While understandable on a personal level, it was heartbreaking on a professional level because writers seldom get the opportunity to relate the story of a true blue All-American war hero, let alone one from World War II who is nearing his 90th birthday.

So when Ted Moran, who grew up in Sharon and now lives across the border in Vienna, politely told me a story was a no-go, I humbly thanked him for his time, told him I respected his decision and said good-bye.

For a couple weeks his story remained in the corners of my mind, not quite close enough to push me to call him again and not quite far enough away for me to forget it.

I had an opportunity to learn just a small part of Moran's story in his own words from two parts of a five-part series he wrote for The Herald in 1945. I'm still trying to track down the other three parts, but the two that did appear in another veteran's scrapbook made quite an impression on a writer who knows in 21st century America real heroes are hard to find and the ones that are too often come from our athletic fields.

Here was one at my fingertips, yet for very personal reasons didn't want to talk. But his story, or at least the small portion of it I discovered, was just too compelling to let sit stuck in the pages of a scrapbook. So with respectful apologies, here is a small part of his story.

Moran was a corporal in the U.S. Army who served in the Pacific Theater of Operations during the war. In July 1942, he and five other American soldiers escaped from a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines while working in a Luzon sawmill and lived in the nearby jungles among mostly friendly Filipino natives for 2èyears.

Ironically, one of the five, Sgt. James Smith, was a New Castle native. The others were Cpl. Walter Mims of Coffee Springs, Ala., Pfc. Charles Buckholz of Kalamazoo, Mich., Pfc. Celso Lucero of Albuquerque, N.M., and Cpl. Espedie "Speed" Ruiz of Gallup, N.M. Moran, Smith, Mims and Buckholz served with the 803rd Engineers, attached to the Army Air Corps, while Lucero and Ruiz were with the 200th Coast Artillery.

Following are excerpts from the second and third parts of Moran's chronicle published in The Herald in 1945:

We were introduced to "Chief Sacki of the tribe of Igorotes who was head of four or five villages in the area of the Kalinga mountains. Some of the Igorote tribes are head hunters but his weren't.

... The Japs discovered that day that we had escaped and they increased their patrols to try to find us. From where we were hiding along the river bank, we could look up to the hills and see them several hundred yards away.

... The natives found us a nice spot in the mountains. We built a grass shack and here we started to live our isolated life which was to last 30 months. We called the shack of pine logs tied with rattan and which had a grass roof 'American Barrio.'

... As the months passed monotonously, the strain of just the six of us living there in close quarters started to tell on us. We had to stay inside all day and just went out at night to try and find food. We got so we knew what was in each other's minds and what each one was going to say. Finally, we hated the sight of each other. In other words, we were going 'stir crazy.' ... We would argue for hours about some little thing just to pass the time. We made mountains out of molehills. I still don't see how we kept from going nuts. Several times our arguments ended in blows. But that was all right. It gave us an outlet for our emotions.

... The location of our shack was about 300 miles north of Manila and about 12èmiles from the nearest town. Naturally, we never went into the town for fear we'd be reported by collaborators. They were our greatest fear. The mountains where we were were from 6,000 to 8,000 feet high and they were wooded. The jungles were so thick in some places you couldn't see the sky. We were about two kilometers (a mile and a quarter) from the nearest Jap garrison. Of course one of us always stood guard and the Igorotes would post one for us too. ... When it got too 'hot' we'd cut the rattan bindings on our log shack and let the roof fall in, making it look deserted.

... Chief Sacki was wonderful to us. We wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for him. He'd take money from the Japs to help them look for us. ... He was a man about 45 or 50, big for a Filipino and broad shouldered. He came about up to my shoulder. The chief always had a big cigar in his mouth.

... If a problem came up in the tribe, they had a meeting. And we were the subject of more meetings! A Jap patrol would go through nearby. And then the natives would talk among themselves. Would they turn us in or wouldn't they? Japs tortured natives in villages where they found them harboring American prisoners. The barrio was divided. One group wanted to turn us in and the other group didn't. When there seemed danger that they might, the chief took us into the mountains for a few days till things cooled off.

In December, 1942, we had our first Christmas in the jungle.

The boys decided to decorate the shack. Speed and Jimmy Smith and Celso set up a Christmas tree and decorated it with pine cones and boughs.

Our Filipino friends put on a party for us Christmas eve. They brought up a pig and some native sugar cane wine called "bassi." Between the bassi and the roast pig we managed to have a happy time. Some of the natives were Christians and they joined in.

We always got along fine with the natives. Whatever they did was all right with us. We respected their native rites and they respected ours.

... All in all, things went along rather smoothly until January of 1943. We had our ups and downs in our life of isolation but we were lucky to be alive.

But Jimmy Smith wasn't feeling very good and finally he became bedridden. We found out Jimmy had malaria and we had nothing to fight it with. As the days went by Jimmy got worse. The fever was beginning to show on him. We tried to get quinine through the natives but there was none to be had. The natives tried to cure him by various rites they performed outside our shack where he wouldn't hear them and be disturbed.

Jimmy got pretty bad towards the end of January and one of the boys went down and got Chief Sacki. He made everyone get inside -- both Americans and Filipinos. Then he went outside and began shouting and talking to the spirits. We found out later from one of the tribesmen who knew a little English said that Sacki had been telling the spirits to leave Jimmy's body and not take him away because the chief wanted him to stay alive. The chief also offered up sacrificial pigs and chickens for Jimmy's recovery. But in spite of everything he could do, Jimmy died Feb. 2, 1943, of malaria.

We didn't know what to do. We were heartbroken over the whole thing and pretty bitter. ... The boys decided then that it was to be my job to bring the news of Jimmy's death home to his parents. And it's the hardest job I've ever had to do.

After Jimmy's death, the natives made us move away from the spot. Because of some superstition they didn't want us to live where Jimmy had died.

The place at which we built our second shack was about a kilometer from the Jap garrison. ... We built this new shack of pine logs tied with rattan, the same as the other, with a tin roof.

... Our chief food was rice. I could cook rice with my eyes shut. I'll always have respect for rice. It pulled us through. ... Sometimes when the Filipinos brought food to us they'd bring a dog to eat. They told us at first it was deer meat and that's how we started on it. The native men would eat dogs but the women wouldn't. Later we learned to eat monkeys too. You can eat anything when you're hungry. The big thing was to get enough food to keep alive. When I look back on it now I don't see how we did it. I've seen them cut up a dog, throw intestines and all in a pot without cleaning it, cook it only five minutes and eat it.

... We used to watch the Japs every day. When their patrols got too heavy, we moved for a couple of weeks. We had smaller shacks and lean-tos that we stayed in at various places in the hills.

... We didn't 'go native' but learned to eat with our hands, build native-style huts, make snares for wild chickens and roll cigars from tobacco leaves. We were barefoot from before we escaped from the Japs in July 1942 to the time we joined the guerillas in November 1944. All we had to wear was a pair of shorts and a shirt. ... We kept patching and patching our shorts until you couldn't find the original cloth any more."

Moran's story, or the third part of it, ends shortly thereafter. It provides a small glimpse into the mind of a remarkable man during a remarkable time of his life.

Americans can hold their athletes up as heroes if they'd like. I'll take a guy like Ted Moran any day, thank you very much.

You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Jeff Greenburg at:
jgreenburg@sharonherald.com.

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