Shadows In the Jungle (40 page)

Littlefield put a halt to the practice.

* * *

While Littlefield and Nellist were working with guerrillas around Laguna de Bay, George Thompson and his men went south by sailboat to Santa Lucia, arriving March 9. After establishing a command post at the town, they moved inland to Mauban and discovered some two hundred Japanese. After reporting the enemy presence, they arranged for an airdrop of arms and ammunition to resupply the men of General Vera's Southern Luzon guerrilla group. With the aid of the guerrillas, Thompson and his men set up an intelligence-gathering network among the local population and blocked major roadways to hamper Japanese vehicular movements.

* * *

In New Guinea, General Krueger had vetoed the idea of sending his Alamo Scouts into the field to capture Japanese general Hatazo Adachi, commander of the 18th Army, saying, “I wouldn't trade the whole damned Jap army for one Alamo Scout.”

Now, his ideas had changed.

For weeks, 6th Army G2 had been trying to discover the whereabouts of Adm. Nobutake Kondo and Maj. Gen. Rikichi Tsukada, who jointly commanded the enemy troops in the Zambales Mountains area. Tsukada commanded army forces out of Fort Stotsenburg, while Kondo, who in 1942 led the Aleutians diversionary force during the Midway operation, led the naval forces from the naval air station at San Marcelino.

Red Sumner, recovered from jaundice and back with the team, was at Iba with his men when he was summoned to the briefing tent. He was told that U.S. forces would be attacking east, over the Zambales, to push out the Japanese and put Clark Field and Fort Stotsenburg back under the American flag.

“It'll be no easy job,” Sumner was told by Col. Horton White. “The terrain is horrible, double canopy jungle and tough to navigate. In our favor, though, is that the Nips are disorganized and out of food. They are dying of starvation and lack of medical supplies. If our move is successful, we can cut 'em off and let 'em wither on the vine completely.”

White lit a cigarette and continued.

“But that's not your concern,” he said. “We believe General Tsukada and Admiral Kondo are hiding out in the Zambales. We'd like to get our hands on them. It'd be a big feather in our cap, and might force a lot of Japs to surrender.”

Setting out on March 28, Sumner's first big hurdle was not the enemy but a regimental commander named Lt. Col. Harry Mangold. Mangold's job was to seal off the Japanese escape route from Bataan to the Zambales. He was unfazed by Sumner's mission and said he had warned his men that he'd court-martial anyone who took a Japanese prisoner. Meanwhile, the 6th Army's psychological warfare section had published surrender leaflets that were being dropped by the thousands over enemy ground.

“These leaflets are having an effect, sir,” Sumner told Mangold. “Some Nips are starting to come in, and the more we capture, the more they tell us during interrogation and the more of our guys who won't get shot. Will you countermand your order to shoot any Jap trying to surrender?”

Mangold stared at Sumner.

“You get the hell out of my area and stay out, Lieutenant,” he snarled.

“With all due respect, sir, my commanding officer is General Krueger, and I will check in with him,” Sumner replied, then saluted and left.

He radioed 6th Army HQ and got White, who passed him along to Krueger.

“You have my authorization to go over Mangold's head,” Krueger said. “Report to his division commander in person, and I will be sending the colonel a personal message.”

That was the last problem Sumner had with Mangold.

Sumner and his men spent the next several weeks combing the mountains for the enemy flag officers, questioning natives and Japanese POWs alike. From what they learned, their quarry was on the move, and the Scouts seemed to be just a few days behind them.

On April 30, in the Bucao River-Mount Botolan area, the Scouts got into a hot skirmish with a small group of Japanese consisting of a naval petty officer and four seamen. One man was captured, while the rest were killed or fled. The prisoner told Sumner, through an interpreter, that Admiral Kondo had been killed by junior officers during a mutiny. The information proved untrue. Two days later, Sumner was told by Negrito tribesmen that a number of sick and starving Japanese were ahead in the village of Pinatubo. The Scouts entered the village with caution, weapons at the ready. The village consisted of four nipa huts. Inside each, amid the stench of decaying flesh, were seven to ten dead enemy soldiers, clouds of flies buzzing around them. None were the officers he sought.

May 2 found the team patrolling near the village of Paluig. Eighteen Japanese were spotted coming toward the Scouts, so Sumner spread the men out in an ambush. When the enemy soldiers arrived, the team opened fire. In the short but deadly fusillade that followed, fifteen were killed and three captured.

Since Japanese soldiers were not expected to be taken prisoner, they had never been warned not to talk if they were, so the three POWs chatted freely. From them, Sumner learned that the officers he was chasing had traveled north along the coast to Baguio, where they were to rejoin Yamashita's command. A second patrol that day from Masinloc to Santa Cruz resulted in another firefight. Eight Japanese were killed, and the Scouts took from them a bundle of documents and maps.

Then, on May 7, during a routine communications check, Sumner received a radio message that the Germans had surrendered in Europe. The news didn't do much for the spirits of the men still engaged in a hot war on the other side of the world.

“A lot of good that does us out here in the jungle chasing Nips,” Sumner told his men.

The longer the chase for the two flag officers went on, the more it seemed a pointless exercise to Sumner. All the search was uncovering were small clumps of Japanese soldiers, either dying of starvation or disease, or already dead. He finally radioed back that he felt there was no way he would catch up to the enemy commanders, and was told to end the mission.

What Sumner had accomplished, though, was to supply weapons and equipment to a number of guerrilla bands, including one led by Manual Roxas, who, in 1946, became the first president of the independent Republic of the Philippines. Sumner was also forever convinced that his getting Mangold to allow for the taking of POWs saved many American lives.

* * *

While Sumner was not successful in capturing Tsukada and Kondo, that did not dampen Krueger's newfound excitement at possibly making top Japanese commanders POWs.

General Yamashita had been holding off the Americans in north-western Luzon for four months, or about the same length of time the Americans had defended Bataan exactly three years earlier. The Cagayan Valley, which the Tiger of Malaya was defending so stubbornly, was a major food supply area for the island and the only practical American approach route. Protected on the east by the Sierra Madre mountains, the Cordillera Central Range to the west, and the Palai, Carabello, and Mamparang mountains to the south, it was a formidable position.

On May 13, the Americans finally punched through the Japanese line at Balete Pass and pushed north, but the Alamo Scouts were already there ahead of them. Between April 30 and June 30, when the 6th Army ceased operations on Luzon, the Scouts would conduct twenty missions in this region.

Tom Rounsaville did the first one. His job was to find and capture Yamashita.

On April 13, with Sergeants Alfonso, Vaquilar, Laquier, Donnette, and Gadung, the latter a Filipino radio operator, Rounsaville boarded a C-47 for the town of Tuao. There he contacted Col. Don Blackburn's 11th Guerrilla Infantry unit. Word had come down that Yamashita had been sighted in the area. Rounsaville interrogated a pair of Japanese POWs, who told him the general had his HQ at Bayombong, but a trip there, armed with photos of Yamashita to show to civilians, proved fruitless.

Returning to Tuao, Rounsaville next questioned an American civilian who had escaped from the Japanese.

“He's hiding out in a cave at Madupapa,” the man said. “He's guarded by about three thousand troops.”

Moving to Madupapa, the Scouts found the area crawling with Japanese, and spotted six men carrying a field-grade officer on an elaborate chair. But the officer was not Yamashita.

The next excursion was to the barrio of Calapangan on the west bank of the Cayagan River, where a guerrilla who had escaped the Japanese said his guard mentioned that he had seen Yamashita riding in a civilian car. However, he said, Yamashita had since moved to Tuguegarao, where he boarded a plane bound for Japan.

This rumor turned out to be true, and the mission was over. However, during his sixteen-day manhunt, Rounsaville was able to confirm the presence of nine thousand Japanese in the Aparri region, south to the Paret River, with the heaviest concentration being between Lallo and Gattaran. There were another three thousand at Tuguegarao, three hundred to four hundred at Aparri and Buguey, and four hundred to six hundred at the Paret River. He also pinpointed a number of enemy defensive positions and rescued two downed pilots. However, both were dangerously ill, and even an emergency airdrop of intravenous glucose did not save them. He had both men buried and their graves marked. Their personal items he later handed over to their squadron chaplain.

* * *

Not all Alamo Scout teams spent April and May hunting Japanese generals.

Traveling in a large banca powered by Filipino oarsmen, Bill Littlefield and his team left Guinayangan on April 18, bound for Mantubig in Camarines Sur province, on Luzon's southern tip. His mission was to locate a landing area for a battalion of men from the 1st Cavalry Division.

It was a long trip and the boats stopped four times for food and water. It took them two days to reach their goal, with rowers being recruited from fishing villages every ten or twenty miles. When they arrived at Camarines Sur, the Scouts found out from the natives that the enemy had abandoned the entire district. Searching for the best landing spot, they scouted along the coast. At Mantubig, Littlefield liked what he saw and radioed the coordinates back to 1st Cav headquarters. Then he settled down to wait.

It just so happened that there was a wedding in the village that day, and the Scouts were allowed to join the festivities. They ate rice and sun-dried fish and attended the wedding ceremony. Afterward, the natives threw a party for the Scouts, and Littlefield, in the spirit of fun, decided to play a joke on the incoming 1st Cav boys. That night, as the Higgins boats rolled ashore and dropped ramps, the alighting Americans, weapons ready for a possible fight, were greeted by children holding hand-painted signs proclaiming LITTLEFIELD FOR MAYOR.

Temporarily attached to the 1st Cav during the drive on Manila, Littlefield was sent on a reconnaissance mission in advance of the troops. The expedition was pointless, Littlefield thought, not to mention suicidal. From his position on the U.S. front line, he could easily see Japanese off in the distance, “swarming like ants.”

“I want a driver and an armored car,” he said.

The vehicle was sent up, and Littlefield climbed in beside the driver.

“Get me closer,” he said. “I need to see what I'm up against.”

The car moved forward and soon came under heavy small-arms fire. Bullets rattled off the steel sides like pebbles. Littlefield had seen enough. The reconnaissance was scratched.

* * *

In late March, Jack Dove and his team, Sgt. James Farrow, 1st Sgt. Fredirico Balambao, and Sgt. Peter Vischansky, left Lingayen Gulf and landed in the area of Labayat. They were assigned to monitor Japanese troop movement along the Labayat-Famy Road and identify enemy escape routes for soldiers fleeing the area south to Mauban.

During the mission, which was also a combat patrol—a rarity for the Scouts—the team was diverted to an offshore spit of land called Fuga Island to bring out some downed American airmen. They discovered the fliers all dead. They had been used for bayonet practice. Outraged, the Scouts ambushed a Japanese defensive position, and in a short, hot skirmish, killed several of the enemy.

On April 23, while reconnoitering the west side of the Umiray River near the village of Blate, Dove and his men, along with escorting guerrillas, got into a six-hour fight with about two hundred Japanese troops. Amazingly, the Scouts and guerrillas suffered no casualties, and the enemy retreated to the north. Continuing to the town of Maroraqui, they ran into fifty enemy soldiers, and in the fight that followed, three Japanese were killed. The rest retreated to the southeast. The following day, Dove and his band met the same large body of Japanese they had fought forty-eight hours earlier. A four-hour battle ensued, leaving six enemy soldiers dead and one taken prisoner.

This off-and-on contact lasted for two weeks. During that time, at least eighteen Japanese were killed, and three were captured.

The Nellist Team's final mission started badly when the C-47 the men were riding in crash-landed on the airstrip at Manaoag in Isabela province on May 18. The men were shaken but otherwise unharmed, and immediately created a command post at the town. The next day, Nellist, Kittleson, Siason, and a Filipino radioman, Sgt. Agapito C. Apano, hiked through the jungle to the junction of the Cagayan and Magat rivers, twenty miles south of Ilagan, and set up another radio post and a spy network of local Filipinos. The rest of the team, Wismer, Asis, and Smith, performed a similar task from Ilagan, north to Cabagan.

A severe rainstorm broke over the men on the night of May 23. Nellist, Kittleson, Siason, and Apano came across an old wooden tobacco shed and slipped inside for shelter. As they sat huddled in the dark, the heavy rain drumming on the roof, a new sound reached their ears: the sloshing of many shoes in the mud. Risking a peek through cracks in the plank walls of the shed, they held their breath as a company of Japanese slogged by, so close Nellist could have reached out and touched them. Rain cascaded down their bodies and Nellist prayed they would not try to seek refuge in the shed. They didn't, and were shortly gone from sight.