Above the Thunder (40 page)

I got just a bit hysterical about that, I guess, raising hell on the airwaves, trying to get the firing stopped. But we had no direct radio communication with those tanks, and so, in desperation, I got down in their line of fire and flew toward them, making violent S-turns with my L-4. Whether I stopped them or someone else did, I know not, but they did cease.

Aerial view of war-shattered Baguio, the once beautiful summer capitol, in its picturesque mountain bowl after its capture by U.S. forces. The city park with a lake in it, where two L-4s met their end trying to land, is at upper right (Photograph from Sanford Winston,
The Golden Cross
).

Baguio had had a prewar population of about thirty thousand. It was then a beautiful city, situated in a mountain bowl at an elevation of about five thousand feet. In the middle of town, at the lowest part of the bowl, was a small lake around which was a wide street running through a park with large trees (see the aerial photograph of Baguio on
page 247
). While the infantry patrols were still advancing through the now devastated city, “Speedy” Spendlove decided that the time had come when he could realize the dream of all 33d Div pilots, which was to be first to land in Baguio. He set his L-4 down on the street beside the lake. Then he looked about him and decided it would be much wiser to get a truck and haul it out rather than try to fly it out. He pulled it off under a tree and went to look for a truck.

And now along came that same corps pilot who had once tried to get me to fuel his plane. He didn't see Speedy's plane, so he, too, decided to be first to land in Baguio. He landed, saw the other L-4 parked there, and, disappointed, took off.

Unfortunately, he was unable to climb out of the bowl, crashed into a hillside, and burned up his plane. He escaped alive, though minus eyebrows and lashes.

The next L-4 to come humming along was none other than our old and honored friend, the
Arizona Keed.
Unaware of the two angels already fallen, Vin made an approach to land beside the lake, but, at the last minute, experience whispered that if he did so he would never fly out. So he aborted the landing and started climbing out. Sad to say, he didn't make it either. Vin escaped with hardly a scratch, but the
Arizona Keed
found a final resting place on a hillside in Baguio.
³

Blissfully unaware of this sudden loss of 30 percent of our air strength, I was busy watching over the 3d Bn, 123d Infantry, as it moved southeast from the vicinity of Dominican Hill to secure Loacan Field, Baguio's airport. Lorne Stanley was with one of the companies, and when they had the field pretty well in hand he asked me to pick him up for an aerial look around the countryside. I approached the sod strip from east to west, and noted the sound of rifle fire at the east end as I came in, so I dragged it well down the strip before I touched down. Then I rolled along wondering whether the Japs had mined the runway.

Pilot's view of Loacan Field, Baguio's airport (Photograph from Sanford Winston,
The Golden Cross
).

Having made the first landing on the newly liberated Loacan Field, I immediately proceeded to share with Stanley the first takeoff. We headed eastward, three or four miles on the Japanese side of the line of contact with American forces still facing north. To our right, the mountains rose well above our altitude, and to our left front, open ridges broken by wooded ravines sloped far down to the valley of the Agno River. At the head of one of those ravines, where the trees dwindled out to mere bushes, a brief flash of sunlight on shiny metal caught our attention.

I swung the plane around and we saw two Japanese soldiers frozen in their tracks. A closer look revealed that they had been digging, and an entrenching shovel probably had made the flash we saw. We reasoned that it was not at all probable that the two were alone, so after brief discussion we called FDC and asked for fire.

They copied our request, but the S-3 got on the radio himself and said that there would be a delay until he could get a clearance from Div Arty to fire outside our sector. While this communication was in progress,
the Japanese realized that they had been discovered, and they began to disperse, making our suspected target a very definite but rapidly dissipating one as the enemy troops began moving out of the ravine in both directions along the open slopes. We so advised the S-3 and assured him that there was no doubt as to identification, no question of the safety of friendly troops. We urged him to open fire at once, but he would not.

And then, from some unknown location, there came the familiar voice of Uncle Bud Carlson.

“Damn it, Bill! Fire that mission! I'll take the responsibility!”

“On the way!” replied the S-3.

We had requested “battalion three rounds in effect,” and the ravine boiled with fire and smoke, dust and leaves, as the shells came in. From our aerial OP, we could only imagine the crashing thunder of the explosions, the squalling fragments, the yells of men. The enemy had been walking briskly, and now he ran.

“This is Kadi 8, roger, wait . . . Bravo repeat range, repeat fire for effect. Alpha left one hundred, repeat range, repeat fire for effect. Charlie right one hundred, repeat range, repeat fire for effect. Over.”

“Roger, Kadi 8, wait . . . Bravo on the way . . . Alpha on the way, Charlie on the way, over.”

Thus we shifted one battery to the right and one to the left, leaving the third firing into the still well-populated ravine.

Out on the hillside, the running soldiers were knocked down all over the place as the vicious missiles burst among them. We walked the batteries out and then back to the gully, and when we stopped firing, the few Japanese left on their feet were too widely dispersed to be considered a target. In the ravine, the leafy concealment had been blasted away. In the dusty debris of leaves and shattered branches there were red splotches, bodies, and a few living binding their own wounds.

“Kadi 3, Kadi 8. Cease fire, mission accomplished. Estimate eighty-five enemy killed, remainder dispersed. Over.”

“Roger, Kadi 8. Cease fire, mission accomplished. Out.”

This was one of the few occasions when I had two pairs of eyes in my L-4, and it had been a very productive mission. I dropped Stanley
back at Loacan to rejoin the company. Later that day, returning to the scene, I found considerable activity as the enemy engaged in evacuating wounded and recovering materiel from the field. I really felt sorry for them, but war is hell, and so I brought down several more volleys on their bloodied heads. Afterward, I reported an estimated twenty-five more enemy killed and recovery activities disrupted.

Three days elapsed before an American patrol reached the area of that target. They found 167 bodies the enemy had left on the field, and they hauled away three truckloads of supplies and equipment worth salvaging. Considering a reasonable ratio of killed to wounded, it was estimated that our fire mission had essentially destroyed a battalion of infantry. Whether the battalion had been withdrawing from the line or en route to reinforce it is a moot question, but I suspect the latter.

Without my beat-up old L-4, that mission would not have been fired, and that enemy battalion would have gone into combat somewhere against our infantry, to be vanquished only at the probable cost of many American casualties. I think the event went a long way toward supporting the conclusion reached by some postwar study that proclaimed, in essence, that the most cost-effective piece of materiel in the U.S. Army in World War II was the Piper L-4 airplane used by field artillery units. In 1943, the cost to the government of an L-4 was only $2,800.

While our troops were searching the field and recovering the abandoned Japanese equipment and supplies, I was keeping an eye on them. Well down the ridge beyond the main area of the search, I saw a Japanese officer lying in the shadow of the trunk of a lone tree a few yards off the dirt road. As an hour passed, the shadow moved, of course, but I noticed that it did not move off of the officer. Very cleverly, he was imperceptibly inching sideways just enough to remain in the shadow, which he probably thought would keep him from being seen. But it was his very cleverness that exposed him as not dead, just wounded.

When I notified the commander of our patrol on the ground, he sent one sergeant down the road to take care of the enemy officer—by capturing him, I had supposed. But I should have known better.

Crouched below a bank along the road, the sergeant moved down
until he was directly opposite the tree. Then he suddenly leaped up the bank, his rifle blazing. After that, the shadow moved slowly away from the clever captain. I was informed that his sword, an exceptionally nice one, was being sent to me, but I never received it.

Somewhere back up the line I threatened to tell a funny story about Fred Hoffman. Here it is:

When we were advancing on Baguio, we heard strong rumors of a new Japanese air defense weapon called the “barrage mortar” that was now in the hands of the troops opposing the 33d Division. Supposedly, batteries of barrage mortars would put up a barrage of shells ahead of and above approaching enemy planes. Each shell would descend on a parachute, and its proximity fuse would detonate the shell upon the near approach of a plane. We were advised to be on the lookout for these barrage mortars. I guess even the top G-2 people were not sure about the truth of the matter.

This rumor made us a little apprehensive for a few days. On one of those days, Fred was out flying just below a broken layer of cloud, intent upon his reconnaissance duties. Unknown to him, Dick Bortz was flying just above the same overcast, dropping propaganda leaflets. Fred glanced up and saw the air immediately ahead of him filled with fluttering white objects that he took to be parachutes, with more of them still descending out of the clouds. They said that his voice on the radio was high-pitched and frantic:

“Barrage mortars! Barrage mortars! I can't possibly avoid them! The sky is full of . . .”

He broke off and was silent for a few seconds. When he spoke again he was very quiet and sounded embarrassed.

“Disregard. It's just sheets of paper.”