Shadows In the Jungle (19 page)

“Our planes strafe that area all the time,” an officer told them. “You're very lucky.”

* * *

Finally making it back to their camp, the men shaved and hit the showers, threw away their muddy, rotting clothes, and drew new uniforms. Then it was off to see the medics at the dispensary to treat the open sores derisively dubbed “jungle rot” or the “New Guinea crud” on their arms and legs and the blisters on their feet. Later, at their tent, the men split the booty from the mission. Lutz got the sword. Anything not wanted was turned over to the ASTC supply people to swap with the navy. Japanese war souvenirs meant better food.

That night, the men slept on clean sheets.

* * *

At about the same time the Lutz Team was striking out for the Arso River, Lt. Wilbur Littlefield was awaiting his first assignment. Like Lutz, he had been a graduate of the ASTC's third class. Littlefield had served with the 160th Regiment of the 40th Division and had gotten himself into some trouble. A lieutenant in Easy Company on Guadalcanal, he was angered by Fox Company's commanding officer, a captain, who was griping to his mess crew about someone in Littlefield's company, and Littlefield had gotten fed up.

“You're a goddamned liar,” he snarled at the officer.

Dragged in front of his own commander, Capt. Donald Moore, Littlefield was told, “Bill, you're a helluva good soldier, but you don't have enough respect for rank.”

The Fox Company captain wanted Littlefield court-martialed, but in the end he was either cooled down or dissuaded, and nothing came of the incident. Still, when news arrived that the Scouts were looking for candidates, Littlefield's name was submitted.

Littlefield's team was a tough bunch, especially Samuel L. Armstrong and Allen H. Throgmorton. Prior to joining the Scouts, both had been first sergeants until jailed by military police, Armstrong for stabbing a man to death in a knife fight and Throgmorton, who, while carrying company funds he was to deposit, stopped by a bar for a drink and disappeared for two months before turning himself in.

Also part of the team was Sgt. Zeke “Chief Thundercloud” McConnell, who was half Cherokee Indian. McConnell was born in Oklahoma, where his father had abandoned his family, and his mother died when he was just five years old. His Cherokee grandmother raised Zeke until he was eight, then was unable to do so any longer, at which point the boy was packed off to the Sequoyah Orphans Training School in Sequoyah, Washington, run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Later, he attended Bacom Junior College, also in Washington State, and was drafted into the army in March 1942.

McConnell did his basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington, then was shipped off to Hawaii, and then New Britain as part of the 180th Regiment of the 40th Division. An athletic young man who loved football and boxing, he was employed as a jeep driver for his regimental commander, Colonel Caulkins. It was Caulkins who learned about the Alamo Scouts and nominated McConnell. Accepted for training, he became part of the third class. Littlefield liked McConnell's nature skills and selected him for his team, and by the war's end the two had forged a lifelong bond as McConnell became the brother Littlefield never had.

The rest of Littlefield's team consisted of Sgt. Alva C. Branson, from California, Pvt. Elmer E. Niemela, a nineteen-year-old Minnesotan of Scandinavian descent, and Sgt. Paul Bemish.

This would be Littlefield's team until Leyte, when several black soldiers came into a bar where Armstrong and Niemela were drinking. Armstrong, who not unlike many Americans of that era held strong racist beliefs, ordered the blacks to dance by firing his .45 automatic into the floor by their feet. He and young Niemela were immediately discharged from the Scouts and sent back to their original units, Armstrong for his actions and Niemela for not stopping him. (His army experiences would change Armstrong, who, in later life, entered the ministry.)

Littlefield's first New Guinea assignment came on August 13. He and his men were dispatched to the coastal village of Vanimo to confirm American intelligence reports that the Japanese were using the area to bypass U.S. lines at Aitape, in an attempt to strike at the 6th Army headquarters. Littlefield would be working with Alamo Scout training instructor Raymond “Moose” Watson, the burly, highly likable Australian who loved the American game of baseball and could usually be counted on to either hit a home run or strike out.

For the Vanimo mission, Watson again brought along his two native police boys. Littlefield respected the abilities of these men, recalling their remarkable skills during night exercises.

That skill aside, however, the police boys' hatred of the Japanese created problems. Littlefield needed prisoners, a concept the natives seemed not to understand. Coming across two enemy soldiers digging a machine-gun emplacement near Vanimo, he turned to the head police boy and said, “You catchum Jap fella.” The natives moved forward quietly. Just before they reached the Japanese, they were spotted. One enemy soldier jumped up and yelled, “No shoot, no shoot.” The police boys gunned them both down.

“Damnit,” Littlefield cursed.

He had the bodies searched for documents, especially anything that might identify their unit, then moved on. Farther along the trail, the men came across an empty lean-to. In that same instant, another Japanese soldier appeared. Spotting the Scouts, he turned to run. The police boys shot him, as well.

Retreating back to Vanimo, the Scouts treated themselves and the villagers to a meal of fresh fish, which they obtained by tossing grenades into the adjacent river and having Branson wade in after the stunned catch. Littlefield, after not seeing evidence of any large Japanese troop movements, and having given up on the idea of taking live prisoners, called in the air corps crash boat they had come ashore in, and returned to Woendi Island.

Littlefield's next mission in New Guinea met with greater success. Near the end of August, the chieftain of a native village on the tiny island of Roemberpon, at the mouth of Geelvink Bay, arrived by canoe at Biak. He brought news that the Japanese had been holding a large number of Indian soldiers, captured after the fall of Singapore thirty-one months earlier, on the Vogelkop, where they were used as slave laborers. But as the war turned against the Japanese and their supply lines tightened under Allied pressure, the enemy was barely able to feed himself, let alone the prisoners. As a result, the Japanese were releasing the Indian soldiers, many already malnourished, into the jungle to fend for themselves or die.

“You and your team will accompany this man back to Roemberpon and confirm his story,” Littlefield was told by the 6th Army G2 officer who briefed him. “If it is true, have the natives spread the word to the mainland to bring all the men they can find to Roemberpon, and we will arrange for their return here.”

On August 29, Littlefield and his team, along with the native chieftain and Sgt. Herman S. Chanley of the Thompson Team, boarded a PT boat bound for Roemberpon. Arriving off the island and out of sight of the coastal village, with its cluster of huts built up on stilts, the Scouts put two rubber boats over the side. Littlefield called Chanley over to him.

“You ride in the boat with me and the chief,” Littlefield said. “Sit behind him. If he's leading us into an ambush, kill him.”

Chanley, who would later receive a battlefield commission and lead an Alamo Scout team of his own, nodded grimly.

Far from being ambushed, after the Scouts landed, buried their boats, and walked to the village, they were treated like conquering heroes. Men, women, and children mobbed them.

“I don't think they'd ever seen a white man,” Littlefield still recalled sixty-three years later.

The celebration was enhanced when some natives brought out what must have been the village's most prized possession, a white linen tablecloth.

“Where in the hell did they get that from?” Littlefield said.

“Beats the shit out of me,” Armstrong replied. “I haven't seen a white linen tablecloth since I joined the army.”

The natives served up fresh fruit and hot coffee and the Scouts enjoyed being the toast of the town. The next day it was back to work. Littlefield had his team reconnoiter Roemberpon, which did not take long on the small island. Satisfied that there were no Japanese hiding anywhere, he arranged with the chief to bring the Indian prisoners to Roemberpon from the mainland.

“Bring em Indian fellas long place kanaka,” he told the chief. “You savvy finish?”

The chief nodded.

Littlefield told the chief they would return to pick up the captives in two weeks. He then led his men back to where the boats were hidden, inflated them, and rendezvoused with the PT boat.

Word went out to the villages on the Vogelkop and soon native canoes were ferrying four or five former prisoners a day out to Roemberpon. On September 15, Littlefield and his men returned. With them they carried sacks of rice, both for the natives and to feed the hungry ex-prisoners.

Over the next two days, Littlefield watched more prisoners arrive, and what he saw was pathetic: emaciated, weak men in tattered clothes, their cheeks hollow, their eyes sunken into the thin faces. Some of the men could not climb out of the canoes without help.

The Indian soldiers were overjoyed to see the Americans and, despite their condition, greeted them with whatever enthusiasm they could muster. Littlefield recalled one practically skeletal man who had to be helped to his feet and propped up by two others. Yet he faced the lieutenant and snapped off a stiff British salute. That memory would remain with Littlefield for the rest of his life.

The Americans remained in the village for four days, during which time Littlefield decided on the best way to get the prisoners out. Scouting the adjacent beach he noticed the shore had a pronounced slope.

“We need to get the PT boats in as close as possible,” he said. “Some of those men are in no condition to transfer from a rubber boat to a PT deck.”

Littlefield had his team wade into the water to probe with their feet for hidden rocks or reefs. Thankfully, the bottom was clear of obstacles.

On September 19 two PT boats arrived off Roemberpon. Littlefield apprised the commanders of the condition of the ex-prisoners he would be bringing out and asked the two skippers to nudge their craft up onto the sloped beach. They agreed.

“Those skippers had balls,” Littlefield said sixty-three years later.

With the PT boat prows on the sand, the Scouts, navy crewmen, and natives began hoisting the Indian soldiers aboard. When the last of the captives was loaded, the Scouts climbed onto the decks. Littlefield turned and waved to the chief as the PT commanders reversed engines and backed their boats off the soft white sand. The Scouts were carrying about forty men away from certain death in the jungle. Later, more PT boats would come back to Roemberpon and take off more sickly former prisoners. Just how many were being saved Littlefield did not know, but he and his men had accomplished their mission of mercy.

* * *

As Littlefield and his men sailed for Roemberpon for the first time on August 29, Bill Lutz informed his team they were being sent out again, this time to Salebaboe Island in the Celebes Sea, south of Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippines.

On September 5, as the team prepared, Lutz boarded a plane for a photo recon flight over the area. Geiger would miss this mission. Down with yellow jaundice, he would be replaced by Bob Schermerhorn, formerly of the Sumner Team.

Lutz and his men arrived at Woendi Island on September 9 and were amazed at the changes since their last visit. From a simple PT base, it had now become an area overcrowded with men and ships. Three days later the team boarded the PT tender USS
Mobjack
as part of a force sailing toward the Morotai Islands, 230 miles northwest of New Guinea and 300 miles southeast of Mindanao. Knowing they were closing on the Philippines heightened the men's eagerness.

The first stop, though, was a new PT base at Amsterdam Island just off Sansapor and not far from the site of the team's first mission less than two months ago.

The invasion at Morotai, Operation Interlude, went off as planned on September 15, but two days later the Scouts were still on the
Mobjack
. A Japanese scout plane buzzed overhead and the sky filled with antiaircraft fire, which the plane managed to elude.

The Scouts' mission, when they were finally briefed on September 20, was to travel by PT boat to Salebaboe, a three-mile-wide, fifteen-mile-long island in the Seloud Group, 150 miles south of Mindanao. It was a one-day mission with the goal of grabbing some local natives and bringing them back for intelligence-gathering reasons. Accompanying them would be a Dutch army officer, Lieutenant DeBruine. Three members of the McGowen Team would go along as the contact men.

The three PT boats departed at four thirty in the afternoon. The trip was long and over dangerous waters, and all the men—Scouts included—wore life jackets. With the night, a steady rain began falling and flashes of lightning lit the sky. One of the PT boats fell behind and the timetable for delivering the team to the island was slowed. The flotilla reached Salebaboe about three a.m. and the Scouts lowered the rubber boat into the water and paddled for shore. Reaching the island, Ross jumped out onto the beach to secure the rubber boat, only to fall into a watery hole. The beach, which G2 told him was made up of “black sand,” was, in fact, deeply rutted coral, and Ross had jumped into a gully. He reemerged, sputtering and cursing. The original plan called for sending the ten-man rubber boat back to the PT boat with two members of the contact team, who had come along on the trip in. Now it was decided to keep it onshore and a radio message was sent to the PT boat to return in twenty-four hours. The coral made it extremely difficult to drag the rubber boat inland and hide it, but the men finally succeeded after much tugging and lifting. That done, the Lutz Team cautiously worked their way inland while the McGowen men stayed with the boat.