The Daring Dozen (41 page)

In August 1943, after the decision had been made by the War Department to raise a Special Forces unit to serve in Burma, Hunter was the logical choice to organize the formation of such a force. Summoned to Washington, Hunter was briefed by the Operations Division on the concept of Long Range Penetration and informed of the work carried out by the British Chindits earlier in the year. Then he was told that it was the turn of the Americans to form a similar elite force to fight in Burma, where the casualty rate was projected to reach as high as 85 per cent. Hunter took the figures phlegmatically and set about raising three battalions for an imminent departure to India.

The volunteers who responded to the recruitment notices for a Special Forces unit were sent to San Francisco. One of those accepted as an officer was Charlton Ogburn, Jr, who recalled Hunter as possessing ‘a mouth that was a straight line across a firm jaw, the gaze of command in a countenance that sometimes surprised you with its boyish look, a sinewy build, and a bearing that made you unaware of his being of only average height’.
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Ogburn, who at 30, was older than the average recruit to the unit, had come from the Signal Corps, a fact that appealed to Hunter. ‘I took the occasion to summon up my courage and confess knowing next to nothing about radio,’ recalled Ogburn in his memoirs
The Marauders
. ‘Colonel Hunter received this intelligence without wincing: “Then, lieutenant,” he said, “you had better learn something about it.”’
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Two battalions were raised from volunteers in the United States, and a third from veteran soldiers of the Pacific campaign already stationed overseas. The unit was codenamed ‘Galahad’, and on 21 September the 1st and 2nd battalions sailed from San Francisco aboard the liner
Lurline
on a 42-day voyage for India.
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Ogburn recalled that as he got to know some of his new comrades he was struck by a common thread that ran through them, despite the fact that they came from all corners of the United States. ‘Each of them had something egging him on,’ he wrote. ‘In some it was the wildness of the hunting male or the nomadic instinct that is never reconciled to the settlement. In some it was a sense of what was owing a cause in which so many hundreds of thousands were having to die … in the younger members of my platoon it was perhaps the simple high-mindedness of youth.’
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At New Caledonia, 12 days out from San Francisco, Colonel Hunter collected 670 soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, many of whom were veterans of the bitter fighting on Guadalcanal. A further 270 officers and men joined the 3rd Battalion when they arrived in Brisbane, so by the time the force arrived in India at the end of October they were at full strength. From Bombay, Hunter led Galahad 150 miles east to the town of Deolali where training began in earnest.

On the voyage out the men had been issued with a booklet on jungle fighting, based on the lessons learned by the Chindits. The men of Galahad already had a basic understanding of what lay ahead, and throughout November and December they were trained to be experts in junglecraft. Hunter shared the same view that soldiers must demonstrate initiative and also show versatility; in other words everyone had a basic knowledge of first aid, radio communications and mortar firing. In addition the Americans learned how to navigate, track, camouflage and fight at close quarters in the jungle. Above all, Hunter instilled in them a respect for but not a fear of the jungle, just as Mike Calvert had done with the Chindits a year earlier.

Hunter procured 700 mules and, having heard of the difficulties faced by the Chindits in trying to get pack animals across a 100-yard-wide river while being chased by Japanese soldiers, he ensured he had a group of expert handlers who could get the mules over the river in the shortest time possible. At times Hunter allowed the men to relax and enjoy themselves with sport or games, but there was one rule never to be broken. ‘I don’t want to see anyone taking sun baths,’ he told the men at Deolali. ‘I don’t know why it should be, but I’ve found that people who take sun baths are difficult to get along with.’
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By late December 1943 Galahad was taking shape, but further up the chain of command there were problems. Initially the idea had been that the American force would be under the command of Wingate, who intended to deploy them in central Burma in tandem with his own Chindits to attack the Japanese 18th Division’s lines of supply and communications. This enraged Stilwell. He wanted Galahad to support his own offensive (using two Chinese divisions) in Burma to open up an overland supply route into China. The final decision on the matter rested with Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of the South-East Asian Theatre, and he acceded to Stilwell’s demands, a decision that would have grim consequences for Galahad. According to Hunter, when he broke the news to Wingate he replied: ‘You can tell General Stilwell that he can take his Americans and … [the language here being of even more than Old Testament plain-spokenness].’
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It wasn’t until 1 January 1944 that Galahad was officially recognized as a regiment with Colonel Hunter its commanding officer. Ogburn recalled that by now the force had a strong sense of its own identity and this was down to the ‘steadying influence’ of its leader and that of the CO of the 1st Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel William Osborne. ‘Each in accordance with his temperament, they gave an impression of being unworried, confident and knowing what they were about – the essentials of leadership.’
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Three days later, however, on 4 January, Galahad was reconstituted as the 5307th Composite Unit under the command of General Frank Merrill, a former West Point classmate of Hunter’s. Merrill was two years older than Hunter and a different character entirely. Whereas Hunter was a lean, wiry, tough professional soldier, Merrill was a military engineer who had served as a military attaché in Tokyo in the late 1930s. Hunter spoke his mind, but Merrill preferred the language of diplomacy and his ability to accommodate opinions had helped him in his rapid rise through the ranks. With poor eyesight and a weak heart, Merrill was an unwise choice to command a unit about to embark on a Long Range Penetration deep into the Burmese jungle, but he was a favourite of Stilwell’s. In Hunter’s opinion his successor was ‘rather tall, he was by no means a rugged individual, being narrow of chest and rather thin. His features were sharp but his nature ebullient, affable and confident.’
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Not long after the appointment of Merrill, the unit was ordered to move to Ledo in Assam by 7 February.
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Hunter grumbled that the unit was ‘not completely equipped or, by any stretch of the imagination, fully organized and trained’.

To compensate for the curtailment of their training in India, Hunter hatched a plan that he executed once Galahad reached their staging area of Margherita in Assam. Ahead of them lay a 150-mile route along the Ledo Road to Shingbwiyang, the airstrip and supply base from where they would embark on their first Long Range Penetration. The route, as Ogburn remembered, was ‘a wilderness of mountains rising from near sea level to two 4,000ft passes’. Hunter had the three battalions of Galahad march the route in ten days. ‘More than any other single part of Galahad’s training, the hike down the Ledo Road, in my professional judgment, paid the highest dividends,’
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Hunter later wrote.

Once they had arrived at Shingbwiyang the men and the mules were hardened and the few weaklings had been rooted out and returned to their unit. Fifteen miles south of Shingbwiyang was Ningam Sakan, where General Stilwell had established his HQ following the successful early advance of his Chinese force into Burma. Hunter and Merrill marched Galahad through Ningam Sakan the day after reaching Shingbwiyang in the expectation of being warmly greeted by their commander, but ‘the occasion proved, unfortunately, to be one of those on which Stilwell missed the chance of an inexpensive gesture that could have repaid him in days to come’.

Stilwell did appear a couple of days later, however, to issue instructions about the forthcoming operation. Stretched out to the south was the Hukawng Valley in which were an estimated 7,000 Japanese troops of the 18th Division; Stilwell ordered Galahad to penetrate into the valley and outflank and destroy the enemy in order to leave the way open for the continued advance south of his two Chinese divisions. Outnumbered by more than two to one, the American troops also had inferior firepower, relying on light assault weapons such as bazookas and 60mm mortars.

Hunter and Merrill led the 2,750-strong Galahad out of their camp in the early hours of 24 February. Ahead of them lay an eight-day march east to allow them to then wheel around and attack the right flank of the Japanese defenders. A reconnaissance platoon was despatched first from each of the three battalions, and when they rendezvoused with the main force a few days later Hunter exuded ‘paternal pride’ as he listened to their reports on the dispositions of the Japanese forces.

Galahad received supply drops as they marched east, the most prized item being the 3,000-calorie one-a-day K-ration, which while better than the Chindits rations was 1,000 calories short of what Hunter had requested the previous September. For the first fortnight Galahad saw hardly any trace of the enemy but reconnaissance patrols, aided by Kachin scouts, reported that a large force of Japanese was stationed at Walawbum, a village that lay on the Kamaing Road, down which Stilwell’s army intended to advance. In the approach to Walawbum in early March there were a number of brief skirmishes. In one such incident Hunter and a small unit encountered a body of Japanese soldiers as they made for a rendezvous point with the 1st Provisional Tank Group (which was unable to penetrate the jungle). In the ensuing firefight Hunter and his men accounted for two of the enemy and caused the others to flee.

The main fight for Walawbum began on 5 March with the 2nd Battalion taking the brunt of the six Japanese infantry attacks, interspersed with artillery bombardments, during a 36-hour period. Nonetheless, the battalion suffered just one fatality and five wounded while killing more than 100 of the enemy. The Japanese withdrew and Merrill assumed the fight for Walawbum was finished, but the enemy came again a few hours later, this time launching themselves against the positions held by the 3rd Battalion a little to the south-west of the 2nd Battalion. Ogburn recalled how the Japanese soldiers ‘spurred on by their cries of
Susume! Susume!
[Advance!] and
Banzai!
by their leaders, had come fanning out over the grassy clearing on the other side in successive waves’.
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Yet despite the brave ferocity of the Japanese, they were repelled by the disciplined defence of the 3rd Battalion over three days. By 7 March Walawbum was firmly under the control of Galahad, and the failed attack had cost the enemy 800 dead.

Though only eight Americans had been killed and 37 wounded during the battle for Walawbum, the 11-day operation had diminished the unit’s total strength in other ways: 136 men had been evacuated suffering from malaria, dysentery and other illnesses; 33 had suffered various injuries and ten soldiers had been removed owing to ‘psychoneurosis’.

The 2,300 men who were fit to continue enjoyed a couple of days’ rest and recuperation at Shikau Ga, five miles north of Walawbum, before Galahad continued south on 12 March with instructions to harass the Japanese at Jambu Bum. ‘This low range of hills, with its barbaric name, formed the southern end of the Hukawng Valley,’ recalled Ogburn. Contrary to the wishes of Merrill and Hunter, Stilwell had ordered that Galahad be split in two with the 1st Battalion making for the village of Shaduzup, and the 2nd and 3rd battalions tasked with seizing Nhpum Ga, 15 miles to the south-east.

The 1st Battalion set off first and 20 miles were accomplished in two days but the next 30 took two weeks as the terrain and the enemy hindered their progress. The battalion diary for 20 March was typical of the daily difficulties which Galahad had to confront:

The first battalion marched over difficult trails to Nprawa Ga where our lead platoon hit a Jap machine gun blocking the trail. We had one man killed and two wounded before the gun and crew were wiped out by mortar fire on their block.
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More and more men began succumbing to disease, with an outbreak of amoebic dysentery decimating the force, and there were also the hateful leeches, which Ogburn described as ‘rubbery monsters, black worms with suction cups at both ends … with the capacity of clamping on and opening a lesion without your feeling anything’.
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Nonetheless 1st Battalion had achieved their objectives, clearing a trail through the Jambu Bum to the village of Shaduzup where a fierce engagement ended with 300 Japanese and eight Americans dead.

The other force, meanwhile, had split with 3rd Battalion securing an airstrip in the valley of Hsamsingyang and the 2nd Battalion four miles south at Nhpum Ga. Both came under sustained attack from the Japanese, with the latter besieged for 11 days. Medics, signalmen and cooks took up arms as wave after wave of Japanese assaults were beaten back. Only the dropping of fresh supplies from the air enabled the 2nd Battalion to continue its defence of Nhpum Ga, while at Galahad’s command post at Hsamsingyang Hunter kept a cool head. More Japanese were rumoured to be approaching from the east, threatening an encirclement of the three battalions and alarming Captain John George of the 3rd Battalion. ‘Don’t you ever get scared?’ he asked Hunter, whose philosophy was that it was beholden on an officer to keep his fear in a foxhole. ‘Wait till you’ve had twins,’ Hunter replied to George.
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The Japanese never appeared from the east and finally on 9 April, Easter Sunday, the 3rd Battalion fought its way through to reinforce their comrades and drive the enemy from Nhpum Ga. The two battalions had lost 50 men and had another 314 wounded (the Japanese lost 400 killed) in the fighting for Nhpum Ga. Also evacuated from the area was General Merrill, who had suffered a heart attack on March 28.
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Hunter took over command and wrote later: ‘I had no warning of Merrill’s approaching illness. He had not undergone any violent exercise in the last few days to have placed a strain on his heart. I knew he was using some kind of thick purplish medicine taken with water which he told me was for dysentery.’
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