This Day in History: Damon Gause's "Great Escape" (pt. 2)

On this day in 1942, an American pilot continues his “great escape.” Damon “Rocky” Gause would make a 3,200-mile trip across ocean waters in a small outrigger skiff, ultimately landing safely in Australia.

As discussed in yesterday’s story, Gause barely escaped the Japanese after Americans’ April 9 surrender in the Bataan peninsula. He also fled the nearby island of Corregidor in a boat, but that boat was hit by Japanese fire.

After hours of swimming, he pulled himself ashore and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

“A jarring kick in the side,” he explained, “awakened me . . . . I was still so drugged from sleep that my reflexes were slow . . . I fortunately made no movement. . . . I heard Jap voices and men laughing. I had been mistaken for a dead American.”

He lay motionless until it was safe to get up, then he worked his way inland. Fortunately, a young Filipino boy found him, taking him home to hide until he recovered.

Gause pondered what to do: Wait out the war on a remote Philippine Island? Make a risky journey to Australia? If the latter, could he find another stranded American to go with him? He met Captain William Lloyd Osborne weeks later, and the two agreed to set sail for Australia.

The boat they found was roughly 20 to 22 feet long, with a small cabin. It had an old Swedish one-cylinder motor, which they dubbed “Little Swede.” The boat itself was named Ruth-Lee, for their wives.

“It was mid-August when we left Mindoro,” Gause described, “ and since at last we were Australia-bound I started to keep a log.” They had already raided a Japanese lighthouse for kerosene and other supplies. Now they were truly on their way!

There were many stomach-churning moments in the weeks that followed. Dangerous waves and storms at sea, Gause wrote, “played havoc with the Ruth-Lee.” The two men began lashing themselves to the ship during these storms, ensuring that they didn’t go overboard.

They were basically island-hopping, stopping to patch up their ship or obtain supplies at each stop.

One stop was at an island housing the world’s largest leper colony. The Japanese were known to be wary of the island, but Gause and Osborne found American doctors there, as well as a mechanic who helped them overhaul Little Swede.

Sadly, they struck a coral reef not long after leaving the leper colony in their newly patched-up ship, so they had to stop and repair the new damage. Nor was that the only coral reef Ruth-Lee would hit along the way.

Once, they crossed paths with a Japanese ship in the middle of the night. It flashed Morse code at them. “I knew only two Japanese words and purging my mind to recall the code, I flashed “Bansai Nippon” (Long live Japan),” Gause explained. The Japanese ship did not respond, so he flashed the code again.

Finally, they got a signal to proceed.

On another occasion, a shark started following them. They managed to catch that shark and ate him for dinner. Later, they encountered a sailfish that entertained itself by repeatedly jumping over Ruth-Lee, dumping water into the boat with each jump. “When at last he tired,” Gause described, “and contented himself with cavorting in the propeller wake and finally disappeared, I thought that at last I’d seen everything.”

Against all odds, Ruth-Lee arrived on the shores of Australia 52 days after she’d left the southernmost tip of the Philippines. She’d even survived a typhoon during the long trek.

“It was not expert navigation or favorable winds or even courage,” Gause concluded, “but by the grace of God and the Filipinos that I could sleep safely once more.”

The two men were flown to General MacArthur’s headquarters. The General’s response when he saw them? “Well, I’ll be damned.”

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Primary Sources:

• Damon Gause, The War Journal of Major Damon “Rocky” Gause (1999)

• Damon Jesse Gause (American Air Museum in Britain)

• Gause, Major Damon J. “Rocky” (Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame)

• Glenn Barnett, Escape From Bataan: Lieutenant Damon “Rocky” Gause fought for survival after the fall of Corregidor (WWII History Mag., May 2011) (reprinted HERE)

• War Journal: Major Damon “Rocky” Gause (World War II Foundation) (documentary)

• William L. Osborne, Voyage into the Wind (2013)