Above the Thunder (44 page)

“Crash, you've got your orders, and I don't like to expose you to any further danger, so I'm not going to order you to fly another mission. But Vineyard is about out of gas, and we badly need someone up there to relieve him. If you should volunteer to go, I'd be grateful. But if you don't volunteer, I won't think the less of you.”

Those were just about his words. What could anyone do but volunteer? So off I went for my last combat mission in World War II. It was just the same thing we'd been dealing with up there before—the tunnel-like clouded valleys and the horizontal machine-gun fire. Only it seemed to me they were worse that morning than ever before. But I returned to Tagudin unscathed and turned my old 31st Division plane over to Swift, who, a short time later, got a bullet through its fuel tank and made an emergency landing with gasoline all over his legs and the cockpit. If the bullet had been a tracer, I suppose there'd have been no more Swifty.

I stayed at Loacan that night. Dwight Mossman took me up to division headquarters, and General Clarkson, in his office, pinned a Silver Star on me—another surprise. Mossman gave me copies of two classified G-2 reports that covered the big target Stanley and I had fired and my earlier twenty-four-at-one-blow mission near Hill 4980. And on 6 June, someone—I think it was Mossman again—flew me to a strip near the replacement depot at Manila.

The “repl depl,” as those addicted to slangy terms called a replacement depot, was a huge tent camp spread over a large and gently sloping hill somewhere outside Manila. I was assigned a cot, put down my duffel bag, and went to the showers that a latrine screen sheltered from general view. When I finished my ablutions, I wrapped a towel around my middle and walked back to the tent, where I started putting on clean clothing.

In the midst of dressing, I was suddenly confronted by a second
lieutenant of the Quartermaster Corps whom I had never met before but who, I learned, was commandant of the repl depl. He strode into the tent and literally shouted at me in a rage.

“Have you no respect for decent American womanhood?”

And he went on from there, a tirade such as I could never reconstruct here. I could only stand and gape at him, because I had not the slightest idea in the world what might have brought on his outraged assault. Man, I hadn't seen anything even faintly resembling decent American womanhood in many long months, and I don't think there was a more respectful fellow in all Luzon than I was, whether the decent womanhood was American or otherwise.

While I continued to stare at him, stupefied, a captain who occupied a nearby cot came to my defense. He stopped the chivalrous lieutenant and turned the tables on him, raising hell with him for raising hell with me. And then, he continued in a loud voice to point out that the fault lay with field grade officers from MacArthur's headquarters who lacked the sense not to bring female personnel into the middle of the replace ment depot without warning. As he said that, I noticed a major who was just putting his duffel down in the tent. He got red in the face but said not a word. And the captain then explained to me that the major's driver—sitting outside in a jeep, dressed in GI fatigue clothes and steel helmet, back toward us—was a WAC, a female soldier of the Women's Army Corps.

I had never seen a WAC before. I certainly hadn't expected to see one there—or to be seen by one.

Our processing in Manila was brief. There was a short lecture about security matters, and the same fellow who'd delivered it told us that our baggage would be thoroughly checked before departure for the dock. Any weapons and any maps, notebooks, or other items containing information of possible value to the enemy would be confiscated and the holder would be scratched from the shipping list, he said. Reluctantly, I took from my baggage the soiled map on which I had marked many a target concentration and burned it. But I couldn't bring myself to dispose of the pistol Sergeant Van Assen had sent to me, so I concealed it. When the time came for the inspection of baggage—there was no inspection at all. We just left the wonderful repl depl and were hauled through the ruins of Manila to where a gray ship waited beside a long quay.

A short time after leaving Manila, the vessel stopped off the shore of Leyte in the vicinity of Tacloban, and there she took aboard about four hundred serious casualties of the fighting then going on in Okinawa. It was just about that time that I began to have severe headaches from a wisdom tooth breaking through. My efforts to obtain aspirin were futile; all the medics were too busy with the casualties to worry about some lieutenant's headache. And the odors associated with the large number of casts on arms, legs, and torsos of the wounded men discouraged me from spending much unnecessary time in their area of the ship.

And so I suffered with severe headache during most of the thirty-day trip to San Francisco. Being one of three lieutenants in charge of troop security, with seventy-two sentry posts to be manned, relieved, and inspected several times during each eight-hour shift, I came to sincerely appreciate the big, shiny coffee urn in the troop galley, and its twenty-four-hour access granted to troop security officers on duty. I must say I've never had better coffee than I had there. And I got cussed out plenty, too, because in the sweltering nights the outer decks were always covered with men sleeping there to escape the suffocating heat below. Making my rounds in the darkness—blackout being enforced—I often accidentally stepped on or kicked some sleeping soldier, and seldom did he wake up in a good mood.

Wendell Young was on the same ship with me, and I managed to talk with him occasionally. His mind was already in Chicago with his wife and stepdaughter.

Aboard the ship, I became acquainted with Lt. Anthony Malik, formerly of the 37th Infantry Division, who had led the platoon in which Pvt. Rodger Young, the Medal of Honor soldier made famous in song, had performed his heroic deeds. The first thing Malik and I did when we hit the streets of San Francisco was stop at the first tavern we came to and order ice-cold beer! I was not really a beer drinker, but it seemed that the thing every soldier was dreaming of was ice-cold beer, and I caught the fever. The fever quickly cooled, because the ice-cold Miller High Life had no more taste than water on our palates, long unaccustomed as we were to cold drinks of any kind.

Both Malik and I were going initially to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, and we were placed in charge of a carload of troops going to Chicago and Camp Atterbury. When came the first halt where the troops had a chance to leave the train, we feared they'd come back with liquor and beer and we'd have problems. And they did bring back a large number of bottles, but as far as we could determine, every one of them was a bottle of milk—real, pasteurized, whole milk! They hadn't had it for many months or even years, and they wanted it far more than they wanted beer or whiskey. So did Malik and I.

The author's beautiful wife, Dorothy, with him on leave in Xenia, Ohio, 1 May 1952. He left for Japan shortly after this picture, and Dorie sailed over on the
President Cleveland
to join him.

I said goodbye to Wendy Young when he detrained at Chicago.

At Atterbury, I filled out a form to indicate that I wanted to be relieved from active duty but retain a commission in the Organized Reserve. I was given thirty days' leave with orders to report at the Field Artillery Replacement Center, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on 14 August for duty as assistant troop movement officer.

Dorie met me in Indianapolis, and we caught a bus for her folks' home in Ohio. My homecoming was saddened by the word they had
recently received that Dorie's brother, Fay Clifford Lane, Company K, 17th Infantry, 7th Infantry Division, had died 28 April of bullet wounds sustained 27 April on the Shuri Line on Okinawa.

I worked a half day at Fort Bragg. When I came in at noon, there was a note on my new desk directing that I see the personnel officer. He had a War Department TWX message authorizing my release from active duty and commissioning me in the Organized Reserve. I started out-processing immediately.

Driving back to Fayetteville late that afternoon, Dorie and I noticed lots of people sounding automobile horns, yelling, laughing, waving, crying, and so on. We soon learned the war had ended. Two days later, I was on terminal leave, and we headed west.

At least until Mikhail Gorbachev's ascension to power in the Soviet Union, the Cold War dominated international affairs after the end of World War II. Twice it escalated into shooting wars involving the United States, and in those wars many veterans went back to combat zones in Korea and Vietnam. I was one of those.

When I landed after my first combat flight in the Korean War, I was greeted by D. W. Vineyard, my old flying partner from the 122d FA Bn. He was then detailed as pilot for a Korean corps commander. Later, we both transferred to Yokohama, where we served together again, flying and carrying out various other duties for Headquarters, Army Forces, Far East. In 1966, Vin retired from the Army. Later, retired again from a successful career as a farmer, he became a realtor in Mansfield, Missouri. He has since passed away.

My own further experience in the service was varied, interesting—to me, at least—and brought me into contact with some widely known people, both military and civilian. I graduated from the Artillery Officers Advanced Course at Fort Sill and from the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. I served in both artillery and aviation command assignments in the United States and in Germany and for
several years was involved in managing research, testing, and evaluating equipment, organization, and operational concepts. For about a year, I was proud to serve as chief of doctrine in the Artillery Agency of the Combat Developments Command.

I was in Vietnam, too, but I won't brag about that. I didn't like that war, and I especially didn't like some of my superiors. Added to my age and expanding waistline—and maybe I had reached my last plateau, anyway—that put the quietus on any hope I may have had for an eagle.

Dorie and I were stationed in Yokohama, Japan, in the late fifties, as Vin was. While there, Vin and I corresponded with Uncle Bud Carlson, who was then commander of Fort Slocum, New York. We heard many years ago that he had died. His former S-3 and later commander of the 122d, Major Bill Hadfield, retired as a colonel and became a bank vice president in Lawton, Oklahoma, adjacent to Fort Sill, where I met him in the sixties. He later died in San Antonio.

Going still further into the past, let me mention the pride of the 89th FA Bn, Jay D. Vanderpool. When I finished Army basic training and joined the radio section in HQ Btry, 8th FA Regt, Staff Sergeant Vanderpool was the section chief. By the time the war began, he was Second Lieutenant Vanderpool, serving as battalion adjutant. His career during the war proved him one of the most able and daring soldiers in the U.S. Army, and he ended the war as Lieutenant Colonel Vanderpool, G-2, 25th Infantry Division. I met him in 1962 when he was Colonel Vanderpool, G-4, Seventh Army, at Stuttgart. I met him again at the battalion reunion in Florida. He now lives in Sarasota.

Col. John W. Ferris died in Florida years ago. He was my first battery commander and one of the best officers I ever knew. Every man of the old battalion, which he eventually commanded, cherishes his memory. I think it was his training and example that enabled several of the ordinary soldiers who served under him in HQ Btry to become successful officers and senior NCOs, and contributed far more to this nation than the general citizenry will ever know.

Lt. Col. William Bledsoe, first commander of the 89th FA Bn, became a brigadier general before the war ended, but an untimely death ended the career of that irascible old veteran of the First World War.

My very close friend, Bill Gibson, served through the war as a gunner in the 8th FA Bn. I saw him a few times in the seventies and talked to him by phone occasionally before his too-early death.

Of my friends in the radio section of the 89th, Carl Bunn, was killed in action as described, and Mulherin and Crupi have faded away, as all old soldiers eventually must do. Pappy Downs became radio chief when I left for OCS, and later he moved up to become first sergeant of the battery. And then, sad to relate, he died of tuberculosis while still a young man. But Ralph Park, who became radio chief when Pappy moved up, Williamson, Willy Cancro, Leroy Ryder, and Shea were all together again with me at our 1988 reunion.

Also at the 1988 reunion I saw Warren Harriman, who advised us that the Japanese were firing real bullets that morning at Pearl Harbor, and Claude Phipps, who got two of them through his body—which is why he was lying on the floor when I stepped over him en route to the Supply Room on 7 December 1941. And there were others, like Williamson, Park, Cancro, and Rider.

It would be great to see all the old bunch from the 122d, too, but it takes a dedicated fellow like L. W. LeGrand of Bronson, Florida, to find people and organize a reunion after over half a century, and I guess the 122d doesn't have one like him. Phil Ryan could do it if he's still alive, but I haven't seen or heard of him since I met him at El Paso Municipal Airport in 1965 when he was managing a couple of car rental agencies there. Are Allen, Young, Kinsch, and Janes still living? I wish I knew. And all the pilots from the 33d—Brisley, Spendlove, Eder, Hoffman, Swift, Donaldson, Pickett, Mossman, and Bortz—where are they now?