Above the Thunder (27 page)

A military force facing an opponent of overwhelming strength often comes up with clever ideas to try to reduce the odds against itself, and the Japanese were very good at that. When the Japs stopped flying from the Sawar Drome, they left there a number of hundred-pound aerial bombs, and the ground troops occupying the strip concealed some of them at strategic points, wired for detonation from a remote position, as part of their defenses. One of our patrols had suffered a number of casualties from one of these at the east end of the airstrip.

One day I was asked to take a close look at the numerous bunkers along the beach at Sawar Drome to determine whether any of them were occupied. Vineyard and I often flew along that stretch right down on the sand, so it was no big deal to me. But as I buzzed along at ten feet, alternately glancing at the bunkers and at the beach ahead of me, I spotted the noses of two of those hundred-pound bombs protruding about a foot above the surf-washed sand no more than seventy-five yards ahead of me. It was very close to where the patrol had been blasted, and I instantly knew what they were. In the same instant, I realized that they might well be intended for remote detonation as one of our planes passed over them, and still in that same instant I pulled up, up, and away as violently as the plane would respond. I warned Vin, and we avoided that beach thereafter.

Since the rest of the 33d Division still was not into combat, some of the junior infantry officers were sent up to visit with our task force—which, by the way, had inherited from previous forces at Maffin the dramatic title “Tornado Task Force”—to get the feel of enemy contact. One lieutenant, not a flying officer, went out with me one day to see a Jap soldier, and he had his M-1 rifle along.

Flying over a long, narrow clearing along a jungle trail that I think ran between Aftawadona and Foe Maoe, we saw several Nips hurry
to conceal themselves in some huts. Of course, my passenger wanted to shoot at them, so I wheeled around, let down into one end of the clearing, and barreled through as he fired out the left window with his Garand. Arisakas winked back at us from the openings of the thatched huts. I held down in there as long as I could, then I pulled up to clear the towering trees at the end of the clearing, the throttle wide open.

We were still a little below the treetops when I felt the throttle come back forcefully against my hand, and the engine died to an idle. The plane began rapidly to slow, of course, and I was momentarily puzzled, trying to understand what had happened. It was evident that if we didn't get power back within a very few seconds, we'd be crashing into the jungle canopy. Fortunately, the truth hit me very quickly. I whirled around to see the lieutenant with his rifle swung far to the rear on the window ledge, still firing back at the Japs, and the rifle was jamming the rear throttle. I yelled at him, grabbed the rifle with my left hand, and then shoved the throttle hard forward, so hard that it's a miracle the engine didn't choke on it. But it roared to full power without a whimper, and we went staggering across the jungle, barely clearing the top, for a few more anxious seconds before I could get speed to climb.

One of my infantry friends—in fact, about the only one I had—was Lt. Raymond Utke. Utke was a blocky, blond-mustached fellow, very quiet, but with a fearsome reputation as one of the I Corps Alamo Scouts, officer and NCO volunteers who were specially trained for solo infiltration of enemy-held areas for intelligence gathering. He was said to be one of the best, and it was alleged that on at least one occasion he returned from a mission bearing the ears of Japanese he had dispatched along the way. But he was quite modest and gentlemanly, and he used to spend hours sitting in our tent at the airstrip, talking with me and the other boys.

Utke was one of three lieutenants sent out with several enlisted men to set up an ambush west of the Woske and try to take at least one prisoner—something not easy to do with the Japanese of that war. But the task force intelligence officer needed a prisoner. In charge of the
expedition was Lt. John Durant, and the third officer was Lt. Francis Peebles, both outstanding young leaders. On the day before they started, I flew Durant over the area so he could better appreciate the terrain before finalizing his plan.

To make the story shorter, suffice it to say that the plan didn't work. The enemy turned the tables, and the ambushers got ambushed. Mortar and machine-gun and rifle fire lashed at them from hidden positions, and Durant ordered a retreat. It became a rout, actually, as the Americans broke out onto the beach and literally ran toward the Woske, trying desperately to get out of the fire. Utke picked up a wounded sergeant and was carrying him on his back when a shell burst close behind him on the beach. The sergeant was killed, but his body shielded Utke from the fragments. Nevertheless, Utke was stunned, his eyes were filled with sand so that he was temporarily blinded and, as he told me later, crazy for awhile. He found himself off the beach, running sightless through brush, colliding with trees, not knowing which way he was going. Fortunately, he eventually made it to the river and was assisted back to the perimeter.

When the cost was counted, five men were missing, among them John Durant. Vin and I could see their five bodies lying up there on the sand, but officialdom demanded more proof that those were, indeed, the bodies of our missing men before they could change their legal status from “missing” to “killed in action.” The commander refused to try to recover the bodies, since it would mean the almost certain loss of more lives, so I was sent out to get a detailed description of everything that could be seen.

For about fifteen minutes I practically taxied on the beach up there beyond the Woske, making note of everything I saw. Everything was there that should have been with the exception of weapons. Five bloody bodies dressed in HBTs and canvas jungle boots, with ammunition belts, canteens, first-aid kits, helmets, and so on. Farthest up the beach, about fifty yards from the others, lay the sergeant that Utke had carried. The bodies of the other three enlisted men—whose names I never knew—lay in a group near a large stump of driftwood over which was sprawled
the giant figure of Lieutenant Durant, a gaping bloody hole between his shoulder blades. It was painful to remember the young officer's boyish grin of only two days before.

I filed an official written report of my observations, and the five were then reported as killed in action. As we flew up and down the area daily, Vineyard and I watched the five bodies swell, turn orange, then black and greasy, the clothing darkly stained. Something, probably crabs, ate their flesh, the waves washed sand over the bones, and finally we could see no sign that John Durant and his four soldiers had ever existed.

Historians sometimes get things all twisted out of shape. I know that it is difficult to get a straight story from skimpy official reports and that reports written by officers preoccupied with the more pressing affairs of combat may very well be skimpy indeed, and even inaccurate. An example—in a history of the 33d Division in World War II—is an account of a five-day reconnaissance of the Sawar Drome area by Company C, 123d Infantry. I won't relate the whole story nor point out errors in the official version, but here's a rough idea of how I saw it.

Company C, commanded by Capt. Martin Marchant Jr., crossed the Woske and proceeded to the east end of the airdrome, made a recon about halfway up the seaward side, then went through the dispersal areas in the edge of the jungle on the landward side. On each of their three nights and at various times during the days they had to fight.

The third night, spent in the dispersal area, was a nightmare of repeated enemy assaults on their position, exhaustion of their potable water supply (they had to drink from bloody shell craters), and near exhaustion of many of the men after three days and nights of movement and fighting with little chance to rest. On the morning of the fourth day, they began to move back toward the Woske.

From left: Lieutenants Francis E. Peebles, John L. Durant, and Raymond R. Utke prepare to set out on their ill-fated patrol. Durant would not return (Photograph from Sanford Winston,
The Golden Cross
).

Vineyard and I had been relieving each other in the air to keep constant surveillance over the company during daylight hours, and I was up when, near noon, the leading elements were clearing the dispersal areas on the inland side of Sawar Drome and proceeding through the tall grass toward the bridge over the small stream at the east end of the airstrip. Vin had just taken off to relieve me and I had started edging toward home when I spotted a Japanese light tank on the beach, camouflaged with palm fronds. I immediately informed Captain Marchant even as I carefully searched the vicinity for other elements of what might be an enemy effort to cut off the company from withdrawal back to the Woske. I immediately discovered a second tank in a position between the road and the beach, its gun covering the road, several riflemen dug in around it. Closer to the company, just east of the creek and on the seaward side of the road I saw numerous infantry in foxholes where
Company C had fought off an attack on the first night out. They were in perfect position to ambush and split the company as it crossed the small bridge. I gave all the information to Marchant, and then, my fuel about gone, Vin relieved me and I went home.

Vin, in cooperation with our forward observers (FOs) with Company C, Lieutenants Paul Giudice and Keith Setterington, both of HQ Btry, adjusted the howitzers of the 122d and the company's mortars on the main ambush position at the bridge. He adjusted artillery fire that knocked out the tank on the beach and, meanwhile, discovered a third tank hidden under overhanging trees right on the beach road, and he also clobbered it with artillery. Strangely, Vin apparently overlooked the second tank I had located, although it was relatively easy to see.

When I came back up to relieve Vin, the company was within a few hundred yards of the bridge, and I was forcibly struck with the realization that if they tried to cross there the result would be a slaughter of company troops. The only way around the Japanese trap led through a deep swamp that extended far into the jungle and would be ex tremely difficult and time-consuming to pass through. But from my aerial viewpoint, I could see the situation much more clearly than Marchant could from the ground, and I suggested a plan, which he accepted and carried out. He crossed through the swamp about a hundred yards above the bridge, then turned toward the shore road while we placed a heavy, sustained concentration of artillery fire on the Japanese position near the bridge. The position rumbled and boiled with scores of explosions as the Americans came out of the swamp and hit the road running toward the Woske. Once clear of the now stunned enemy at the bridge, they slowed, reformed, and began a deliberate movement along the road in the normal way.

At that point, I turned my attention to the remaining tank and its infantry, which was still between Company C and the Woske, waiting patiently. Although the history says the company “could not account for the one remaining tank observed earlier in the afternoon,” it appeared to me that Marchant had forgotten all about it. The company was swinging nonchalantly down the road with its radio turned off, so I could not tell it anything. If we brought artillery fire on the tank now, the company
would be directly on an extension of the gun-target line and a long round might hit the head of the company, so I didn't ask for fire. But as the point men got close to where they would come under fire from the tank, I dove on the company, revving the engine and motioning for the troops to hit the ground. They did so, and soon Marchant came on the air to ask what the trouble was. I explained that within another ten paces his point would come under fire from the tank and surrounding infantry. I told him that there was a small knoll in the bushes near the beach from which he would be able to get a shot at the tank with a bazooka (a two-and-a-half-inch rocket launcher), and I recommended that he send someone to do that. Despite my description of its location, he still had trouble understanding just where the tank was, so I circled it at low altitude, then repeatedly dived low above it on a path perpendicular to the road. On one of these dives, I met Vin heading in from the ocean side. He came on the radio to say that he had brought up some smoke grenades and would use one to mark the tank. Being thus relieved, I headed toward our airstrip.