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More in a series about notable people from my adopted hometown, Jefferson, Georgia…

Major Damon J. “Rocky” Gause

Millions of incredible personal stories came out of World War II. And one of the most amazing is that of Jefferson’s own Major Damon J. “Rocky” Gause.

Rocky Gause was a fighter pilot who became an infantryman because of wartime circumstances. While serving in the Philippines, he escaped from the Bataan Death March, survived the Battle of Corregidor, evaded Japanese soldiers while hiding out in Manila, and sailed a rickety boat 3,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean to safety in Australia.

He was a 5′ 6″, 165-pound dynamo, and he pulled off one of the most amazing escapes of World War II.

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Rocky Gause, born in Jefferson in 1915, is remembered as an exuberant, restless, adventuresome kid. He hit the road after high school, and for a time, worked in South America as an oil field roughneck.

Eventually, he returned home, married his childhood sweetheart, and enrolled at the University of Georgia. To assuage his restless spirit, he took flying lessons at the Athens airport.

In 1941, with America about to go to war, Rocky left college and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. After flight school, his unit was sent to the Philippines to await the arrival of their fighter aircraft.

When Rocky arrived in the Philippines, he began keeping a journal to document his experiences. For the next year, through a series of truly harrowing adventures, he wrote daily in his tattered notebook.

The fighter aircraft his unit awaited never arrived. On December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes began bombing American bases in the Philippines. Rocky and the other pilots became foot soldiers fighting to defend the islands.

After the initial bombing raids, Japanese ground troops invaded the Philippines. During three months of fierce fighting, the outnumbered American and Filipino defenders were steadily pushed back. By April 1942, they were trapped on the peninsula of Bataan and ultimately, forced to surrender.

What followed was the infamous Bataan Death March. Japanese troops forced 70,000 captives to walk 65 miles back to the mainland without food or water.

In the eyes of the Japanese, the defenders had dishonored themselves by surrendering. So great was the Japanese contempt that prisoners who fell behind were executed on the spot. As many as 14,000 Filipino and American soldiers died during the forced march.

Rocky, however, escaped before the march began. He overpowered a Japanese guard, stabbed him to death with his own knife, and escaped into the jungle amid a hail of bullets. He made his way to the coast and swam three miles across Manila Bay to the island of Corregidor, where the defense forces were making a last stand.

For the next month, artillery shells rained down continually on Corregidor. Rocky wrote in his journal of a shell bursting directly overhead, killing the Marine next to him. “A piece of shrapnel the size of a fist struck the man in the back and came out through his chest,” he wrote.

The Japanese landed waves of troops and tanks on Corregidor. On May 5, the badly outnumbered defenders were forced to surrender.

Being a pilot in a unit that never materialized, Rocky did not feel obligated to accept the surrender terms. He asked the American commander for permission to try to escape. The request was granted.

That night, as searchlights swept the water and Japanese patrol boats circled the island, Rocky fled Corregidor in an outrigger canoe and made his way back to Manila.

For several months, he remained in hiding, protected by sympathetic Filipinos. They moved him from place to place, sometimes from island to island, to evade the Japanese soldiers searching for him.

In August 1942, Rocky made contact with Captain William Osborne, another American officer hiding in Manila. Although neither man had boating experience, they devised a plan to escape across the Pacific Ocean to Australia, 3,200 miles away.

When word went out in the underground, Rocky and Osborne were shown an old fishing boat — a 20-foot-long, native-built wooden skiff with a tiny engine and a dilapidated sail. They purchased it with an IOU for $700 American dollars.

They named the boat the Ruth-Lee, after their wives. Their only navigation aids were a small brass compass and a map of the Far East taken from a National Geographic magazine.

The Ruth-Lee was at sea for 59 days. Sometimes the engine worked, sometimes it didn’t. They eluded Japanese patrol boats, ran aground on a coral reef, and weathered a typhoon.

More than once, they came under fire from Japanese aircraft. Rocky wrote in his journal of a bullet that zinged past his ear and grazed Osborne’s shoulder. The Ruth-Lee was raked with bullets several times and on one occasion, caught fire.

The men were tormented by mosquitoes and the blazing sun. Their supply of drinking water soon ran low, and they had few containers for catching rainwater. Although they passed several small islands, none had streams or springs. Coconut milk became their primary drinking source.

When a shark followed them for several days, the men caught it with a hook made from steel wire. The shark provided both food and moisture. When their supply of coconuts ran out, they chewed on raw fish.

Finally, on October 11, 1942, they sighted the Australian coast. Joyfully, they raised an American flag brought from Corregidor — only to be strafed and nearly sunk by a passing Japanese plane.

Ten days later, rested and well fed, Rocky and Osborne were presented the Distinguished Service Cross for “extraordinary heroism in action” by General Douglas MacArthur.

When Rocky returned to the United States, he was assigned to go on tour, speaking about his exploits and appearing at war bonds rallies. During that period, he also set aside time to finalize and polish his journal. In 1943, a few excerpts were published in a New York magazine.

But making speeches and promoting war bonds wasn’t Rocky’s style. He asked to be returned to active duty in the Pacific. Instead, with an invasion of the European mainland imminent, the Air Corps assigned him to a fighter squadron in England.

Late in 1943, just before shipping out to Europe, Rocky went home briefly to see his wife, who had just given birth to a boy, Damon. It was the only time he saw his son.

During early 1944, Rocky flew missions over Germany in a P-47 Thunderbolt. On March 9, while on a training mission south of London prior to the D-Day invasion, he put his plane into a vertical dive and apparently lost consciousness.

The aircraft crashed nose first into the English countryside. Rocky is buried in the American Military Cemetery in Cambridge, England.

Rocky’s son, Damon Lance Gause, grew up in Jefferson, and the adventures described in Rocky’s journal were a source of great family pride.

The younger Gause went on to graduate from the University of Georgia. After several years as a high school teacher and coach in Dahlonega, he became a residential engineer with Georgia Power Company.

In the late 1990s, with the help of a faculty member at the UGA journalism school, Gause made a deal with Hyperion, the Disney publishing company, to publish Rocky’s diary. “The War Journal of Major Damon ‘Rocky’ Gause” was released in 1999.

In the introduction, the younger Gause wrote that his mother tried to publish the journal soon after the war, but was blocked by the War Department. They said too many Filipinos were named in the book and would be at risk. Then, Gause recalls, he got busy raising a family, and the years rolled by.

Soon after the journal was published, Disney’s Miramax Films signed a deal with the Gause family to make a movie based on Rocky’s story. At the time, “Saving Private Ryan” was popular in theaters. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who had just written and starred in “Good Will Hunting” were to serve as executive producers.

For unexplained reasons, Miramax never followed through. Plans for the movie quietly faded.

As further proof that not every story has a Hollywood ending, the younger Gause died unexpectedly in 2006. He was 63.

Rocky’s widow Ruth still lives in Jefferson. Ruth remarried after the war, and in her new life, had two daughters and a son, all of whom still live nearby.

Among their family heirlooms is an old army footlocker that contains mementoes from Rocky’s war years: a pair of cut-off trousers, a floppy hat, a compass, a folded American flag, a stack of photographs, and a handmade paddle with “Gause” carved into it.

Rocky’s journal, however, is not in the trunk with the other souvenirs; Ruth keeps it locked away in a safe deposit box.

Lt. Rocky Gause in flight school.

Osborne and Gause posing with the Ruth-Lee before the voyage to Australia.

Captain Gause, home from the Philippines.