Above the Thunder (37 page)

The nearer we came to Hill 3000, the harder the enemy resisted our advance. We got the Footstool, and there we sat. Assault after assault met with defeat, in spite of heroic efforts by some of the best of Colonel Serff's infantrymen. Army Air Force P-38s clobbered the knob with bombs and napalm until it was just a scorched and desolate pile of dirt into which the 122d poured tons of HE shell, and yet the stubborn Japanese defenders hung on and held us off. But until we took Hill 3000, our progress toward Baguio by the Pugo-Tuba route could get nowhere.

Uncle Bud Carlson considered the problem carefully and came up with a suggestion for Colonel Serff: why not try a night attack? No big fuss about it, no special artillery preparation that might reveal our intentions, just get up some night around 2200 hours and walk up there. The enemy would not be expecting us to attack at night—we never had—and it was a good bet that we'd find his forward positions very lightly held while his men were sleeping snug and warm back in their tunnels to avoid our harassing artillery fires.

Under pressure from General Clarkson to get things rolling at this critical point, Colonel Serff bought the idea, and it was carried out without a hitch, just as our brilliant Uncle Bud had envisioned it. After a sharp
above the thunder but brief fight with a few surprised Japanese defenders, a battalion of the 123d Infantry occupied the enemy's positions on Hill 3000 with few friendly casualties.

In the predawn darkness, Lt. Lorne Stanley of HQ Btry, 122d FA Bn, an FO with the troops on Hill 3000, crawled forward alone, dragging a field wire-remote connection to his radio. When the Japanese troops came swarming back to reclaim their positions on Hill 3000, it was Stanley who was first to meet them and to greet them with crashing volleys of 105 mm artillery fire that caused great consternation in their ranks. Most of the enemy were halted by the fire, dead, wounded, or forced to take cover; but some raced forward, trying to reach their old positions. Two of the latter happened to run directly toward the spot where Stanley lay hidden, flat on his belly, adjusting the artillery fire. In his excitement, the heroic Stanley momentarily forgot himself and opened fire with his carbine, killing one and stopping the other's advance. But that disclosed his position to the enemy, and he immediately became the focal point of a lot of rifle fire. Realizing that the better part of valor was to withdraw to his own line, Stanley pushed up on his hands to rise. As he did so, a bullet clipped a path through the thick hair all the way down his chest and abdomen without breaking the skin. He made it back safely, and the fire he had brought to bear with such surprise to the Japanese effectively prevented their return to Hill 3000. The infantry had little to do.

Stanley—who was called “Burrhead” by his friends in that outfit—was a medium-size guy as hairy as an ape, and he was quite proud of that depilated streak left by the Jap bullet down the front elevation of his hirsute self. He was also grateful for the impulse to rise just before the bullet appeared. And just to be sure that I don't leave you with a wrong impression of Burrhead Stanley, let me add that he was an intelligent, Stanford-educated son of a corporate lawyer and a professional opera singer who made his home in San Francisco and was as bold and clever a fighter as the United States ever sent to the field. For his heroism on Hill 3000, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and we in the 122d were quite proud of him. It was only the highest of numerous decorations he received for bravery and achievement.

Gen. Walter Krueger, commanding general of the Sixth Army, came out to visit the 123d one day during our approach to Hill 3000, and I
over the hills to baguio 229 got to meet him. I left our Pugo forward strip driving a jeep, heading up into the hills along our new supply road, having in mind a visit to Uncle Bud's CP and lunch in Uncle Bud's mess tent. Shortly after leaving the strip, it was necessary to ford a stream. It wasn't very deep, but it was wide, its banks were steep and muddy, and its bottom was covered with rounded boulders slick with slime. In short, it would have been very easy to get a jeep stuck in that stream. You had to hit it pretty fast and keep on going. As I bounced up over the bank on the opposite shore, around a clump of willows just ahead of me came speeding another jeep, bearing General Krueger with his four stars, and standing up in the rear seat, swinging his arm and yelling at me, “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!” was no less a person than Colonel Serff. The only way I could get out of the way was to go full speed straight ahead, off the outside of the curve and into the boonies. And that's what I did, while the General's jeep, its velocity unchecked, went bounding and splashing on across the stream.

Come to think of it, I did not salute General Krueger.

After Hill 3000, our next major terrain objective was Mount Calugong, which, as I recall, is more than forty-seven hundred feet in elevation. The way was rough, and the enemy was tough, and it was a pretty hard row to hoe. Vin and I were busy every day, searching out the enemy and bringing fire on him wherever we could see him or reasonably suppose him to be. The 33d Division historian estimated after the war that 95 percent of the observed artillery fire in the division was either adjusted by, or under the surveillance of, one of the eleven field artillery pilot observers. Vin and I certainly did our share of it.

Searching the terrain on the approaches to Mount Calugong one day, far ahead of our troops, I spotted one solitary Japanese soldier. He was sitting on a log seat above an open pit latrine, surprisingly located right out in the open, although there was a tree-lined ravine only fifty yards away. The chilly winds were blowing up there in the mountains that day, and he was wearing a long overcoat, but the coattails were thrown up over his shoulders and his bare behind was fully exposed to the wind—and to the enemy. Nevertheless, true to his training, he froze—probably almost literally froze—right where he was while I surveyed the area and tried to figure out what else was in the vicinity.

Map of the Philippine Islands, showing where the 33d Division operated on Luzon during the drive to capture the summer capitol of Baguio (Map by Carol Kerns).

This map fits into the rectangle on the upper left of the adjacent map of the Philippine Islands, on the island of Luzon, and shows the various objectives of the 33d Division in the battle for Baguio. Note Hill 3000, Mount Calugong, and other terrain features that had to be wrested from the Japanese on the approach to the city (Map from Sanford Winston,
The Golden Cross
).

Considering the terrain and the location relative to other enemy activities of which we knew, I came to the conclusion that there was a regimental CP located in that wooded ravine. But it was in an area where I had not worked closely before and which, as a matter of fact, was off the maps I had with me, so I looked around for something from which to transfer fire. Far away among the hills I could identify an old concentration that I had plotted on my map, so I called in my fire mission something like this:

“Kadi 3, this is Kadi 8. Fire mission. Over.”

“Kadi 8, send your mission. Over.”

“This is Kadi 8. Concentration 261 is one thousand right, two thousand short. Suspected regimental CP. Request Willie Peter. Will adjust. Over.”

After the usual preliminaries, the round of white phosphorus was on the way, and I watched carefully, expecting nothing more than that I'd
spot it somewhere within several hundred yards of the target area. Astonishingly, the fearsome burst of fire and white smoke appeared among the trees in the ravine at precisely the point at which I had supposed the CP was probably located. It was hard to believe, fantastically lucky, and I'll bet it made quite a reputation for American artillery among the local Japanese population.

The most immediate effect, I think, was one of great relief for the poor soldier on the latrine. Relieved now of his obligation to remain immobile to avoid detection, he leaped up from the log, pulled up his britches, and headed for parts unknown. I'll bet that overcoat felt good to his chilled posterior.

The next effect I saw was a hasty evacuation of a large group of Japanese personnel, heavy with officers, flapping the tails of their long coats as they hightailed it around the gentle slope leading away from that smoky hollow. Of course, I had already given the word to FDC:

“Repeat range. Request HE. Fire for effect. Over.”

They switched to HE and fired the entire battery three rounds in effect. It was rather exhilarating to me at the time—such a lucky guess at the target, such a lucky shot with the WP, so much fun with the guy on the latrine, and now—well, I feel kind of sad now to say that several of the fleeing enemy officers and men fell on that hillside. It's too bad that when a war is over the dead and the wounded cannot rise up smiling, whole and happy, and go home to their families.

But who was so foolish as to put that latrine right out in plain view of the whole world when everything else about the place was perfectly concealed? Well, our troops captured a letter addressed by a superior commander to the officer who had allowed Hill 3000 to be taken while he slept. Among other pleasantries, it included the Japanese equivalent of “You damned fools!” So that officer is probably the same one who put the latrine out in the open. Maybe he died there that day for his poor judgment.

But lucky shots happen more frequently than it seems they should. I recall a time when a platoon was working its way up a very narrow ridge, following a path through the tall grass that covered it. They came to a screeching halt when a machine gun began kicking up a fuss every
time they tried to pass a certain point. There was no way around, nor could they determine exactly where the gun was located. I was called over to try to find it, but I could see nothing. Nevertheless, I asked for one piece to fire a few rounds on the little ridge to see whether I could uncover or flush out anything. The transfer distance was not great, so we fired HE shell from the start. The very first round fired burst directly in a shallow hole at the base of a solitary tree that stood on the ridge. A machine gun was flung out to the front, and I could see the gunner lying back against the tree, dead. Our platoon walked on up the ridge without opposition.

The all-time world champion lucky artillery round, of course, was one of the first rounds fired by the 33d Div Arty after relieving the 43d on the highway between Damortis and Rosario (see the lower left corner of the map of of 33d Division objectives,
p. 231
). That was the one that hit the highway, tore up a chunk of pavement, and uncovered about half a million dollars worth of Philippine coin that had been concealed there before the Japanese invasion. They dipped it up in steel helmets and hauled it away in quarter-ton trailers. But I didn't see that round burst, so my personal candidate for champion was . . . well, one day I was informed by our S-2 that the enemy had a light artillery piece concealed in a tunnel through a small knoll on top of the mountain ridge not far west of Mount Calugong. That perfect little circle contour line on the map was the origin, he believed, of the interdicting time-fused rounds that kept bursting periodically over a certain curve in our road just below the batteries. I was asked to adjust fire on it and see whether we could discourage such rude conduct by the Japanese artillerymen.

I got into position to observe the knoll and was soon told that my first adjusting round was on the way, and it was white phosphorus, of course, because it would be easy to lose anything else in those mountains. For a few seconds after the round should have burst, I saw nothing, and I thought it must have gone beyond the ridge and down into the Asin Valley. But then I saw white smoke billowing out of the little knoll, and then explosions blasted out fore and aft, and I knew that the round, fired with only corrected map data from FDC, had gone directly through the camouflaged firing opening in the knoll and burst inside. The explosions
that followed must have been ammunition set off by the fire. I doubt that anyone who was inside the position survived.