The Lost Ranger: A Soldier's Story

by Mehlo, Noel

  Figure 62: U.S. Department of the Interior Geologic Survey, Fort Pierce, Florida, 7.5 Minute Quadrangle, Edition of 1949 The Spanish were the first Europeans to settle in the area of what is now known as St. Lucie County, Florida. The Spanish established the Santa Lucia colony between Vero Beach and Stuart, Florida in approximately 1567. Old Spanish maps refer to the area as Santa Lucia, which is believed to be named in honor of the Roman Catholic Saint Lucia. The Spanish began construction of a fort at this location. When the Spanish entered the French and Indian War on the side of France, they lost Florida as a result of the French loss to the British at the First Treaty of Paris in 1763. At the conclusion of the American Revolution, the British returned Florida to the Spanish at the Second Treaty of Paris in 1783. The Spanish crown formally laid claim to these lands from 1783 to 1819. The tribe known as the Seminoles lived in the region. They were Creek Indians from the areas that became Alabama and Georgia. Runaway slaves also began to populate the barrier islands. The Spanish referred to this region as the Treasure Coast, named after the famed sinking of a Spanish treasure fleet in 1715.

  The United States and Spain had various border disputes over Florida until in 1819; Secretary of State John Quincy Adams signed the Florida Purchase Treaty placing Florida in U.S. hands. The area of Florida began to be populated by U.S. citizens in 1821. Florida became a United States Territory by Congress in 1832. It later became a State in 1845. The U.S. Army set up a series of forts in Florida during the Second Seminole War between 1835 and 1842. Colonel Benjamin K. Pierce sailed down the Indian River in 1837. A year later, he would build a fort in Santa Lucia. This Colonel was brother to future 14th U.S. President Pierce.

  The first rail line to enter the area was the Florida East Coast Railway in 1894, thus enabling the region to grow. St. Lucie County was thus established with Fort Pierce as the County seat on July 1, 1905.2 Fort Pierce is often referred to as the Sunrise City. It grew from an initial population of around 300. The elevation of Fort Pierce is 16 feet above mean sea level. It is located at 27°26’20”N, 80°20’8”W. St Lucie County is about 38 miles north of West Palm Beach, and about 220 miles south of Jacksonville, Florida on the east coast of the State. The area is characterized by its long barrier islands and low, relatively flat inland areas typical of the central Florida coast, complete with white sands.3

  The town of Fort Pierce would be changed as the U.S. Naval Amphibious Training Center Fort Pierce was established and marked by the installation of a gate that was set up on January 26, 1943. This gate was installed at the east end of the bridge to South Beach, resulting in a base running from Vero Beach to Port St. Lucie. Fort Pierce was selected as an ideal location for Training in Amphibious Warfare because it had protective barrier islands which were low-lying and sandy, with narrow beaches, sand dunes and marshes. The large number of beaches and estuaries were perfect to act as surrogates for conditions in both the European and Pacific Theaters of Operations. The mild Florida weather allowed the military to conduct year-round training at the facility. This area was considered by the Army and Navy leadership to be ideal for beach landing exercises. The Navy built barracks, a hospital and dozens of other facilities were built as sailors and soldiers trained for beach invasions. The facility would see over 140,000 personnel throughout the war. Many local residents would rent out rooms for the duration of the war to accommodate the men, women and children who would be off at war. The installation encompassed both North and South Hutchinson Islands and over 19,280.49 acres located along the islands running from Vero Beach to near Port St. Lucie. Part of this acreage was submerged lands or marshlands, inlets and estuaries. German submarines attacked merchant ships off the coast of South Beach on many occasions; in one case sinking as many as three ships in two days. A good aerial of the base (Figure 63) was taken in 1944 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of their routine aerial photos taken throughout the nation as part of their soils analysis duties. These photos are held at the University of Florida.

  The former Navy base no longer exists today. There are scattered remnants of the training that went on if one looks very hard. The islands were low-lying and bounded by Indian River to the west and the Atlantic to the east. They rise only 10 to 15 feet above sea level with narrow beaches backed by sand dunes giving way to marshes on the Indian River The Ft. Pierce Inlet State Park sits on North Hutchinson Island where a great deal of underwater demolition training took place. The former hospital was located on South Hutchinson Island just to the west of the South Jetty Park Beach, located at the intersection of Seaway Drive and South Ocean Drive. The hospital became the Old Days Inn, and later the Mariner Bat Motel Property before finally being torn down just a few years ago. The hospital building represented one of the oldest structures remaining from the base. The Navy UDT-Seal Museum is located at 3300 N. Highway A1A, North Hutchinson Island, Fort Pierce, FL 34949. This museum has taken the time to chronicle the installation and schools located there. The staff was helpful when contacted for this work.

  The Scout and Raider School and those men who trained at it owe their training to several new types of thinking in amphibious warfare experimented with and perfected during World War II. The reason for this was two-fold; the first was the bitter fighting that was occurring in the Pacific, where the Japanese gave no quarter, and the second was the seemingly impenetrable fortress Europe. One organization to look at was the Naval Combat Demolition Units (NCDU) of the United States Navy. The first of these men would volunteer and train in Dynamiting and Demolition School at Camp Perry, Virginia. These sailors were then sent to the Naval Amphibious Training Base at Solomons Island, Maryland, in Chesapeake Bay with a small group of other sailors. After an uneventful deployment to Sicily, several of these men were reassigned by Admiral J King, Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, and Chief of Naval Operation to the newly formed Naval Amphibious Training Base at Fort Pierce Florida.

  Figure 63: U.S. Department of Agriculture Aerial Photo showing Fort Pierce. The Atlantic Fleet had a Joint Scout-Observer Group that operated until 1942. This effort would be the direct forerunner of the Scout and Raiders School. Up until that time, the United States Marine Corps and Army had operated together. The Army preferred covert night landings, while the Marines preferred their more traditional mode of landing in daylight accompanied by Naval shore bombardment, and aerial bombardment to soften up their targets. These differences in doctrine lead the Army to eventually team with the Navy, when it was eventually mutually decided to develop the school. The original location of the Scout and Raider school was in Little Creek, Maryland. The Army had originally operated Camp Gordon Johnston, Florida and the Dunedin training base for amphibious training. When the joint school began, they closed Gordon Johnston.4

  A tenacious U. S. Naval Officer by the name of Lieutenant Commander Draper L. Kauffman, Commander, Navy Bomb Disposal School, was reassigned to Fort Pierce with the mission of launching the Navy underwater demolition program. Lt Cmdr Kauffman adopted the Scout and Raider Physical Training (PT) course in what the men came to refer to as “Hell Week.” In the future, this would evolve in the UDTs in the Special Warfare community and ultimately into the Navy Basic Underwater Demolition (BUD/S) or Navy SEAL training.5,6 This physically and psychologically challenging called BUD/S training is a requirement for any modern prospective Navy SEAL. The first class of NCDU Naval trainees arrived and began to train in June of 1943 at Fort Pierce.1 These men would and are referred to today as Navy Frogmen, although if you ask a Naval historian or Navy person, they would say that the true frogmen were the UDTs.8 The conditions of Fort Pierce were primitive, and not enough thought had taken place as to the logistics of this kind of base. The cadre did not have an idea as to what types of obstacles to train for, or how to demolish them. All the logistics of the base were in a shambles including lodging, equipment and clothing. The first four units to be trained became the backbone of what was called the demolition force of the Atlantic Theatre. As intelligence began to mount regarding th
e Atlantic Wall, the Navy eventually moved into high gear and they began to recreate conditions observed in France for future classes to train on. This included such things as ship salvage, rocket disposal, mine recognition, and the assault demolition practices of the British. They began to understand a particular German obstacle referred to as the Belgian Gate that would attempt to hinder the approaches in Normandy. The local residents of Fort Pierce who live to this day recall the explosions from the demolitions rocking the town.

  The Scouts and Raiders School moved to Fort Pierce in January 1943. This School lasted at Fort Pierce until December of 1943 when the Navy took over the school exclusively. The instructors and trainees were from both Army and Navy units. The Navy personnel would receive an eight-week course that began in March with the purpose of becoming core cadre for future sailors and soldiers. The Army units would receive amphibious scout training as a four-week course. The training included rigorous physical fitness. It was focused on teamwork, hand-to-hand combat, seamanship, navigation, small craft engines, weapons, rubber boats, swimming, hydrographic survey, beach reconnaissance (Figure 64), first aid, survival, infiltration exercises ashore eluding patrols and sentries, voice and Morse Code radio operation and signaling and beach marking with semaphore flags and lights.10, 11 The training course included a heavy physical component including running, swimming, obstacle course and log PT. Much of the training was conducted at night with focus on operation of LCPs for scouting and delivering small parties ashore (Figure 65). In May, the Navy training was extended to 12 weeks when extensive demolitions training were added. The Army ceased operations at the School in December and the Army cadre and instructors were reassigned in February 1944 and then “Joint” was dropped from the name. The Navy continued to operate the school until September 1945.

  Figure 64: Fort Pierce, Florida – Typical training photos from WW II (NARA) It is reported in multiple sources that the heat, insects, food and living conditions were intolerable at the base for much of its existence. It was reported that in the early days of Fort Pierce, many men died mysteriously. It was only then that the high numbers of mosquitoes were identified as the carriers of disease and a danger to the men who trained there. Sand flies were also in abundance and a nuisance to the unsuspecting soldier or sailor. There were reported suicides on the base due to cracking up over the bugs.13 Others would simply run and immerse themselves in the water to escape the swarms, even at the risk of drowning. One resident is quoted as saying “I don’t know if God Himself could have lived there with all of the sand flies and mosquitoes”.12

  Even though it was a joint school, Fort Pierce was a Navy base and was organized as such. The Navy ran it similar to the organization on board a ship. To most of the men in the Army, things like only saluting an officer once a day, was very strange. The result of bringing on board the Army instructors and officers truly made Fort Pierce a joint combined arms effort. The use of army fatigues equipment and weapons likewise seemed different to the Navy personnel undergoing the training at the school.15, 16

  Figure 65: Fort Pierce, Florida – Typical training photos from WW II (NARA) Victor Miller discussed learning the use of rubber boats for the purpose of training for assault landings. He indicated in his biography that his company was hardly dry in the two weeks of training. He discussed how the men trained to enter the water in the following quote: “The scheme is to have three men on each side, each holding a rope loop attached to the boat. Behind is the commander, the coxswain. He waits till one large wave breaks on the beach, or three in succession, and shouts to go! As they rush into the ocean, the water gets deeper.” They would chant out “ones in”, “twos in”, “threes in”, until “coxswain in”, at which point the boat would be underway with the Rangers paddling hard to move out into the ocean. In practice as he described, the waves often would not cooperate, but they eventually caught on.

  He talked about training one night where the objective was to make an assault of the beach in rubber boats. They were next to cross the barrier island and then re-launch on the inter-coastal waterway to make their final assault on an airport on the mainland. He talked about the sea being phosphorescent likely due to the plankton or other sea life. The navigation across the island was hampered by thickets of mangrove. He discussed crabbing with several fellow Rangers which was comical to many of them. Many of the Rangers accounts discussed how the islands were insect infested. Figure 66 is a collage of many of the typical training activities conducted at the facility.

  Figure 66: Fort Pierce, Florida – Typical training photos from WW II (NARA) The 5th Ranger Infantry Battalion stayed in pyramidal tents while at the school. The Rangers practiced small-scale amphibious raids with rubber boats (Figure 67) and all kinds of other landing craft such as the British LCAs (Landing Craft Assault) and famed Higgins boats (Figure 68).7 They learned how to maneuver them and how to recover a capsized craft. As part of this they went into an untiring, intensive, further specialized training cycle in practical use and maintenance of rubber boats. The unit mastered the art of Coastal Raids including the real life capture of towns like Fort Pierce. They practiced the maneuver of other strong-points. They practiced in the tactical study and employment of Combined Naval Operations. These skills would help save their lives on the beaches of Normandy, and would become an important part of their Ranger training in the months to come.

  The Hand to Hand Combat course taught the Amphibious Scout, developed from combinations of the forms Ten Shin Shinyo Ryu system of Jiu Jitsu. Physical fitness and an alert mind were imperative. Repetition of movements until real speed and precision were learned was the key. The method of fighting contains bone breaking holds based on principles of leverage timing, momentum, equilibrium, vital touches and the principle of non-resistance. The art taught how to take on an armed attacker while one is unarmed. The student learned how to assault the body of an enemy by targeting areas such as the temples, ears, throat, heart, genitals, and other vital areas.17 The United States Navy would eventually compile this training in a manual called Hand to Hand Combat for Amphibious Scouts, United States Naval Amphibious Training Base, Ft. Pierce, Florida; by C. Gulbranson, Captain, USN, Commanding.

  Known training areas at the Fort Pierce Amphibious Base include: 10.4 miles of North Hutchinson Island and at least seven other areas on North Hutchinson Island, Fort Pierce Inlet, and South Hutchinson Island including Turtle Cove, Angler’s Cove, Round Island Park, Pepper Beach, Sea Turtle Beach, and Normandy Beach.15 It is unknown how many of these areas were used by the Rangers, but many of them must have been.

  The final test of the Rangers at the school was to assault both the Fort Pierce military installation and town itself. Their mission included the Rangers isolating the North and South Islands, fort Pierce, Coast Guard Security Tower and Coast Guard Channel Boat. The City of Fort Pierce had its own separate civil defense system made up of Coast Guardsmen and civilian guards. Several units had gone through this training exercise before and the military school command had pre-warned the town prior to the exercise. This type of activity was not new to the Rangers after their time at Camp Forrest. The Rangers used black and green camouflage face paint and broke into small assault squads. Each squad or team was tasked with specific targets such as the power station, command and control facilities. The men used their continually honed skills to use and infiltrated the enemy beachhead. The 5th Ranger Infantry Battalion would become the only unit to train at the Scouts and Raiders School to capture the Commander of the North and South Islands Naval Command. They seized mock installations and moved stealthily past the Navy and Coast Guard sentries around Fort Pierce.

  Figure 67: USACE16: Figure 211. Crews of two landing craft rubber (LCR) bring their vessels onto the beach at Amphibious Training Base Fort Pierce, FL, 28 November 1943 (NARA College Park, RG 80-G, box 198, photo 43902). ERDC/CERL TR-10-10 pg 133 A team of ten Rangers from A Company including Richard Hathaway, Jr. secured a crossing site on North Island for use by the battalion. Th
is mission required these men to capture Coast Guard enlisted sentries and their guard dogs. The men approached the island by rubber boat in complete dark and entered the water once the boats hit the surf to mask their scent. They stashed their boats and took position along a coastal road. After in position, a Coastguardsman and his patrol dog became their first victim. The A Company Rangers then secured this site and held it for the rest of the battalion to land and cross at this location. Moments before the remainder of the companies landed, the team challenged a jeep moving along the road using black-out lights. This jeep was carrying the Naval Commander of the North and South Islands and three staff officers. As the Rangers dealt with their prisoners, the companies scheduled to land did so and began to move east to west across the island. Major Carter spoke with the Naval Commander and then the Commander congratulated the Rangers on being the first unit to capture him and his men.

  A small patrol of Rangers approached the Coast Guard Security Tower. One man swam the swift flowing channel and climbed the outside ladder of the structure. Another Ranger climbed the braces on the rear of the tower and the Rangers captured the tower and its three Coast Guard personnel. This rendered the tower out of play, hindering the Coast Guard’s ability to raise an alarm.

  Company B was to pass through the A Company crossing site on North Island carrying their rubber assault boats. They were then to capture the east and west ends of the bridge between Fort Pierce and North Island. Their next objective on the mainland was to capture the civilian telephone exchange. Captain Whittington’s men placed their weapons and equipment in the boats and carried them across the island until they reached the muddy shores of the Indian River. With the bridge captured, the remainder of the battalion was able to use the captured bridge to cross on foot into the City of Fort Pierce. There, the battalion captured the airport, railroad station, broadcasting station, police station and fire station.