turned them away. Just once they allowed P300 to reach him — barely enough for a packet of cigarettes.

Spirit in the camp is quite good. Both Patterson and Clelland showed great signs of the past strain, especially the former. They talked of their ordeal in a matter-of-fact manner, showing that even supreme contempt for the Japanese was not worth the effort.

. . . .

From Santo Tomas, I biked down Quezon Boulevard, walked up Carriedo, and for the first time realized the real meaning of No Man's Land. It was a fairyland of ruins; the sidewalks buried with debris so you couldn't recognize you were on a street. On each side, skeletons of concrete stood as if in a petrified forest, whitewashed with powdered ash to resemble unearthed ruins of eons past. There were no signs of civilization ... nothing printed, nothing current or suggestive of its past; just plain, drab lifeless masses of sand, clay and cement extending as far as the eye could see ... ruin after ruin after ruin. Bike tires wouldn't last a few yards over all the shards of glass.

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