The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific (18 page)

Now, here he was, carrying a Thompson submachine gun, 250 rounds of ammunition, and a field pack to boot. Stenberg had it better than some of his buddies, though. He still had not come down with malaria.

Even Herman Bottcher, a hardened veteran of the Spanish Civil War, suffered. “We were never dry,” Bottcher said. “Sometimes in twelve hours’ marching we would make three miles—some days only a mile.” Fortunately, according to Bottcher, the native carriers showed the soldiers how to find dry wood by “sounding trees.” Like lumberjacks, the carriers would use their machetes to strike the trunk of a tree, listening for the vibrations. A hollow sound meant the wood was damp and decaying and would be no good for building a fire.

The natives who accompanied Company G proved to be invaluable. Lieutenant James Hunt, who had helped Company E build the coastal road, writes of one terrible climb. Exhausted, he lay down and closed his eyes. “When I opened them,” he writes,

I was surrounded by a small group of native men, who were silently watching me. When I started to move, they helped me to my feet, took my pack and assisted me on the way. I had stopped within a few hundred yards of the top of a hill, and when we reached it one of the men climbed a coconut tree and got a fresh coconut, which their leader opened so I could drink the milk, which was cool and refreshing. They then went with me down to the bottom of the hill to our camp site…. I thanked them and gave each one a cigarette, which pleased them greatly. I then lay down on a canvas litter…. The afternoon rain started…but I was so exhausted I just lay there in the rain.

At midday, Gus Bailey called for a brief rest. Bailey had never seen anything like what confronted him on the trail. Here he was, a lieutenant in the role of a captain, and his company was falling apart. Bailey wrote his wife Katherine that the men were so weakened by dysentery that sometimes he had to carry his own pack as well as the packs of two other men. Katherine would later write him back, telling him to take it easy, to avoid being a hero. According to Katherine, his response was always the same: “I won’t ask my men to do anything I will not do myself.”

One of Bailey’s second lieutenants remembers that despite the circumstances, Lieutenant Bailey never appeared discouraged. Jungle rot had left the skin on his ankles and feet as brittle as onionskin. The skin peeled off as he walked and blood seeped through his socks.

When, late in the day, Bailey called for the men to stop and set up camp, Stenberg was relieved. His muscles were shot. He breathed shallowly in the rarified air and chewed on a piece of foot-long sugarcane he had cut from one of the native gardens. The sugarcane hung like an amulet from a sock stretched and fastened to either end and worn around his neck.

Around him, men staggered; some fell to the ground and lay there as if dead. Men who could still walk searched for flat ground on which to set up their shelter halves. Some did not see any point in trying. After regaining some of their strength, a number of men tried to build fires, but the wood was soaked.

When all the men were situated, Bailey finally sat down. He removed his boots for the first time in days. Jastrzembski could see that his feet were raw, but Bailey never even grimaced. In fact, he told a few jokes, and the men listened and laughed.

A few even remember Bailey singing, which was odd because he was not a singer. Home was the theme: “Home on the Range” “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” The mood was lighter, and when Jastrzembski discovered a large vine, he called some of the guys over.

“Watch this,” he said, grabbing the vine and swinging. “I’m Tarzan.” Then he let out a deep woods yodel. The others joined in, each man trying to swing higher and farther than the rest.

That night, after taking care of his feet, Bailey treated his men to a recitation of his favorite poem—Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” “There are strange things done in the midnight sun / By the men who moil for gold / The Arctic trails have their secret tales / That would make your blood run cold; / The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, / But the queerest they ever did see / Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge / I cremated Sam McGee.”

For Bailey it felt good to say the words. The poem reminded him of Katherine. In Indiana when they went out for a drive, Bailey would recite it for her.

But New Guinea was not the back roads of Indiana. Later that evening, it began to rain again, and it grew cold in the mountains. They were lucky, according to Jastrzembski, if they managed to doze for ten or fifteen minutes. Most stayed awake talking, trying to comfort themselves with fond memories of Australia.

Had Carl Stenberg overheard the talk, he would have reminded the men that Australia had not been all roses. Australian Imperial Force troops, who had fought overseas, had begun to return while the 32nd was still in Australia. They were national heroes, and they were worshipped. Australia is a huge country, but it was not big enough to accommodate both the 32nd and the returning AIF fighters. Russell Buys explains the problem. “These men came back to find their wives pregnant and their daughters knocked up. They knew that the American army was there, and they weren’t a bit happy about it.” Inevitably, brawls erupted in the streets and in the pubs of Brisbane and Melbourne. An Australian general described the confrontations as “a most despicable thing between allies.” Carl Stenberg recalled that when an outmanned group of American soldiers was jumped by a larger group of Australian soldiers, the Australians’ battle cry had been, “Put the bloody boots to ’em!” Things were so bad that General Harding assembled his officers and told them that he wanted them to make certain their men were avoiding “altercations with Australian soldiers…particularly when there is…liquor involved.”

The Japanese were smart enough to exploit the situation. One wartime cartoon depicted an American soldier having sex with a young Australian woman. “Take your sweet time at the front, Aussie,” it read. “I got my hands full right now with your sweet tootsie at home.”

While the single men dreamed of their Australian girlfriends, Gus Bailey conjured images of what it would be like when he saw Katherine again. Together, they would tour the landscapes of the West that he had admired on the train ride from Massachusetts to California. No longer, though, would it be just the two of them. Cladie Alyn Bailey, a boy, had been born only one-and-a-half months before Company G had begun its march. On the day Katherine returned from the hospital, the postman arrived at her door with a present. The postman waited as she opened the package. When Katherine pulled out an opal ring that Bailey had sent from Australia, the postman was beaming, too. A picture arrived sometime after Katherine received the present. The picture showed a proud Gus Bailey reading to his men the telegram that announced the birth of his son.

When G Company reached Ghost Mountain and the bizarre realm of the cloud forest, they were as spooked as Medendorp’s men and Company E had been. In the heavy fog, the trees—huge, moss-draped oaks and beeches—looked like apparitions. Ghost Mountain was a world all its own, where time seemed suspended in perpetual twilight. The soldiers tiptoed along a series of limestone ridges. Occasionally, a man would slip and he would hear rocks tumble into the abyss.

Two days later, Company G crossed the divide, where Major Stutterin’ Smith’s party overtook it. Though Smith was cheered by the reunion, he was appalled by the condition of Gus Bailey’s men. They looked “haggard, tired and tattered.” He wondered how he looked to them—a tall, gaunt bag of bones. How had any of them made it through the jungle and over the mountains?

General Harding had been under no illusions about the preparedness of his men, but neither he nor Smith could have anticipated the trek’s toll on them. Harding would later write, “I have no quarrel with the general thesis that the 32nd was by no means adequately trained for combat—particularly jungle combat…. Unfortunately we had no opportunity to work through a systematic program for correcting deficiencies. From February when I took over until November when we went into battle we were always getting ready to move, on the move, or getting settled after a move. No sooner would we get a systematic training program started than orders for a move came along to interrupt it…”

On October 28, Smith’s small party and Companies G and H arrived in Jaure. According to Smith, it was a day of “mud, washes and wading.” His boots were rotting off his feet. The trail from what Smith called Umi Creek to Jaure was especially grueling. Though not given to expressions of self-pity, Smith called it “torture.”

En route to Jaure was Lieutenant Robert Odell, who would later command a platoon in Company F. Only three months before, he had been the assistant military attaché in Wellington, New Zealand. Now, he was in charge of a small group of men bringing up the rear of the battalion. His team had departed the trailhead camp at Kalikodobu after Major Smith’s crew, and it was hustling now to catch up with the rest of the battalion. Odell and his men made good time, but what they saw along the trail to Jaure filled them with dismay. Piles of discarded government-issue equipment told a tale of the battalion’s ordeal.

Though Bailey was hoping to rest his troops once they reached Jaure, Boice, who was still in Jaure keeping a handle on things, informed him that Company G was to join him and Company F on the march to Natunga early the following morning. Lutjens and Company E had left for Natunga the previous day.

Prior to leaving Jaure for Natunga, Boice received a message from Colonel Quinn.

Your Msg Signed Six Forty Five Morning Two Seven Referring To Batting Average And Confidence Just Received Stop Sorry If I Have Said Anything To Raise Such Questions Stop Same Farthest From Thoughts Stop Have Utmost Confidence [in] Your Ability And Loyalty Stop Have Tried to Show It By Turning Whole Show Over To You Stop You Are Not Only Leading The League In Batting But Have Been Unanimously Selected Most Valuable Player Stop I Am Personally Interested In You And Every Man Out There And Wish I Could Be With You Stop Its Tough Being So Far Away Stop I Know You Will Win Repeat I Know You Will Win Stop Keep Your Chin Up Jim Back Here We Are All Pulling For You Hundred Per Cent

What precipitated the exchange between Quinn and Boice has been lost to history. Perhaps as the one who gave the go-ahead for the march across the peninsula, Boice was burdened by a sense of uncertainty about whether he had done the right thing. Had the trek indeed been too much for the men? They had made Jaure, but each and every one of them had suffered mightily. Had Quinn sensed Boice’s ambivalence and sent the message to bolster his sagging spirits? Or perhaps it was the colonel who initially voiced his worries about the men’s condition. Maybe Boice interpreted his inquiry as a vote of no confidence. Whatever the reason for the exchange of messages, the one irrefutable fact is that the trek from New Guinea’s south coast to Jaure brought each man face-to-face with the limits of his physical and emotional endurance.

As Boice and Companies F and G were preparing to proceed to Natunga, Smith assumed his new role as battalion commander. His first responsibility was an unusual one: Romee asked if the carriers could hold a celebratory dance.

Though the prospect of sixty dancing natives did not thrill Smith, he told Romee that he would, at least, consider the idea. Smith then called a meeting of his company commanders.

“What do you think, boys?” Smith asked. “I think it’s imperative to keep the porters happy. We can post guards just in case they get carried away.”

The setting for the celebration could not have been more perfect. The natives found a natural amphitheater at the base of a “gently rising slope.” As the sun slid behind the Owen Stanleys, the men began a slow dance to the accompaniment of reed and bamboo panpipes and small drums with heads made of dried reptile skins. As darkness advanced, the tempo increased, and Romee joined Smith on the hill overlooking the celebration grounds. Romee explained that the dancers were reenacting historic battles between the mountain tribes and the coastal natives, which often centered on the precious commodity of salt. The mountain people would come to the sea to evaporate seawater and obtain salt. When they did this, they were trespassing on the tribal lands of the coastal people. Romee assured Smith, though, that the dancers had no intention of becoming warlike.

Herman Bottcher describes the mood at Jaure that had seized everyone, soldiers and carriers alike. It was electric.

The Owen Stanleys were behind us and far in the distance we could see the beautiful green lowlands of the Buna Peninsula. We were overjoyed—particularly the faithful native porters…. We made our first comfortable camp, and the natives gathered coconuts, green bananas, squash, taro roots, sugar cane, paws-paws, limes…. We had an orgy of eating and they stayed up all night, dancing and beating on the tom-toms…. We had accomplished the…march with only about twenty casualties…one man died.

Early the next morning, Companies F and G hit the trail for Natunga, two days’ march northeast of Jaure. Once they reached the village, the bulk of their journey would be behind them. Situated in the steep foothills of the Owen Stanley Mountains, Natunga was roughly thirty miles south of the Buna coast.