The Ghost Mountain Boys

by James Campbell

  Eichelberger was justifiably bitter. Demonized by his men, he bore the brunt of MacArthur’s sense of urgency. He would later write, “The great hero went home without seeing Buna before, during or after the fight while permitting press articles from his GHQ to say he was leading his troops in battle. MacArthur…just stayed over at Moresby 40 minutes away and walked the floor. I know this to be a fact.” Though MacArthur had never bothered to visit the front “to see first hand the difficulties our troops were up against,” he continually hounded Eichelberger “to push on to victory.”

  Victory at Buna and Sanananda came at a huge cost. Eichelberger wrote in his book, Our Jungle Road to Tokyo, “Buna was…bought at a substantial price in death, wounds, disease, despair, and human suffering. No one who fought there, however hard he tries, will ever forget it.” Fatalities, he continued, “closely approach, percentage-wise, the heaviest losses in our own Civil War battles.” Historian Stanley Falk agreed. “The Papuan campaign,” he wrote, “was one of the costliest Allied victories of the Pacific war in terms of casualties per troops committed.”

  The combined victory at Buna, Sanananda, and Gona, though costly, was psychologically and strategically momentous. Together with the fall of Guadalcanal, it destroyed the myth of Japanese invincibility. Strategically, it broke Japan’s hold on New Guinea, ensuring the security of the Australian continent and the American supply line to the Pacific.

  Buna-Sanananda was not the 32nd Division’s only campaign. In December 1943, it returned to battle in New Guinea at Saidor, followed by invasions of Aitape on the New Guinea’s far north coast, and Morotai, near the island of Halmahera, between New Guinea and the Philippine island of Mindanao. Later, it participated in the liberation of the Philippines at Leyte and Luzon.

  Although the division’s battles were overshadowed by the likes of Tarawa, Saipan, and Iwo Jima, Eichelberger managed to put the Red Arrow men’s contributions into perspective:

  “Some of the Pacific history has been written, but little of it has been concerned with the men I commanded—the ordinary, muddy, malarial, embattled, and weighed-down-by-too-heavy-packs GIs. They waded through the surf, they struggled through the swamp mud…they cut tracks which ultimately became roads leading to the airfields they constructed. They were the true artisans of the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific which led ultimately to the Philippines and Tokyo. They called it—The Hard Way Back.”

  It was, in fact, the 32nd Division to which General Yamashita surrendered near Kiangan on September 2, 1945. By the war’s end the 32nd Division had been in combat for 654 days.

  As costly as its other campaigns were, none could compare with Buna and Sanananda, where the division’s casualties pushed 90 percent. Out of the nearly eleven thousand troops in the division’s three combat teams, there were 9,688 casualties. According to Samuel Milner, the division’s 126th Infantry Regiment “had ceased to exist.” Of the 131 officers and 3,040 enlisted men who went into battle in mid-November, only thirty-two officers and 579 enlisted men remained when the last remnants of the regiment were transported to Port Moresby in late January. The 126th’s Ghost Mountain Battalion was down to 126 men and six officers. Companies E, F, G, and H had been reduced to the size of platoons. Each had fewer than thirty men. West of the Girua River on the Sanananda Front, the Antitank and Cannon Companies and the 3rd Battalion fared just as poorly. As of January 20, 1943, Antitank had just ten men. None of the other companies had more than twenty.

  Illness represented the vast majority of those casualties. Of the 9,688 casualties, 7,125 of them were due to illness. On the battlefields of Buna and Sanananda, malaria, dysentery, dengue fever, scrub typhus, and hookworm were as debilitating as enemy bullets.

  When the entire division assembled at Camp Cable in April 1943, Simon Warmenhoven was shocked by the condition of the soldiers and their inability to recover. Physicals revealed that men had lost a quarter to a third of their body weight. Sam DiMaggio was down to 135 pounds and had blackwater fever. His liver and spleen were enlarged and his urine was the color of a Buna swamp. Others were suffering from exhaustion, malnutrition, and anemias related to vitamin deficiencies.

  Those with hookworm, dysentery, and anemias eventually responded to treatment. The majority of the malaria cases, however, did not. Men with malaria got worse instead of better, suffering relapse after relapse.

  Bill Sikkel’s personal malaria report is illustrative of what Stenberg and many of the Red Arrow men experienced. Sikkel had led patrols on the Sanananda Front since the third week in November. Stricken with high fevers, he was taken off the Sanananda track and evacuated to Port Moresby on Christmas Eve, 1942. Treatment in Port Moresby consisted of three days of quinine, then three days of atabrine, then three days of plasmochin. Following that, he took one atabrine tablet per day. Upon reaching Australia, before going to Coolangatta, he, like many other soldiers, was quarantined and given a seventeen-day malarial treatment. Australian officials were worried that malaria could spread in epidemic proportions throughout the continent; returning troops were banned from Australian territory north of 19 degrees south latitude, an area known for its large mosquito populations. On March 11, Sikkel suffered another malaria attack and was hospitalized at the 155th Station Hospital at Camp Cable. After a positive smear, he received nineteen days of quinine, atabrine, and plasmochin in addition to adrenaline shots. That treatment was followed by six weeks in a malaria rest camp at which he received one atabrine tablet per day. Three months later, Sikkel suffered a third attack. It was the worst of the three. He was admitted to a U.S. Navy hospital at Nelsons Bay, New South Wales, and then transferred to the 47th Station Hospital in Sydney, where he was diagnosed with malaria, bronchitis, and hookworm, and was hospitalized for forty-three days.

  By September 1943 when the 32nd was preparing to return to New Guinea, 2,334 men, judged “unfit for combat,” were dropped from the division roster.

  The decimation of the 32nd Division by disease was not an isolated incident. By the end of 1942, the Australians had 15,575 cases of infectious disease: 9,249 cases of malaria, 3,643 cases of dysentery, 1,186 cases of dengue fever, and 186 cases of scrub typhus.

  And as badly off as the Americans and the Australians were, the Japanese suffered more. One Japanese official called New Guinea “a magnificent tragedy.” Of the sixteen to seventeen thousand troops committed to the campaign, they lost roughly twelve thousand, many to dengue fever, malaria, dysentery, and even beriberi, a disease directly related to starvation.

  One thing is clear: MacArthur came away from New Guinea with a profound respect for the destructive power of malaria. In future campaigns he made sure that troops were supplied with malaria tablets, mosquito netting, protective clothing, and training in antimalaria procedures. By October 1944, when MacArthur returned to the Philippines, malaria was no longer a significant problem among Allied ground troops.

  Some historians believe that MacArthur learned a number of other lessons at Buna, responding to its savagery by developing his policy of “bypassing” or “leapfrogging,” a “hit ’em where they ain’t” strategy that relied on the efficacy of air power and amphibious operations. After Buna, MacArthur avoided enemy strongholds. Rushing the construction of airstrips, he pounded the Japanese supply line, leaving bases to “wither on the vine.” This strategy, MacArthur admitted, was “as old as warfare itself.” Admiral Nimitz had already used it to great effect in the central Solomons and would again later in the central Pacific when he jumped from the Gilbert Islands to the Marshalls and then to the Marianas. MacArthur, though, got credit for it.

  For the natives of New Guinea, who according to General Blamey could not be given “too much praise,” nothing would ever be the same. Yet, as the war moved up the coast of New Guinea, the natives, and especially the carriers, were forgotten. According to a former ANGAU administrator, “Carriers and conscripted village men never received their just rewards.” Author Alan Powell writes that this remains “a lasting stain
on Australia’s war record.”

  What’s more, civilized warfare had clearly wrought greater destruction than centuries of tribal battles. An estimated fifteen thousand New Guineans died as a direct result of the war and tens of thousands more died of disease and starvation.

  According to John Waiko, a native New Guinean, who was born a year after the campaign ended, war had a profound effect on people: “The villages suffered severely, without men to clear gardens, hunt, maintain houses and canoes, etc…. The women were strained from overworking, there was…high infant mortality, there was all the grief of separation and bereavement and the frightening…loss of will to live…”

  The people of the Buna coast, in particular, returned to find their land strewn with the detritus of war. Airfields and roads quickly fell into disrepair. Undetonated shells lay scattered around the swamps. The population of crocodiles burgeoned. Rotting corpses fouled drinking holes, homes and gardens had been destroyed, birds and animals had disappeared, and trees were nothing but bare, bullet-ridden trunks. In the sunlight and stagnant water of bomb craters, mosquitoes bred, malaria cases skyrocketed, and the disease became more virulent by passage through many human hosts.

  Sam DiMaggio recovered from blackwater fever in time to take part in the battles of Saidor, Aitape, Morotai, and Leyte, where he suffered on and off from malaria. He was discharged on points (a soldier needed only eighty-five combat points to get back home and DiMaggio had 130) one day before his company shipped out to Luzon. Once back in the States, he was sent to Fort Ord in California, where he was in charge of a barracks of a hundred men who were training to go to the Pacific. He was at Fort Ord on V-E Day, May 8, 1945, and in Albion, Michigan, on V-J Day, September 2, 1945. DiMaggio received a Combat Badge, a Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, and four campaign stars for his service. His brother Jimmy was killed in northern France by a German sniper in November 1944. DiMaggio had six more malaria attacks after he was discharged in July 1945 with the rank of sergeant. The piece of shrapnel that lodged in his jawbone on December 19, 1942, is still there today.

  Suffering from jungle rot and malaria, Stanley Jastrzembski was put on limited duty in Sydney, Australia, where he guarded a stockade. Although he had enough points to get home, he stayed on until Japan surrendered—until, as he says, “the last dog was hung.” Jastrzembski was discharged in mid-August 1945. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service.

  Gus Bailey won the army’s second highest award—the Distinguished Service Cross—for his heroism at Buna. Back in Australia, he was promoted to captain and made commander of the 126th’s 1st Battalion. He took part in the battles of Saidor, Aitape, Morotai, and Leyte. Although he had been offered a position as regimental executive officer, which would have kept him off the front lines, Bailey turned it down and was killed by a Japanese grenade on the Villa Verde Trail on the island of Luzon on April 25, 1945. He was awarded the Silver Star posthumously. In February 1949, his body was returned to the U.S.

  Carl Stenberg was put on limited service in Australia, where he was assigned to a replacement depot in Brisbane and later to Signal Section headquarters. In August 1944, Stenberg was bound for the United States aboard a Norwegian freighter, and four months later he was discharged. He suffered from malaria attacks for another ten years and still has scars on his legs from jungle ulcers. Stenberg received the Combat Infantry Badge, the Presidential Citation, two Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Bronze Star, but what he treasures more than anything else is the Christmas card he received from Jim Broner in December 1996. The note reads: “I will never forget the effort that you made in saving my life, so many years ago: And believe it or not I’m still enjoying every minute.”

  Paul Lutjens spent a year in Australia, recuperating from malaria and the wounds he sustained in battle on December 5 and was awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, and the Distinguished Service Cross. When he returned to the United States, he was still so gaunt he could wrap his hands around his waist. The first thing he did was to make his way to San Jose, California, and propose to Lorraine Phillips, the woman to whom he wrote from the swamp on November 29, 1942. He and Lorraine were married at the Presidio in San Francisco. In February 1944, he traveled to military bases throughout the South, lecturing about the Buna campaign to troops preparing to go overseas. Afterward, he embarked on a career in military intelligence and counterintelligence, and was stationed at bases across the United States, as well as in the Philippines and Japan. Later, he commanded military intelligence groups in Hawaii, Germany, and at the Presidio.

  Herbert “Stutterin’” Smith was sent to the 105th General Hospital at Gatton, about thirty miles from Brisbane, where he recuperated in a small ward with Paul Lutjens and Harold Hantlemann (Hantlemann would eventually marry the ward’s Red Cross nurse). Afterward he was made executive officer and port inspector of Base Section 4 in Melbourne. Just before going back to the United States, he checked into the 4th General Hospital, where his roommates were Guadalcanal veterans from the 1st Marine Division. According to Smith, “They continuously harped about the tough times they had endured” until one day Smith put on his blouse and they asked him where he acquired his ribbons—a Combat Infantry Badge, the Purple Heart, and the Distinguished Service Cross. When Smith told them Buna, they did not refer again to Guadalcanal in his presence. On October 6, 1943, Smith sailed for the United States and not long after he retired from the military. On June 28, 1990, forty-six years after he left the army, the State of Wisconsin honored Smith with the Wisconsin National Guard Distinguished Service Medal.

  Captain Alfred Medendorp suffered recurrent malaria and was classified as “unfit for combat duty.” He was reassigned to the Amphibious Training Center where he worked with the navy to improve the performance of troop and equipment landing craft. He was rotated home in April 1945 and was awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, and the Combat Infantry Badge. In 1950, Medendorp (by then a major) volunteered for active duty during the Korean War. He was stationed at Fort Monroe, Virginia, until the spring of 1954. He was then assigned to the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Taiwan. On September 3, 1954, during his inspection of Chinese Nationalist Forces on the island of Quemoy (now Kinmen Island), a mile and a half from the Chinese mainland, Medendorp was killed during an artillery barrage.

  General Eichelberger said of Herman Bottcher, “He was one of the best Americans I have ever known.” For his heroism at Buna, Bottcher was given a rare battlefield commission as a captain and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Bottcher was killed in Leyte on November 28, 1944. Although he had achieved the rank of major, he was making a lone reconnaissance behind enemy lines in the Ormoc Valley when he was cornered in a rice paddy by a Japanese patrol. He held off the Japanese for four hours, but was finally killed by two rifle slugs to the head. Legend has it that advancing American soldiers of the 32nd Division found him facedown in a puddle of mud, still gripping his pistol. He is buried in the Manila American Cemetery. Today a memorial to Herman Bottcher stands in the village of Buna.

  General Edwin Forrest Harding went on to become commanding general of the Panama Mobile Force, where he trained units in jungle warfare. Unlike Eichelberger, he never took the opportunity to justify himself in a postwar memoir. In 1946 Harding retired to Franklin, Ohio, to the stately family home. He remained the favorite general of 32nd Division veterans. One veteran said, “His greatest fault was that he loved his troops and could not stand to see them slaughtered.” At a reunion, they presented General Harding with a Bronze Red Arrow plaque, which he treasured.

  On June 21, 1943, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Lieutenant Colonel Simon Warmenhoven was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Henrietta “Mandy” Warmenhoven saved every one of her husband’s 160 letters.

  Notes

  IN PUTTING THIS BOOK TOGETHER, I have used countless interviews—with veterans of the march and the campaign, and wives, children, grandchildren, and friends of the participants—to elaborate on the official army nar
rative. I have also used self-published books, diaries, newspaper articles, and veterans’ printed recollections to bring the human history to life. Major Herbert M. “Stutterin’” Smith wrote three informative books about his experience: Four Score and Ten; 0-241957; and Hannibal Had Elephants II. The Indiana author Wendell Trogdon wrote a wonderful biography of Gus Bailey called Out Front: The Cladie Bailey Story. Sam DiMaggio dictated his biography to his son J. P. DiMaggio; it’s called “I Never Had It So Good.” Captain Alfred Medendorp left behind two detailed accounts of the march and the ensuing war. The first is an official document published by the Ground General School in October 1949, titled “The March and Operations of Antitank and Cannon Companies…(Personal Experience of a Patrol Commander).” The second is an extensive (over one hundred pages), untitled collection of personal memories. Walter Shauppner left behind a diary in which he detailed the day-by-day activities of the 127th Infantry Regiment, beginning with its arrival at Port Moresby Harbor. Lawrence Thayer wrote a revealing account of the 128th’s experiences. Clarence Jungwirth wrote Diary of a National Guardsman in WWII, an informative account of his experiences from 1940 to 1945. Paul Lutjens left behind a diary and the text of his lecture on the Papuan campaign. General Edwin Forrest Harding’s diary is also an excellent source of information. Courtesy of Walter Hunt, Jim Hunt’s brother, I have Lieutenant Hunt’s diary and an enlightening letter that Hunt sent to Major Herbert Smith after reading one of Smith’s books. Jim Boice’s diary was very useful, as were Lieutenant Colonel Bill Sikkel’s recollections and those of Gordon Zuverink, Herb Steenstra, and Stanley Hollenbeck. Simon Warmenhoven’s letters were important sources of information. The letters provided me with insight into a remarkable man. Art Edson’s letters were also very helpful. Maclaren Hiari’s account of his father’s experiences as a carrier for the Allied Forces in New Guinea was also quite helpful. The Wisconsin Veterans Museum (and its very capable staff) proved to be a treasure trove of information. The museum has a large collection of letters, diaries, audio interviews, and photographs donated by veterans and/or their families.