Shadows In the Jungle (41 page)

Wismer, Asis, and Smith, meanwhile, met with Kiang Chi Kien of the committee of Overseas Affairs of the Republic of China. Kien offered to use his local contacts to set up an intelligence network on the east side of the Cagayan River, near Highway 5. Wismer agreed, and was soon getting reliable reports to pass along to 6th Army HQ. Wismer was also asked by the commander of the 14th Guerrilla Infantry, an American named Major Damian, to call in an air strike on Japanese crossing the Siffu River heading into Barocboc. On May 25, thirty-two B-25 Mitchell bombers plastered the barrios of Vira, Santa Cruz, Callang, and Simimbahan, where the Japanese garrisons were stationed.

On May 29, Nellist and his group crossed the Magat River and entered the headquarters of the 7th Guerrilla Infantry. The guerrillas turned over four prisoners, three Taiwanese and one Japanese from the 32nd Ship Regiment. They also agreed to supply the Americans with two guides to take the Scouts to the town of San Mariano. There, the mayor told Nellist that Japanese were present in large numbers between San Mariano and Palanan. With that information in hand, the men began heading back, riding in a caraboa cart on the raised roads that separated individual rice paddies. A guerrilla led the Japanese prisoner by a rope that was tied around the man's waist. His hands were also bound.

The group stopped for a break on the southern slope of the road, hiding the cart out of sight. As they rested, a Japanese patrol was spotted approaching along the same road. The men lay flat in the tall grass, hoping the enemy would walk on by, when, to everyone's dismay, the enemy decided to take a break on the opposite side of the road. Nellist watched a Japanese soldier, not fifteen feet away, light a cigarette. Nellist was concerned that the prisoner would cry out to his comrades, but that fear went away when he saw that Kittleson had a firm grip on the man's throat.

The enemy patrol soon rose and moved on without incident.

The Nellist Team reunited at Manaoag on June 2, and the Scout leader decided it was time to interrogate his prisoner. With the help of a twelve-year-old Filipino girl who spoke Japanese, he questioned the man, but without success. The soldier refused to talk.

“Kit,” Nellist said, “bring him out in back of the hut.”

Kittleson did so. The Japanese soldier watched as Nellist slid his .45 from a shoulder holster and laid it on a table. “Mark out a grave, Kit, and then have him dig.”

The Japanese soldier was soon babbling out all he knew.

While at Manaoag, Nellist called for an airdrop to resupply the guerrillas, requesting weapons, mines, bazookas, shoes, and socks. When the drop was made twelve days later, the bundles contained Thompson submachine guns with clips that did not fit, no mines, no bazookas, no socks, and shoes too big to fit the Filipinos.

Immediately following the airdrop, Nellist again split his team in two parts. He and Kittleson fed information to the HQ of the 37th Infantry Division on enemy troop strengths, while Wismer and his group moved farther into the hills. Wismer set up his radio station in a schoolhouse, where it was destroyed when American bombers leveled the building. Nellist now had to contact Wismer by dropping handwritten notes from an L-5 scout plane.

On June 22, the Nellist Team was ordered to return to American lines. While complying, Nellist, Kittleson, and Siason came across six guerrillas of the 7th Guerrilla Command Post, who were planning to attack a shack containing fifteen Japanese soldiers. To support them, Nellist and Kittleson set up the guerrillas' .30-caliber machine gun and fired on the hut. The Japanese spotted them and returned fire. One of their first shots ricocheted and struck Nellist in the right thigh. The American's wounding unnerved four of the guerrillas, who turned and fled. The other two remained and helped the Scouts make a stretcher so they could carry Nellist out. Nellist was taken to the 43rd Field Hospital. His war was over.

* * *

On May 15, Red Sumner left the Alamo Scouts to work for 6th Army Intelligence. His team, veterans of many tense missions, was taken over by Lt. Chester B. Vickery, who would lead them on their final two assignments before Scout operations ceased entirely.

On June 2, Lt. George Derr led his brand-new team, consisting of Pfc. William E. Teague, Sgts. Thomas J. Kolas and Charles J. Stewart, and Pvt. Robert D. Hamlin, into the Bontoc area for a ten-day intelligence-gathering mission. On this foray into enemy territory, Derr nearly hit the jackpot. On June 21, he and his men discovered General Yamashita at his headquarters near Banaue. Derr tried to make his way closer, but could not. Yamashita had eighteen hundred men at his headquarters camp. Derr wisely decided to pull back.

Another new team, led by Lt. Robert Shirkey, and containing Sgt. Richard G. Andrews, Pfc. Clyde S. Townsend, Staff Sgt. Clinton R. Tucker, and Sgts. Michael Zwer and Martin Grimes, reconnoitered Casiguran Bay on Luzon's east coast. On his second mission to Palanan Bay, Shirkey headed up a mini-task force consisting of two gunboats, two LCIs, and two hundred guerrillas. On June 12, the gunboats bombarded the beach while Shirkey's force landed and fought with enemy patrols. The next day he and his men came across an eight-man Japanese patrol resting by a stream. Four men were sunbathing nude. Creeping to within twenty yards, Shirkey rose, leveled a BAR, and opened fire. Six Japanese were killed. The other two tried to escape but were captured.

Operating sixty-five miles behind enemy lines, Shirkey, too, was looking for Yamashita, but was ordered out after it was confirmed that Yamashita had fled the islands and was back in Japan.

* * *

On July 1, 1945, the 6th Army turned control of the Luzon operation over to the 8th Army and began planning for its next big venture, the invasion of Japan itself.

Since landing on Luzon in January, the 6th Army had engaged and defeated the Shimbu and Kembu groups in the west and south, and had pushed Yamashita's Shobu Group back into the mountainous northeastern corner of Luzon. In the process, 214,000 Japanese troops had died.

The Alamo Scouts performed forty-three missions. They had aided in rescuing more than five hundred Allied POWs and coordinated guerrilla activities throughout Luzon. Although they didn't know it yet, for most of the teams, the war was over. The few Scout teams still in the field were turned over to 8th Army control. The 8th Army's commander, Lt. Gen. Robert Eichelberger, renamed them the Octagon Scouts, after his army's code name. Irate, Krueger got on the phone to Eichelberger and raised hell, and the name Octagon soon vanished.

Among these final Scout missions, the Vickery Team, formerly the Sumner Team, set up roadblocks on highways north of Aparri and worked with guerrillas until July 7, when they were ordered out.

Bill Littlefield's last mission started on July 1. Accompanying Littlefield was Allen Throgmorton, Oliver Roesler, radioman Bob Shullaw, Zeke McConnell, Ben Mones, and one other man.

Sent to the village of Sadanga, Littlefield and his men lived among the Igorotes, an indigenous tribe much like the Indians back in America. A fierce people who lived high in the mountains, they loathed the Japanese, severing the heads of those they killed in order to save the jawbone. These grisly reminders of their kill would be laid out on the ground, while the warriors performed a native dance around them.

Shortly before Littlefield's arrival, a twenty-five-man Japanese patrol arrived in the village. A group of Igorote boys between the ages of ten and twelve befriended the Japanese, built them a fire, and helped prepare their food. That night when the soldiers slept, the boys killed them all, beheaded them, and collected the jawbones.

Likewise, Filipinos from below did not go to the mountain people alone or unarmed.

Luckily, the Igorotes liked the Americans and were scrupulously honest. If the Scouts left camp and forgot anything, a runner was sent from the village to return it.

Even so, Americans were not immune from violations of Igorote law. Littlefield and his men discovered the skeletal remains of two Americans who had not surrendered to the Japanese in 1942 and sought refuge with the mountain tribe. One of the men had a sexual affair with a married Igorote woman. For that transgression, her husband and his friends killed him. The other American was killed because he witnessed the murder. Igorotes feared arrest and being brought to the lowlands, for there they often contracted diseases like malaria, unknown in the mountains, and died.

Littlefield collected the dead Americans' dog tags and arranged for the remains to be recovered by Graves Registration.

According to Igorote tradition, when two children, male and female, reached puberty, they left home and lived in a common hut called the Ulu. When a girl got pregnant, she and the boy were considered married.

The adult women, arms tattooed, were bare from the waist up, and some were very attractive. This social quirk amused the Scouts. Often they radioed Lee Hall, formerly of the Barnes Team but now commissioned and leading a team of his own, who was also among the Igorotes about twenty-five miles away, and talked about the bare-breasted women. This practice earned them an angry “Get the hell off the air, you bastards,” from the air force, which shared the same frequency. It seemed the references to the women's breasts were distracting the airmen.

* * *

The final three Alamo Scout combat missions of World War II were all carried out by Jack Dove.

On July 16 he and his team boarded two PT boats of Squadron 28 for a fifteen-mile trip to Ibahos Island, the last island of the Philippine chain before reaching Formosa, arriving that afternoon. Their assignment was to reconnoiter Ibahos, Sabtang, and Batan islands, and see if they could find a suitable location for an airstrip. The American high command still considered invading Formosa.

Unfortunately, a storm rolled in and prevented the recon, but Dove managed to locate three civilians who informed him that Ibahos was unoccupied, but on Sabtang and Batan there were one thousand head of cattle that the Japanese kept for food. Dove was also told there were twenty-three Japanese soldiers on Sabtang, controlling civilian traffic and monitoring the collection of food in the islands.

Dove and his men went ashore at Ibahos and conducted a brief reconnaissance. When it came time to leave, however, the sea was so rough that Dove radioed the PT boat to pick them up on the island's leeward side, and the team carried their rubber boat across the island.

Six days later they were back, this time on Batan Island. Dove and his men were to gather more information on the Japanese garrison. Contacting a civilian agent on the island, the enemy troops were identified as members of the 61st Imperial Mortar Brigade under the overall command of Maj. Gen. Hikotaro Tajima, who commanded all Japanese forces in the Batanes and Babuyan islands. While reconnoitering the island, Dove and his team pinpointed numerous defensive positions, including twenty-seven 75mm and two 47mm howitzers.

The final mission came on July 28, when Dove's team was sent to Fuga Island to discover enemy troop strength. Coming ashore on the island's north coast at three a.m., they contacted local fishermen, who pointed out where two Japanese soldiers were sleeping. In a quick ambush, Dove captured the men. Through interrogation, plus information gathered from other civilians, Dove estimated enemy strength at 550 to 600 men with three 75mm howitzers. But many of the men were suffering from dysentery, malaria, and malnutrition, negating their combat value.

While on Fuga, Dove and his team brought back thirty-nine civilians—two PT boats were needed—including the family of Alfonso Sycip, the president of the Philippine branch of the Bank of China. Sycip fled to Fuga in 1942, thinking it was safer than staying in Manila. He and his family had been held by the Japanese, and were half starved.

Dove's arrival back at Claveria on July 30 brought an end to the Alamo Scouts' wartime operations.

CHAPTER 16

 

 

 

 

O
peration Olympic, the first phase of the plan—code-named Downfall—to conquer the home islands of Japan, was slated to kick off on November 1, 1945. Olympic called for a feint at the island of Shikoku by one American corps, while three other corps stormed ashore on the southernmost island of Kyushu. Some 767,000 men, including Krueger's 6th Army, would be involved, as would many veterans of the now-ended war in Europe.

The Japanese knew the invasion was coming, too. All across the land, the military was gearing up the population for a do-or-die fight. More than five thousand planes were being prepared for kamikaze attacks, as were hundreds of suicide boats. Along Japan's coasts, civilians worked side by side with the army to prepare coastal fortifications. Four million civil servants and 2.5 million soldiers, many brought back from Manchuria and Korea, were told they were being given the “divine chance” to save the nation. And in fields, parks, and school yards everywhere, old men, women, and children armed with bamboo spears were learning how to attack and kill the American invaders. To overcome their crude armaments, the government convinced them that their “strength in the citadel of the spirit” would lead them to prevail.

The national slogan became “100 million die together.”

The Americans also knew what they were facing, and it was a grim reality indeed. At a strategy meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., Chief of Staff George C. Marshall warned that losses would be “frightful.” With Olympic set for November 1 and Coronet, the invasion of the main island of Honshu, expected to start in March 1946, half a million American deaths were not out of the question. Many times more would be wounded.

The thought of those horrendous casualties left Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson pale and weak.