That’s the funny thing—I can’t understand it. They were fighting fools."

Today was Cinco de Mayo - an observance mostly observed in the US, and not in Mexico. It also marks the day that Battery Way, the 4 12-inch M1890 Seacoast Mortars on Corregidor, started their longest, greatest day.

Their baptism of fire came on 29 April, 1942, when the guns, up until recently deactivated but now hurriedly reactivated on the initiative of Coast Artilleyman Major "Wild Bill" Massello, were brought into action being fired in anger for the first time.

As the Japanese had celebrated Emperor Hirohito's birthday by treating the defenders of Corregidor to a artillery barrage of circa 10,000 rounds, they found themselves stunned when Battery Way opened up and fired a total of 80 rounds against Japanese forces concentrated near Cabacen.

It's a great story - and rather than essentially rewriting (and pretty much thereby plagiarizing) the webarticle of Eric Sprengle, who did all the research - I'll leave you with this tidbit to make clicking the link worth your while...

Battery Way received word of the concentration of Japanese boats and landing barges, and the gunners ran to man the mortars. Massello broke out the antipersonnel shells. They were thin-walled shells weighing 670 pounds, practically all TNT. They had a fuse 6 inches long, a complicated affair that unwound a tape as it went. The slightest little touch could set these monsters off, but their blast had a lethal radius of 500 yards. Massello had been saving them for just this occasion. Rubble was swept from the tracks leading to the last two mortars, shell and powder bags rammed home, and the guns fired on the coordinates. At the same time the big guns on Fort Drum opened fire and at a range of 20,000 yards poured shell after shell on the water craft of the Japanese second wave with deadly effect. On Fort Hughes, the mortars manned by the men of the USS Mindanao joined in, and the Japanese were caught flat footed and exposed.

At about 3:00A.M, on orders from Lieutenant Colonel Norman Simmonds, the fire commander, Battery Way shifted its fire directly onto the Japanese beachhead at North Point. However, some of the 670-pound projectiles, fell very close to the marines and soldiers containing the Japanese at Water Tank Hill. Reluctantly, Colonel Bunker had to order Simmonds to cease fire.

After this, for the remainder of the morning of 6 May, Way fired almost continuously at Bataan and on the landing barges, getting away a round approximately every five minutes. The Japanese replied with counter battery fire which Massello described at "terrific," causing steadily mounting casualties among the gunners. Yet as soon as one crew was knocked out by a direct hit in the pit, another crew would dash from the safety of the bombproof magazine to take its place. Corporal William A. Graham’s gunners fired for an hour before Japanese salvo wounded four of his men and put a piece of shrapnel through his lung. Graham said, "Well, boys, that’s my ticket but you guys keep on firing." He died shortly after. The next crew immediately took over. One the noncoms, Sergeant Walter A. Kulinski recalls with wonderment the bravery of the men. "I have never in my life seen men like that crew … they were wounded, but they wanted to fire those guns." One man continued servicing the piece although his stomach had been torn open. "You couldn’t keep them down. That’s the funny thing—I can’t understand it. They were fighting fools."

Honor Major Massello and his Redlegs of "Erie" Battery, 60th Coast Artillery, who manned the mortars of Battery Way, by reading their little-known story. It's a story of courage, innovation, and adaptation, characteristic of American soldiers with their backs to the wall.

To read that story, which is hosted at the website Corregidor.org: click here to read Major William "Wild Bill" Massello" by Eric Sprengle. H/t, JTG

I'm setting this post to publish at 23:30, 5 May. It just seems... apt.

For an taste of what Colonel Massello thought about things later in life - check out this interview.

On 6 May, 2002, 60 years after the battle, a memorial was dedicated at Battery Way to Colonel Massello.

If you'd like a better version of the pic that opens this post: Click here.