World War II: The Autobiography (80 page)

The shelling concentrated on the Deep and became a violent, continuous drumfire. My stomach felt empty and I was ready to vomit. I should have relieved the King’s Own. This was more than human flesh could stand. Nothing to do now though. The attack would come in immediately after the bombardment.

The shelling increased again. For ten minutes an absolute fury fell on the Deep.

Major Heap, the second-in-command of the King’s Own, tumbled in, his face streaked and bloody and working with extreme strain. “We’ve had it, sir,” he said. “They’re destroying all the posts, direct hits all the time . . . all machine-guns knocked out, crews killed . . . I don’t think we can hold them if . . . the men are . . .”

I didn’t wait to hear what the men were. I knew. They were dead, wounded, or stunned.

I took the telephone and called Tim Brennan, commanding 26 Column of the Cameronians, and told him to bring his whole column to the ridge crest at once, with all weapons and ammunition, manhandled, ready to take over the Deep. “Yes, sir,” he said pleasantly. I had time to call Henning and order him to spread out to occupy Brennan’s positions as well as his own, before going quickly, my breath short, to the hill crest.

The shelling stopped as I reached it. Tim arrived. Johnny Boden, the mortar officer, arrived. Now, now, the Japanese must come. I told Boden to stand by with smoke and
HE
to cover the Cameronians; 26 Column arrived, at the double. Still no assault. Tim ran down the forward slope, his men behind him. I waited crouched on the ridge top. Ordered Boden to open up with his mortars. The enemy must have this blasted slope covered by machine-guns. I knew they had. They didn’t fire. It was twilight, but down the slope in the smoke I could clearly see Cameronians jumping into the waterlogged trenches, King’s Own struggling out and up towards me. The Cameronian machine-guns arrived, men bent double under the ninety-pound loads of barrel and tripod. Bombs burst, smoke rose in dense white clouds. I told the officer to move the machine-guns again, after full dark, if he could. “Of course, sir,” he said impatiently.

The men of the King’s Own passed by, very slowly, to be gathered by Heap into reserve. They staggered, many were wounded, others carried wounded men, their eyes wandered, their mouths drooped open. I wanted to cry, but dared not, could only mutter, “Well done, well done,” as they passed.

The minutes crawled, each one a gift more precious than the first rain. I sent wire down, and ammunition, and took two machine-guns from Henning’s 90 Column, and put them in trenches on the crest, ready to sweep the whole slope. Full darkness came, with rain. An hour had passed, a whole hour since the enemy bombardment ended. In our own attacks we reckoned a thirty-second delay as fatal.

With a crash of machine-guns and mortars the battle began. All night the Cameronians and the Japanese 53rd Division fought it out. Our machine-guns ripped them from the new positions. Twice the Japanese forced into the barbed wire with Bangalore torpedoes, and the blasting rain of the mortars wiped them out. At four am, when they launched their final assault to recover their bodies, we had defeated them.

AN ENGLISH OFFICER ESCAPES THE JAPANESE, MALAYA, MAY 1944

Colonel F. Spencer Chapman, 5th Seaforth Highlanders

Chapman entered the jungle of Malaya in 1942 to organise stay-behind parties; he did not leave it for three years.

Although my hosts did not attempt to tie me up, they took no other chances. There were three sentries who seemed to be particularly interested in my welfare. An N.C.O. who carried a pistol – I saw him take it out of its holster, cock it, and push it into the belt of his raincoat. A sentry with fixed bayonet who strolled up and down beyond the fire in front of the tent. Another with a tommy-gun hovered on the edge of the firelight and seemed to be watching the jungle as if they expected my friends might attempt a rescue. Alas! how little fear there was of that!

My tent-fellows slept in all their clothes, including boots, and were thus able to dispense with blankets. I lay between my English-speaking friend and another officer in the centre of the tent and therefore directly in front of the fire, which was only a few yards from my feet. It was quite light enough to read, and the encircling jungle night looked inky black by contrast, though I knew there would soon be a moon. My neighbours seemed to fall asleep instantly, but were restless and noisy sleepers. We were so crowded that one or the other often rolled against me or put a knee affectionately over mine and I had to push them back, observing with satisfaction that no amount of manhandling seemed to disturb them – though my guard showed signs of disapproval.

In the days when I was a fieldcraft instructor I had read every book on escaping and used to lecture on the subject. But none of the methods I had advocated seemed to be of much practical use now . . .

At about one o’clock I woke up. The N.C.O. on duty had been changed and the new one did not seem so vigilant. I watched him closely, and while pretending restlessly to stretch my arms, I was able little by little to ease up the canvas behind my head. Before I could continue operations I had to do something about the fire which, in the chill early morning, had been made larger and more brilliant than ever. I now had an inspiration which traded, most ungenerously, on the natural good manners of my hosts. After a few preliminary hiccoughs, I got up, retching horribly, and pretended to be violently sick. I had saved up spittle for a time and the results, especially the noise, were most realistic. The N.C.O. was quite sympathetic and I explained that the heat of the fire was so great that I was unable to sleep and was indeed – as he had seen – very ill. He immediately called up the sentries and together they damped down the fire and raked it further from the tent.

From there the firelight still shone on my blanket sleeping-bag, but I was able to put on my rubber shoes (which I should have to wear until daylight) and then to collect some of the miscellaneous gear belonging to my bed-fellows – a haversack, a tin hat, some spare boots, and a despatch case (which, unfortunately, I could not open and it was too heavy to take away), and pushed them down into my sleeping-bag, tastefully arranging the boots to resemble my own feet thrust into the corners of the bag. Meanwhile, with legs doubled up, and watching the guard through half-closed eyes, I worked myself further and further back into the angle of the tent. A Japanese rifle caused much discomfort to my backbone; I thought how careless of them to have left it there, and wished I could have taken it with me, but it would have been too much of an encumbrance.

I waited till one sentry was out of sight, the other at the far end of his beat, and the N.C.O. not actually looking at me. Then, in one movement I thrust myself violently through the opening at the bottom of the canvas. I heard a “ping”, as a peg gave or a rope broke, and a sudden guttural gasp from the N.C.O. – and I was out in the jungle.

LIFE IN A JAPANESE POW CAMP, JUNE 1944–AUGUST 1945

Anton Bilek, mechanic USAAF

Bilek was captured at Bataan in 1942.

In June of ’44, they asked for another detail to go to Japan. I volunteered for it. I talked to a buddy, Bob, who I knew from Chicago. I said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” We’d been hearing some rumors where our troops are movin’ up, gettin’ some foothold into the islands here. Down south, Guadalcanal and this stuff. When they come in, they’re not gonna come in like a ballet dancer. They’re gonna come in with both guns firin’ from the hip. They can’t afford to be very fussy. We could be bombed by ’em or shot by ’em.

We went to Japan and were fortunate we chose that detail. The ship that left right after us with another sixteen hundred men aboard was torpedoed by one of our submarines. All sixteen hundred drowned. We lost close to five thousand men killed by our U.S. Navy, on freighters being transported to Japan. None of the ships were marked, so our navy people didn’t know this.

It was a mean old freighter, rusty goddamn thing, full of bedbugs. It stunk to high heaven. It took us sixty days from Manila to Moji, Japan. We stopped at Formosa for two weeks, loadin’ up with salt. It’s the only ballast we had.

We worked in a coal mine in Omuta, about twenty-five miles east of Nagasaki, across the bay. We were surprised at the nice quarters we had. The food was tremendous. In other words, we got some vegetables in our soup. One time we got a bun. For sixty days on the boat, we had nothin’ but wormy rice. You swallowed all the worms. We called that our protein. They quarantined us, because we were in such poor shape after sixty days of two dabs of rice a day. They decided we needed some rest and a little bit more food, so we could do some work in the mines.

The mines were the property of Count Mitsui, the industrialist. We were really workin’ for him. Plus they had Korean prisoners. The Japanese who supervised us were, you might say, 4-Fs, either too old for the army or somethin’ wrong with ’em. We’d work, maybe six or eight of us, with one Jap supervisor.

You did find some good Japs there. Some of the old men were nice to us. But the majority could not see looking up at an American who was much taller than him. This they hated with a passion. I got the devil whaled out of me quite a few times because I couldn’t understand. The school they took us to, the Jap would hold up a shovel or a pick and say the Japanese word. You gotta remember all this. My first day in the mine, he talks to me and I couldn’t understand. So he decked me. It made him feel good, I guess.

Once in a while you’d find a good Jap. Right away you learned his name. If you could get Fiji-san or Okamoto-san, he’s a good one. Some of them guys would take you on the side and you’d sit down and rest. One time, at the end of the day, while I was waitin’ for the little train to take our shift out, I laid back against the rock wall, put my cap over my eyes, and tried to get some rest. The guy next to me says, “God damn, I wish I was back in Seattle.” I paid no attention. Guys were always talking about being back home. He said, “I had a nice restaurant there and I lost it all.” I turned around and looked and it’s a Japanese. He was one of the overseers. I was flabbergasted.

He said, “Now just don’t talk to me. I’ll do all the talkin’.” He’s talkin’ out of the side of his mouth. He says, “I was born and raised in Seattle, had a nice restaurant there. I brought my mother back to Japan. She’s real old and knew she was gonna die and she wanted to come home. The war broke out and I couldn’t get back to the States. They made me come down here and work in the coal mines.” I didn’t know what the hell to say to the guy. Finally the car come down and I says, “Well, see you in Seattle someday.” And I left. I never saw him after that.

One of the Japanese officers in our camp was born and raised in Riverside, California. He pitched for his college team. He was the chief interpreter. He was no good. He’d sneak around and listen to us in the dark, and if he didn’t like what we were sayin’, he’d turn us in.

Our camp was one of the worst. Both camp commanders were executed by war-crimes trial, and two of the guards, because of the treatment to war prisoners.

I lost about fifty pounds in the war. Once I came down with double pneumonia. This was the big killer, and I beat it. The doctor was elated. They’d given me up. No sooner do I get rid of it than I come down with beriberi again. I swelled up. This was the worst I had. I was so big I was like a walrus. I couldn’t move. If I had to defecate, they’d roll me over on the side and put the bedpan up against my butt and then they’d wash me. Your hand is so big around, you could stick your finger in it and make a big hole. They had to make a special bed for me.

BAMBOO, DYSENTERY, LEECHES: A MARAUDER ON THE JUNGLE PATH, JULY 1944

Charlton Ogburn, 5307th Composite Unit

Known as “Merrill’s Marauders” after its commanding officer, Brigadier-General Frank D. Merrill, the 5307th was an American long-range penetration unit operating in Burma.

The country we had to cross in bypassing the Japanese was a conglomeration of hills resembling the patternless jumble of waves in a tide rip and often so steep your feet would go out from under you while you were climbing. (“The steeper the hill the less distance you got to fall before you hit it. So what the hell are you complaining about?”) Sometimes the slopes were too much for the mules; the packs would have to be unloaded and broken up and the pieces carried up or passed up from hand to hand. The platoons took in rotation the task of hacking a passage through the towering, tangled, resistant vegetation that buried hillsides, valleys and ridges together and reduced us in scale to crawling animalcules in its somnolent depths. Within the platoons, officers shared with the men the labor of chopping. The young bamboo would slash out like saber blades when severed; the old, resisting like steel the blows of the dulled machetes, could hardly be cut at all. (The cuticle of bamboo has a high content of the material quartz consists of: silica.) Little of it would fall. You could cut a passage for hours, for days on end, and nothing would happen; the tops of the growth were too interwoven for any of it to break loose. So the bamboo had to be cut twice, at the ground and at a height above the peaks of the mules’ loads. The head of the column sounded like a spike-driving crew on a railroad, but the jungle imprisoned the sound, as it did us, and within a small fraction of the column’s length to the rear, nothing could be heard. The men in the van struck savagely at the unyielding stems, as if the vegetation were an enemy that had to be done to death, until, soaked with sweat, their arms heavy, and gasping for breath, they would fall back to the end of the platoon and be replaced. It was like a column of slaves clearing a path for the pampered and despotic ruler of an ancient Asian empire.

We fought and toiled to reach Shaduzup as if it were salvation. But, Christ, how I hated its uncouth syllables! Shadu’zup! On to Shadu’zup! I pictured it as a cowled and sheeted figure like one of those ghoulish Moslem women. The days of that tortuous march were to remain forever living in my mind, though merged with other days of other marches that preceded or followed – not that it mattered; they were all alike anyway.