While Skau and Ringler were securing the camp, Burgess and the balance of the 1/511th reached the beach at San Antonio indicated by green smoke from the combined recon/guerrilla force. After dropping off a platoon to secure the beach and two 75 mm pack howitzers that would provide artillery support, Burgess led the rest of the battalion down the 2.5 mile road to Los Baños. When they reached the camp, Burgess later recalled, “There was a high barbed-wire fence enclosing the camp, with a gate ajar about two feet. … Our driver simply drove through the gate, knocking it to the ground, and into a large area on the edge of the camp inside the barbed-wire fence. … I was appalled at the condition of the internees. None of us was prepared for what we found. The prisoners were hysterical and euphoric, most of the larger men weighed no more than 110 pounds, and the women resembled sticks.”

But the initial success of the raid was now, ironically, threatened by the liberated inmates. Ecstatic and hysterical with joy, a mob of more than 2,000 men, women, and children was chaotically milling about, oblivious to the fact that deliverance, though at hand, was not yet secured. Additionally, there were scores of inmates who were so incapacitated that they could not walk, and would need assistance. With the camp exposed on a flatland dominated by high ground to the south from which the Japanese 8th Division was sure to come once it received the word of the raid, Burgess had little time to gain control of the situation, organize the internees, and begin the evacuation.

A separate unit, Soule Task Force, was supposed to be heading overland from the north in support of the raid, but Burgess had not been able to establish communication with it. Burgess quickly decided he could not afford to wait for the task force’s arrival. Everyone would leave via Amtracs immediately. This proved to be a wise decision; though it was successful in temporarily diverting enemy attention from Los Baños, Soule Task Force never reached the camp.

Burgess next had to solve the problem of how to round up the milling internees. During the firefight, some buildings on the far side of the camp and the opposite the parked Amtracs had been set ablaze. Burgess ordered troops to clear the buildings in advance of the spreading fire and guide internees to the Amtracs. Sister Maria del Rey Danforth recalled the reaction of an American soldier who burst into their barracks: “’Won’t my mother be proud when I tell her I rescued the sisters,’ he said.”

Those who could walk had already headed toward the beach, where they would be assigned an Amtrac. Those who couldn’t walk were loaded into the amphibious vehicles. Just before noon, the evacuation was complete, and so far the Japanese army had yet to appear.

The first internee-laden Amtracs reached San Antonio at about 10:00 a.m. After the last Amtracs arrived shortly before 1:00 p.m., they assembled in columns of threes, motored into the lake, and ran the gauntlet of ineffectual, though nerve-wracking, Japanese artillery fire from the east near Mayondon Point. Meanwhile, Japanese forces were finally advancing toward San Antonio. By 3:00 p.m., all of Burgess’ battalion, including the pack howitzers, had successfully departed. The raid was a total success. Remarkably, not a single casualty was suffered.

The day after the Los Baños raid, MacArthur said, “Nothing could be more satisfying to a soldier’s heart than this rescue. I am deeply grateful. God was certainly with us today.”

This article was first published in The Year in Special Operations: 2004 Edition.