Shadows In the Jungle (26 page)

The Zero's nose-mounted machine guns opened up, raking the
Sea Bat
, and two hundred-pound bombs dropped from the plane.

“Incoming! Hit the deck!” Kittleson yelled.

He and Cox dropped behind a torpedo tube just as the bombs hit the water close by the
Sea Bat
's port side. Geysers of water lifted from the sea and descended onto the men and boat as shrapnel tore through the already injured craft.

In the forward gun tub, Bowers swung his gun around, but not in time. Shrapnel from the bombs ripped through his position, tearing off his kapok flack jacket and leaving him slashed and bloodied.

“I figured I'd been cut in half,” he wrote. Later, at the hospital, surgeons would dig kapok out of Bowers's insides.

Kittleson heard Bowers scream in pain when hit. He jumped up and ran to the gun tub. Stepping over the injured sailor, he swung the weapon up at the plane, but his sudden movement, plus the wind-driven spray from the fighter's propeller as it zoomed by overhead, nearly blasted Kittleson overboard.

Shrapnel from the same bombs that wounded Bowers also riddled the cockpit. Jones received a slight head injury and a more serious wound in his side, and the
Sea Bat
's XO, Muller, had the back of his neck and both shoulders gashed. A wound to his left arm left that hand paralyzed for eight months.

Vining, the young radar man, was mortally wounded.

Shrapnel from another bomb that landed just astern of the
Sea Bat
struck Torpedoman 2nd Class William J. Speer, a twenty-year-old North Hollywood boy who had transferred from submarines to PT boats and served as the
Sea Bat
's 40mm loader. Hit in the back and abdomen, he was dead within fifteen minutes.

Motor Machinist Mate 2nd Class (MoMM2c) Bill Fox, who had been in the engine room but had just come topside and was talking to Speer, was hit in the leg and thrown into the cable near the engine room hatch. MoMM2c Bob “Parry” Parazinski, at the 20mm mount with MoMM3c Dewey Hiner, was struck in the foot. Fox, who at twenty-seven was the “old man,” took over Parazinski's position, but could no longer see the Japanese plane.

Radioman 3rd Class (RM3C) Owen Beach, a twenty-year-old New Englander at the number-two twin .50, saw a bomb drop, recalling, “It had a large detonator, like a stinger, about eighteen inches long.” He ducked down as it exploded and got a small nick on his leg, but he never got off a shot from his machine guns.

With both Jones and Muller down, RM3c Thomas Gibson, after sending out a distress signal, took over the boat. He thought of his assistant, young Vining, who just a day earlier had confided to chief engineer Bowers the fear that he was going to die.

“Don't worry about it,” Bowers had told him, trying to calm the boy's nerves. “We're gonna make it fine. I got two years in here, and we're gonna be all right.”

Now Vining's fears had come true. In fact, within minutes, half the
Sea Bat
's crew were casualties, including two, Vining and Speer, who were dead or dying.

The Alamo Scouts fared a bit better.

About an hour before the attack, Jack Dove had gone below to get some sleep. He planned to use Jones's stateroom, but Muller said, “Use mine. I have a fan at the head end. You'll be more comfortable.”

“I'll buy that,” Dove replied.

The decision saved Dove's life, for Jones's room was shredded by bomb shrapnel. Dove was also saved by his not using a pillow. A chunk of steel ripped through the PT boat's wooden hull, leaving a hole so big, Dove recalled, that he could stick his head through it. The shrapnel grazed Dove's nose. Had his head been raised on a pillow, he might have been blinded or, more likely, killed outright. He also caught a bullet in the leg from a strafing plane.

Nellist treated Dove's wounds after sticking him with a morphine syrette.

Andy Smith had been talking to crewman Betz just before the attack. Betz had shown him photos of his two young daughters. Smith then lay down on the deck to get some sleep, propping his head up on some spare kapok jackets. But the sun was in his eyes, so he reversed his position, lying flat and propping his legs up on the jackets. When the Japanese attacked, he was jolted awake. Smith saw his legs were bloodied, but it wasn't all his blood. Most of it was from Betz. The young father lay seriously wounded near the base of his 20mm gun mount. Smith, with just minor injuries, jumped up and began helping to care for the bloodied man, and thought that Betz might survive. However, the young Missourian died three days later on the hospital ship USS
Comfort
.

Scout Bob Asis took a shrapnel wound to the arm while using the forward gun tub as cover.

American fighters, responding to Gibson's distress signal, arrived and chased the Zeros back over Dulag.

The 346 boat had miraculously sustained little damage, and now her skipper, Ensign Terry, brought her close to her stricken sister craft. His XO, Ens. Pete Rardin, had been a medical student before the war, and now came aboard the 132 boat with his medical kit and ministered to the wounded, for which he would receive a Silver Star.

The two PT boats then continued to limp their way home.

They arrived at Tacloban on October 27, where Nellist filed a report that there were between six hundred and eight hundred Japanese on Mindanao, although many seemed to be unarmed, and they were short on food. He provided 6th Army G2 with a detailed map of troop positions, ammunition dumps, supply depots, and travel routes, as well as sources of fresh water and whether or not the beaches could sustain an invasion. But even in Tacloban, now in American hands, the men were not safe from the enemy. The day after Nellist got back from the Mindanao mission, a Japanese fighter strafed the beach where he and several other Americans were sunning themselves. The men scattered but Nellist was grazed by bullets in the leg and neck.

* * *

Since the invasion at Leyte, the 24th Division had been engaged in heavy fighting near the city of Palo on the coast of San Pedro Bay. The division's goal was to move south and link up with the 96th Division, and the 24th's commander now requested a reconnaissance mission between Palo and Tanauan. Sixth Army HQ selected Bill Littlefield for the job, and he arrived for a briefing on October 22. Sleeping near the HQ tent that night, the Scouts, jolted awake by gunfire, grabbed their weapons and dashed outside. Japanese soldiers were attacking the camp and a wild melee broke out. When it was over, Littlefield found dead enemy soldiers within thirty yards of his tent.

The team moved out at ten a.m. the next day, passing through American lines. Cherokee Indian Zeke McConnell recalled, “The Japs were on both sides of us all the way. Between the Japs, the American bombing, strafing, and navy shelling, we were all plenty scared.”

The Americans lucked out. Tanauan was unoccupied. Littlefield radioed the information back to army HQ and the next day, the American 381st Regiment arrived and the advance continued. Returning to the PT tender
Wachapreague
, Littlefield and his team were dispatched to Samar by PT boat to spot enemy activity, but there was none to be seen.

* * *

On November 9, the Lutz Team was alerted for its first Philippines mission since they had watched MacArthur slosh ashore, although by now they were no longer the Lutz Team. Bill Lutz had come down with a jungle rash that required his being sent back to the States for treatment. In addition, Glendale Watson was gone and Bob Shullaw had been transferred to George Thompson's team. Thus only Jack Geiger, Bob Ross, and Oliver Roesler remained, and they were now led by John McGowen. This was a happy move, Geiger recalled. McGowen was not just the most experienced of all Scout team leaders but he had won a Soldier's Medal and two Silver Stars. He was an easygoing man and not a stickler for military protocol.

The three-day mission involved contacting Filipino guerrillas in the mountainous region of Burauren and obtaining information on Japanese supply routes between Burauren and Dagami. Infiltrating through Japanese lines was easy. Getting cooperation from the Filipinos was more difficult. When the Scouts reached Burauren, the town's mayor told them that the guerrillas had moved farther up into the hills.

“Can we hire a guide to take us there?” McGowen asked.

“No, no,” the mayor said. “There are many Japs and you are just four men.”

“Then we'll find them on our own,” McGowen resolved. “We won't turn back.”

The next day a guide agreed to take them as far as Malaihaw, the next town to the west. They saw no Japanese, but the cratered landscape, splintered trees, and shattered huts gave proof that American artillery had been at work.

The team moved to the San Joaquin River, which skirted the densely forested mountain range that runs the length of Leyte. There they crossed the river and moved inland, where they discovered several abandoned Japanese pillboxes. They saw no Japanese but the soft earth was heavily scarred with footprints and hoof prints.

“The Japs are using pack animals,” McGowen muttered.

Approaching the town of Camire the next day—it was October 24—the Americans froze at the sound of small-arms fire off in the distance and to their rear. After waiting silently in place for about fifteen minutes, the team pressed on into the town. Finding it empty, they passed on through. The source of the gunfire remained a mystery.

Moving into the mountains, the team's trek became steep and difficult. Reaching the lip of a precipitous gorge that offered no way across, they backtracked, soon coming upon an elderly Filipino man with a water buffalo, or caraboa, harvesting rice. Unable to understand the heavily armed men with the fiercely painted faces, he led them to the nipa hut he shared with his granddaughter and her husband. Luckily, the girl spoke English.

“You fooled my grandfather with your uniforms,” she said. “He thought you were Japanese.”

McGowen explained his mission and his need to contact the guerrillas. She told McGowen the guerrillas were camped just a few miles away, and invited them into the hut to eat. As they downed a meal of black beans and rice, the door to the hut burst open and in barged a guerrilla brandishing a Tommy gun in both hands and wildly shouting orders. The woman spoke rapidly to the man and calmed him down. She explained who the strangers were, then she turned to McGowen.

“This man thought you were Germans,” she explained.

“Germans?” McGowen said. “Why in the hell would he think that?”

“He heard that Germans had landed by submarine to help the Japs,” she replied.

Once the confusion was straightened out, the guerrilla agreed to lead McGowen and his men to his headquarters. Picking their way into a jungle ravine, they passed through several checkpoints, and, as darkness descended, reached a small bamboo hut lit by a single candle. By the flickering light, McGowen outlined his mission to the guerrilla commander, who refused to cooperate, saying it was impossible. He then left the hut carrying the candle so the Scouts could get some sleep.

He awoke them at daybreak, and while he still would not lead the Scouts into the mountains, he agreed to have men escort them east to the mouth of the Kabugnan River, where the Scouts could obtain two native canoes. From there, their reconnaissance would be by water.

Escorted by a few guerrillas, they reached the river by mid-afternoon and found the dugout canoes waiting. As they skimmed over the water, they passed makeshift shelters occupied by refugees who had fled inland from the Leyte invasion beaches in response to American leaflets warning them of the upcoming landings.

Stopping to talk to the refugees, McGowen learned that the Japanese were short on food and that they had abandoned their prepared positions along the highway running between Tanauan and San Joaquin, to take up new ones inland.

With this information in hand, McGowen decided to return to base even though his main goal of locating Japanese supply routes in the mountains had not been accomplished. The reluctance of the guerrillas to help him left McGowen with a bitter taste in his mouth for their fighting ability.

McGowen's bad luck as leader of the former Lutz Team would continue.

On November 19, seven days after their unhappy experience in the hills above Burauren, McGowen, Geiger, Ross, and Roesler were headed on a new assignment. They were to load up supplies, including stretchers and medical gear, on a PT boat and rendezvous with George Thompson and his team on Ponson Island, where Ormoc Bay meets the Camotes Sea, off Leyte's western coast. Thompson and his men had been there since November 6, watching Japanese shipping activity in the bay, and had picked up two wounded airmen.

The team would hop a ride with three PT boats from Squadron 33, which were scheduled to conduct a patrol of the bay. During the course of this patrol, their boat, PT-495, the
Gentleman Jim
, would stop at Ponson so McGowen's men could unload the supplies and evacuate the wounded fliers.

The boats cruised along the western coast of Leyte. Onshore the Scouts could see lights, possibly fires lit by GIs. At about twelve fifteen a.m., the boats intercepted several wooden Japanese barges, eighty to ninety feet in length and armed with machine guns. The PTs circled, then swarmed in for the attack and a wild firefight ensued. Japanese 7.7mm machine guns and American .50 calibers blazed and flaming tracers cast their reflections on the black water as they streamed to and fro. American 20- and 40mm guns joined the melee.

A Japanese barge, burning and badly holed, nudged into the
Gentleman Jim
, and the PT boat's starboard .50-caliber machine gunner riddled it. A man screamed in the darkness, and Roesler recalled the barge dissolving under the heavy fire “like a sugar cube in a hot cup of coffee.” The barge disappeared into the sea. Three more barges were burning and sinking.