Shadows In the Jungle (17 page)

At five forty-five a.m., after cruising three or four miles south of the river mouth, the three boats closed in to within a few hundred yards of the shore. Jones took the microphone of his radio and told the other boats, “OK, here we go.”

He pointed the boat north and pushed open the throttles. The PT boat leaped forward, skimming across the ocean at twenty miles per hour. The other two boats followed about a hundred yards behind.

As they reached the target area, Jones yelled into his mic, “Commence firing.”

Instantly, the 132's bow-mounted 20mm gun opened up, as did the four dual-mounted .50-caliber machine guns located in two gun tubs. The stern-mounted 40mm Bofors was last to join. This cacophony of noise, multiplied by the three boats, tore apart the quiet night. The darkness was lit by colored tracers, leaving a fiery trail as they sought targets inland. Brass shell casings from all the weapons clattered to the wooden deck, striking each other and ringing like the bells of Hell.

The PT boats walked their fire along the coastline. Then rounds from the rearmost boat found a fuel dump, and an angry ball of orange flame and thick black smoke billowed a hundred feet or more into the sky, followed by a deafening explosion. Incendiary rounds from the PT boats added to the deadly pyrotechnic display.

Sumner was speechless, as it seemed as if the entire shoreline was ablaze.

Passing the target area, Jones ordered the boats to do another 180-degree turn.

“We're gonna hit 'em again,” he said.

The PTs raced back, pouring another barrage of fire into the area. Now there came a twinkling of light from the shore, followed by waterspouts and a whizzing noise in the air. The enemy was firing back, fortunately with light weapons. The .50 calibers on the PT boats zeroed in on the muzzle flashes, and the Japanese fire diminished. Meanwhile, in the staging area, more balls of flame rose skyward, adding to the inferno already in progress.

“On me,” Jones said into the radio, and turned his boat into the mouth of the river, the other two close behind. In the estuary, the PTs raked one shoreline, then the other, as well as the small islands. Fires raged everywhere, both onshore and on the water. Barges were shredded by the heavy fusillade of automatic weapons fire.

The Japanese onshore returned what fire they could, and bullets thunked into the wooden boats. With full daylight now upon them, Jones turned the 132 toward the mouth of the river and led the way out.

Emerging into the open sea, the three PT commanders pushed open the throttles and unmuffled the engines. The Packards roared and the screws bit into the water. The trio of PT boats, bows lifted in the air, spray cascading over their decks, sped away at forty-five miles per hour. As the coastline diminished, so did the volume of return fire, although some heavy-caliber slugs still hissed into the water around the retreating boats.

“Think they're still mad?” Coleman asked, as he watched the waterspouts from the Japanese bullets.

“Let's just say I wouldn't expect no Christmas card from them this year,” Jones replied.

After leaving the throttles open for fifteen minutes, the boats finally slowed to about twenty-five miles per hour. Jones picked up his talk-between-ships mic.

“Damage report,” he said.

Both the 128 and 131 responded with no damage, no casualties.

“Let's go home,” he said, and set course for the three-hour trip to Woendi Island.

Sumner was elated and, based on the grinning faces around him, so were his men. His team's first mission had been a resounding success. They had scouted out an enemy supply base and made possible its crippling, if not its destruction. And they had done it with no injuries.

“Good job, guys,” he said, and shook each man's hand.

McGowen, beside Sumner, said, “When we get back, we'll debrief with the Naval Ops guys at Woendi. Then you can radio your report to ASTC at Hollandia. Every mission is a learning experience, and what we do out here is incorporated into training for the new teams.” He stuck out a hand. Sumner took it and they shook. “Excellent mission, Bob.”

“We had some luck,” Sumner said modestly. “I just hope it continues.”

He went below to get some rest.

CHAPTER 7

 

 

 

 

O
n July 30, 1944, over seven thousand troops of the U.S. 6th Army came ashore unopposed along a twelve-mile front between Cape Sansapor and Cape Opmarai, on the north-western coast of the Vogelkop Peninsula, the last major objective in MacArthur's retaking of New Guinea.

Code-named Operation Globetrotter, the island has a rugged, mountainous terrain, cut by numerous rivers, and includes coastal terraces ideal for airfields. Planes from these fields would be able to block Japanese shipping from the East Indies and the Philippines and isolate the fifteen thousand Japanese on the eastern side of the Vogelkop, as well as those still fighting on Biak and Noemfoor islands.

More important, at least to MacArthur, taking the Vogelkop would bring him to within six hundred miles of Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippines.

Lt. William B. Lutz and his team had been idle for the entire month since their June 22 graduation from the ASTC. A serious-minded man, Lutz was more concerned with getting the job done than in rewards for doing one's duty. In other words, as he informed his men, neither he nor, by extension, they were in the war for glory and medals.

“We're here to win the war as fast as we can, and I'm not going to worry about handing out medals,” he told his team. “If any of you have a problem with that, speak up.”

No one did, for Lutz was a methodical and thorough officer, and the men felt confidence in his leadership and believed that his decisions were not going to get them killed.

Religious “before it became fashionable,” Scout Jack Geiger recalled, Lutz often read Bible passages to his team, who were a mixed bag of men. There was Cpl. Clifford A. Gonyea, who, for reasons none of his surviving teammates recall, was nicknamed “House Wrecker,” and Pvt. Robert E. Shullaw, the team's radioman. There was the tall Sgt. Bob Ross, a Jewish man who, when the army cooks served pork—as they often did—called it beef and ate it. Staff Sgt. Oliver Roesler's father was a Pacific Northwest lumberman who also owned a small farm in Washington State, growing raspberries and raising cows and chickens in order to keep his sons “out of mischief.” Roesler was a Seventh-Day Adventist, “although,” he admitted, “not a very good one.” And there was Pfc. Jack Geiger, whom his buddy Ross nicknamed “Handsome Dan.”

Ross and Gonyea had served as the contact men for the Hobbs Team on a two-day mission that included reconnoitering Japen, Naoe, and Koeroedoe islands in early July, but aside from that, it was just lying around camp on Woendi Island, playing cards and volleyball and exercising to stay fit.

The men's spirits were raised around July 13 when a message was received to “hold Lutz Team for a mission for 6th Army.” The mission, a two-day excursion that came on July 22, was to land about twenty miles east of Sansapor, three hundred miles behind Japanese lines. The enemy had long been operating a barge staging area in Cape Sansapor, running supplies between Sorong and Manokwari to the east.

The team, along with a Dutch youth to serve as interpreter, was to escort Lt. Everett M. Hodges, a 6th Army engineer, onto the shore to map out serviceable roads, fresh water supplies, and bivouac areas in advance of the July 30 invasion. A reconnaissance a week earlier by Alamo Scout Jack Dove said the target area seemed unoccupied by enemy troops.

“He's a good man,” Ross told his friend Geiger, referring to Dove. “If he'd seen any Japs, he and his tough bunch of bastards would've killed them, like they did on that Hollandia job back in June. They killed thirty Nips that time.”

The trip from Woendi Island by PT boat—there were two of them, one for the Lutz Team and one for Dove's contact team—was long and arduous, and necessitated a stop to refuel at Noemfoor. There, the Scouts swam in the clear Pacific while, onshore, the sound of battle rumbled across the water as GIs mopped up the remaining enemy troops. Around five p.m., with the boats refueled and two hundred miles still to go, the Scouts continued their trip, arriving in the Sansapor-Cape Opmarai area around midnight. The trip had been uneventful, except for around sunset, when a Japanese barge was spotted on the horizon. As the boats' crews and the Scouts anxiously prepared for action, it soon became evident that the barge was actually a large, partially submerged tree. The men were disappointed because, as Ross said, they “didn't get to see a show.”

At the landing point, the rubber boat was inflated and lowered into the water. The sea was calm and visibility was good, almost too good, the men thought. After signaling the PT that they were ashore and OK, Lutz told Gonyea and Ross to deflate the rubber boat. The men tensed as the air hissed from the craft. It was then rolled up and hidden, after which the team settled in to get some sleep as best they could as the local insects tried to eat them alive. Up at dawn, the team had coffee and a breakfast of ten-in-one rations, good for either one man for ten days or ten men for one day.

Penetrating four hundred yards inland, the team struck off to the east, paralleling the shoreline. During a rest break, Geiger heard the shuffling sound of footsteps and signaled the team to freeze. Four armed Japanese soldiers were walking along the beach, coming toward Lutz's position. As Geiger watched, three more appeared, following the first group. The Scouts lay silent, watching from the underbrush as the seven men passed by, breathing a sigh of relief only when they were gone from sight. Lutz pointed eastward, and the men headed out. Two hours later they reached the bank of one of the many rivers that flows down from the Vogelkop's mountainous interior. This was the easternmost boundary of their patrol area. As they arrived, a Japanese soldier, bare-chested and dressed in shorts, came walking along the bank. He shouted to an unseen person on the opposite shore, then continued walking. Roesler, at the point, was barely ten feet from the man, and for one chilling moment the Japanese soldier looked right at him. Their eyes seemed to be locked, but because of the tall grass and Roesler's camouflaged uniform and painted face, the soldier failed to see him, and thus lived.

Continuing on, the Scouts crossed a jungle trail marred by the many footprints of passing Japanese. The patrol route next took them up a large hill, where they stopped. This was the end of their patrol area, and they headed back. Approaching the jungle trail again, Roesler, still at point, shot up his arm to signal “freeze.” Two unarmed Japanese, evidently stragglers, were walking along the trail, carrying huge packs. The two were not molested and the Scouts continued their westward walk. Stopping for the night to eat some supper and get some sleep—their ten-in-one ration included roast beef, corn, and peas—the men got a rude surprise. Shullaw spotted four Japanese soldiers approaching along a trail Lutz and his team had been unaware of because, Geiger said years later, they had failed to reconnoiter before they stopped to rest—a first-mission mistake that would not be repeated. The Scouts froze to immobility.

After the Japanese had passed, Lutz whispered, “Sweet Jesus, I didn't realize we were still so close to the trail. Roesler, Gonyea, check it out.”

Roesler and Gonyea crept toward the trail, found it was less than ten yards away, then hurried back. Gonyea also gestured that four more Japanese were coming, all armed. The Scouts huddled down in the vegetation until the soldiers had passed, then Lutz led the team deeper into the underbrush, to find safer overnight accommodations. Still, as the men lay restlessly on their ponchos, they could hear Japanese soldiers shouting to each other in the distance. To add to their misery, a drenching rain started to fall. The men spent a miserable night, with each man standing watch for an hour and fifteen minutes in the steady downpour.

Good news came with the dawn. Hodges, reviewing his notes, said he had all the information he needed, and the team could return to the pickup point. Arriving at the beach by late morning, they retrieved the radio and rubber boat as another heavy rain began pouring down on them. An attempt to stave off the deluge by erecting a shelter with their ponchos proved futile.

The Scouts observed the beach all day in case more Japanese came by. The men were wet, miserable, and irritable, and any enemy soldier who crossed them that day would not survive. Luckily for the Japanese, none did.

The PT boat arrived on schedule that night, although it hit a log and bent one of its three screws, slowing the trip home. The Scouts, tired and drenched to the bone, sat in the tiny wardroom, enjoying cups of hot cocoa. However, sleep on the PT boat proved just as elusive as on the island. The surf kicked up by the rain squall kept dumping the men on the top bunks onto their buddies in the lower berths.

Back at Woendi, the team found that their tents had been taken over by Red Sumner's men, so they had to move to new quarters elsewhere. Lutz and Jack Dove were flown to Wakde with whatever intelligence had been gleaned at the Vogelkop. Lutz's men joined him a few days later. Camped near the edge of the American perimeter, the men were kept awake by intermittent Japanese machine-gun fire, and jarred by an enemy artillery round that exploded on the nearby beach. By August 8, they were back in the safer environs of Hollandia, where they could quietly recover from the insect bites and crotch itch that afflicted them.

But the respite would not last long.

Six days later, on August 14, the Lutz Team was dispatched to the village of Arso, twenty miles inland from the Hollandia invasion area. The Japanese reportedly had established a radio station there, and although the air corps had bombed the place repeatedly, it was uncertain if they had successfully knocked the station out. The Lutz Team was to recon the village, check on the damage, and see if the radio station was still operational. If it was, they were to destroy it, which could prove difficult. Allied G2 estimated two hundred Japanese in the area of Arso.