The Ghost Mountain Boys

by James Campbell

  Gus Bailey also enjoyed the trip. It allowed him and the guys of Company G ample time to do what Bailey loved best—play cards. It also gave him a chance to see the sights. Like many of the Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana men of the division, Bailey had never been west. He was awed by the wide-open expanses of the high plains, by the snow-packed mountain passes of New Mexico, and eventually by the ocean. When the train arrived at the Oakland, California, pier on April 13, Bailey took time out from his duties to write Katherine a letter.

  “I’ve made up my mind, “he wrote, “that when I get back we will spend two or three months in this part of the country. You and I and the little one. I hope to God this is over soon so that we may be able to start where we left off, and with a little more to make life happier for us. I am now looking forward to the day when I get off that boat for home and, wherever it is, I want you to be there to meet me.”

  Chapter 3

  ARRIVAL DOWN UNDER

  WHILE WAITING TO be deployed, a portion of the division stayed at Fort Ord and the Dog Track Pavilion while the rest of the men were put up at a large convention center and rodeo venue called the Cow Palace in San Francisco. According to Stutterin’ Smith, the Cow Palace was a miserable, concrete “monolith” as cold and “drafty as the North Pole,” and the men hated it. They were forced to sleep draped over stadium chairs and in horse stalls that reeked of manure. But the stopover was essential. Before shipping the division overseas, the army needed to take care of some last-minute business, including issuing extra uniforms, M-1 rifles, new helmets, and modern howitzers to replace the World War I artillery that the division had been using for two decades.

  Before shipping out, lots of the men took advantage of San Francisco. The sightseers climbed Telegraph Hill and admired the Golden Gate Bridge. Most, though, just wanted to have a good time. That meant beer and women in Barbary Coast saloons or Chinatown. If they were going off to war, they were going to have one hell of a party first.

  Simon Warmenhoven had just been promoted to major, and he was in the mood to celebrate, too. Instead of going with the other men, he sent Mandy a telegram, announcing the promotion, and then wrote her a letter.

  Dearest Lover:

  I looked at your picture so long last night—Anyway, I had a dream about you…I saw you just as plain as if you were standing in front of me, you wore a black dress with white trimming around the collar and your pretty blond hair…I didn’t even get to kiss you tho…Oh, Mandy darling, I miss you so, so much…I’d just give anything to to be with you…to feel your warm lips on mine. I hate to think how long it is going to be before I’ll be able to do that again…Before closing—Dearest Lover…again let me tell you, I love you so very, very much…It’ll be like being married again when I see you…My love to the girls—and the grandest wife and most thrilling lover.

  Lovingly, Yours Always, Sam

  On April 19 the 32nd Division, filled out with over three thousand “selectees,” mostly privates fresh from basic training, crammed into seven Matson Line cruise ships, that had been semi-converted to troop carriers. At 5:30 p.m. three days later, the overloaded vessels pulled anchor, escorted by two corvettes and the cruiser Indianapolis.

  When the 32nd left Fort Mason’s wharves, it enjoyed the distinction of being the first American division in World War II to be moved in a single convoy. As the California coastline receded, though, the men had no sense of their place in history.

  The ships steamed by Alcatraz, and the men joked that they would gladly trade places with any of its prisoners. When they reached the Presidio they heckled the “soft” garrison soldiers who were staying behind to guard the coast and enjoy the niceties of civilization. With the Golden Gate Bridge in sight, Stanley Jastrzembski grew nostalgic. There was no turning back now. Secretly some of the guys hoped that the transports’ smokestacks would not clear the bridge. When they did, Jastrzembski watched the city disappear in the distance. Already he was dreaming of his return home.

  No one seemed to have any definite answers about where they were going. Rumors swirled through the ships: Hawaii, some said; others were convinced it was Alaska, or the Far East, New Zealand, India, Fiji, or maybe Australia. Stutterin’ Smith, now the 2nd Battalion’s executive officer, had slipped a map into his duffel prior to leaving California. Using his compass, he plotted the ship’s course—Hawaii first, and then an abrupt turn to the southwest. Smith ventured an educated guess: Australia. Not long after, Division Headquarters confirmed his assumption.

  They were at sea for three weeks. By the hundreds, men unaccustomed to the pitch and roll of a ship at sea fell ill and spent much of their time leaning over the ship’s rail.

  “It’s mind over matter, boys,” Captain Medendorp asserted as he walked the deck.

  It was not the thing to tell a bunch of seasick men. Days later when Medendorp’s stomach began to roil and he, too, was standing at the rail retching, many felt that he had received his just reward.

  The ships were filled far beyond capacity, and the men had to endure long lines everywhere they went—to the dining room, the showers, the latrines. At night, they bedded down wherever they could. Most slept in “standees,” pipe frame bunks piled four or five high in converted staterooms, parlors, party rooms, and the ballroom. According to Carl Stenberg, the ballroom was dubbed “Stinking Sock Alley.” Those who had it worst, though, slept on sheets of plywood in the bowels of the ship. As the convoy approached the equator, men vied for space on the deck to avoid the stifling heat.

  The officers, though, enjoyed a bit of pampering. They slept two men to a stateroom, dined at tables set with fine china and silverware, and were treated to sumptuous meals because the ship’s food locker was still full of fare that would normally be reserved for its paying civilians.

  Although officers held mandatory orientation courses emphasizing Australia’s people and customs and staged battalion conferences, the men still had lots of time to fill. They spent their days doing calisthenics, walking around the ship’s crowded deck, writing letters home, singing, and watching the sea. The novelty of flying fish, ocean-wandering albatross, gliding hundreds of miles from land, and moonlit nights did not last, however. The “Abandon Ship” drills and fire drills and the “Order of Neptune” ceremony, performed when the division crossed the equator, provided some excitement. But it was the poker games—instigated in some cases by Gus Bailey—and the craps games that did the most for the men’s spirits.

  For General Edwin Forrest Harding’s staff, it was get-acquainted time, and they liked what they saw. The division’s new commander had an agile mind. He could quote T. S. Eliot or Tennyson or Kipling, or discuss astronomy and history like an Ivy League professor. But he did not put on airs. He had sparkling eyes and a midwesterner’s common touch. And there was no one who understood the modern military better than he.

  Harding had written the book on it. When George C. Marshall went to Fort Benning to become the school’s assistant commandant entrusted with updating the army, he brought his friend Forrest Harding with him as an instructor and put Harding in charge of Benning’s influential Infantry School publications. In 1934, Harding edited Infantry in Battle, which disseminated across the world the school’s new ideas on modern military strategies. The triangular division was one of those ideas, and no one understood its simple genius better than Harding did. Unlike the square division of World War I, which was designed for attrition warfare, the smaller triangular division, consisting of three regimental combat teams and a simplified command structure, emphasized agility, adaptability, and a lower casualty rate.

  On May 7, the convoy crossed the International Date Line, and eight days later the ships docked at Port Adelaide in South Australia in the early afternoon. The 32nd Division had traveled 8,500 miles in twenty-one days.

  Throngs of Australians turned out to greet the division. As the men walked down the gangplank, they received a hero’s welcome that rivaled MacArthur’s. Some of the men expected “to be met a
t a primitive wharf by aborigine porters on kangaroos.” What they got instead were young Australian women who swooned at the handsome American GIs.

  “I could get used to this awful quick,” Willie La Venture said, winking to his best buddy Stan Jastrzembski. La Venture and Jastrzembski had been through a lot together, but they had never seen anything like this reception. They had not even fired a shot in defense of Australia, and already they were being celebrated as heroes. According to Jastrzembski, “Young women were throwing flowers, blowing kisses, waving handkerchiefs, and crying.”

  The adoration was short-lived. Officers herded the men onto trains as swiftly as they could, and shortly after six that evening the division was bound for one of two camps outside of Adelaide—the 126th went to Camp Sandy Creek, and the 127th and 128th went to Camp Woodside, thirty miles from Sandy Creek. Two hours after leaving Adelaide, the battalions arrived at the appointed camps in the dark of the night without lights to guide them. Both Sandy Creek and Woodside were under strict blackout orders.

  “Damn, it’s cold,” Jastrzembski said, stepping off the train. “It’s like winter. I thought Australia was supposed to be warm.”

  “Where are the beaches and the girls?” someone asked.

  “They’re here, all right,” another guy said. “The army’s gonna surprise us.”

  The following morning they were not joking around. Camp, they discovered, was a bunch of tin warehouses and huts with canvas roofs and no insulation. Their beds were nothing more than burlap bags filled with straw.

  The various units spent the next week getting settled. They worked fast because company commanders were eager to get them on their feet again. After three weeks at sea, the men had grown soft, and because of the seasickness, many had also lost weight.

  By late May, the division began its “toughening up” anew in South Australia’s gently rolling farm country. “Toughening up,” at least initially, meant basic, no-frills road marches. Eventually, as the men regained their strength, they performed scouting, field, and patrolling exercises, and put in lots of hours at the rifle range.

  Like many of the men of the 32nd, Stanley Jastrzembski was dumbfounded to find himself in Australia. Jastrzembski was twelve years old before he ever even left Michigan. He was a small kid but wiry and athletic and did the high jump and broad jump for the Polish Falcons of the National Polish Alliance. When the Falcons were invited to LaPorte, Indiana, for a regional track meet, Jastrzembski accompanied the team. Although he won two medals in LaPorte, he will always remember that trip for another reason: The Muskegon team stayed in a hotel. There, Jastrzembski took a bath in a real bathtub for the first time in his life.

  Although the division was being prepared for battle, the men felt more like wide-eyed sightseers on a tour of “Down Under.” Adelaide had a powerful draw on them. A city of roughly a million people, it offered abundant entertainment. According to Stutterin’ Smith, who was no puritan, soldiers quickly learned to indulge in the “Aussie penchant for having a good time.” The men learned to “Give ’er a go” Australian style, whether they were drinking flat Aussie beer or chasing Aussie women. The Americans were well paid—they would be awarded 30 percent raises when they went overseas—especially in comparison to their Australian counterparts, and they “spent with abandon on food, drink, and girls.”

  Prostitution was legal in Australia, and in May 1942, venereal disease became a serious problem for the 32nd Division. These were pre-penicillin days. Warmenhoven had to hospitalize soldiers for thirty days even for cases of gonorrhea. With the help of local public health officials and the police, however, division medical officers set up prophylactic stations across the cities and towns frequented by the troops.

  Warmenhoven clearly had his hands full, but he still found time to write Mandy.

  Tuesday Nite 8:00 PM.

  June 2, 1942

  Dearest Lover:

  Before I forget to mention it, from now on, send all your letters air mail…seems that if you send it air mail, it is then taken across the ocean by these bomber planes…I’d sure feel so much better after hearing from you…that old heart starts aching for news from the loved ones way back in the States…I keep wondering about you all. I suppose Ann is quite a walker by now, isn’t she? I remember so distinctly when Muriel first began to walk, how after she got into it, how she used to run all the time up and down the rooms, then every once in awhile she’d take a nice spill on the slippery floor in the kitchen…I suppose pretty soon you’ll be going to the cottage. Sure would love to spend a weekend with you out there, lover—so many sweet and fond memories are contained in the cottage…I suppose that you’ve read all about the big air raid over Germany by 1000 bombers…Well, those Germans certainly have it coming to them. Don’t feel sorry for them at all…isn’t it awful the way they are murdering those poor Czech families because of the attempted murder on that ‘butcher’ Heydrich…if the Russians can keep up their present tempo, and a few more such air raids over Germany, I then think that Germany won’t last long anymore. Then they can all concentrate on Japan and that phase of it will be simple enough. Sure hope I don’t have to stay out here too long.

  Yours Forever, Sam

  Six days later, he wrote again:

  Monday 4:30 PM.

  June 8, 1942

  To My “One and Only”

  My first letter from home…to-day. I’ve read it over and over and almost know it by heart. This certainly was quite a letter, honey. And so my Mandy is going to have another little “Warmy”…I sure was thrilled to read about it sweetheart, altho I must honestly say, not surprised. Remember the last time I examined you, I think that was around March 20…I hoped then that you would be pregnant—I didn’t like to say anything about it then because I just had a premonition that after I would leave you there, I wouldn’t be seeing you again for a long time…Well Darling…I’d sure be tickled to have a son…The thing that makes me feel bad is not being home with you to watch them grow up…I’ll bet when I get home he’ll say, “Momma, who’s that man?”

  There’s a lot of things I could write about…if I were sure that you were the only one reading them; So many places you’ll have to read between the lines…so much I’d like to tell you…whatever may happen to either one of us, always know this my darling, I’ve always most sincerely and most deeply loved you…I’ll be so anxious to hear from you all the time now, darling—I’ll be praying for you. Give Muriel and Ann a hug and a kiss for me—and Mandy, darling—all your Warmy’s heart’s true love…

  Forever yours, Sam

  The soldiers that Warmenhoven treated could hardly be blamed for their casual attitude about their training. They were doing what came naturally to young men: They were living day-to-day, making the best of a situation over which they had no control. War might be just around the corner, but they would deal with that when the time came.

  Had they been privy to the intelligence that showed that Japan coveted the island of New Guinea, they might have reacted differently. As early as May 19, as the regiments were settling into Camps Sandy Creek and Woodside, ULTRA, the name for the Allied code-breaking system that had cracked Japanese and German wireless codes, revealed that the Japanese army planned to attack Port Moresby via a mountain route from the north coast.

  On June 9, when Allied Intelligence again notified MacArthur that the Japanese were contemplating an invasion of New Guinea’s Papuan Peninsula, he alerted General Blamey, his Commander of Allied Land Forces. “There is increasing evidence,” he wrote, “that the Japanese are displaying interest in the development of a route from Buna on the north coast of southern New Guinea through Kokoda to Port Moresby. From studies made in this headquarters it appears that minor forces may attempt to utilize this route…”

  Blamey directed MacArthur’s inquiry to Major General Basil Morris, who at the time was commander of New Guinea Force and also head of ANGAU (Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit), the military government that ran New Guinea after Jap
anese planes bombed Port Moresby. Morris replied that there were ANGAU officers, native constables, two Papuan Infantry Battalions (a unit made up of natives), and a company from the Australian Infantry Battalion patrolling the area around Kokoda.

  Blamey followed up with another message instructing Morris “to take all necessary steps to prevent a Japanese surprise landing along the coast, north and south of Buna, to deny the enemy the grasslands in that area for an airdrome, and to assure that we command the pass at Kokoda.”

  Morris replied, “Re the Japs, I don’t think you need to worry about them. It is not likely they will want to commit suicide just yet.”

  Despite Morris’ assurances, MacArthur was concerned. The Allies had just finalized their own plans for seizing New Guinea. Operation Cartwheel called for a powerful two-pronged attack by MacArthur’s ground forces and the U.S. Pacific Fleet. MacArthur’s troops would sweep through New Guinea by land while the navy moved up through the Solomon Islands by sea. Operation Providence stipulated that Australian troops and American engineers would march over the Kokoda track to Buna and prepare the area for the arrival of a main Allied landing force, which was to make the trip from Port Moresby. That force would travel around the tail of the Papuan Peninsula and then north up the coast in a series of small coastal steamers. The main body was to arrive in mid-August and prepare Buna for antiaircraft defense and begin construction of a large airbase at Dobodura, fifteen miles inland.

  The resounding booms to the north on the evening of July 21 puzzled Captain Sam Templeton. A thunderstorm? How could it be? The sky was a cloudless blue.