Shadows In the Jungle (12 page)

The team moved off the beach quickly, deflating the rubber boat and burying it, along with its CO
₂
cylinder, near a tree. Assuring themselves they could quickly find it again, they struck out in the direction of the Momote airfield.

* * *

What McGowen and his team could not have known was that their arrival had been observed by a lone Japanese soldier patrolling near the beach. He had hurried back to report the Americans' landing and the nervous leader, Col. Yoshio Ezaki, commander of the Admiralty Islands garrison, immediately dispatched patrols to find the Scouts. Then he inadvertently played into the Americans' hands.

Fearing this to be the prelude to an overwhelming invasion, Ezaki began shifting troops to the west, away from the island's eastern shore at Hyane Harbor, where, so far as he knew, they would not be needed.

* * *

Considering the overall ruggedness of the Bismarck Archipelago's terrain, the Scouts' trek took them over relatively level ground. Still, in the thick jungle, there were few landmarks to guide the way, so their course was set using their original compass bearing.

McGowen and his men picked their way through the dense foliage for about three hours, then they came upon vines strung tree to tree to tree, about five feet off the ground.

“What do you make of this?” Sergeant Gomez whispered.

“My guess is it's to keep the Japs on the trail in the dark,” McGowen said. “I think the general is right. The Nips are still here.”

The words were no more than uttered when heavy machine-gun fire opened up in the distance, several short, sharp bursts. The Scouts dropped to the ground and listened in absolute silence. Then another sound reached their ears—aircraft engines, followed by the dull booming of bombs and the
rat-tat-tat
of strafing fighter planes. It was the air strike meant to cover their landing.

“Now the bastards get here,” Ramirez said.

“Probably still have their watches set to San Francisco time,” Roberts observed.

“Let's keep moving,” McGowen said.

Still advancing on their compass heading, McGowen and his team almost literally stumbled into a series of trenches running for some two hundred yards northwest to southeast, and camouflaged by small branches and leaves. The trenches were about two feet wide and two feet deep, and the dark earth indicated that they had been recently dug. In some spots, what looked like three machine-gun revetments had been carved out.

There were also signs of men—a lot of them—in the form of footprints and discarded ration packages.

McGowen was leading his team around the trenches, careful not to disturb anything, when they heard a nearby scream, possibly from a soldier wounded by the bombs. Then another, more soothing voice was heard, as if someone was trying to calm the injured man. Other voices filtered through the trees to the Scouts as well.

At the first scream, McGowen, at the point, put up a hand to indicate “freeze,” and the men stopped dead. A few minutes passed in stone silence before McGowen proceeded. He wondered how far away the Japanese were. Then he got his answer. An enemy patrol, more than a dozen men, was moving perpendicular to McGowen's team, not fifteen feet out in front. McGowen's hand shot up and the men converted themselves into statues.

Watching the enemy patrol, which he had no way of knowing was looking for him, McGowen desperately wanted to hit the ground, but he dared not. At this distance, even the slightest movement would have been spotted by the patrol. Sweat poured down his face, burning his eyes, as he watched the patrol pass by so close that he could distinguish the insignias on their dark brown uniforms. Then, oblivious to how near they had come to locating the Americans, the Japanese faded into the underbrush.

McGowen gave the enemy plenty of time to put distance between them and him before moving on. At about one p.m., the team came to a wide, swift-moving creek. McGowen halted the men and had them gather around him.

“Goddamn it,” Gomez gasped. “I thought I was gonna shit my pants back there. Any closer and we coulda smelled the breath on those rice bellies.”

He took a slug of water from his canteen to calm his nerves.

“Listen up,” McGowen said. “The airstrip is just beyond this creek. We know there are Japs there, plenty of them. I don't want to risk crossing and possibly get our asses in a real jam, only to discover what we already know, so we're heading back.”

“Suits me,” Roberts agreed.

“I think it suits us all,” Ramirez injected. “I don't know who said the Japs were gone from this island, but I wish the bastard was here with us.”

The Scouts picked their way back through the jungle, eventually coming to a well-used footpath. Hunching down in the foliage, the men watched as Japanese soldiers trudged along the trail in a steady stream. During intermittent breaks in the line, the Scouts crossed the path in ones and twos. During this slow process, Ramirez and Gomez got separated. McGowen waited beyond the path as long as he could, then said, “They can read a compass and they know the rally point. Let's go.”

By six p.m. McGowen and his men reached the rendezvous site, where they were soon joined by the absent Ramirez and Gomez. Reunited, the team continued on to a spot about thirty yards from the beach. There McGowen ordered a security perimeter set up and the men settled in for the night.

At daybreak, the team worked quickly, retrieving the rubber boat and inflating it with a CO
₂
tank. McGowen tried several times to reach Barnes on the radio, feeling the information he had was too valuable to wait until his pickup. After much difficulty, he finally got through.

“Tell Bradshaw this island is lousy with Japs,” McGowen told him.

“Roger,” Barnes replied.

About an hour later the distinctive silhouette of the PBY came into view, cruising lower and lower over the water until it touched down. McGowen's men had loaded into the rubber boat and pushed off as soon as they'd spotted the aircraft. As they rowed toward it, it quickly became evident that the same pilot who had brought them there was again at the controls, as the plane slowed but did not stop.

McGowen's team rowed the rubber boat to the side of the slow-moving PBY. Barnes, locking his knees inside the seaplane, reached out through the open hatch and grabbed the dinghy, now bobbing in the choppy water churned up by the PBY's prop wash. Using Barnes's body as a bridge, McGowen's team began crawling into the Catalina.

Despite the dangerously close proximity of the whirling propeller, four men made it aboard safely. Then the plane turned right and the prop blast from the whirring blades swept McGowen's hat from his head, dumping the lieutenant into the roiling water.

Roberts, the last man in the rubber boat, grabbed his commander's arm. He hung on tightly as the two were hauled into the aircraft by Barnes and the rest of the team. Even as the seaplane accelerated for takeoff, McGowen crawled over Barnes and into the plane, followed by Roberts. Barnes opened the rubber boat's air-release valve and let it go.

Sitting on the floor of the Catalina, wet and angry, McGowen glared at the cockpit and swore, “Goddamn that yellow sonofabitch.”

The PBY arrived back at Langemak Bay at about nine thirty a.m. Maj. Franklin M. Rawolle, one of Krueger's intelligence officers, was waiting on board the
Half Moon
for the Scouts' return. McGowen repeated that Los Negros was “lousy with Japs.”

Rawolle, realizing the impact this information would have on the invasion plans, commandeered a PT boat. Then he and McGowen were off to meet Brig. Gen. William B. Chase, commander of the landing force now aboard a destroyer en route to Los Negros.

Reaching Chase's flagship, McGowen and Rawolle were taken on board and McGowen briefed the general. Chase quickly called for a conference with his unit commanders and his naval gunfire liaison officer. He ordered increased prelanding naval gunfire, especially on the areas the Scouts had highlighted.

MacArthur, meanwhile, refused to believe the report by the McGowen Team, saying the new, untested men were overeager and had exaggerated.

Krueger, on the other hand, had full confidence in McGowen's report and foresaw disaster. In response, he dispatched additional troops to be held offshore as a reserve in case the landing force would, indeed, meet superior numbers.

Operation Brewer went off forty-nine hours later, hitting the beach at Hyane Harbor, which the Japanese had weakened in response to the Scouts' landing. Initially, as MacArthur predicted, the troops met little resistance and the island seemed to be lightly defended. In fact, the fight seemed so easy the general himself paid a brief visit to the front. But the Japanese on the island recovered from their confusion and soon met the Americans head-on, and it was the reserve forces Krueger had sent who made the difference between victory and a bloody repulse.

In tribute to the work done by McGowen and his men, Chase's after-action report declared the significance of the information supplied by the Scouts, in that “subsequent developments proved that the Scouts were . . . correct . . . with estimated total garrison of between 4,000 and 5,000 troops.”

The importance of McGowen's mission was more completely revealed later when captured Japanese documents told that the reason the island appeared uninhabited to the air force was because soldiers had been ordered not to give away their positions by firing at enemy planes.

The documents also confirmed that McGowen's team had, in fact, been spotted as they first rowed ashore, and that the Japanese had been actively trying to find them the entire time they were on the island.

Last, the papers stated that Colonel Ezaki, fearing an invasion at Chapatut Point, where the Scouts had been spotted, moved a large portion of his forces away from Hyane Harbor, where the actual landing was set to come ashore. “We were fooled,” a Japanese officer wrote in a letter that was among the captured documents.

Despite the evidence of Japanese troop strength, the air force refused to admit its error in so badly misjudging the numbers of enemy troops on the island.

Lt. Gen. George C. Kenney, commander of MacArthur's Allied Air Forces, disputed the worth of the information obtained by the Scouts, saying, “twenty-five enemy in the woods at night” is of no value.

Chase and Krueger knew better. And so did MacArthur. Never again would he question an Alamo Scout report.

* * *

Following the debriefing of the McGowen Team, the Alamo Scouts prepared a list of “lessons learned,” one of which was that seaplanes no longer be used to take teams to and from their missions. Planes are vulnerable to weather and easily spotted.

Another recommendation was that the walkie-talkies be replaced by the powerful, albeit heavier, SCR-300 radio.

The recommendations were sent to Krueger, who approved them.

* * *

The same day he did that, March 20, 1944, Krueger traveled to Fergusson Island and the Alamo Scout Training Center. There he presented a Silver Star to each member of the McGowen Team for the reconnaissance of Los Negros.

Krueger announced the pride he felt for “my Scouts,” and said their dedication and training made them elite among soldiers.

He was correct.

Over the next eighteen months the Alamo Scouts would perform 108 missions without losing a single man killed or captured in action. More important, techniques they developed are still being employed today by Special Forces and Long Range Surveillance Units.

CHAPTER 5

 

 

 

 

W
ith the fall of the Admiralty Islands on March 24, General MacArthur's next target on his return to the Philippines was the north coast of Dutch New Guinea at Hollandia, the former provincial capital.

The invasion on April 22, Operation Reckless, coincided with a similar assault 125 air miles to the southeast at Aitape. The goal of the twin assaults was to secure Japanese airfields at Hollandia, Sentani, and Cyclops, and start the process of eliminating the Japanese from the entire northern coast of New Guinea.

The Hollandia area reaches from the sea to the twenty-five-mile-long Cyclops mountain range, which rises up five to ten miles inland, with peaks topping off at seven thousand feet before descending sharply on the southern side toward the Lake Sentai Plain.

MacArthur's assault would constitute a double envelopment, with troops of the 41st Division wading ashore at Humboldt Bay (Operation Letterpress) while men of the 24th Division stormed the beach at Tanahmerah Bay (Operation Noiseless), twenty miles to the west.

The Japanese defenders, led by Gen. Kitazono Toyozo of the 3rd Field Transport Command, were ill prepared. Of Toyozo's fifteen thousand army and navy troops, only about 20 percent were combat-ready.

In addition, in eastern New Guinea, Americans and Australians were still pushing back Japanese forces in the weeks and months following the bloody fights at Buna and Gona.

With all this action going on, the Alamo Scout team leader Lt. Bill Barnes did not have long to wait for his first assignment. Three days after serving on the contact team for McGowen's successful mission to Los Negros, Barnes was climbing into the nose of a B-25 Mitchell bomber for a flight to eastern New Guinea. American forces of the 32nd Division, pushing west, were driving the Japanese back from Saidor toward Madang, where Australians were preparing to spring a trap. Barnes's mission was to scout the area around the Male River, halfway between Saidor and Madang, to make sure that the enemy was not planning a trap of his own. Since he had no photo reconnaissance pictures of the region, Barnes, seated in the bomber's Plexiglas nose, camera in hand, would be taking the needed photos as the Mitchell swooped in low over the beach.