The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific
Authors: James Campbell
Tags: #World War II, #Asian History, #Military History, #Asia, #U.S.A., #Retail, #American History
Contents
A G
UIDE TO THE
B
OOK’S
M
AJOR
C
HARACTERS
Chapter 8
M
ARCHING INTO THE
C
LOUDS
Chapter 10
T
O
S
WALLOW
O
NE’S
T
EARS
Chapter 14
I
F
T
HEY
D
ON’T
S
TINK
, S
TICK
’E
M
To Elizabeth, for her patience and grace, and to our
daughters Aidan, Rachel, and Willa
And to the Red Arrow men of New Guinea and their families
A Guide to the Book’s Major Characters
U.S. C
OMMAND
S
TRUCTURE
General Douglas MacArthur:
Commander in Chief Southwest Pacific Area
Major General Richard Sutherland:
MacArthur’s Chief of Staff
Brigadier General Charles Willoughby:
MacArthur’s Head of Intelligence (G-2)
Major General George Kenney:
Commander of Allied Air Forces
Brigadier General Hugh Casey:
MacArthur’s Engineer Officer
Major General Edwin Forrest Harding:
Commanding General 32nd U.S. Infantry Division from February 1942–December 1, 1942
Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger:
Commander I Corps. Assumed command of all U.S. forces east of the Girua River in early December 1942
A
USTRALIAN
C
OMMAND
S
TRUCTURE
General Sir Thomas Blamey:
Commander Allied Land Forces SWPA
Major General Basil Morris:
General Officer Commanding New Guinea Force
Lieutenant General Sydney Rowell:
Replaced Morris as General Officer Commanding New Guinea Force on August 10, 1942
Lieutenant General Edmund Herring:
Replaced General Rowell in late October 1942
Major General Arthur “Tubby” Allen:
General Officer Commanding 7th Australian Division
Major General George Vasey:
Replaced Tubby Allen as Commanding Officer of the 7th Australian Division on October 27, 1942
32
ND
U.S. I
NFANTRY
D
IVISION
Colonel Lawrence Quinn:
Commander 126th Infantry Regiment until November 5
Colonel John Mott:
Temporary Commander Urbana Force
Colonel John Grose:
Assumed command of Urbana Force on December 4, 1942. Three days later, turned over command of Urbana Force to Colonel Clarence Tomlinson. Then took over command of the 127th Infantry Regiment. Resumed command of Urbana Force on December 20, 1942
Lieutenant Colonel Clarence Tomlinson:
Assumed command of the 126th Infantry after Quinn. Took over command of Urbana Force on December 7, 1942. Relieved of duties on December 20 due to exhaustion, but remained Commander of the 126th Infantry
Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Smith:
Commander 2nd Battalion 128th Infantry Regiment
Major Herbert “Stutterin’” Smith:
Commander 2nd Battalion 126th Infantry Regiment
Captain William “Jim” Boice:
Regimental Intelligence Officer (G-2), and leader of the Pathfinder Patrol
U
RBANA
F
RONT
Lieutenant Robert Odell:
Platoon leader Company F 2nd Battalion 126th Infantry Regiment. Took command of the company in early December 1942
Lieutenant James Hunt:
Head of communications section attached to Company E, then F, and eventually Battalion Headquarters 126th Infantry Regiment
Sergeant Herman Bottcher:
Platoon commander Company H 2nd Battalion 126th Infantry Regiment. Attached to Company G
C
OMPANY
G 2
ND
B
ATTALION
126
TH
I
NFANTRY
R
EGIMENT
Lieutenant Cladie “Gus” Bailey:
Commanding Officer
Sergeant Don Stout
Sergeant Don Ritter
Corporal Stanley Jastrzembski
Corporal Carl Stenberg
Privates First Class Russell Buys, Samuel DiMaggio, Chester Sokoloski
C
OMPANY
E 2
ND
B
ATTALION
126
TH
I
NFANTRY
R
EGIMENT
Captain Melvin Schultz:
Commanding Officer
1st Sergeant Paul Lutjens
Sergeant John Fredericks
Private First Class Arthur Edson
S
ANANANDA
F
RONT
Captain Alfred Medendorp:
Leader of the Wairopi Patrol, Commanding Officer of Cannon and K Companies
Captain Roger Keast:
Second-in-command Wairopi Patrol, and Commanding Officer Antitank Company
Captain John Shirley:
Commanding Officer Company I 3rd Battalion 126th Infantry Regiment
Captain Meredith Huggins:
Operations Officer (S-3) 3rd Battalion 126th Infantry Regiment
Lieutenant Peter Dal Ponte:
Commanding Officer Service Company 3rd Battalion 126th Infantry Regiment
Lieutenant Hershel Horton:
Platoon Commander Company I 3rd Battalion 126th Infantry Regiment
Father Stephen Dzienis:
Chaplain 126th Infantry Regiment
Lieutenant Lester Segal:
Physician assigned to Wairopi Patrol
Major Simon Warmenhoven:
Regimental Surgeon, 126th Infantry Regiment. Served on both Sanananda and Buna Fronts
Author’s Note
I
N
1884
THE ISLAND
of New Guinea was partitioned by three Western powers. The Dutch claimed the western half (it was handed over to Indonesia in November 1969 and is now called the province of Papua, formerly Irian Jaya), and the Germans and British divided the eastern half. The southern section of the eastern half became a British protectorate (British New Guinea Territory) and passed to Australia in 1906 as the Territory of Papua. The northern section formed part of German New Guinea, or Kaiser-Wilhelmsland. During World War I, it was occupied by Australian forces and in 1920 was mandated to Australia by the League of Nations. It became known as the Territory of New Guinea.
Although the Battles of Buna and Sanananda took place in the Territory of Papua, because people generally refer to the island as New Guinea, I do, too, in order to avoid potentially confusing distinctions.
Introduction
N
EW
G
UINEA WAS
an unlikely place in which to wage a war for world domination. It was an inhospitable, only cursorily mapped, disease-ridden land. Almost no one—not the elite units of the Japanese forces that invaded New Guinea’s north coast in July 1942, not the Australian Imperial Forces or its militia, and maybe least of all the U.S. Army’s 32nd “Red Arrow” Division—was prepared for what military historian Eric Bergerud calls “some of the harshest terrain ever faced by land armies in the history of the war.”
In New Guinea, exhaustion and disease pushed armies to the breaking point. Losses to malaria alone were crippling. Sixty-seven percent of the 14,500 American troops involved in the battles for Buna and Sanananda contracted the disease. On the Sanananda Front, casualties due to malaria were over 80 percent.
The suffering was enormous on all sides. For the Americans, it could have been alleviated, at least initially, by better planning. But eventually the topography and climate would still have exacted a terrible toll.
By the time the Red Arrow men arrived in New Guinea in September 1942, U.S. Marine troops were already fighting a brutal, well-documented land battle at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The marines had a superbly oiled publicity machine that kept them in the spotlight. The 32nd Division’s soldiers fighting in New Guinea felt forgotten. The American public, in particular, suffered from the misperception that except for Guadalcanal, the South Pacific was a naval war with a few insignificant ground operations thrown in for good measure. By October 1944, they knew that General Douglas MacArthur, who had fled the Philippines, had returned two and a half years later, keeping his promise. But they had little idea of what went on in the interim, which is to say that they had scant knowledge of the land war in New Guinea. Americans’ lack of interest revealed a geographical ignorance. The European front—and the exception of Guadalcanal—they could comprehend. The vast blue Pacific with its obscure island nations remained a mystery.
Yet the fighting on the island of New Guinea—especially the early confrontations at Buna and Sanananda—was every bit as fierce as that at Guadalcanal. General Robert Eichelberger, who would assume command of the 32nd, wrote that in New Guinea, “Everything favored the enemy.”
Casualties at Buna, in fact, were considerably higher than at Guadalcanal. On Guadalcanal 1,100 troops were killed and 4,350 wounded. The cost of New Guinea’s combined Buna-Sanananda-Gona campaign was 3,300 killed and 5,500 wounded. As William Manchester points out in his book
American Caesar,
“If the difference in the size of attacking forces is taken into account, the loss of life on Papua (New Guinea) had been three times as great as Guadalcanal’s.”
On New Guinea, as at Guadalcanal, topography determined everything. Tanks and artillery, which won the day in Europe, were rendered useless. In the matted jungles, men were forced to fight battles at point-blank range. Soldiers used anything that worked—grenades, fixed bayonets, and, sometimes, their hands. Eric Bergerud described the struggle as “a knife fight out of the Stone Age.” George Johnston, an Australian war correspondent, called it one of the “most merciless and most primeval battles.”
As fierce as the fighting was, the terrain and climate were just as dangerous. General Hugh Casey, MacArthur’s chief engineer, called New Guinea the “ultimate nightmare country.” Support units, he said, would face challenges “without precedent in American military history.” Before his first inspection of the island, he assumed that nothing could compare with Bataan and Samar. But New Guinea was in a class of its own. War, Casey told MacArthur, would be almost impossible to wage on the island. His warnings proved prescient.
For the troops of the 32nd Division, New Guinea became “the ultimate nightmare country” indeed. Lenord Sill would later say, “All who were alive, were so near death…. Our briefing, before we began near Port Moresby, did not prepare us for what we were about to encounter. In the beginning, we were all young, healthy GIs, eager to conquer the world…. In a matter of weeks, long before we met the enemy force, all of us had been transformed into ghosts of our former selves.”
Bob Hartman of Grand Rapids, Michigan, minces no words. “If I owned New Guinea and I owned hell, I would live in hell and rent out New Guinea.” The first time Carl Smestad saw the Sanananda battlefront he was convinced that it would be his graveyard. “God help us,” he thought. “We’re never going to get out of here alive.”
One would think that the 32nd must have been a division of elite fighters, or that it contained units of crack troops. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Although Field Service regulations specified “all troops must be thoroughly acclimated before initiating operations,” the men of the 32nd were not ready for the jungle. When it came time to send the division to New Guinea, a commanding general judged it soft and just barely fit for combat.
New to jungle warfare, the division lacked even the basics for survival, prompting one military historian to label the soldiers of the 32nd the “guinea pigs” of the South Pacific. Men were not issued any of the specialized clothing that later became de rigueur for the war in the South Pacific. For camouflage, their combat fatigues were hastily dyed before they left Australia. In the rain and extreme humidity, the dye ran and clogged the cloth, causing men to develop horrible skin ulcers. Soldiers were forced to wade through vines, creepers, brush, dense stands of razor-sharp kunai grass, and elephant grass as high as a basketball rim without the aid of machetes. They did not even have insect repellent—astonishing when one considers that they were fighting in a bug-ridden place. They were not equipped with waterproof containers either. Matches were often unusable. Quinine and vitamin pills, salt and chlorination tablets got wet and crumbled in their pants pockets. Never, perhaps, have American troops been more poorly equipped. Yet, in New Guinea, the 32nd Division was asked to do the extraordinary.