Beach, at Palo, Leyte (south of Tacloban), as it looks today, about 30 years after General Douglas MacArthur made his historic return to Philippine soil on October 20, 1944, accompanied by Pres. Sergio Osmeña, Gen. Carlos P. Romulo, and others. An eyewitness account given by William J. Dunn, an American radio correspondent, which appeared in the Free Philippines describes the event: "The General was in great spirits, as he has been ever since we boarded his flagship for the voyage from New Guinea. When the landing barge drew itself alongside the flagship, the General showed the first faint sign on the inward excitement which must beset a man when he faces the realization of his greatest ambition. He took his place on the stern of the boat with General Sutherland, his chief of staff, who had accompanied him from Bataan, seated beside him, and as the tiny craft rocked away from the great warship, he fixed his eyes on the distant shore, smiling quietly. Then, slapping General Sutherland on the knee, he exclaimed: "Believe it or not, we''re back". "Pausing only to pick up President Osmeña and two Philippine generals, Basilio Valdez and Carlos Romulo, our boat made straight for the beach - for the one beach where our troops had encountered the heaviest opposition. As we bounced out tiny craft across the turbulent surf, there was little to mark our landing from the hundreds of others made on the same sandy strip in the preceding hours. As soon as the ramp dropped, just short of the shore, General MacArthur stepped into the surf with President Osmeña and waded, the last few yards to shore. "Once ashore, the General immediately set out on a walking tour of forward installations, plunging into the neighborhood palm groves with long strides. Pausing only to confer briefly with field officers, he covered several miles in less than an hour, inspecting blasted enemy positions, tank traps, trenches, shell holes. Only a little way ahead we could hear the occasional rattle of rifle and machine-gun fire; and heavy explosions, either our own or Japanese rifle bursts, shattered the air just a little way down the beach. "After locating and conferring with the division commander in that sector, the General took a seat at the floor of a palm tree and motioned President Osmeña down beside him. For nearly fifteen minutes the two conversed in quiet tones while literally hundreds of soldiers clustered about just out of hearing. “Probably the most dramatic moment of the entire landing came at this time when a Signal Corps officers stepped up and informed the General that the “Voice of Freedom” had been re-established. The new “Voice of Freedom” turned out to be a much-battered Signal Corps truck equipped with a transmitter and a hand microphone but nothing remotely resembling a studio. "As the General took the microphone to deliver his first message to the Filipino people, a few drops of rain began to fall. On the beach less than 20 feet away huge trucks ground their noisy way through the loose sand bearing ammunition and supplied. Bulldozers crashed their way through the nearby groves forging roads for those supplies. American planes roared overhead and American and Australian warships in the harbor continued their intermittent shelling of the positions farther inland. This then was the setting as the General began his speech. "The rain increased steadily but the General paid no attention. He spoke with obvious feeling and with a depth of emotion that belied the air of calm he had shown us since we embarked for his historic return.... "By the time he turned the microphone over to President Osmeña, the rain had become a deluge, but the Filipino leader, too, ignored the min as he talked for the first time in two and a half years from his native soil to his fellow Filipinos".