Shadows In the Jungle (24 page)

After all the hostages were freed and the village scoured for documents, the Scouts went about tossing phosphorous grenades into the huts until all were burning briskly, the bamboo walls and thatched roofs crackling. Smoke and flaming embers drifted into the night sky as the Scouts led the captives toward the pickup point. It had been just four minutes since the first shot had been fired.

Because of the dense jungle, Nellist had not heard Rounsaville's signal shot, nor the gunfire that followed.

Reconnoitering the Japanese defensive position, he had discovered a bamboo hut with a palm-thatched roof, mounted on stilts. A ladder led up to a small porch. Nearby were three foxholes, two of which held machine guns. None of the guns were attended.

Nellist waited anxiously for Rounsaville's signal. At one point he and his men had been forced to lie low as two Japanese soldiers emerged from the hut. One man carried his tunic and stepped into the bushes nearby to relieve himself. The other spoke to him as he stoked the fire and put a pot of water on to boil. One of the men, possibly having heard some slight noise, rose, picked up his rifle, and walked to within a few yards of where Kittleson and Siason lay hiding. He spoke to his comrade, who said something back, and the man returned to the fire. Two other soldiers now emerged and strolled into the bushes to attend to nature.

After waiting close to an hour for the signal, Nellist decided he needed to attack. He and Cox, who carried a twelve-gauge Remington automatic shotgun, crept to within ten yards of the fire. Then Nellist, one of the few Scouts who used a Garand, took aim and fired. The impact of the round tossed his man over onto his back. Cox leveled his shotgun and blasted the second man, who was thrown as if hit by a brick.

Kittleson and Siason leaped to their feet, ran forward, and cut down the other two. Siason saw an unexpected fifth man dive into the bushes, and, investigating, found an officer, pistol in hand but too terrified to fire. Siason leveled his carbine and squeezed off three rounds.

“Bastard,” the Filipino hissed at the dead man.

“Search them to make sure they're dead,” Nellist said. “Check the hut for documents, then burn it. And grab those two machine guns.”

While this was being done, Rounsaville's runner arrived and Nellist got on the radio to Dove.

“Nellist One,” he said. “Recover.”

“Roger,” Dove replied.

Dawn sunlight was starting to stream in through the trees when the caravan of Scouts and freed hostages arrived. As preparations were made to depart, Alfonso thought he heard a noise in the jungle, and pumping a round into his shotgun, he went to investigate. A skinny white man jumped up from the undergrowth, shouting in broken English, “Me no Jap. Me Frenchman. Me got wife and ten children. Go with you.”

“What the hell?” Alfonso muttered to himself, then said to the frightened man, “Well, come on if you're goin.'”

Thus, the Scouts' troupe of refugees was increased by twelve, bringing the total number of escapees waiting to board the PT boats to seventy-eight. By seven a.m. the boats were idling offshore and the loading had begun. It was a slow, tedious process, as Dove's scratch team helped the civilians get from the beach to the boats while the Scouts set up a defensive perimeter around the pickup point. When all was done, the eighty-foot Elcos were jammed with bodies fore and aft.

As the PT skippers pointed their bows toward Biak and sped for home lest they be caught in the open by enemy aircraft, the refugees, happy their ordeal was over, broke out in song. Regaling the Americans with the Dutch national anthem, they gleefully pounded the Scouts and sailors on the back.

News of what Rounsaville later called a “flawless mission” and a “textbook operation” brought instant recognition to the previously unknown Alamo Scouts. Although the mission was officially classified until February 1945, word leaked out and on October 13, 1944, less than ten days after the completion of the mission, Bradshaw's hometown newspaper back in Mississippi, the
Jackson Daily News
, ran a headline proclaiming, BRADSHAW WINS MEDAL FOR TRAINING PACIFIC SCOUTS and told of his being awarded the Legion of Merit by General MacArthur for the Oransbari raid. Two days later an Associated Press war correspondent, Murlin Spencer, arrived to pen a three-part story recounting the exploits of the Scouts.

As for Nellist and Rounsaville, their adeptness in delivering the prisoners unscathed from Japanese hands would not be forgotten by Krueger. In January 1945, they would be called upon to repeat this performance as part of another rescue mission, this time in the Philippines at a POW camp near the city of Cabanatuan.

* * *

The rescue at Cape Oransbari marked the last mission by the Alamo Scouts in the New Guinea area during World War II. Between February and October 1944, the Scouts conducted thirty-six missions, from Los Negros in the Bismarcks to Sansapor on the Vogelkop. They had been awarded nineteen Silver Stars, eighteen Bronze Stars, and four Soldier's Medals. They had rescued five hundred civilians, killed eighty-four Japanese soldiers, and captured twenty-four more without loss to themselves other than men hospitalized by jungle ailments.

Their next stop would be the Philippines.

CHAPTER 10

 

 

 

 

I
n the early morning hours of Friday, October 20, 1944, Gen. Douglas MacArthur stood on the bridge of the cruiser USS
Nashville
and watched with satisfaction as ships of Adm. Thomas Kincaid's 7th Fleet and Adm. William F. Halsey's 3rd Fleet pounded the coastline of the island of Leyte with their big guns. Through binoculars, he followed LSTs and Higgins boats loaded with men and tanks of General Krueger's 6th Army as they circled the troopships like gnats, then turned and headed for land. Seeing the smoke and the flame, and hearing the rumble of battle from the distant shore, MacArthur smiled grimly. This was the day of fulfillment of the promise he had made thirty-one months earlier after his harrowing escape from Corregidor on Lt. John Bulkeley's seventy-seven-foot plywood boat. This was the first day of his retribution against those who had caused his defeat and humiliation.

This was his return to the Philippines.

Code-named Excelsior, the Philippines stretch for 1,150 miles, which, if laid over a map of the United States, translates to the distance from the Great Lakes to Florida. The archipelago's 7,083 islands, of which just 466 are larger than one square mile in size, cover 114,400 square miles. In 1944, only 2,773 of the islands, or about a third, bore names, and only between 600 and 700 were inhabited by any people, many of whom spoke a language called Tagalog.

Called Hito or Firippin by the Japanese, the Philippines were vital to Nippon as a natural barrier between the advancing Allied tide, the Japanese homeland, and their Dutch East Indies conquests, with their wealth of much-needed natural resources, particularly oil and rubber. Or at least what resources could safely slip through the American submarine network, which was taking an ever-higher toll on merchant shipping.

Volcanic in origin, the Philippines largely consist of rocky terraced ridges and deep valleys, mostly running north to south. Hardwood forests of teak, ebony, and cypress cover 70 percent of the land, while the lowland plains are extremely fertile.

Leyte, the island chosen for the Americans' initial assault, is the perfect example. Located 340 air miles south of Manila, Leyte is 115 miles long and 45 miles wide. The eighth largest island in the chain, most of its 2,799 square miles is rugged, mountainous terrain, with a narrow coastal plain to the south, which widens to 5 to 10 miles in the central area, facing Leyte Gulf, where Krueger's men were now coming ashore. To the north, the island's coastal plain becomes the 25-mile-wide Leyte Valley, running out to the Samar Sea. Climate-wise, there is on average only ten degrees difference between Leyte's hottest and coldest months, and rainfall, as the Americans were about to find out, averages seventy inches a year, with some spots getting two hundred inches, especially during the monsoon season of October to April.

About one million people called Leyte home in 1944, mostly in the more hospitable northern region, especially in the Leyte and Ormoc valleys and near the city of Tacloban, which had a population of thirty-one thousand and sits at the mouth of the San Juanico Strait, which divides Leyte from Samar. Tacloban was especially poignant for MacArthur, for it was here that he had first come, fresh from West Point, to the Philippines as a second lieutenant exactly forty-one years and one day earlier, on October 19, 1903.

The island's biggest asset, however, was its magnificent anchorage in Leyte Gulf.

* * *

The invasion MacArthur was now observing from the bridge of the
Nashville
almost did not come to pass. Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, MacArthur's coequal in the Pacific, did not share the general's passion for retaking the Philippines. Unlike MacArthur, his pride was not tied up in the islands, and he proposed a strike directly at Formosa. This, he argued, would seal off the Dutch East Indies from Japan and place U.S. forces in a position to land in China at Hong Kong, or maybe Formosa, and establish airfields from which to bomb Japan into oblivion.

MacArthur countered that the Philippines were American soil, and that national pride demanded they be freed from Japanese control. Besides, he said, it would be easier to take and the Filipinos were loyal and could be counted on to give the utmost help.

To sort out the difference, FDR ordered Nimitz and MacArthur to meet with him in Honolulu in July. MacArthur bristled at the order from “Mr. Big,” as the secret order referred to the president, complaining about “the humiliation of forcing me to leave my command and fly to Honolulu for a political picture-taking junket.”

But the “junket” proved successful. FDR supported the Philippine operation.

Planning for the return to the Philippines began on September 21, 1944, and called for U.S. forces to hit the southernmost island, Mindanao, the second largest in the chain. However, aerial reconnaissance reported meeting so little resistance that the high command decided to bypass Mindanao and go straight to Leyte, just to the north across Surigao Strait. In addition, Halsey was encouraged by reports from a downed pilot who had been rescued by a submarine, and by reports from other fliers, that Leyte was more lightly defended than first thought. Indeed, U.S. planners began to believe the entire central Philippines were a hollow shell.

The date for Operation Cyclone, as the invasion of Leyte was code-named, was set for December 20, but was advanced two months in light of Halsey's reports.

The attack was to be led by the 6th Army under General Krueger, and would be launched along an eighteen-mile front north to south from San Jose to Dulag. This would secure the Tacloban area, as well as sealing off the San Juanico Strait and isolating Samar island to the north. As a prelude, the 6th Army Rangers would strike the offshore islands of Dinagat, Suluan, and Homohon on October 18, knocking out any observation posts and radar stations that might forewarn the Japanese of American intentions. On the night of October 19, the Rangers would set up beacon lights to guide the fleet into the gulf toward the invasion beaches.

The Japanese garrison on Leyte consisted of twenty-three thousand men of Lt. Gen. Shiro Makino's 16th Division, reputed to be the toughest unit in the 35th Army. Except for four companies detached to Samar, most of Makino's men were concentrated to the north, in the Ormoc area, where they would defend Leyte in depth. There would be little resistance on the beaches. Makino's job was to fight the Americans for as long as he could, buying time for General Yamashita and the 14th Army to bolster defenses on the main island of Luzon.

For the Alamo Scouts, the Philippine campaign would mark a change in their operations. Now, instead of reconnaissance missions to scout possible beach landing zones and enemy numbers and defenses, they would conduct intelligence-gathering missions ranging from three to seventeen days, during which, for the most part, they would work closely with Filipino guerrilla groups. They would arrange for the resupply of arms, ammunition, medical supplies, and other materials to the guerrillas, as well as coordinate guerrilla movements with American troops advances, and establish radio networks to report on Japanese activity.

* * *

At one p.m. on Friday, October 13, four Alamo Scout teams under Bill Nellist, Tom Rounsaville, Jack Dove, and Wilbur Littlefield boarded the PT tender
Wachapreague
at the Woendi Island PT base, their destination being Leyte. After a refueling stop at Palau on October 16, and slogging through rough seas on October 19, the ship dropped anchor in Leyte Gulf on October 21; the invasion onshore was twenty-four hours old. There, in Leyte Gulf, they were surrounded by the powerful 3rd Fleet, which included sixteen aircraft carriers, six sleek new battleships, and eighty-one cruisers and destroyers. Closer to shore was Kincaid's 7th Fleet, with several smaller escort, or jeep, carriers, and a few of the navy's older battleships. While the 3rd Fleet was to protect against an attack by Japanese naval units, the 7th Fleet, also known as MacArthur's Fleet, provided support for the men on Leyte. The Scouts watched from the ship's rail as the battleship USS
West Virginia
, which had been sunk at Pearl Harbor almost four years before, lobbed shells at unseen targets on the island.

On October 23, the fleet was subjected to a Japanese air raid. The sky filled with antiaircraft fire and, as the Scouts watched, a Japanese plane, trailing smoke and flame, arced downward into the sea a few hundred yards from their tender. Anxious to get off the vulnerable ship, the men were relieved when they were able to go ashore on October 25, even though they had yet to be given a mission.