Above the Thunder (33 page)

It was like a scene out of a movie. With Schuster at their head, the platoon charged up the slope, firing from the hip, throwing grenades, moving rapidly to close with the Japanese defenders. And the enemy's nerve gave way. Nipponese fighters began jumping up from their foxholes and running for the rear, bounding over the boulders and down the rear slope with the agility of mountain goats. The Americans chased them, individuals halting occasionally to aim and fire, and several of the enemy were knocked down as they fled.

Down the reverse slope, through a row of banana plants, across a shallow dry creek, and up a slope where stood a thatched Filipino farmhouse, moving toward a large banana grove on the next ridge, the enemy fled in apparent panic. Instead of halting to consolidate his position on the knoll, Lt. Schuster led his men in a wild pursuit to exploit the rout. As they went down the hill, I saw two of the enemy halt behind the farmhouse and set up a machine gun to fire from one corner. I could not talk to Schuster or to his radioman, so I dived over him, gunning the engine and rocking the wings to warn him of the danger. But he paid no heed. His helmet gone and his blonde hair shining in the sun, his carbine held high in one hand, he raced at a dead run, a good fifty yards ahead of his men. As he was passing through the row of banana plants, the machine gun opened on him. He pitched headlong into the bottom of the dry creek and lay still.

Traditionally, it was a glorious way for a soldier to die; nevertheless, I felt heartsick as I looked down at that tow-headed bloody heap in the dusty creek. It was so unnecessary.

Intelligence from various sources, including observations by Vin and me, indicated the probability that the enemy was withdrawing from his positions in front of the 123d, leaving only an outpost line, while he established a new main line of resistance (MLR) somewhere back on the mountains. To help verify that, one Lieutenant Jones was assigned a patrol mission to feel out the enemy line and determine its nature. I didn't know Jones before and never met him afterward, but before he led his reinforced platoon out on the mission, I flew him on a reconnaissance of the area in which he was to operate. Jones was a small, thin, very mild and modest young man with light brown hair and a nervous manner. Upon our return from the recon, I asked him what he thought. He stood with his head down for a few seconds, then looked at me with a worried expression and said, “Kerns, this will be my first time on a mission like this, and it looks very dangerous to me. I don't mind telling you, I'm scared to death.”

I could only wish him good luck and silently praise his honesty. Watching over Jones's patrol, I saw them moving down a dry creek between grassy hills in the low range that parallels that part of the Luzon coast a couple of miles inland. Ahead was a junction with a larger dry stream, and beyond that was a hillside that appeared to hold nothing more threatening than dry brown cogon grass waving in the wind. But suddenly that innocent-looking hillside blazed with the fire of numerous Arisakas and two or three Nambu machine guns, and Jones's men hit the ground, taking fullest advantage of every small depression, every rock or tuffet that might stop a bullet. But just a few seconds later, they were up and racing toward the foot of the hill, where a four-foot creek bank offered the only good cover available for hundreds of yards around.

I watched them with serious misgivings. How could they now disengage and get out of the pinned-down situation they were in? Having halted, they turned on their radio, and I asked Jones if he wanted artillery fire on the hillside. He said no, and I thought he was crazy. But soon I saw what he had in mind. At several points along the creek bank, I saw the men set fire to the cogon grass. The fires quickly spread and joined, and the wind sent a line of raging flame up the hill. Lids of spider holes popped up, and Japanese riflemen ran for their lives as the Americans fired up the hill at whatever they could see. And Lieutenant Jones, the man who was “scared to death,” proceeded on his mission.

LUZON, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. Area of operations, 123d Regiment/122d Field Artillery Battalion: Damortis-Rosario to Baguio, February–April 1945.

Moving swiftly, he hit the enemy line at numerous points, sometimes finding nothing, sometimes striking fierce resistance. When he hit resistance, he fought long enough to assess its strength, and he returned to our lines with two captured machine guns, leaving behind at least sixty enemy dead and bringing home two wounded men, his only casualties. He had determined that the enemy was, indeed, withdrawing; only a strong outpost line remained in our immediate front.

The main objective of the 33d Division was the Mountain Province city of Baguio. Baguio, which had a prewar population of about thirty thousand, was established in 1909 and intended by Philippine governor William Howard Taft to become the country's summer capitol, because its mile-high situation in the Cordillera Central made it an ideal place to escape the oppressive heat of Manila. It was now the headquarters of Yamashita's 14th Army. Although the Kennon Road was a paved highway up from the plains of central Luzon, the enemy had practically insuperable advantages for defense on that avenue, and it was pretty much ruled out as the avenue for the division's main effort.

There was supposed to be an ancient road called “the Old Spanish Trail” that led through the mountains from the town of Pugo to a village near Baguio called Tuba (not to be confused with the town of Tubao). It was hoped that this old trail could be used as a route for the main attack on Baguio, and since it lay in the 123d RCT's zone of operations, Vin and I were directed to find it. We tried but with little positive result. If the trail was there, it was long unused and overgrown with trees, brush, vines, or tall grass. Only beyond the crest of the ridge between Mounts Calugong and Santo Tomas was there a clear indication of a trail, although we did spot possible traces at other points. But it was decided that the 123d would seize Pugo and from there would launch its drive into the mountains to take Baguio. Our engineers would build supply roads as we advanced.

The first thing the RCT had to do was take Pugo, and the best routes to that intermediate objective needed to be searched out. Since the ground reconnaissance would have to go far behind the enemy's outposts, the recon force would be in danger of being isolated and destroyed by stronger enemy forces from his main line, the exact location of which
had not yet been established. It was planned as a five-day mission for a company of infantry that would depart the vicinity of Rosario, go north to Pugo, west to Tubao, and through a narrow pass in the coastal hills to Agoo, then south back to our lines at Damortis. The patrol would move fast to minimize the danger of interception.

And who should get the job of commanding this important and hazard ous mission but that same rough and tough, bullnecked, red-faced captain who had boasted so much aboard the ship en route to Luzon. Because I don't want to tell you his name, I'll call him Captain Red.

On the morning of the third day of his five-day patrol, Captain Red had still not penetrated the outpost line north of Rosario. In fact, he had veered far to the west, apparently to avoid the outposts, and neither he nor his men had fired a shot. As I went out to relieve Vin in our constant daytime watch over the patrol, I was given a message drop bag containing a written message for Captain Red. On the way out, I took the opportunity to read it, printed boldly in capital letters:

RED:

GET BACK ON YOUR PLANNED ROUTE AND PROCEED WITH YOUR MISSION OR I WILL RELIEVE YOU OF YOUR COMMAND.

SERFF

I dropped the message. About an hour later, I was asked to relay a radio message to the effect that Captain Red had suffered heatstroke and was being evacuated. One of his lieutenants had assumed command and was continuing the mission.

The only account of this patrol that I have ever read makes no mention of Colonel Serff's threat to relieve Red, nor does it mention his evacuation. In fact, it gives him full credit for accomplishing the mission. So maybe I'm wrong, maybe he was just as good a fighter as he claimed to be, and maybe he really did suffer heatstroke. Maybe he wasn't even evacuated. If that is true, I certainly owe him my most abject apologies. All things considered, it might be better if I send my apologies by wire from Timbuktu. But this is the way I saw it and the way I still believe it happened.

Aerial view of the rugged, mountainous terrain that confronted the U.S. forc es in retaking Luzon from the Japanese, and a typical view of the landscape for the pilots of the artillery battalions. The town of Ambuclao is just off the map at left (Photograph from Sanford Winston,
The Golden Cross
).

And so there has existed in my mind a very distinct contrast among three types of officer as represented by Lieutenant Schuster, Lieutenant Jones, and Captain Red: the loner who proved a gallant leader—although a rash one—when sent against the enemy; the modest officer who admitted his fear, then put it aside and led courageously and brilliantly on his first independent combat mission; and the braggart who quailed when the chips were down.

But the adventures of Captain Red's patrol were not yet over. Under his lieutenant (as I believe), the patrol immediately passed through the outpost line and moved toward Pugo, that night digging in somewhere
above the thunder short of that place. In fact, I don't think they ever reached the town itself, but they did pass close to it and probably gained enough information to achieve their purpose.

My first clear memory of them after the heatstroke matter was about noon on the fourth day, I think. They were moving toward Tubao along a narrow gravel road that ran through a wide, open valley. About the time that I came up and relieved Vin, they became engaged in a firefight with a small enemy force that was guarding a stock of ammunition stored in a dry creek just above a little wooden bridge. They killed a few of the enemy but quickly moved on, asking me to destroy the ammunition dump with artillery fire.

I called FDC and asked for precision fire. The creek bed in which the target was located happened to be parallel to the gun-target line, so as the 105 mm rounds came in, one after another, the range dispersion caused some of them to burst in or near the creek, well beyond the ammo dump. These rounds killed or wounded a few of the eight or ten Japs who fled in that direction. Only one man seemed to realize that it was wiser to move away from the creek and the gun-target line, because the lateral dispersion was not so great and, therefore, was less likely to cause him trouble. He ran across a field for about a hundred yards and lay in a ditch. He was perfectly safe from our fire.

The howitzer in the 122d over by Rabon kept dropping the rounds in while I waited for one to hit the right spot and start the ammo blowing up. Meanwhile, I kept an eye on the progress of the patrol as it continued down the road, and I also watched the soldier in the ditch, mentally congratulating him on his wisdom in choosing to get out of the line of fire. I felt glad that he was safe there.

But then I saw him get up out of the ditch and run back toward the creek and the ammunition cache, the center of the pattern of shell bursts. He reached the six-foot-high bank and jumped for the creek bed—but he never hit the ground. At that instant, while he was in midair and I was looking directly at him, the entire ammunition stock went up in one grand explosion, centered right where he was. Anticipating such an explosion, I was flying at almost two thousand feet above the ground. From there I
could see a silvery ring of compression that flashed out to a radius of at least half a mile around the target, and a second later I felt an impact as if a giant had hit the propeller hub with a sledgehammer. I'm sure that there was nothing identifiable left of my smart little Nip soldier.

For more than sixty years I've wondered why that fellow went back over there. I've thought of only one probable answer: it may be that there were wounded men still in there, unable to get out of danger, and calling for help. It probably was to help a fellow soldier that our hero went back—and he's one more reason why I say there's nothing finer than a good soldier. Seems to me someone else, too, has said something about a man who lays down his life for his friends. But I don't know the soldier's name, and no other surviving person knew how he died. Some Japanese mother knows only that he never came home from the war.