Throughout the month of MAR 1942, the US NAVY POWs on Java were being consolidated into ever growing groups. The Americans found themselves in the company of mostly Dutch but also Australian and even a few British POWs. By mid-month, the main group of the TXNG 2/131 had been moved from the tea plantation to the race track in Garoet. Small groups of men who had separated in hopes of being evacuated, were being rounded up and returned ‘to the fold’.
On the far eastern end of the island, CPT Dodson and his small group of evaders finally surrendered on Madura Island. It would be months before that dozen or so men would rejoin the rest of E Battery. Back in the west, on 26 MAR, LT(jg) WEILER succumbs to his wounds (burns?) in Serang.
LTC Tharp’s troops’ first assignment was at the Tandjoen Priok docks near Batavia where they loaded ships bound for Japan with anything and everything moveable that the IJA was looting from Java. This included sugar and oil both stored in barrels in dockside warehouses. Here they managed their first attempts at sabotage. After distracting the guards, they would add sugar to the oil drums.
Meanwhile the IJA was preparing a more permanent home for their newly acquired slaves. They were converting a barracks of the KNIL near the center of Batavia into a prison camp. Since the KNIL housed there operated more as a police force than an army, they rode bicycles around the town. This camp would forever be referred to as the Bicycle Camp.
Among the first US POWs to arrive there was a group of 2 dozen HOUSTON survivors led by LT Ross. Within the month, he would be the first US POW to die from disease (dysentery). By the end of APR, almost all the Navy and Marine POWs were in that camp as well as COL Searle of the 26th FA Brigade and a small group of his men who had intended to wage a guerilla war.
It wasn’t until mid-MAY that the bulk of the 2/131 arrived at the Bicycle Camp. It is likely apocryphal but one account has the Texans marching into camp singing The Eyes of Texas are Upon You !
By the time of their arrival, most of the senior Navy officers had already been extracted and were on their way to Japan or Manchuria. It is one of LTC Tharp’s accomplishments that he managed to stave off a similar fate for himself and his officers.
In another interesting side-story, a British Sergeant named John Morgan managed to convince the IJA captors that he was an American and had been a member of ‘Eagle Squadron’. His charade continued for some time, but was finally discovered while the POWs were transiting Singapore. His rationale for posing as an American is lost to history.
And so the US military men settled into a life as POWs that would continue for the next 4-5 months at the Bicycle Camp.