From the Horror's Mouth

C. Yates McDaniel is only 35, but his hair is almost white. It should be. As a Far Eastern correspondent for A.P., he retreated up the Yangtze with the Chinese Army, had enough narrow escapes to earn many a thread of silver. His experiences of the past fortnight entitle him to a snow-white thatch for the rest of his life. For Yates McDaniel watched the collapse of Singapore at close hand, filed a dispatch that might well have been the last farewell of a crack reporter:

"The roar and crash of cannonade and the bursting bombs that are shaking my typewriter, and my hands, which are wet with nervous perspiration, tell me without the need of an official communique that the war ... is today in the outskirts of this bastion of empire. . . . Don't expect to hear from me for many days, but please inform Mrs. McDaniel . . . that I have left this land of the living & dying."

The next seven and a half days were packed with equally nervous moments. His ship, last to leave Singapore harbor, was bombed with deadly efficiency by the Jap, was soon in flames. Yates McDaniel, propped against a coil of rope, took notes, stopping only to help fight the fires. A jam-packed lifeboat finally carried the oar-weary, bailing survivors to Bangka Island, five miles away. At dark, the tide so low that lifeboats could not float within a half-mile of the beach, the weary party began wading to deep water and rescuing launches from a nearby rubber plantation. Said Yates McDaniel:

''The next 45 minutes were the worst I ever experienced. . . . Fifty-five men and one plucky girl piled, exhausted and soaked, with their legs bleeding from coral cuts, into a launch licensed to carry 15. Forty men gave up the struggle and turned back to the island to wait. ... If the night on the island was miserable, the one aboard the launch was indescribable. Waves rolled over the deck where we were sprawled wet and shivering, but we were still hoping we'd make Sumatra before dawn brought Japanese bombers."

They did. Across 400 miles of Sumatran jungles the weary party straggled in trucks. From northwest Sumatra to a port of embarkation for Batavia they traveled in pony carts, spurred on by native tomtoms pounding out an air-raid warning. At the port Yates McDaniel saw "the most beautiful sight I ever expect to see a British destroyer hull down on the horizon, steaming full speed toward the harbor." The destroyer carried them to Batavia, where, for the first time in eleven days, Yates McDaniel could file his story, then crawl into a bed.

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