Shadows In the Jungle (10 page)

Doc Canfield discussed medical and sanitary regulations with the men and stressed ways to prevent malaria and other diseases. He instructed them to take five Atabrine tablets with their evening meals each week, Monday through Thursday. He issued mosquito netting, which was to be put up around their beds in the evening and taken down each morning. Swimming was only allowed between seven a.m. and six p.m., the hours when mosquitoes are less active.

“Shirtsleeves must be worn down and trousers tucked into socks or leggings,” Canfield said. “Clothes will be boiled when possible, and a fresh uniform will be worn daily.”

While the main mission of the Alamo Scouts was to observe rather than fight, they had to be prepared to fight if need be. For that reason, Krueger demanded the men have the best possible weaponry. Any piece a man wanted was obtained for him. Carbines were the most popular, although some men armed themselves with the Thompson submachine gun and a few preferred the M1 Garand rifle.

Requests were also made for the M1A1 carbine with the folding wire stock. Designed specifically for the paratroopers, it was issued only to the airborne units. Yet if an Alamo Scout wanted one, the ever-resourceful Stuntz could supply it.

Each man also carried a Colt .45-caliber automatic pistol.

Weapons training included the use and maintenance of the Garand, the carbine, the Thompson, the M3 “grease gun,” and the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), as well as grenades, pistols, knives, garrotes, and clubs. Sniping techniques, with and without a silencer, were also taught. The men worked with the standard Mark II fragmentation grenade, the M15 white phosphorous, or “Willie Peter” grenade, and the AN-M14 incendiary grenade that burns to two thousand degrees and could melt steel.

In one drill, Teeples said, “We had to climb into a foxhole, then place a grenade on the lip of the hole, pull the pin, and duck until it exploded.” He also recalled learning to fire a 60mm mortar without a base plate or elevating mechanism. Instead, he placed the mortar against the crotch of a tree, bracing his elbows against the limbs, and, with another Scout assisting, visually aimed and fired it at a barrel anchored out in the water.

The Scouts were instructed on how to make and use snares and booby traps, how to rig explosives and set demolition charges, and were even drilled on the use of enemy weapons. They learned how to move at five- and ten-yard intervals through jungle, to negotiate wire entanglements and avoid booby traps. They were blindfolded and told to move through jungle without being caught.

During this phase, overhead personnel acting as the enemy sniped at the Scouts with live ammo, placing their rounds so close to the trainees that a few Scouts were treated for minor gunshot wounds.

By the fourth week, the men were swimming up to five miles and were given a written examination on what they had learned. By this time, some classes had less than half the men they had started with.

The Scouts also were used as a testing ground for experimental weapons and ideas. Sumner recalled testing silencers for the M1 carbine, the 1903 bolt-action Springfield, and the M3 submachine gun.

“The .30-caliber carbine models got a good testing too, and we found them to be too heavy, the core material unsatisfactory and the silencers generally unacceptable,” he wrote. “The mechanisms were steel tubes stuffed with various quantities of steel mesh or wool. Some had exhaust vents, some did not. We found too that the internal packing deflected the round fired or affected the flight of the round, usually skewing it, and we could never be sure of the strike on the target. We were too expert at our marksmanship to miss very often, and not being able to depend on the hit offset any value of the silencer. We did find that at close range—ten feet—it was effective, but if we closed to that distance, why not go all the way and use a knife or machete in a close attack.”

The army also tried to inject some medieval warfare into the Scouts' repertoire of weaponry by testing crossbows developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories. The bows were made of aluminum and steel, and fired bolts or darts of various dimensions with a wide array of barbs and cutting edges. Poison tips could even be used. The weapon came in two styles, a rifle model and a pistol-style bow.

The rifle model proved unwieldy, Sumner recalled, and good for only one shot because the loud clack emitted by resetting the bow was “earth shattering.” The pistol-style bow was better, with a maximum range of fifty feet and a killing range of twenty to twenty-five feet, and a resetting mechanism that was easy to use and virtually soundless. Bill Littlefield's team used such a bow near Vanimo in New Guinea in August 1944, killing a Japanese sentry, the bolt passing cleanly through his body.

* * *

Not every hour was spent in training. During their off-duty time, the Scouts fished, boated, and hunted wild pigs. They also played baseball and volleyball.

The men enjoyed the best of army food. Lieutenant Stuntz traded surplus items, native goods, and war souvenirs (especially the much-sought-after helmets, swords, rifles, and flags) to the navy or air corps, in exchange for fresh meat, eggs, butter, and vegetables. Stuntz also swapped cigars, chewing tobacco, pineapples, and bananas for meat, eggs, potatoes, apples, and oranges.

The first thing Bill Littlefield noticed about the eating arrangements, besides the quality of the food, was the lack of segregation in the mess hall. Officers and enlisted men stood in one chow line, and the first man in line, regardless of rank, was the first one served. Officers and enlisted men did eat at separate tables, however, since the officers used this time to discuss the next day's schedule.

Not only were Bradshaw's men happy with the arrangements at the ASTC, but so were the locals. Understanding the value of good relationships, Bradshaw employed natives as guards, laborers, and in other jobs, in exchange for which the natives received ample food, clothes, and medical care. This latter included an emergency delivery of a set of twins by Doc Canfield, who, even though one infant died, was rewarded with a fine pearl.

On Christmas 1943, the entire camp spent the holiday with the natives. On Christmas Eve, the wife of an Australian missionary to Fergusson Island led natives into the Scout camp, singing carols in English for the benefit of the men so far from home and loved ones. In return, the singers received gifts of tobacco, calico, candy, cigarettes, knives, soap, and matches.

Bare-breasted women and laughing kids presented the Scouts with tubs of flowers and fruits, and even a live chicken. For the finale, four native men gave Bradshaw a roasted goat.

* * *

During the last two weeks of training, the men put into practice everything they had learned by going out into the jungle. Sometimes one team would hide while another was sent to find them. Other times, natives were used in place of Japanese. Littlefield recalled nighttime exercises, lying in wait for the “enemy,” in this case Watson's police boys, only to have a police boy come up from behind, unheard, and tap him on the shoulder.

Bradshaw often bribed the natives, saying they could have cans of food if they found the Scout team. The Scouts soon caught on to this, and buried cans of meat. Once the natives found the cans, they gave up the hunt.

On other occasions, teams of Scouts were sent behind Japanese lines in lightly held areas to watch for movements of enemy troops and supply barges. This gave the men a true sense of what they would face.

Galen “Kit” Kittleson, who would later be a member of the Cabanatuan mission, spent one night sharing a nipa hut with the skeleton of a Japanese soldier who, possibly, had chosen this spot to die of starvation. It was a rainy night, and the roof leaked. Andy Smith, always quick with a joke, had propped up the skeleton, put a cigarette in its mouth and a GI cap on the head.

The next day, Kittleson and his teammates came across an abandoned village, overgrown with foliage as it was slowly being reclaimed by the jungle. The ground was littered with the rotting bodies of several dozen Japanese, killed either by Americans or, more likely, by natives, since several skulls were missing.

Even though training was winding down, the weeding-out process continued, although generally with less frequency.

During one training mission, an “infiltrator” climbed a cliff, entered the camp of a training team, stole a knife, and escaped undetected. When the theft was discovered, the men argued among themselves, blaming each other for the crime, and debated whether to report it when they got back to base. They did not report the missing knife, and the entire team was dismissed. Honesty was a key to accurate intelligence gathering, and Bradshaw would not tolerate anything less.

One last endurance test involved a twenty-six-mile hike through the jungle with full packs. Zeke McConnell and the Littlefield Team recalled passing through a mangrove swamp, where leeches attached themselves to their bodies. Emerging on the other side, McConnell remembered, “We had to strip down and remove the leeches from each other.”

* * *

Yet even successfully completing the training and receiving a diploma from the Alamo Scouts did not guarantee a man would be assigned to an Alamo Scout team.

The final selection was based on projected manpower needs and a secret ballot, during which both officers and men were asked to list, in order of preference, which men they would like to serve with and under. Officers were likewise told to select the men they'd most like to have on their teams. Those who failed to make the cut would still graduate as trained Alamo Scouts, but would be sent back to their original units, where their skills were put to work. So while some men's diplomas read “Retained as an Alamo Scout,” others' did not.

One of these latter was Bob Buschur. Buschur missed graduation. Following his final field exercise, he came in from the jungle with malaria. He reported to the medics, who sent him to the field hospital. There, the doctors refused to treat him because he did not have a pass from his commanding officer. He returned to Bradshaw, who saw that the young man was very ill. Bradshaw personally took Buschur back to the hospital and told the commander, “When one of my Alamo Scouts comes in here, I expect him to be treated.”

After graduation Bradshaw visited Buschur in the hospital, congratulated him on his achievement, but informed him that he was being returned to his division to ply his skills there.

“That was OK with me,” Buschur said in 2007. “I missed my buddies.”

For others, the choice of whether they stayed with the Scouts or returned to their original units was either a personal one or predetermined by their commander. Robert Sumner later wrote, “If selected, graduates had the choice of joining a team or returning to their units with their buddies. Often times soldiers felt a deep connection with their unit and wanted to take back what they learned in the Scouts. A few did that, while others were ordered back because their units needed them. In fact, many units had no intention of letting them stay because they didn't want their best men siphoned off. The needs of the army were paramount and dictated how many teams were retained.”

A few decided on their own not to remain and join a team. Terry Santos, for example, heard his old unit, the 11th Airborne, was being put on alert for a drop, and asked to go back. There he led a reconnaissance platoon and was lead scout on the Airborne Division's famous rescue mission at Los Baños in the Philippines.

Bob Teeples was one of those graduates retained by the Scouts. He remembered being “mighty proud” of the inscription on his diploma stating that he was “proficient in all subjects.”

For all of the Alamo Scout graduates, whether assigned to a team or returned to their original units, the difficult training forged a bond of mutual respect and solidarity between the men.

Wilbur Littlefield, who would be in the ASTC's third class, was in the hospital with dengue fever when he heard he was retained and was told to select his team.

“The guys were all for each other,” he recalled. “They were close-knit.”

The ASTC graduated its first class on February 5, 1944; four teams under Lts. John R. C. McGowen, William F. Barnes, Michael J. Sombar, and George S. Thompson.

Training was over. Now it was time to go to work.

CHAPTER 4

 

 

 

 

C
olonel Bradshaw stepped off the PT boat at Finschhafen even before the vessel had been secured to the pier. Striding along the wooden wharf, followed by his XO, Capt. Homer A. Williams, he headed for a jeep that would take him to General Krueger's headquarters.

This was the day Bradshaw had been waiting for. Summoned from his own HQ on Fergusson Island, he had been handed a mission for his newly activated Alamo Scouts.

On February 5, just twenty days earlier, four teams had graduated from the Alamo Scout Training Center: twenty-four highly trained men, all piss and vinegar to prove their mettle. Two of those teams would be joining him at the Finschhafen briefing. Which one would actually undertake the mission, Bradshaw had yet to decide.

One team was led by Lt. John R. C. McGowen, a twenty-five-year-old Texan from Amarillo who, like many of the men in the first graduating class, had come to the Scouts from the 158th Infantry Regiment.

Having graduated with a master's degree from Texas A&M, where he was also enrolled in the ROTC program, McGowen had worked in Panama for the United Fruit Company before the war, joining the army immediately after Pearl Harbor. (His draft board back home evidently was slow to get the message and bombarded his mother with demands that her son report for duty, even after he had been sent to the southwest Pacific.)