The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific (44 page)

Mott, though caustic, had a master’s from Harvard and a quarter century in uniform. Harding had made a mistake, however, in relying on Mott. Gailey relates a confrontation that Mott had with one of the staff officer observers, arguing over who had the right to use one of only two jeeps at the front.

As Gailey points out, the staff officer (Larr) did not leave a written report of what he witnessed at the front, and he was killed in a plane crash. Whatever Larr said, though, represented a nail in Harding’s coffin.

Smith relates the details of this meeting in his books.

The details of Harding’s walk to Dobodura are taken from Anders’ biography and from Harding’s
Buna Diary.

The history of Doboduru, or what the army called Doboduru, was explained to me by Wellington and Willie Jojoba on a tour of Doboduru. Seeing Doboduru, it is obvious why the U.S. Army chose it as an airfield. Doboduru’s grasslands are vast. The runways that the army built, though surrounded by tall grass, are still visible.

Details on the mental and physical condition of the men on the eve of battle are derived from personal interviews with the veterans.

Smith writes of his affection for his men, especially Bailey. Jerry Smith (Smith’s son) also spoke of his father’s affection for his men.

Jastrzembski says that even guys who did not smoke or swear learned to do both once they got in the army.

Stateside conditions are from Perret’s book. I also mined Robert Frankenstein’s book,
WWII: Rendezvous With History
, for details. An exhibit set up by Frankenstein at the Dodge County Historical Society in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, was also very helpful.

In his interview with E. J. Kahn, Lutjens relates the story of Fredericks sneaking up on a Japanese position.

Lutjens’ love letter is from his diary.

Japanese diary entries are from the ATIS collection at the National Archives.

Odell’s observations are taken from his diary. Other historians have also used excerpts from Odell’s diary.

The scene with Captain Erwin Nummer is taken from E. J. Kahn’s article, “The Terrible Days of Company E.”

Historical accounts of what the soldiers discovered when they overran the Japanese hut vary. Milner, Mayo, Lutjens, Odell, and Smith all have slightly different stories.

Mary Ellen Condon-Rall quotes Warmenhoven about the performance of the medical corps. All the men that I interviewed spoke highly of Warmenhoven and his staff. Some details are also from George Moorad’s newspaper stories, and a variety of articles that appeared in the
Grand Rapids Press.
I also used an article in the
Junior Review
titled “Report from the Medical Front.”

The Bottcher incident is described by George Moorad in his article for
Liberty Magazine
called “Fire and Blood in the Jungle.”

Chapter 15. The Butcher’s Bill

Milner, Gailey, Mayo, and Anders provide details on Harding’s meeting.

Harding had written earlier that Sutherland seemed to be the kind of man with whom he could be “perfectly frank.” “I was,” Harding later wrote, “but he wasn’t.” Prior to the incident, Harding rated Sutherland a good friend—“until we tangled at the Dobodura airstrip on November 30…since then my personal and official regard for him has steadily deteriorated.”

Harding seemed to be the last man to grasp Sutherland’s true character. Others regarded Sutherland as prickly, aloof, and power hungry.

Harding thought it unwise to relieve subordinates in the middle of battle. While he was at the
Infantry Journal,
it published an article “The Economics of Canning” that clearly reflected Harding’s ideas on the subject. “In WWI,” the article read, “some commanders thought that GHQ’s measure of an officer’s ability was the number of subordinates he canned…. ‘Put the fear of God in them was the watch-word.’ One strike and out was the procedure…it gives them [the officers] the jitters. And jitters don’t make for the highest combat efficiency. Moreover, the practice lends itself to grave abuses; weak superiors are prone to cover their own shortcomings by throwing off their subordinates.” The article then goes on to extol the virtues of team play. “All passably good officers should be kept with their units. Commanding officers cannot expect run-of-the-mill subordinates to posssess the military virtues of Napoleon’s marshals. They must know how to get results with average material as well as superior…. Indeed, the chances are that the replacement will be worse than the officer relieved.”

In
Our Jungle Road to Tokyo
Eichelberger writes of his meeting in Port Moresby with MacArthur. General Kenney has a slightly different version, but the essence of the encounter is largely the same. Geoffrey Perret also details this meeting.

E. J. Kahn wrote, “The men at the front in New Guinea were perhaps among the most wretched-looking soldiers ever to wear the American uniform.”

In
1942,
Groom, too, writes of the men’s suffering.

Eichelberger’s account of their meeting differs slightly from Jastrzembski’s.

Accounts of the meeting with the “brass” can be found in Smith’s books. Other historians describe the scene, too.

Harding defended Mott. The situation at Buna favored the Japanese. It was hard on the troops. In 1936 Harding wrote in
Infantry Journal,
“Flesh-and-blood troops don’t conform to Leavenworth and Benning ground rules.”

In a letter he wrote to MacArthur on December 7, 1942 (after he was relieved), which Tom Doherty quotes in his article “Buna: The Red Arrow’s Heart of Darkness,” Harding stated, “I cannot agree with General Eichelberger’s conclusion that the ‘men were licked.’ The impression I got was that the men still had plenty of fight left but had no stomach for another go at a position which had beaten off four attacks. They felt, and with good reason, that the bunkers and the strong fixed defenses that had held them up should be blasted out before they went at it again.”

Eichelberger writes of the flood in
Our Jungle Road To Tokyo:
“Various personal items floated around like chips in a millstream. I waded knee-deep to get my shaving mirror…. In Buna that year, it rained about a hundred and seventy inches.”

The incident with the soldier in the hospital is taken from Anders’
Gentle Knight.

Phil Ishio wrote an article for the
American Intelligence Journal
in 1995 on the Japanese-American contribution to the Allied victory in the Pacific.

Kahn writes of Swede Nelson and Ned Meyers in “The Terrible Days…”

In
The Fight for New Guinea,
Patrick Robinson details the enemy’s tactics. So do a number of other authors, including John Vader in
New Guinea: The Tide Is Stemmed
and John Ellis in
The Sharp End.
In Burma, according to Ellis, British soldiers referred to Japanese infiltration attacks as “jitter raids.” The intention was to draw fire and cause soldiers to give away their positions.

Lutjens decribes the incident and Schultz’s calm in shooting the sniper out of the tree.

The details of Colonel Yokoyama’s order to soldiers without weapons to defend the garrison with anything they could find are from ATIS documents and Ham. Hospital conditions are also described by Ham and by various Japanese soldiers in translated documents.

Yamagata’s speech is from ATIS documents.

Details of the conditions at the roadblock are from Milner, George Weller’s articles, the
Detroit News,
Medendorp’s memoirs, and veterans of the Sananda Front whom I interviewed.

The details of Roger Keast’s time in Marquette, Michigan, are derived from Harry Keast’s collection of biographical information on his father.

Captain Peter Dal Ponte said of Roger Keast, “He excelled in every mission that confronted him…. His heroic actions and gallantry instilled confidence in and maintained the high morale of his men constantly.”

Details of Keast’s and Shirley’s deaths are from Medendorp and a series of articles in the
Grand Rapids Herald
and the
Detroit News.

Chapter 16. Breaking the Stalemate

Smith includes a description of Grose’s imperiousness in his books.

E. J. Kahn described this attack and Lutjens’ injury in detail.

Odell mentions this incident in his diary. In his correspondences with Milner, Grose relates the details, too. In a letter to one of the historians working with Milner (Colonel Kemper), Odell writes bitterly, “We unanimously condemned higher headquarters for wholly inadequate recognition of the Buna situation, particularly with regard to intelligence…higher commanders constantly ordered attacks without any conception of the situation.”

Details on Sergeant George Pravda, including the articles he filed for the
Daily Tribune,
are from George Pravda Jr.’s collection. Details of specific attacks are from interviews with George Jr.

Details on Bottcher’s Corner are from interviews with DiMaggio and Jastrzembski, Moorad’s article “Fire and Blood in the Jungle,” and Sufrin’s story for
Historical Times.

Eichelberger writes of his emotions in
Our Jungle Road.
He also recalls Captain Edwards’ wound. The bullet entered his belly and blew a “gaping hole near his spine.” A doctor told Eichelberger that Edwards would never make it, that there were no “facilities that far forward to take care of a man so severely wounded.” The situation was hopeless, he said. If moved, Edwards would die. “Right then and there,” Eichelberger wrote, “I decided to take Edwards back to the field hospital. If he was going to die, he might as well die on the hood of my jeep. We carted him out like a sack of meal, lashed him to the hood, and started down the trail. Much of it was corduroy road…Edwards took a terrific and painful jolting but he offered only one protest…the operation saved his life.”

Smith writes of his injury in his books.

Milner and Mayo write of Odell reaching Bottcher’s Corner. Odell describes it in his diary.

ATIS documents reveal the extent of Japanese suffering.

Scenes of the roadblock are from interviews with Bill Sikkel and Carl Smestad and a variety of 3rd Battalion members.

Medendorp writes of Horton’s wounds.

George Weller wrote a story—“Bravery and Guile Keep Phone Line Open”—about the heroic American signalmen. Weller writes of Dal Ponte in his article titled “Scene of Gallant Stand Named for Hero.” Milner and Medendorp also write of Dal Ponte’s heroism.

In Medendorp’s memoirs he writes of Father Dzienis.

Details of the fall of Gona are from Paul Ham.

Medendorp includes Horton’s diary in his memoirs. Two articles in the
Detroit News
also tell Horton’s story—“Hero Writes Letter as He Awaits Death in Jungles of New Guinea,” and “Out of the Jungle a Dying Soldier’s Testament of Faith.”

Chapter 17. Caged Birds

The poem “Caged Birds” is from ATIS documents.

Medendorp writes grimly of what he’s witnessed.

Eichelberger writes of MacArthur’s letter in
Our Jungle Road to Tokyo.

Milner and Mayo, among others, describe the horrible scene. The dead bodies and excrement explain the stench the Americans had to contend with. Groom writes that the American soldiers were “repelled to the point of nausea by odors from these positions, blown directly at them by a prevailing onshore ocean breeze.”

Blakeley, Milner, and Anders explain the problems that plagued the American advance.

In
Our Jungle Road to Tokyo,
Eichelberger includes the letter that he wrote to MacArthur. Could hundreds of men have been saved if GHQ had agreed to send in tanks earlier? In his
Buna Diary,
Harding writes of a letter that he and E. J. Kahn composed on their way back to Australia in early December and sent to MacArthur. It said: “I shall still not have it on my mind that I let you or the division down. I didn’t succeed in taking Buna with the means at my disposal but I don’t feel that any other commander could have done more.” Anders includes a letter from Colonel Geerds, who toured the Australian hospitals with Harding. “I could have cried,” Geerds wrote, “when they told him that most had been wounded after his relief.”

The details of Boice and Bailey’s advance are from Milner’s and Smith’s books, interviews with veterans, interviews with Katherine Matthews, Sam DiMaggio’s recollections, and from my two trips to Buna, during which I visited the bridge where Boice was killed, and interviewed Buna villagers about the details of Boice’s death.

Insight into Boice’s state of mind comes from interviews with William Boice Jr. and the collection of letters and newspaper articles that Zelma Boice kept.

The story of Chet Sokoloski was told to me by Stan Jastrzembski.

Bob Hartman told me the story of leading his platoon into the Triangle.

Phil Ishio told me about interrogating exhausted, disease-ridden Japanese POWs.

This story is from “Fire and Blood in the Jungle” by George Moorad.

During an interview, Stanley Jastrzembski told me the amusing anecdote about eating the cake with his buddy Chet Sokoloski.

Eichelberger describes the contents of MacArthur’s letters. Back in his Ivory Tower in Port Moresby, MacArthur could not have been more distanced from the reality of what Eichelberger was up against at Buna.

The following day, Eichelberger woke with a renewed sense of optimism. “Daylight,” he later wrote, “is good medicine for the fears of darkness.”

Grose, writes Mayo, was stunned by the orders. Eichelberger wanted to take Buna in front of MacArthur’s “eyes and ears”—in other words, he wanted Sutherland to witness it.

In his correspondence with Milner, Grose wrote of the general’s rage.

Wada and other Japanese soldiers’ diary entries are from ATIS documents.

Milner and Mayo comment on Eichelberger losing the 163rd.

The scene of the Japanese soldiers taking to the water to flee north up the coast is included in Milner, Mayo, and Blakeley. Many of the veterans that I interviewed remembered it. Those who did not witness it firsthand had heard the stories.

Mayo relates the story of Yasuda’s and Yamamoto’s deaths.