The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific (27 page)

Captain Erwin Nummer of F Company was one of those brave men. Hit by a Japanese grenade fragment, Nummer popped up off the ground, crying out, “It doesn’t hurt, fellows! See, they got me and it doesn’t hurt at all!”

Just behind Nummer, Lutjens and his men joined F Company, running at the Japanese, soon close enough to use their bayonets, slashing and stabbing and swinging the butts of their rifles. Outmanned, many of the Japanese fled their bunkers, leaving the Americans to storm the Japanese outposts.

One of the huts was filled with the scent of perfume, and there, lying on woven mats, were six Japanese officers. Next to them were bowls of warm rice and a washtub with soapsuds. The officers reacted as if they had been awakened from sleep. Perhaps they were drunk; perhaps, finding themselves confronted by a band of bearded and bedraggled American soldiers, they thought they were dreaming. Or they were sick with fever. Whatever the case the officers did not make a move to defend themselves. According to Lutjens, they were “so startled they just buried their heads in the mud, like ostriches.” Lutjens and his men unleashed a fury of bullets, killing all but one of the Japanese where they lay. One officer tried to stand. They filled him with lead, but the officer just wouldn’t die! He tried to rise two more times before he finally toppled over.

Then the Americans stripped the shacks, taking watercolor prints, fine silks from China, lacquer boxes from the Philippines—proof that the Japanese were part of a veteran naval landing force—blankets, silverware, clothes, cigarettes, whisky, cans of meat, and fourteen rolls of Japanese writing paper. The Americans thought the rolls were toilet paper and celebrated—they had had no toilet paper for nearly two months. Odell grabbed a Japanese bayonet, and from that point on he never went into battle without it. They also found personal pictures, photos of Japanese soldiers in civilian dress surrounded by their wives and children. If some of the men felt a pang, a stab of doubt or mercy, it did not last long. Their motto, according to Lutjens, was “If they don’t stink, stick ’em.” So the Americans moved among the Japanese bodies and plunged their bayonets into the corpses. Setting fire to the huts, they watched them burn and then they blew up the Japanese bunkers.

If Lutjens and the others felt avenged, it was only momentary. The memory of seeing friends “blown to bits just a few yards away” was one he would never forget. And the trail back to the battalion aid station, according to Lutjens, “was so slimy with blood of the wounded…that you could hardly keep your balance.” He wrote later that he saw “men coming back with their faces shot away and their hands where their chins had been, trying to stop the flow of blood.” Men “with their guts sagging out…yelling in pain.”

When Bailey finally called for Company G’s attack, Jastrzembski, DiMaggio, and Stenberg leaped to their feet and ran toward the Japanese outpost. It was hard to shake the feeling that they were on a suicide mission. American machine gunners firing tracers set the field ablaze. Men ran screaming and shooting through the fire. From afar, it must have had a kind of horrible beauty—the black night glowing and crackling with burning grass, the whip and whine of bullets ripping through the trees, the cold, metallic twang of 50 mm and 60 mm mortar shells.

Don Stout could see the kunai grass bending one way as Company H, the battalion’s heavy weapons company, fired on the Japanese using water-cooled .30 caliber machine guns. The grass would bow in the opposite direction when the Japanese returned fire.

Stout ran forward like everyone else. It might have been miles or hours—to him, distance and time had lost all meaning. As the company neared the Japanese, the men lunged with their bayonets. They were so close they could feel blasts of hot air from the muzzles of Japanese rifles.

Stenberg was part of the 4th platoon’s 60 mm mortar squad. As a forward observer, his job was to protect the mortarmen. In New Guinea’s thick jungle, though, high trajectory mortars often were not much good. So now he was out front, a regular rifleman. He pressed the trigger and felt the tommy gun buck in his hands. It was his kind of battle, close in. All he had to do was to pull the trigger and he was bound to hit something, leaving behind enemy soldiers with gaping holes in their chests.

Unable to see more than two or three feet in any direction, no one knew where anyone else was. Squads were cut off from one another. Stenberg heard the lashing of a machine gun and saw three Company G men go down in front of him. His ears rang from the muzzle blast. Jastrzembski felt a bullet skin his leg. It was a searing pain, like being cut with a hot knife. Then he realized that he was only ten feet from a Japanese pillbox, and felt an electric jolt of fear. Before a bullet could tear open his chest, he jumped to the side like an acrobat, grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it at the pillbox. He knew a grenade had a killing radius of thirty-five yards, so he threw himself to the ground just before it blew.

All around him he heard the sickly smacking sound of bullets entering flesh. He saw the flashes of Arisaka rifle barrels. One of those bullets knocked down his buddy Willie La Venture, the shot tearing open his belly. Jastrzembski ducked as low as he could, ran to La Venture, and cradled his head in his hand. Bullets sizzled through the long kunai grass and kicked up dirt just in front of them. La Venture begged for water. “All he wanted was water,” Jastrzembski remembers. Jastrzembski pressed his canteen to his buddy’s lips. La Venture gulped at it. Seconds later, Jastrzembski saw the water pouring from the hole in his belly.

Jastrzembski could not wait around, though, even for his best buddy. Calling for a medic, he jumped to his feet, retched, and left La Venture lying there. It was the hardest thing he ever had to do.

Stenberg blasted his way through the enemy’s first line of defense, but when the rest of the company caught up to him, and Company G tried moving on Buna Village, the men lost their way. As daylight crept into the jungle, Gus Bailey realized that they were mired in a swamp at the northern border of the grass strip, and called off the attack.

Jastrzembski leaned against a tree, lifted his pant leg, and inspected his wound. Luckily, the bullet had only grazed him. Then, looking around, he spotted a Japanese flag lying in the mud. He walked over and grabbed it. Goddamn Japs had just killed his best buddy. At least he could steal their precious flag and stuff it in his pocket like an old snot rag.

Stenberg stumbled forward, his legs weak but still able to carry his weight. Then he sat down in the long grass and finally exhaled, taking a moment to thank his lucky stars that he was still alive. Then he wondered how his best buddies, Sergeants George Borgeson and O’Donnell O’Brien were doing. He and O’Brien had joined the Guard at the same time. Their serial numbers were one digit apart. In November of 1941, while back home in Muskegon on leave, O’Brien and Borgeson, still in uniform, were groomsmen at his wedding. O’Brien was a tough Irishman. If the Japs tangled with him, he would give them a run for their money.

In front of Stenberg, a man moaned in pain. When Stenberg approached him, he realized that it was his buddy Jim Broner, one of the two Broner brothers in Company G. Broner was a sergeant in the rifle platoon and had been shot through the leg. It was a deep wound, and the flesh around the bullet hole was shredded. Stenberg took his bag of sulfa powder and dusted the wound and stood guard over Broner, watching for snipers in the trees, waiting for a medic. When the medic arrived he shot Broner up with a half grain of morphine, hurriedly dressed his wound, then gave him two sulfanilamide pills. Ten minutes later, litter bearers carried him out. If they could get Broner back to a portable hospital before he lost too much blood, his buddy had a good chance of keeping his leg.

Doc Warmenhoven and his staff, working round the clock in blackout tents just behind the front lines, were performing miracles with sodium pentathol and blood plasma. Plasma had saved dozens of lives. It came in a tin can in powdered form and was mixed with distilled water and injected into a soldier’s vein via a needle and rubber tubing. Because it was universal, a doctor did not have to wait for blood typing. If the litter bearers could get Broner out of the jungle, Warmenhoven could pump plasma into him as fast as he could slice open the can. He would operate right there, sterilizing his instruments with a small stove or canned heat, kneeling over a canvas stretcher draped in bloody sheets and soaked in disinfectant, in a tent that smelled of burned flesh and of feces, because guys often had their bowels ripped open by mortar rounds. While bullets struck the surrounding trees and perforated the tents, they continued working. In one week they had performed almost seventy major surgeries, including amputations and serious chest operations, saving soldiers who in World War I would have been left for dead.

When Colonel Mott discovered that Bailey was out of position, he called on Lutjens and Company E to take Buna Village. Shortly after sunrise, Lutjens led his men down the main track in the direction of the village. Three hundred yards out, Company E slammed into a Japanese bunker and was stopped dead in its tracks. Although Company E’s assault failed, Stutterin’ Smith, who was in the front lines with his men, recognized that a breakthrough was possible. Sensing victory and a speedy end to the battle for Buna Village, he ordered Companies H and F and some troops from Headquarters Company to resume the attack. He knew the assault would require mortar support.

Putting Captain Harold E. Hantlemann, commanding officer of Company H, in charge of mortars, he instructed Captain Nummer of Company F to initiate the charge. It is what the men loved about Smith—his moxie, his ability to think on his feet, his willingness to be at the front with the privates and the corporals. Smith knew it was his job to make the men believe. The only way to do that was to be right there with them dodging bullets, risking his life.

While Nummer led his men down the main track in the direction of the ripening sun, “Handy” Hantlemann, a former star offensive guard at the University of Iowa, directed a fierce mortar barrage. Hantlemann sported a long, disheveled black beard and looked more like a swarthy pirate than a captain in the U.S. Army. The mortars sent hot shrapnel flying everywhere, but the Japanese were ready for them and stopped Nummer well short of the village. Still, Nummer and Company F punched away at the Japanese for much of the morning.

Herman Bottcher, now in charge of a platoon, saw a Japanese sniper pick off six of Company H’s men. Spotting a rifle barrel jutting from the leaves of a nearby tree, he raised his tommy gun and touched off the trigger. The Japanese sniper fell six feet and then bounced as the rope he had used to tie himself in tightened around his ankle.

Elsewhere, another Japanese machine gunner sprayed bullets through the jungle.

“We have to take him out,” Bottcher told his men. Next thing his men knew, Bottcher grabbed two grenades and was crawling through the long grass. Poking his head up, he saw the machine gun sticking out of a trench. After throwing the grenades, he began pawing at the dirt, digging down as deep as he could. The grenades blew and things went nuts. Bullets flew over his head. Damn Japanese are shooting high, Bottcher thought to himself. Then he realized it was his own men, shooting in the direction of the detonated grenades.

When the firing stopped, Bottcher crawled back to his men, grabbed his machine gun, and returned to scout the enemy trench. He found three Japanese, all dead, crouching with their faces buried in their arms. Bottcher realized that they had heard the grenades hit. With no time to roll out of the trench they had tried to save themselves by covering their heads and faces.

By early afternoon Stutterin’ Smith saw the handwriting on the wall and reluctantly called off the assault. The morning’s offensive had been successful, but his men had made little progress since those early gains.

As the Americans dug in, some Japanese soldiers staged a counterattack. One of Lutjens’ men, Private Johnny Combs, caught them in the act. With his back against a tree for support, he leveled his tommy gun and took out all sixteen attackers.

The battlefield, Lutjens remembers, was littered with bodies: mostly Japanese, but Americans, too. It was a sight he would never forget. Among the dead were two Company E men who had made the mistake of trying to take a small group of Japanese as prisoners. Pretending to surrender, the would-be prisoners machine-gunned their captors.

Despite Company E’s losses, Lutjens felt relieved that many of his best buddies had made it through the battle. Art Edson had survived. Edson had been with Lutjens since their scouting trip along the coast. Together they had also made the walk from Natunga to Pongani to establish contact with the 128th. The return trip had been especially rough on Lutjens, who was sweating out his first malaria attack. Had it not been for Edson, who encouraged, prodded, and sometimes dragged him, Lutjens might never have made it back to Natunga.

Stutterin’ Smith had reason to be upbeat, too. His Ghost Mountain boys had driven the enemy back hundreds of yards. In the process, they had achieved their objective: the first breakthrough in the Japanese perimeter.