Above the Thunder (34 page)

By the time the ammo had blown up and I was able to catch up with Captain Red's patrol, it had passed Tubao and was entering the pass where a stream cuts out to the coastal flatland. I remember being impressed with the picturesque scene at Tubao, where a tall church steeple stood dominant in the ravaged little town and the wreckage of a U.S. Navy fighter lay in an adjoining field.

The patrol went through the pass at the double-quick and drew not one round from the enemy, so far as I could see. But some distance in its rear was a group of men wounded in the ammo dump fight, escorted by a squad led by a sergeant. They could not go at double time. Neither could Cpl. Alphonso H. DiNunzio of my battery, who had to carry the heavy radio intended for use by our FO team with the patrol. Now the FO was far ahead with the patrol commander, and Al DiNunzio was struggling along with the orphans.

The patrol was out of the pass and still going full tilt toward Agoo when the party with the wounded reached the middle of the danger area. On their right—the north—as they followed the road was a steep hill, on the crest of which, we knew, there must be manned positions of the Jap outpost line. To their left, a high bank dropped off to a rocky creek that had only scattered pools of water in it. Across the creek was a lower bank and a weed-covered bottom that spread about a hundred
yards to a line of bushes at the foot of another steep hill—the end of a long ridge—crowned by another enemy position. It was now that the enemy opened fire.

From both hills enemy machine guns rattled, and light mortar rounds dropped about the small party of Americans. They went over the bank and took cover among the large rocks in the creek. I called a fire mission to FDC and tried to get suppressive fire on the enemy but found it impossible. The line of fire was parallel to the ridge, and the nearer position was in dead space for the howitzers. We were firing there at maximum range, and the more northerly hill could not be reached at all.

And then Corporal DiNunzio came on the air and called me.

“Lieutenant, I need help,” he said. “The sergeant is dead, and so are several others, and we have the wounded. The company has gone ahead and left us. These men are scared. I'm the senior NCO now, and they're looking to me to get them out of here. Sir, I'm not infantry. I don't know what to do. Can you help us some way?”

I told him to hang on for a minute while I thought about the matter. I figured that the enemy would soon be down with a patrol to finish them off at close range, so we had to do something fast. The enemy would expect them to move down the creek toward the coast so would probably block that route first. The Red patrol was still marching vigorously on down the road and not communicating with me, so there was no help to be expected from that source.

But while I was considering the situation, I noticed a ditch that began at the foot of the south hill and ran across the bottom to the creek, coming out only a few yards upstream from where the men lay. It was covered over by the rank growth of weeds, and I thought it probably couldn't be seen by observers on the ground. I was certain that men crawling through it could not be seen, even from the air.

“Kadi 11 this is Kadi 8. Can you see where a ditch comes into the creek about twenty yards up from you?”

“Yes, I see it.”

“OK, listen: leave the dead behind but take the wounded, your weapons, your radio, your water, and your rations. Crawl—I say again crawl—through that ditch until you reach a line of bushes at the foot of
the hill. Lie still right there until it gets dark. Then move very carefully around the base of the hill to your left. Don't go to the right, because the Japs may be laying for you that way. Go to the left until you're about two hundred yards back from the nose of the ridge, then go straight up and over and down the other side. Be as silent as possible, no talking, no firing unless you absolutely must fire in self-defense. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

“When you get well down from the top of the ridge, set up your radio and call Kadi 3 on this frequency. We'll be monitoring and we'll give you instructions from there on. OK?”

“OK, sir.”

“Good luck, Corporal. Out.”

I hoped I was right about how the enemy would be thinking, and I hoped that there was no manned position on the ridge where I told them to cross. I did not envy the handsome young corporal his task, I pitied the men with him, and I inwardly raged at the commander of the company of American troops disappearing far down the road to Agoo. It was hard to believe. I stayed overhead and watched until the men had disappeared into the weedy ditch, and then I went about my business, hoping the Japs, upon investigation, would think that the four or five bloody bodies among the rocks were the only ones who had not gotten through.

DiNunzio brought out every man to safety. He was promoted to sergeant and awarded the Silver Star “for gallantry in action.” As for the remains of the infantry sergeant and the men who died with him in the creek, I have no knowledge. It was a few weeks before we finally secured that pass. The division history does not mention this little episode at all.

Streams of refugees now began coming down the railroad past the airstrip. One day I made the mistake of leaving my brown leather flight jacket in one of the maintenance tents on the side next to the railroad. When I returned no more than five minutes later, it had vanished. A refugee had ducked quickly down the grade and grabbed it.

The nightly harassment by Japanese air continued, and we often sat outside our tents and watched the grand display of fireworks. On a few occasions, while sitting out there, we saw an escaping dive-bomber come scooting along, following the light strip of beach sand, so low that we could fire straight out at it with our carbines, so near that with better light we could have recognized the pilot. It occurred to us that if we could see the bomber so plainly, he surely couldn't miss seeing our L-4s sitting lined up there, their wings reflecting the moonlight.

The author, in February 1945, beside the L-4 that was sent to him by the 31st Division to replace the one that sank in Maffin Bay, with mechanic “Wendy” Young lying beneath it. This was at the Rabon strip that was burned off a few nights later. A ship in Lingayen Gulf is faintly visible in the background.

It just happened that the day after one of these bombers had buzzed past us in the moonlight we moved from the Rabon strip to a field near a small village on a broad ridge just south of the Damortis-Rosario road. A Japanese artillery unit had been hard hit there by counter-battery fire of the 43d Division only a short time before we relieved them. A number of bodies, including a couple of officers, still lay among the weeds. We could see nice swords, but none of us could stomach the stench of the decaying bodies to recover one.

The nearby village threw a big dance that night and invited us to attend. Except for a few men on guard and telephone watch, all of us went. In the middle of a beaten circle of bare earth hung a lantern on a
pole. Around it, the people danced to the music of a small string band playing instruments that resembled guitars if one didn't look too closely at them. I tried to play one until I found that it had only five strings and was tuned unlike any instrument I had ever played. Not being a dancer, I merely watched, as did most of our group.

While the dance was in progress, the nightly visitors from Taiwan arrived over Lingayen Gulf. As soon as they saw the searchlights come on, the Filipinos put out their lantern, and everyone stood in the moonlight and watched. When the guns began to fire, we had a grandstand view of the show, as good a one of its kind as I had ever seen. Then there were flashes much nearer to us than those we had seen before, and the heavy thud of bombs came rolling up to us from about three miles away.

“Those bombs are hitting our old strip!” one of our pilots exclaimed. “Damned good thing we're not there tonight!”

And he was almost right. We guessed later that they probably were aiming at our strip, our planes having undoubtedly been observed the night before. But they hit the division ammo dump over the hill, and they set it off. We watched for a couple of hours as exploding artillery and mortar shells, grenades, demolition explosives, small arms cartridges, and flares put on a sideshow of their own. We went back to our new strip and turned in then, but the fireworks went on most of the night. The next day the old strip was completely burned over and liberally sprinkled with shell casings and cartridge brass. Across the road, the ammo company's tents, those not burned, hung in tatters on their ropes and center poles. The ammo dump hill was gouged, charred, and strewn with brass, and amid the debris were the twisted remains of a couple of antiaircraft guns. There must have been casualties, but we didn't hear of any.

For about two weeks, we had to be very stingy with our ammunition expenditures until the reserve stock could be replaced. Nevertheless, Vin and I—and, I'm sure, our colleagues in the other battalions—fired numerous missions on various small targets of opportunity discovered as we searched every nook and cranny of the coastal hills for the enemy. I remember a tiny village that, on my map, was named Pong Pong. It was just a half dozen shacks that appeared to have been deserted by their
Filipino inhabitants. But under one of the roofs I saw what I thought was a Japanese truck, so I called for fire. I still don't know whether there really was a truck there, but I sure clobbered hell out of Pong Pong.

Around the first of March, the 123d started moving out to take Pugo. During this phase, Vin and I briefly used a forward strip on the southern side of Agoo. Our boys would drive out there in the three-quarter-ton truck and remain until our last refueling of the day, then return to the new Div Arty strip at Rosario.

I made friends there at Agoo with an eleven-year-old Filipino boy named Abelardo Madarang. He came out to the strip, introduced himself, and in a very grave manner presented me with a gift. It was a postcard-size picture of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe that had on its reverse a Spanish language advertisement for Vicks Vapo-Rub. I wrote his name on it that day, and I still have it. I also have one of two identification tags that Abelardo gave me a little later. He said they belonged to his uncle and his aunt with whom he had lived and who were killed while the Japanese were withdrawing from Agoo when a Japanese soldier tossed a grenade into their home. I understood that such tags were required to be worn by some Filipino adults during the Japanese occupation. The one I still have is a crude, homemade, cloth replica of a Japanese flag and has Japanese characters that I suppose spell the name of a person. This cloth is sewn between two pieces of acetate and has a small loop to facilitate fastening it on a button.

On the day of the big drive to Pugo, Vin and I were quite busy, of course, although I can't recall the specific missions I may have fired that day. We overran the enemy outpost line and pushed on toward his MLR. There was much movement but very little fighting, much territory coming under our control as all the objectives were taken. It extended our artillery observation area of interest into the hills well beyond those objectives, and just before noon I went to our battalion CP, which was still at Rabon, to pick up some new map sections to cover the new areas. General Paxton, the Div Arty commander, was visiting and having lunch with Uncle Bud and the officers. I also stayed for lunch. Afterward, the general's aide took a picture of him standing with Uncle Bud, the staff,
and me outside the CP tent. At some point during these proceedings, General Paxton asked me what I'd been doing.

“Flying, sir, watching over the troops, firing whatever targets I can get.”

“How's the attack going?”

“Quite well, sir, I believe. Looks to me as if it's moving fast just about everywhere, with only minor holdups. We've started working so far into the mountains now that we ran off our maps. That's why I came down here.”

“Well, that's mighty fine, mighty fine. Gittin ahr baws some mighty fine trainin'.”

Although he was quite serious, I thought General Paxton's comment was amusing. He was always talking about “getting our boys some training.” However, the future would reveal that the 33d Division was one of those scheduled to make the assault landings on Kyushu in the initial invasion of the Japanese home islands in November 1945, had the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki not brought the war to a close before that became necessary. I don't think there is any doubt that whatever previous combat experience our men might have had would have seemed like mere peacetime training exercises in comparison with the fury they would have faced on Kyushu. I suppose Paxton was anticipating that event.

With Pugo secured and the infantry moving into the foothills, the 122d displaced to positions in the valley between the coastal hills and the mountains. Our positions were only a few hundred yards from where I'd blown up the Jap ammo dump, and I walked down to the place, thinking mostly of the little Jap soldier whose compassionate self-sacrifice had so impressed me. I stood there at the crater, where the once vertical creek banks were now just barren slopes, and thought about him. But there was nothing to see.