The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific (30 page)

On the evening of December 3 he wrote, “Parents! Wife! Brother and Sister! I have fought with all my strength. I believe by all means that the violent efforts of BASA (Basabua) Garrison will be handed down to posterity…. But now my fighting strength is weakened and I am about to expose my dead body on the seashore of BASA. My comrades have already died, though my heart is filled with joy because I can become the guardian spirit of my country. I will fight and crush the enemy. I will protect the seashore of BASA forever.”

First Lieutenant Jitsutaro Kamio expressed many of the same sentiments. On November 30, he wrote in his diary, “Even though there is little to eat a warrior must bear it.” A day later he wrote, “Human beings must die once. I only ask for a good place to die.”

West of the Girua River at the oval-shaped clearing that had already become known as the “roadblock,” Captains Keast and Shirley were barely hanging on. The American position on the track was a precarious one. Two hundred fifty yards long by 150 yards wide, and only 300 yards south of a Japanese position on the track, the roadblock represented the only high, open ground for what might have been miles. Though the Americans were dug in, Japanese snipers tucked into the tops of trees had clear shots, and the dense undergrowth made them vulnerable to surprise attacks. Isolated nearly a mile behind the main Japanese position on the Sanananda track, Keast and Shirley were unable to communicate with anyone but their own men. Their phone lines had been cut, and their radios could not reach the American command post fifteen hundred yards to the southwest.

Keast instructed two machine gun squads to man positions to the north and south of the garrison. Shirley’s men dug in to the west and placed two 60 mm mortars, which could fire thirty rounds per minute, inside their perimeter while Keast took his Antitank Company men to the eastern perimeter.

Outmanned several times over and unable to call for reinforcements, Keast and Shirley, and what remained of their troops after the brutal bayonet charge spent the night of November 30 repulsing raid after Japanese raid. The position was nearly impossible to defend.

The following morning, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, Keast offered to execute a probing attack and take a patrol off the southwest perimeter. Though Shirley knew how dangerous this was, he also knew that they would have to find a gap in the Japanese position at some point. Without ammunition, food, or reinforcements, the Americans would not be able to hold the roadblock for very long.

Just three miles to the north, the waves of the Solomon Sea washed over the dark sands of Sanananda Point, and the first rays of the sun glistened in the morning sky. In the swamp, Keast and his men moved through the mist and sago palms like ghosts of the war’s dead. The spikes of the trees ripped at their clothes. Raw from jungle rot, their feet burned with every step. At every sound their fingers tightened on their triggers. So far they had been lucky; they had not walked into a slaughter. Then the jungle closed in around them and they had to suppress the desire to burst into a mad, clumsy rush.

For a moment Keast, the former teacher and coach, allowed himself to dream of home. Marquette, Michigan, bordered by Lake Superior and great forests of white pine and red and sugar maples, had been a good place for the Keasts. Roger, Ruth, and their young son Harry had been there for just fifteen months when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor. As a lieutenant in the Reserve Officer Corps, Roger must have known that his time at home was drawing to a close. The family’s time in Marquette, though brief, had “meant a great deal” to all the Keasts. The school and the community had embraced them. To show their appreciation, the school held a series of farewell parties that included hams, chili and cake, card games, songs, and jokes about how Keast enjoyed “singing in the showers” and his efforts to teach the high school boys to dance. Though the school paper declared that “depressing talk of any kind was not allowed,” more than a few people left the parties with “lumps in their throats.” At the official school send-off, Keast was told that the 1941 yearbook was being dedicated to him. The dedication, the speaker said, was for Keast’s “splendid loyalty shown in furthering athletics and a better school spirit.” The speaker added, “the staff bestows this honor upon you and hopes that in the years to come you will always remind us of our duty to our country and to our school.” Then the crowd broke into song. It began with “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and ended with “Auld Lang Syne.”

But Keast was as far from Marquette as he could be now. He and his men had not made much progress when they were hit by a wave of rifle and machine gun fire. When one of his men, a company cook by the name of Johnson, stopped, Keast patted him on the back. Johnson was wild-eyed with adrenaline, and Keast tried to calm him. “Don’t let it bother you, soldier, let’s go right in there and keep our eyes open.” Keast knew the situation was desperate. Jap snipers were moving to surround them. Their only hope was to keep shooting, to keep moving straight ahead in the direction of Medendorp and his men. Keast must have known that if Medendorp knew that they had fallen into a trap, he would try to bail them out.

Keast took a few more steps, and then gunfire burst at point-blank range from the jungle ahead. There was a brief flash. Johnson might have heard the dull thud of a bullet entering flesh. Then Keast fell. Johnson could see Keast “lying on the ground on his side, his empty pistol holster exposed above the grass.” He wanted to go to his captain. He needed to get his captain, to pull him out of the jungle and scream for a medic, but bullets snapped and hummed around him. Soon the decision was made for him. The Japanese attacked, and he and the others who had not been hit stumbled back to the roadblock.

The following day, December 2, a party under the command of Captain Meredith Huggins left the battalion command post a mile back on the track. Five hours later, after dodging enemy snipers, Huggins reached the roadblock’s southern perimeter. In need of ammunition and rations, Shirley was overjoyed to see Huggins, but he had bad news for him: Roger Keast was probably dead.

Huggins had no time to mourn his friend. Just minutes after he arrived, a large Japanese force attacked. According to Johnson, who had seen Keast go down the day before, Shirley was “everywhere,” shouting orders and beating back the enemy. Not long after noon, though, Shirley’s luck ran out. A medic saw him go down, ran to him and dragged him into a trench. Shirley wanted to know how bad his wound was. “You’ll be okay,” the medic lied. According to Johnson, Shirley “just slipped off into death.”

As the highest-ranking officer, Huggins was suddenly in charge of the roadblock. In a matter of seven hours he had gone from a supply man to a battlefield commander. Now, battalion headquarters wanted to know: Could he hold the garrison?

Huggins replied, “I’ll hold that place until hell freezes over.”

Chapter 16

B
REAKING THE
S
TALEMATE

B
ACK AT THE
Buna Front, Eichelberger was gearing up for the December 4 attack. After consulting with Colonel John Grose, though, he agreed to postpone the attack, but only by a single day.

Grose had been I Corps inspector general, but now that I Corps was taking over, Eichelberger was replacing Harding’s officers with his own. Grose was an odd choice for a battlefield commander. In a matter of a few days, the colonel went from shuffling papers to leading men.

Grose immediately rubbed the troops the wrong way. According to Stutterin’ Smith, he “arrived like a potentate.”

Grose was taken aback by the condition of the troops, especially Stutterin’ Smith’s men. Some of them, Grose wrote, were on the brink of “nervous exhaustion,” and most of them had fevers, too. Malaria did not keep men off the front lines, either. A soldier’s temperature had to reach 103 degrees before Smith could send him back to an aid station. Smith hated to see sick men going into battle, but he was so shorthanded that he took anyone he could get, fever or not. Searching for troops, he had already stripped the regiment’s Headquarters and Service Companies. Cooks, too, were fighting as riflemen.

At 10:00 on Saturday, December 5, Eichelberger’s attack began with nine B-25 bombers swooping in on Buna Government Station. Artillery and mortars pounded Buna Village. Some of them landed short of the village and burst in the trees just above the heads of Lutjens and his men. Had the shells landed twenty feet shorter, Company E would have been wiped out by friendly fire. Half an hour later, the barrage ended. Then, according to Lutjens, “it was deathly still.”

The troops waded into the jungle. The Japanese were flinging mortars, and Lutjens took cover in an artillery shell hole as rounds crashed through the trees and burst. Shrapnel flew and splinters of wood cut the air. Everywhere around him men lay plastered to the ground in rain puddles.

After waiting out the mortar bombardment, Lutjens and his men were back on their feet. They had advanced only twenty yards when Japanese machine gunners opened up on them. Bullets struck flesh, and six men fell. Blood clouds floated in the air. Then everyone dove for cover, except Sergeant Harold Graber. With his machine gun at his hip, Graber stormed the Japanese. Inspired by Graber’s example, one of Lutjens’ lieutenants attacked, too. Lutjens heard firing, and then saw the lieutenant fall. Seconds later the man got up, stumbled ten more yards, and was hit by another burst of fire. Then Graber went down. Another one of Company E’s men raced forward. Lutjens heard the pop of a grenade fuse and then the sputter. When it blew, he knew he had lost another good man.

Though Graber had taken out a bunker before he was killed, there were still Japanese everywhere, and Lutjens’ platoon was surrounded. Lutjens knew his only hope was to get a message to Captain Schultz. Perhaps Schultz could send the rest of the company forward.

Lutjens decided to try to get through himself. Because the chances of success were slim, he knew it was a job he could not ask any of his men to do. He took only a few steps when a Japanese soldier spotted him and hurled a grenade. The concussion rocked him, then another grenade lodged in the mud next to him. He lunged forward just as it went off, and the grenade tossed him through the air. Lying in the mud, he noticed that the barrel of his tommy gun was bent. Now he did not even have a gun to defend himself, but he was not sure it mattered. He was afraid to reach down, positive the grenade had taken him apart at the hips. At the thought, the strength seeped from his body. His arms felt as heavy as dumbbells. He shivered and then retched.

Lutjens lay there, then slowly he moved his hand down his legs. He was terrified they would be gone, severed below the knee. But they were still there—wet with blood, yes, but they were still there. Lutjens experienced a moment of joy until the soldier who had thrown the grenade started shooting. Lutjens rolled to his side and dragged himself along using his elbows. Disoriented, he nearly slithered into his enemy’s lap.

A bullet ripped through his shirt and another creased his eye. One struck him in the thigh. The pain was enough to make him vomit again. Another bullet slapped dirt in his face. I’m a dead man, he thought. For some reason, though, the Japanese soldier held back. It didn’t make any sense. He could have sauntered over to Lutjens and banged his head in with the butt of his rifle.

Lutjens struggled back to his elbows. This time, he tried to make some sense of where he was. Then he crawled again.

It was a miracle: Somehow he snaked his way to a medic who was sitting in a foxhole with his hands in a man’s gut. Scattered around him lay dead and wounded soldiers. The medic gave Lutjens a handful of sulfanilamide pills, and went back to work on the soldier. Lutjens was full of shrapnel and lead, but the belly wounds came first.

Lutjens eventually pulled himself through the muck back to a field hospital. His pulse was weak, his breathing shallow. He was losing consciousness and the shock was wearing off. His whole body burned as if it were on fire until a medic gave him a shot of morphine.

Like Lutjens’ men, Gus Bailey’s G Company was stranded in the jungle. Eichelberger was furious. He wanted Buna Village taken and called F Company out of reserve. Grose protested—nothing would be gained by throwing another company at the Japanese; they were dug in too well. Stutterin’ Smith also weighed in.

“Sir,” he said. “Pulling F Company out of reserve isn’t going to work.”

Eichelberger was not listening. He had been sent in by MacArthur to capture Buna, and MacArthur was growing impatient. Adamant that Buna fall that day, the three-star general was on the front, directing the troops.

“You will attack!” Eichelberger ordered.

Eichelberger called for Lieutenant Odell and told him what he wanted. Odell was to get as much information from the forward troops as he could and do a brief reconnaissance. Then he was to split up his company, sending half his men up one side of the trail and taking the rest up the other side.

Company F, the general said, was to storm the village and capture Buna. Odell was not sure he heard the general right—take Buna?

“Yes,” Eichelberger said, they were to “finish the job,” and they had need little more than their bayonets to do it.

Odell had his good luck Japanese bayonet that he had taken on November 30. But now he didn’t feel so lucky. None of the other companies had made it to Buna. What the hell made the general think he and his men were going to succeed?

Some of the men, realizing they would be walking into a death trap, refused to go ahead. “If you don’t get going, I have the right to shoot you,” Odell snapped.

“I heard safeties being clicked off,” says one of the soldiers who witnessed the altercation. “Fortunately, someone stepped in and cooler heads prevailed. I do believe that someone would have gladly put a bullet in Lieutenant Odell.”

Reluctantly, Odell’s platoon advanced. In front of the soldiers lay the bodies of other Americans who had tried to take Buna. Odell stepped over the corpses and when he and his men were in position they rushed the village. A storm of Japanese bullets greeted them. Odell screamed for everyone to get down, but not before the Japanese had taken out a number of men.

On the other side, Sergeant George Pravda organized his men. He was only a sergeant, but the company had already lost all its lieutenants. Besides, Pravda was as cool as they came and had already won a Silver Star for an attack on November 30.

Just a few days before, Pravda had come to a buddy’s rescue. Sergeant Jack Olsen had been doing reconnaisance work at Buna Government Station when he was shot in the leg. Unable to walk, he lay in the jungle waiting for someone to find him. He prayed it would be an American and not a Jap. He dared not yell out, though. His unit was not far behind. If he screamed, he would give away its position.

Olson swallowed twelve sulfa pills and waited. Twenty-four hours later, George Pravda found him. Pravda cut the bottom off Olsen’s fatigues, filled the wound with sulfa powder and wrapped it with the piece of cloth, then signaled to some litter men who managed to get Olsen out.

Now Pravda hesitated. He knew the trail ahead was a death trap. The last thing he wanted to do was to send these men forward. They were more than friends; they were family, brothers. While F Company trained in Louisiana, Pravda served as its reporter for the
Daily Tribune
in Grand Haven, Michigan. He knew who came down with measles, who was sunburned, who was a regular at the weekend picture shows, who was homesick, and because it was his job to check them in at night, who liked to carouse and who did not. He knew their wives and sweethearts, their mothers and fathers, the names of their dogs, their company nicknames—Baby Dumpling, the Bugler, Wrong Entrance—and laced his correspondences with amusing anecdotes and folksy yarns about life in Louisiana. He wrote about the heat, mosquitoes, mud, cotton and watermelon, fried chicken, funny deep-South drawls, black shoeshine boys.

The men of Company F relied on Sergeant Pravda’s discretion, and Pravda never disappointed them. He never printed anything that might give family members back home reason for alarm or sweethearts cause to worry about whether their men were straying. But after earning their trust, how could he now send them up against Japanese snipers, machine gunners, and mortarmen when he knew some of them were going to be killed?

Pravda instructed his men to remove their bayonets. It was an unorthodox way to run an attack, plus Odell had just ordered them to insert bayonets, but Pravda had been at Buna long enough to make the call.

“No bayonets?” asked one of his corporals.

“That’s right,” answered Pravda. “No bayonets.”

Pravda was worried that with bayonets the men would get hung up in the jungle’s swarm of vines and limbs.

Pravda and his men made it all the way to the mouth of Entrance Creek and inadvertently crossed over into Buna Government Station. When Pravda realized where he was, he called for reinforcements. He had made a wrong turn and now he and his men were staring at the biggest prize of all—the Government Station.

No one could believe the news. “He’s at the goddamn Government Station! We gotta get him some men!”

But the men never arrived, and Pravda was forced to pull back. Not before he was shot and seriously wounded, though. The bullet entered his arm, traveled through his back and exited at his neck. A few more inches and it would have severed his spine. Now he was being carried out on a stretcher while Japanese snipers tried to pick off the litter men.

Back at the field hospital, where Pravda would spend the night, doctors were working to keep men alive. On December 3, when Russell Buys was shot and went back for medical attention, he warned the medics to expect heavy casualties because soon there was going to be a “big push on.”

Buys knew what he was talking about. Though he was a cook, cooks at Buna did not get a break. They fought shoulder to shoulder with the riflemen. In fact, Buys had already taken a few Japs and risked his life in the process.

While guarding the company command post, he had seen enemy soldiers crossing Entrance Creek by way of the wood bridge. When he reported the activity to Gus Bailey, Bailey treated him like anything but a cook.

“Well, then, get up there and shoot ’em” was all Bailey said.

Buys had something of a reputation in the company. He had grown up on a farm in Muskegon, where he was always shooting something. At Camp Beauregard he had finished at the top of the company on the firing range, using .22s and .30-06 bolt-action rifles. When the scores came in, the officer in charge chided the rest of the guys. “You guys let a cook beat you!” he roared. “You sorry SOBs, you let a goddamn cook beat you!”

Buys crept up toward the creek and squeezed between some mangrove roots. Then he put his M-1 to his shoulder and sighted in on a spot about two hundred yards away on the bridge. When a group of Japanese soldiers tried crossing he sent three of them spilling into the creek.

On the day Buys was shot, Bailey had sent him to the front lines to get hot rice to the troops. On the way back a firefight broke out, and Buys took a blow to his shoulder that felt as if a heavyweight fighter had unloaded on him. Turning around to punch the SOB who had hit him, Buys realized that he had been shot. He did not know if it was a Jap sniper or one of his own guys. It did not matter to him—a Jap bullet or friendly fire, “it hurt the same.” Another bullet flew just past his head, and Buys dropped to the ground. When the shooting stopped, he crouched down low and hustled back to the aid station. The medic on duty told him he was a lucky man—the wound would get him out of Buna and they would not have to amputate his arm. The bullet had just missed shattering his shoulder bone.