Above the Thunder (28 page)

Immediately after I went down, Marchant sent his 3d Platoon forward in a frontal attack on the Japanese block while he personally led a small group to the knoll I had told him about. From there he hit the tank with two of three bazooka rounds. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Blake's 3d Platoon knocked out three Nambu machine guns around the tank and killed several riflemen. The road to the Woske was clear, and Company C proceeded in good order—although a day earlier than planned. Although the company had suffered a number of casualties in earlier fighting during the patrol, its casualties suffered in getting through the double ambush while destroying three tanks and killing a number of Nips amounted to eleven walking wounded.
¹

Of course, the 122d helped, and Marchant, who seemed to think that all the air observation had been done by Vin alone, wrote Vin—alone—a glowing letter of recommendation. However, Col. Paul Serff, commanding the 123d Infantry, knew the facts, so in his forwarding endorsement he added the names of Giudice, Setterington, and Kerns, saying that if regulations permitted he would award us each the Combat Infantry Badge, because, in his opinion and that of his officers and men, we
were, indeed, combat infantrymen. Uncle Bud Carlson's endorsement concurred with Colonel Serff's opinion and added that we also were “combat field artillerymen of the highest order.” I think I can safely say that the others felt as I did about that: good.

Capt. Tom Healy was a fine example of a Boston Irish gentleman, highly respected by everyone who knew him. He commanded Btry B of the 122d, but that did not prevent his going as FO with a unit reconning the vicinity of Mount Aftawadona. The infantry got into a fight at very close range in the heavy jungle, and Healy, unable to communicate directly with our FDC, contacted me to help him get fire on the Japanese positions with which they were engaged.

Circling above, I could see nothing at all of either our own or the enemy troops or positions, and landmarks in the immediate area were nonexistent—with the exception of a patch of deadened trees where a concentration had been fired weeks earlier. However, Healy seemed to know exactly where he was. He gave me coordinates of his position and asked me to get a couple of rounds of high-explosive (HE) shell within two hundred yards of him and he would complete the adjustment by sound sensing, since he could see no more than twenty yards in any direction.

I sent the fire mission request to FDC, giving a cautious shift from the old concentration toward where I figured the infantry was, according to Healy's coordinates.

FDC came back with, “Baker, center, one round Willie Peter. Wait . . .” And a few seconds later, “On the way. Over.”

“Roger. Wait . . .”

It was the center platoon (two pieces) of Healy's own battery, and the first fire would be white phosphorous shell, which produced thick white smoke easily seen in the deep forest. And I saw these two bursts, right where I had expected them to be.

“One hundred left, two hundred long. Over.”

“Roger. Wait. . . . On the way. Over.”

“Roger, wait . . .”

Author's sketch of Maffin Bay area of operations, showing locations of events described in text.

The second pair of Willie Peter (WP, white phosphorous) bursts were still at least two hundred yards from where I thought Captain Healy would be able to take over. However, it was time to switch to HE, which was far easier to sense by sound than the WP shell and which would be fired for effect on the target. Since the ballistic characteristics of shell HE were different from those of shell WP, I made a still more cautious correction this time, but I made it very quickly. A split second after the WP burst, I was calling FDC again.

“Five zero long, request shell HE. Over.”

As soon as I let off my microphone button, Healy was yelling, “Cease fire! Cease fire!” And I immediately repeated, “Cease fire! Cease fire!”

But I don't think there was a faster 105 mm howitzer battery in the Army than Tom Healy's Btry B, and the reply came back, “Sorry! Center, one round HE, on the way!”

“Sorry, Tom. HE, already on the way!”

“Oh, my God! Those last rounds were right on the target. These will be in the middle of us!”

Two seconds after he spoke, I saw the HE bursts, right about where I had expected them to be, and far from where Tom had thought he was. It could have been worse, but it was bad enough. Two infantrymen were hit, both seriously, one of them very nearly losing an arm. When the patrol got home, I wanted to go with Captain Healy to visit the men in the hospital, but he would not permit it. He insisted that it was his responsibility alone.

Down along the lazy loops of the Woske, from a quarter to half a mile from the main perimeter, Colonel Serff had established three bunkered positions called the “Sorry Listening Posts.” Vin and I thought they were well named. Flying over the area during daytime, we usually saw men out along the river near their bunkers. They might be washing their clothing or themselves or sometimes just sunbathing or reading, showing not the least concern with the possibility of danger. But on numerous occasions we saw Japanese soldiers squatting amid the weeds and brush on the opposite bank, watching very closely. Any sniper over there could have picked off one or more of our men with ease, and a machine gunner could have found opportunity to wipe out most of a squad with one long burst. Probably the reason they did not attack in that manner was their knowledge of the defensive barrages registered in at those very points by the 122d FA, to be fired on call. Further, they probably considered the Sorry bunkers little or no hindrance to anything they planned to do, so why ask for trouble?

At dusk, our men would close up the gap in the booby-trapped wire entanglement around each bunker and batten the hatches for the night. They could see nothing then except the river and the far banks as viewed through a narrow firing slit. Vineyard and I often talked of how helpless they were, and how careless. We repeatedly recommended—through our own battalion commander, of course—that the listening posts be taken
out of the bunkers and placed in open foxholes and that their positions be changed each night. Colonel Carlson passed these recommendations to Colonel Serff's headquarters, but nothing changed.

I was the duty officer in the battalion CP one night, and at about 2230 hours, I had just dozed off on a cot when the duty NCO woke me. Capt. Garth Rowls, our liaison officer with one of the infantry battalions, was on the phone. As I got up, I could hear from the direction of the river the distinctive sound of incoming mortar shells. Rowls said that the Sorry Listening Posts were asking for their defensive barrages.

I told the duty NCO to alert the batteries to stand by to fire the Sorry defensive barrages at my command, and I sent another man to wake Colonel Carlson and Maj. Bill Hadfield, our S-3. They were on the scene within two minutes, and Major Hadfield started the batteries firing. Within a few more minutes, Captain Rowls reported that communication with the Sorry Listening Posts had been lost, and no one knew what had happened.

That was still the situation when, in the first dim light of dawn, I took off in my L-4. I found the three bunkers blown open, the holes showing the yellow stains left by picric acid. Around the bunkers I could see a number of dead or wounded men. One man lay on his back, a stream of blood from his head running down the mud bank into the river. Another sat in the debris and tangled wire beside his bunker, holding a rifle, his face white—and he didn't move. I realized that he was dead. Another man lay stark naked in the grass, his body bruised and scraped and seared, but he waved weakly as I passed over him. I was able to count about half of the more than thirty men who had been in the three widely separated bunkers.

Having reported that much of the picture, I was told that a relief party was preparing to move out to the Sorry posts. I was quite upset by that information, and I asked—without expecting an answer—why in hell they were still “preparing” some seven hours after the posts were lost? And then I began to examine the area for signs of how the attack had been made. My observation of fresh trails and trampled areas in the grass, together with my knowledge of the mortar fire, the signs of picric acid, and my long acquaintance with the blind situation of the Sorry posts soon led me to a conclusion that became generally accepted.

Up the river above Sorry 3, the enemy had emplaced three mortars, one for each of the bunkers. They had sent three demolition teams of two men each across the river to move down behind the bunkers and take cover in existing foxholes that were all over the area. On schedule, the demolition teams in place, the mortars fired several rounds at the three bunkers to be sure all the Americans were inside and buttoned up, and probably also hoping to detonate some booby traps outside. As soon as the mortars ceased fire, the demolition teams moved up and thrust the picric acid charges through the wire on long bamboo poles, then moved back into their foxholes and waited until their demolitions had blown up the bunkers and the 122d had finished firing the defensive barrages. Then they swam the river and walked away, unscathed. It was very easy for them.

Nearly half of the Sorry Listening Post men were killed, and many of the survivors were wounded. After that, the posts were moved out into foxholes and their positions frequently changed, as Vineyard and I had long recommended. The Sorry Listening Posts are not mentioned in the 33d Division history,
The Golden Cross.

A 105 mm howitzer shell, HE, is a deadly thing. It weighs thirty-five pounds and is composed of a steel casing filled with dynamite and equipped with a fuse that may detonate it on impact, or at a certain time after firing, or when in proximity to a sensed target. The steel casing—the shell—breaks up into a large number of fragments of varying size and shape, which are propelled through the air with the velocity of bullets. The fragments can make terrible wounds, and they travel far and wide. Flying at eight hundred feet above a 105 mm shell burst, I have had a fragment of it strike and cut halfway through a metal structural tube just behind the windshield of my L-4. On another occasion, a jagged fragment the size of my middle finger penetrated and lodged in the wooden main wing spar of my L-4, less than a foot from the fuselage and not much farther from my honorable head. Vin had a hot fragment come through the floor of his plane, through his handkerchief and his
hip pocket, and sear a sizable spot on his bottom. Fred Hoffman had his aileron cable cut by one—all these being fragments from our own shells. For people on the ground close to the burst, there is the added shock of concussion and heat and the dirt, dust, rock, and other debris turned into missiles by the blast. A friend of mine died in awful pain when a ricocheting enemy shell struck a nearby tree and filled his body with wood splinters. When an entire battalion of 105s, consisting as it did in World War II of twelve pieces, fires “battalion three rounds,” a total of thirty-six shells burst in the target area within about eight or ten seconds from first to last. When it is not preceded by adjusting rounds, and therefore comes without warning, such a concentration is a terrible thing, especially for people caught in the open, unprotected. Try to imagine such a thing—if you haven't seen it yourself—and keep it in mind while I tell my next story.