The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific (43 page)

In
War History of the Force which was Sent to the South Seas
, Nakahashi presents another scenario for Horii’s death. Lida Mayo suggests that he drowned in the Kumusi.

Smith includes a description of Natunga (alternately spelled Natanga on some maps).

Professor Bill McKellin, who lived among the people of Central Papua, provided descriptions of what the people of Natunga probably looked like.

I discovered the messages between Quinn and Smith and Quinn and Boice in the National Archives. The description of the crash is from soldiers, native interviews, and Smith. Boice comments on Quinn’s death in his diary.

Hawkins, Harding’s G-2, wrote of Quinn’s death, “It’s always the people who put out, who go out of their way to do more than their share—that seem to get their necks out. I only hope they don’t foist off one of these homeless colonels on us…floating around in superfluous base jobs.”

In his diary Odell also writes of the crash scene and of the minute or two where men were more concerned with scrounging food than the colonel and crew’s death.

Harding, of course, had the unenviable task of informing Quinn’s widow. To his wife Eleanor, he wrote, “It will be a tough job. I wish I didn’t have to do it.”

The details of the Memorial Service are from the National Archives file on the 126th.

Chapter 11. Fever Ridge

Descriptions of MacArthur’s Port Moresby Headquarters are found in a variety of different books including Manchester, Groom, and Willoughby.

Conditions at Pongani are found in Lawrence Thayer’s “My War” and other diaries of 128th soldiers, and in collections of newspaper articles housed in the Wisconsin Veterans Museum.

Robert J. Doyle, the staff war correspondent for the
Milwaukee Journal
who was assigned to accompany the 128th, wrote a series of excellent pieces on it, including a story about the 128th becoming mired in the extensive swamps of the Musa River delta, and the slow, tedious process of moving troops north by small boat.

On a boat trip from Oro Bay to Tufi, I saw the vast delta of the Musa River.

Lawrence Thayer relates an interesting side story. Once the 128th made it to Pongani, he was asked by a lieutenant heading up the I&R (intelligence and reconnaissance) platoon to take a squad through the swamps and into the inland hill country in an attempt to find the Kokoda track. Thayer writes that he “didn’t even have a map because the only one available described the interior as unexplored.” It was his job to fill in the map. He continues, “At first I wrote down an azimuth reading of our direction and an estimate of distance for each leg, but soon it became apparent that this was not going to work. There were too many short legs and steep climbs interspersed with stretches of soggy swamp. About all I could do was to keep track of the general direction and time involved.”

Thayer continues: “That afternoon we came upon a river…. We held our packs and rifles about our heads and started moving slowly across…. At one point I was submerged up to my neck…. It wasonly by a miracle that we weren’t pulled downstream. If the river had been an inch deeper or faster we couldn’t have made it. On our second night we slept on a huge pile of driftwood in the middle of a wide shallow river. It was very uncomfortable, but the current was strong enough to provide sufficient air to keep us from being devoured by the king-sized mosquitoes.

“As we continued toward the mountains the next day, the trail became quite steep in spots and very tiring. During one of our rest stops, to catch my breath I lay flat on my back staring into the branches of a small tree above me. To my horror I realized the leaves were covered with a squirming mass of leeches…. Some of the trees were nearly 10 feet in diameter and reached high in the sky…”

Eventually, Thayer and his team turned back and returned to Pongani because one of the soldiers developed a “nasty jungle infection.”

Milner’s book and Doyle’s articles provide great information on the 128th at Pongani. I also collected lots of information in interviews with soldiers of the 128th.

Before he committed large numbers of troops to the coast, MacArthur wanted to make sure there was an escape route and wanted assurances that he could supply his troops. Regarding supply, MacArthur was dealing with a very difficult situation. The line of communication and supply from the United States to the scene of operations was one of the longest in military history. According to G-2 reports: “The entire route was by water at a time when the Japanese Navy was undefeated and roaming the Pacific almost at will.” And once supplies reached Australia, the problems had just begun. It was fifteen hundred miles from South Australia to New Guinea. There was a shortage of ships and the quirky Australian system of transportation—all the railroad track gauges were different—made the transportation of supplies troublesome. MacArthur understood that Allied success in New Guinea would be determined, in part, by the dependability of its supply line. Aware of the fact that most of America’s resources would go to Europe, MacArthur wisely initiated a supply source using Australian producers and resources. It was a stroke of genius, almost certainly colored by the tragedy of Bataan.

By this time, Harding realized that it would be impossible to move troops overland to the north coast.

After the naval battle of Guadalcanal (November 12-15), the Japanese stopped trying to reinforce their Guadalcanal garrison. In other words, the marines reinforced by army troops were tightening the noose on the Japanese at Guadalcanal just as MacArthur was beginning his advance on Buna.

Most historians refer incorrectly to Buna Mission instead of Buna Government Station. The government station was at Buna, but the mission was up the coast at Gona.

I learned much of the history of Buna, and the correct spellings of place names, from Wellington Jojoba, a professor at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby, who was raised in Buna.

Details of William Hirashima’s life are from the transcript of Dr. David Swift, University of Hawaii.

The story of Simon Warmenhoven’s heroism on the trail is from a letter that Herb Steenstra wrote to Warmenhoven’s daughters. In an interview with Jack Hill, I learned of Warmenhoven’s heroism during the bombing of the airstrip in Port Moresby.

Milner discusses the paucity of accurate intelligence. There was a commonly held belief that the Allies might be able to take Buna “without firing a shot.” Eichelberger comments on this in
Our Jungle Road to Tokyo
; and in his article, “War Is Like This,” E. J. Kahn does, too.

Chapter 12. The Kill Zone

I found the translation of the poem “Umi Yukaba” in Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Cook’s book,
Japan at War: An Oral History.
Details of the advance and first day’s battle are from Lawrence Thayer’s account, a series of articles that Robert Doyle wrote for the
Milwaukee Journal,
interviews with soldiers of the 128th, writer-historian Tom Doherty’s account in the
Wisconsin Magazine of History
titled “Buna: The Red Arrow Division’s Heart of Darkness,” and Bergerud’s interview with Ernest Gerber.

In the early days of the battle, according to Doherty, “Murphy’s Law ran amok.”

Accounts of the bombing of the flotilla of boats that included General Harding are from Lida Mayo, Harding’s
Buna Diary,
Anders’ biography of Harding, a report of the incident that Harding wrote on January 6, 1943, a colonel’s account of the disaster (written on December 8, 1942), Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Hollenbeck’s diary, which can be found at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, an article by Murlin Spencer called “2 Allied Generals Swim Half Mile” that appeared in the
St. Paul Dispatch,
and Pat Robinson’s book
The Fight for New Guinea.

Harding mourned the loss of McKenny. “The Division,” he wrote, “lost a good man.”

The 128th urgently radioed General Ennis Whitehead, General Kenney’s deputy commander, requesting airdrops to replace the supplies that were lost.

According to author Thomas Carmichael (
The Ninety Days
), despite Kenney’s boast about his pilots supplying the artillery, it was a role that he showed a “total inability to fulfill.”

Descriptions of the Japanese positions are taken from Milner,
The Papuan Campaign,
and Bergerud’s
Touched with Fire.
Geoffrey Perret writes in
There’s a War to Be Won
that the Japanese position was so formidable that “Two men and a machine gun could hold off a battalion.”

Groom writes, “The Japanese were fighting from beind the most formidable bunkers seen since the Western Front of World War I.”

Doyle wrote of the attack: “The Yanks are advancing—crawling on their bellies through the rain soaked jungle so thick they can’t see more than 10 yards ahead of them…” Doyle also writes of the medics’ outstanding work.

Details of that first night are from my interviews with Ray Bailey. Stutterin’ Smith writes of being put under Australian command.

Chapter 13. A Poor Man’s War

Eric Bergerud called the battle for the north coast “a poor man’s war.”

Harding comments at length in his
Buna Diary
on MacArthur’s orders to take Buna. According to Kenney, “Harding was getting the blame, as he had not weeded out incompetent subordinate commanders who didn’t know what to do. The troops were shot full of dysentery and malaria was starting to show up…. The troops were green and the officers were not controlling them…. They threw away their steel helmets and then wouldn’t go forward because they didn’t have them. They were scared to death of snipers.”

Smith writes of his battalion’s return to the east side of the river.

Soldiers would eventually come to call the Triangle the “Bloody Triangle.”

Details of Hirashima’s heroism are from the transcript of Dr. David Swift, University of Hawaii.

Details of the early days on the Sananada Front are from Lieutenant Colonel Bill Sikkel, Carl Smestad, Martin Bolt, Wellington Homminga, other 3rd Battalion veterans, Medendorp’s report and his memoirs (he called them his “Reminiscence”), and the Major Boerem Force Journal in the National Archives.

Details of the establishment of the roadblock, including the savage attack led by Shirley and Keast, are from Milner, Carl Smestad, and a series of articles that George Weller wrote for the
Detroit News
and the
Chicago Daily News.

Details of 2nd battalion’s move back east across the Girua River are from Lieutenant Robert Odell’s diary.

The story of Colonel Smith’s early efforts at the Triangle were told to me by Irving Hall. I filled out the story with details from Milner.

Early in the afternoon on November 21, Sergeant Irving W. Hall of Company F, 128th, was out in front, leading the company, when he noticed an enemy machine gunner ahead. It was a lucky catch. The machine gunner was preparing to mow down Hall’s men. Hall pretended that he had not spotted the machine gunner. He turned around to face his men and calmly instructed them to leave the track. Then he spun around, firing his tommy gun and splattering the enemy with bullets. It was a heroic move that allowed the company to avert disaster.

Smith immediately called for flanking movements. Company F went left, G moved right, H was sent right down the center, and E was held in reserve. On the right, Company G was soon mired in neck-deep swamps. The company, under 1st Lieutenant Theodore Florey, pushed on in hopes of finding better terrain. Hours later, it was still surrounded by nasty swamp. At 2100 hours, Florey halted his troops; it was senseless to push on in the dark. Florey must have been cursing his map. Despite the swamp’s vastness, on the map there was no indication that it even existed. How could the G-2 guys have missed the swamp?

Early the following morning, Florey and his men moved out. By noon they found dry land on a kunai flat. After consulting his compass, Florey realized that only a relatively small sago swamp separated Company G from its destination. In other words, Company G was in position to attack. But Colonel Smith balked. He was convinced that the company’s position was unsupportable.

Company F had only slightly more success. The terrain west of the Triangle was not as swampy, so initially it made better progress. But then it bumped into Entrance Creek, which was impossible to cross. At high tide, the creek was deep enough to be unfordable. It was also teeming with well-positioned enemy machine gunners.

Colonel Smith was prepared to pull Company G when he received news from headquarters forbidding him to do so. It had planned an attack for the following morning. It would begin with an airstrike on the Triangle and was to be followed up by a ground offensive.

Colonel Smith asked for a postponement of the attack, during which time he hoped to reconnoiter the area. His request was denied. He was heartened, however, by the arrival of Major Smith’s 2nd Battalion.

The story of the friendly fire was told to me by Erwin Veneklase and soldiers of Company G. I also relied on Milner’s and Mayo’s accounts of the incident.

Lutjens’ story is from his diary and a series of lectures he delivered on the Papuan Campaign after returning to the United States. Other details are from Odell’s diary.

Details on the Japanese counterattack come from Milner, Mayo, Gailey, and Herbert Smith.

Chapter 14. If They Don’t Stink, Stick ’Em

Just a week before, six Japanese warships had landed a thousand men, including three hundred replacements from the 144th Infantry and the 229 Infantry’s 3rd battalion—a unit of crack troops. Along with Colonel Hiroshi Yamamoto, they were sent east of the Girua River.

Gailey, quoting John Hetherington’s Blamey biography, writes that Blamey wrote Curtin, saying, “My faith in the militia is growing, but my faith in the Americans has sunk to zero…. American troops cannot be classified as attack troops. They definitely are not equal to the Australian militia, and from the moment they met opposition sat down and hardly have gone forwards.”

Harding, as Anders says in
Gentle Knight,
was critical of the staff officers sent to observe conditions at the front.