It was typical MacArthur-esque hyperbole. What the front-page story omitted was that Buna Government Station east of Entrance Creek, the Allies’ main objective, was still firmly in Japanese hands. It also failed to mention was that the Japanese possessed a large chunk of land—the Warren Front—east of the Government Station, and another one west of the Girua River at Sanananda.
Despite the triumphant New York Times headline, the reality was that the war in New Guinea had already dragged on much longer than the Americans or the Australians thought it would. There had been successes—Buna Village and Gona—but in the big picture they were minor victories. Early on, the plan had been to envelop the eleven-mile-long front as if a giant hand were closing inexorably around the Japanese. The Americans would come up the coast while the Australians moved down. A combined American-Australian army would move north via the Sanananda track, while an entirely American force would attack the Triangle.
A week and a half before the capture of Buna Village, after the failure of his December 5 assault on the Warren Front, Eichelberger realized that this plan would not work—at least not east of the Girua River. Japanese positions were just too strong, and the terrain was dismal.
The Americans, Eichelberger decided, would soften up the Japanese positions by infiltration and aggressive patrolling, the kind of mobile, small-unit maneuver tactics that General Forrest Harding had pioneered at the Infantry School at Fort Benning.
Eichelberger’s plan was for reconnaissance platoons to identify enemy positions. He would then use artillery, especially the 105 mm howitzer—code named “Dusty”—with its high angle of fire and delayed fuses, to pound those positions into submission. Following bombardment, patrols would knock out the bunkers one by one, with rifles, grenades, grenade launchers, and mortars. If that failed, Eichelberger resolved to let starvation take its toll.
In the abstract, the plan seemed sound. The reality, though, was much more complicated. The terrain made even small-unit patrolling nearly impossible. While soldiers used grenade launchers with punishing effectiveness, their supply was limited, and they soon ran out of grenades. The 105 mm howitzer sat unused for days after firing a few hundred rounds because of a lack of ammunition. Eichelberger was again forced to resort to mortars and 37 mm guns, which hardly fazed the bunkers, and 3.7-inch mountain howitzers and 25-pounders that fired rounds with super-quick fuses that blew up on impact, leaving the Japanese positions undisturbed.
In mid-December, however, Eichelberger’s luck changed. Tanks arrived: four light American M-3 General Stuarts that General Harding had fought so hard for and that had been denied to him time and time again. They saved the day, sparing Eichelberger a career-ending decision; MacArthur, who demanded daily battle reports, never would have tolerated Eichelberger’s plan to let attrition take its toll.
A day after receiving the tanks, Eichelberger began to prepare for an all-out assault on Captain Yasuda’s and Colonel Yamamoto’s forces on the Urbana and Warren Fronts. In the waning light on the evening of December 17, five hundred Australian infantrymen assembled near the front. The Australians were the same troops who had defeated the Japanese at Milne Bay. They were new to the Warren Front and would lead the attack, while the Americans were held in reserve.
At sunup on December 18, the tanks and the camouflaged Australian troops moved out. Ahead of them sat the stranded Bren gun carriers that had failed to dent the Japanese defenses two weeks earlier. Farther ahead was the Duropa Plantation, with its elegant coconut palms swaying in the slight breeze. Underneath the trees in the long kunai, Colonel Yamamoto’s elite 144th and 229th Infantry troops hid in their bunkers and machine gun nests, unaware of the approaching battle.
Just before 7:00 a.m., artillery battered the plantation. Ten minutes later, even before the smoke cleared, the Australians advanced. The General Stuarts opened up on the bunkers with their 37 mm guns. An American officer described the results: “The tanks really did the job. They apparently completely demoralized the Japs [who] fought like cornered rats.” The Australians, wielding tommy guns and hurling grenades, moved forward in the wake of the tanks and caught Yamamoto’s men by surprise.
Except for heavy Australian casualties, the day was a success. The Allies now controlled everything east of the Girua River except the Old Strip and Giropa Point.
In a letter to Sutherland that evening (each night Eichelberger penned a letter to MacArthur’s headquarters and to his wife Emmaline), Eichelberger wrote, “I am glad he [Brigadier Wooten] has the tanks to help him. I do not believe he or anyone else would have gone very far without them.”
General Harding had been vindicated. The tanks, however, had not arrived in time to save his career.
Meanwhile, Major General Yamagata was trying to rally the Japanese troops on the Urbana Front. On December 17, he issued a message to the front’s commanders, calling for the “complete annihilation and expulsion of the enemy from the soil of New Guinea.”
At the same time, Eichelberger was putting his men into position for an assault on the Government Station.
With the entire 127th at his disposal, Eichelberger relieved White Smith’s 2nd Battalion, sending them to the village of Siremi for a well-deserved rest. To make up for the loss of White Smith’s men, he pulled the Ghost Mountain Battalion, under Jim Boice, out of reserve after barely a week’s rest. Boice moved a portion of his men into the Coconut Grove and the rest of his troops into the Triangle east of Entrance Creek.
At the Triangle, bunkers, firing trenches, and chest-high swamp guarded every possible approach to the raised track that led to the Government Station. The plan was for two companies to attack the Triangle from the Coconut Grove via the bridge that spanned Entrance Creek, while a third company moved on the point of the Triangle from the south. Prior to the assault, the area would be subjected to an air strike and 81 mm mortar fire.
At 10:00 p.m. the evening before the assault, Boice and Bailey and their men maneuvered into position through thick sago swamp. Bailey felt the same poignant ache for home he always felt on the eve of battle. Only a week earlier he had received a packet of seventeen letters from Katherine. He read the letters hungrily and then he reread each one slowly three or four times until he knew their details by heart.
Katherine had also sent along three baby photos of Cladie Alyn. Swelling with pride, Bailey passed them out among the company.
Back at home Katherine and Cladie Alyn were on their way to the Bailey farm to share Bailey’s most recent letter with his mother, Mamie. Mamie loved to have Katherine read the letters aloud to her, to hear the cadence of the sentences, her son’s words.
Katherine looked forward to the visits, too. Even when she and Cladie were dating, she enjoyed going to the Bailey farm. She loved its simple grace: the white house with a porch across the front, the barn that Jim Bailey, Cladie’s father, had built with lumber cut and milled on the farm, the fenced-in yard with the big oak, and the creek that wandered through the pasture behind the house. Now Katherine imagined how it would be when her husband returned. She and Cladie and Cladie Alyn would go down to the creek. They would roll up their pants and wade in the summer trickle.
Jim Boice was feeling good. He knew Christmas was approaching and while in Australia, he had made arrangements with Block’s Department Store in Indianapolis to have presents delivered to Zelma and Billy and his mom. It was a special service the family owned store offered to soldiers. Boice imagined Zelma and Billy’s surprise when they received the gifts. For Billy, he had ordered a pedal fire truck; for Zelma, hard-to-come-by nylon stockings and perfume; and for his mother perfume, too.
Boice was no pessimist, but sometimes it was hard, even for a man who had been taught since he was a small boy to look on the bright side, to imagine getting out of the jungle alive. He had been lucky; he had made it over the mountains. Once he got to Buna, Lady Luck was still at his side. In battle he had not been scratched. Somehow he had avoided the sniper’s bullet on scouting trips. All the whi
le, men were dying around him. He had prayed, but so had the others. Why did God hear one man’s prayers and not another’s?
Perhaps God would spare him long enough to let him hold Zelma again and to bounce Billy on his lap. Perhaps next year he would make it home for Christmas.
Boice would have given anything to be home. Instead, he was preparing to try to take the Government Station, the toughest target yet. Perhaps, though, God really was listening to his prayers. On Sunday, December 13, while in reserve, the battalion found time to conduct church services. Boice kneeled, laid his rifle down beside him, and bowed his head. The following day, the 127th captured Buna Village. Now, as they prepared to attack the Government Station, Boice hoped that perhaps it could be accomplished as easily. He had seen enough good men die.
At first light on December 19, Boice ordered the men to inspect their weapons. Jastrzembski, DiMaggio, and Stenberg had checked and rechecked theirs all night long. They knew how to care for their weapons. One of the guys in the company joked that he could take apart and put together his M-1 almost as fast as he could get his girlfriend’s dress off.
Shortly before 7:00 a.m., the first part of the plan went into action. Nine B-25s dropped 100-and 500-pound bombs on the Government Station. Fifteen minutes later a dozen A-20s bombed and strafed the coastal track between the station and Giropa Point. At 7:30 the mortars began firing. The bombardment lasted fifteen minutes.
At 7:45, Boice and Bailey led their men in the attack with the support of a rolling mortar barrage. They had not covered more than twenty yards when they got caught in fierce cross fire. The barrage had done little but antagonize the Japanese.
Out front, his feet raw and swollen, Boice ran, ducked, and crawled, trying to keep his men moving over the bridge.
“Move boys, keep on going!” he yelled. It wasn’t any use, though; they were pinned down.
Boice ordered the men to retreat. In a large patch of kunai grass, some found cover while others pawed at the ground, carving out shallow foxholes. DiMaggio flopped down on his belly in the grass, thinking that he had just survived another close call. At Bottcher’s Corner, after one Japanese attack, he realized that a bullet had come close enough to knock the bayonet off his rifle. During another battle, a rifle grenade had landed and exploded a foot from his head, and he was not even scratched.
Just then a Japanese soldier on the other side of the river fired a rifle grenade, and shrapnel flew everywhere. DiMaggio felt hot metal stick into the side of his face and embed itself in his jawbone. Minutes later, an aidman was at his side. Unable to extract the shrapnel, he bandaged DiMaggio’s face and asked if he could walk back to the portable hospital. DiMaggio said he could.
A hundred yards back, a doctor informed DiMaggio that the piece of metal would be his ticket out of New Guinea.
Carl Stenberg had been even closer to the explosion than DiMaggio, and was thrown ten feet through the air when the grenade blew. When he landed, he felt for his limbs. They were all there. But his ear rang like a siren; he had ruptured his left eardrum.
Stanley Jastrzembski was sitting in his foxhole burning up with malaria. He had felt the explosion, but was far enough away from it that he was safe. Like everyone else, his nerves were frayed. “Damn jungle,” he thought. “A guy can hardly see two feet in front of his face even in the daylight.” Suddenly he felt someone jump next to him. “A Jap,” he thought. “I’m a goner now.” He whipped around to defend himself and then he heard an American voice.
“Hey, it’s me Chet.”
It was not unusual for Jastrzembski and Sokoloski to be together. They had gone to St. Michaels and later they enlisted in the Guard together. “A pair of Poles,” they used to joke. But Sokoloski was supposed to be twenty yards away in his own foxhole.
“What the hell you doing over here? I thought you was a Jap. I almost shot you.”
“I just saw some Japs,” Sokoloski replied.
“So,” Jastrzembski said. “Get back there and shoot them. That’s why we’re here, ain’t we?”
“Sure as shit,” Sokoloski thought. “I better get back.”
“Keep your head down, you stupid Pole,” Jastrzembski said to the shadow at the edge of his foxhole.
As soon as Sokoloski left, Jastrzembski felt alone and scared. It would have been nice to have someone with him. They could have said a prayer in Polish. They could have whispered the words right there in the mud with the Japs on the other side of the creek.
“Keep your head down, you stupid Pole,” he hissed again.
An hour went by, then two. The Americans were still on the west side of the bridge. Boice knew that if they could not cross over and clear out the Triangle, the plan to take the Government Station was dead on arrival. Boice jumped up. Maybe, just maybe, they could make it over the bridge. He waved his arm and his men slipped out of the kunai and followed.
Boice might have heard the whine of the mortar shell, but there was not time to jump out of the way. The mortar landed at his feet and blew him into the air. Two of his men grabbed for him, and pulled him away from the bridge. When a medic arrived he checked Boice’s vital signs, then called for a team of litter bearers. At 9:45, on December 19, only feet from the bridge over Entrance Creek, and only two days after being pulled out of reserve, Jim Boice was killed.
For hours, Boice’s men made stabs at crossing the bridge, but by early afternoon, they were still stranded on the west side of the creek.
When Eichelberger heard the news, he ordered the mortarmen to lay down a wall of white phosphorous smoke as cover. The battalion, trailing the smoke, gained a few yards but was stopped short again. Two hours later the mortars fired another seven hundred rounds. The whole Triangle rumbled. No way, Bailey thought, no possible way the Jap bunkers could stand up to that kind of bombardment. The men tried to move forward again. They were hit by a fusillade of fire even before many made it out of their hiding spots.
At the Triangle, Bob Hartman, a recent addition to Company E, was leading a platoon through the jungle. His orders were to take out a pillbox. He was dumbfounded by the assignment. He had spent his entire military career in Service Company, and now because the 2nd Battalion needed healthy riflemen, he was in charge of an attack.
Hartman had never even seen a pillbox before, and his platoon was made up of guys as as green as he. Hartman and his men were moving through eight-foot-high kunai grass when he spotted an elevated trail. At last, he thought, now we won’t have to trudge through the grass. He got to the trail and in a flash realized where he was. A fire lane! He dove into the kunai at the trail’s edge. Just then a machine gunner opened up on him, and he felt the bullet hit. Fortunately, it had just scraped his arm. It was then that he realized his men might try to come to his aid.
“Stay over there,” he yelled. “I’m okay.”
As darkness crept into the jungle, Hartman pulled his platoon out and rendezvoused with Gus Bailey’s men at the Coconut Grove. Jastrzembski had survived another battle and thanked God for sparing his life. Out of the 107 men who began the attack, only sixty-seven remained.
The portable hospital was buzzing. It had not been set up to handle this many casualties. Every bed was full. The less seriously wounded lay in the mud, waiting to be taken care of.
One of the doctors was attending to Stenberg, but was more concerned about Stenberg’s 104-degree temperature than his eardrum. He gave Stenberg six 5-grain quinine tablets, which he took all at once. A half an hour later, Stenberg could barely move or see.
No one knew what had become of Gus Bailey. He had led the attack. No one had seen him go down, and nobody had heard him scream. Just where was he, then?
Bailey was sitting against the base of a tree. He had taken a bullet, which had lodged in the meaty portion of his upper thigh. Rather than call for a medic, he had wrapped it himself, and continued to fight. Now, he obviously needed a doctor’s attention. Bailey waited while Warmenhoven and the other doctors treated the soldiers with chest and abdom
inal wounds and head injuries. He was losing blood, and his leg was stiffening up, but he knew that he would make it.
The following day, the Ghost Mountain Battalion went into reserve again, and Gus Bailey was evacuated to Port Moresby.
Badly off as the Ghost Mountain Battalion was, Phil Ishio and William Hirashima knew from the diaries they had translated and the few prisoners they had interrogated that the Japanese were in even worse shape. They had very little food, no quinine, and according to Hirashima, “were almost dead from malaria.”
The next day, Eichelberger turned over the job of taking Buna Government Station entirely to the 127th. Herman Bottcher, who was now a captain thanks to a rare field promotion, stayed behind to assist. Even with Bottcher’s help, though, the 127th was unable to infiltrate the Triangle. In fact, its attack failed miserably. The lead company lost 40 percent of its troops, including Bottcher, who was wounded in the arm by a machine gunner and taken to the hospital at Dobodura.
At Dobodura, Bottcher was reunited with Harold Mitchell, who had been badly wounded during the December 19 attack. Mitchell, smiling wanly, was happy to see his friend, who, he had been told, had been killed with Captain Boice.
That night Mitchell died with Bottcher sitting at his side.
After the failure at the Triangle, Eichelberger was forced to reassess his strategy. Late on the evening of December 19, in a letter to Sutherland, he explained how he would cross Entrance Creek farther downstream, bypassing the Triangle. “General Herring,” he wrote, “is very anxious for me to take the track junction, and I am most willing, but the enemy is…strong there and is able to reinforce his position at will. I am going to put in artillery on him…and I am going to continue that tomorrow morning. Then I am going to find a weak spot across Government Gardens.”
The Ghost Mountain Boys Page 28
