A Night to Remember! (30)

When the men retired to their foxholes that first night, the atmosphere at the 92nd Evac Hospital was one of uneasy relief.  That morning they had joked about it possibly being their last day on earth, but the jokes had seeds of real concern in them.  The men were alert, but not unduly frightened.  Probably some of them had even spent part of the day swimming and poking around (Gene had  poked around some, being a naturally curious person!).  It was a good thing they were alert!

Japanese supplies amidst the wreckage from the pre-invasion shelling at Humbolt Bay

April 24, 1944 Monday
     What a night to remember!  We were in our foxholes (I on my silken sheets! and dirty shoes!) by dark.  We heard that all planes at night would be enemy.  Just at dusk a lone raider came along the beach below us.  There was no radar and no search lights.  By a lucky hit, he dropped 3 bombs on the Jap ammunition dump (probably guided by the fire on the beach from the dumps burning from the previous shelling.  Explosions were more or less continuous - some tremendous enough to shake the earth where we were on a hill about a mile (4 seconds by sound) away.  Fragments went whizzing over us and a few dropped nearby.  The display was spectacular - tracers, big flaming chunks up in the sky, fire!  Christie and some others thought it was all a tremendous counter-attack (you could hear the small arm cartridges sounding like machine guns) and were too scared to look over the top of their foxholes and see it.  Me - I had my head up peeking over to see the show, and to watch how close the red hot fragments were going to land.  If one hit my foxhole, I wanted to be ready to get out!  About 4 A.M. I had to urinate, so I used my helmet.
     We started to set up and will have 2 wards and a surgery by 5 this evening.  The area is in a little saddle between Pancake and another hill.  We had bull dozzers [sic] scraping flat benches on the hillside to put up the tents.  We have to take over a portable Hosp's patients, which is by our site.  Apparently most of our food and medical supplies were burned and blown up!  The loss of life and casualties will probably be large.  So far as they can tell, several companies were almost entirely destroyed.  What a disaster.  Why was the fire left burning? [Gene felt it guided the Japanese raider the night before].
     I dug in again with Sparky and George along a stone abuttment [sic].  The work is terribly fatiguing - perspiration simply runs off in streams.  But I have no headaches like I did last night.  Even then I slept most of the time, although I woke up at each big explosion, to keep an eye out for red hot pieces or incendiaries.  I couldn't tell which was flying thru the air.
     Probably the Japs will be back in force tonight.  Just about 300 yards up the hill from us is a battery of 90 mm ack ack and searchlight and radar.  We'll probably get the near misses when the Japs try for the emplacements.

Pancake Hill with Humbolt Bay in the middle ground; note the bomb craters

     Well, so far I haven't been afraid.  It's hard to realize that this is the real thing and that anything can happen.  The worst part is that we live like pigs.  I haven't had my clothes off since yesterday morning and probably won't for a while.  We have no provision against rain except rain coats.  Most outfits have ponchos or shelter halves.

From an unidentified, undated newspaper article:

THOUSANDS OF YANKS STORM HOLLANDIA AND AITAPE BASES: Huge Air and Sea Armada Covers Landings With MacArthur Looking On (A.P.)

     MacArthur's Advanced Headquarters in New Guinea, April 24 - Under cover of a tremendous naval and air blasting, thousands of American troops established beachheads at Hollandia and Aitape on the strategic north coast of New Guinea Saturday and Monday - 60,000 more isolated Japanese faced annihilation.

     Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who witnessed the gigantic operation, terned it Bataan in reverse.  MacArthur's triumphant communiqué Monday said 140,000 Japanese troops stretching from New Guinea to the Solomon islands are thus "neutralized and strategically impotent".  These Japanese are all that remain of a force on one-fourth million established in these islands for the invasion of Australia, he declared, adding, "Time and combat will be required to accomplish the annihilation, but their ultimate fate is now certain."

Locations mentioned in the article are marked in pink.  The map is from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection: Engineers of the Southwest Pacific, 1941-45, Vol.1

     The 60,000 Japanese are caught between Hollandia and Madang.  The other 80,000 are in New Britain, New Ireland and Bouganville. 

     The Japanese, caught far off by feints in the direction of Wewak and Madang to the southeast , offered little opposition to the powerful American forces which poured ashore on both sides of Hollandia and Aitape, 150 miles southeast.

     Immediately the Americans drove toward the airdromes at both bases with tractors and bulldozers to make serviceable the excellent airstrips which are a little over 1,000 miles from the Philippines - within bomber range.

     General MacArthur, intent upon returning to the Philippines from which the Americans withdrew a little more than two years ago, watched the Hollandia landings from the quaking deck of a bombarding cruiser and went ashore with the second wave of troops, which established a beachhead at Tanahmerah bay west of Hollandia at dawn.

     After greeting field commanders and many of the men, he proceeded to the Aitape area and watched from a destroyer as the first assault team made shore, later to seize Aitape's air strips.  MacArthur went in with the second wave again and expressed his satisfaction to the commanding generals for a job well done.

     The landings, which in the case of Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea meant the first recapture of Netherlands territory in the war, bypassed the Japanese base at Wewak with its four airfields and the other enemy air bases of Bogia, Alexishafen and Madang along the northeast New Guinea coast.  The campaign swept the New Guinea front 500 miles up the coast from the Madang sector.

     A strong force of central Pacific warships under the command of Adm. Chester W. Nimitz participated in the preinvasion shelling, lending support for the first time to a MacArthur landing operation.

     These warships previously had prevented material Japanese air interference with the Hollandia action by smashing hard at Palau and Woleai in the western Caroline islands north of New Guinea as well as Truk to the east.

     The Americans disembarked from transports in tropical predawn darkness for the Hollandia landings.  They hit shore at 7:08 a.m. and by noon had driven about two miles inland from the beachheads at Tanahmerah bay and Humbolt bay.  Their objectives were three airfields lying midway between the two beachheads.

     No land mines or obstacles interfered with rapid establishment of the beachheads.  The troops met only weak resistance as they headed inland with fixed bayonets and suffered only light losses.  The estimated 14,000 Japanese in the Hollandia area may attempt a stubborn stand around the vital airfields or may withdraw to the slopes of the Cyclops mountains commanding the airstrips.

     Hollandia's once formidable air power had been knocked out in a pulverizing 1,500-ton bombing assault which started three weeks before.  The enemy's coastal defences were hit by hundreds of tons of shells in the stiffest warship and carrier plane pounding of any Japanese objective south of the Marshall islands.

     While advanced ground units pushed toward the airfields and transport craft were disgorging more men, guns and supplies on all three beaches, hundreds of naval planes and many heavily gunned warships maintained a protective screen overhead and far out to sea.

     As the first assault waves dashed toward shore in Higgins boats and amp0hibious Alligators and Ducks, navy planes dived thru the dense smoke clouds to unload bombs on a few enemy guns that survived the bombardment.

     Amphibious tanks and trucks carried the first assault wave into the southern inlet of Tanahmerah bay, Infantry followed closely to establish the first beachhead as transports unloaded a larger force five miles to the north.  By afternoon this force had driven a strong spearhead to the westernmost of the three airdromes lying between the Cyclops mountains and Sentani lake.

     The eastern jaw of MacArthur's pincers trap was set on the shores of Humbolt bay where another assault group landed between Hollandia village and the Tami airdrome, twelve miles southeast.  One unit gained the beach, drove rapidly inland one mile to occupy a hill overlooking Hollandia village, and then cut across the main road.  Americans captured a few Japanese and killed several more in this first thrust.

     Two other units landed further south and a fourth, coming in on ducks and alligators, drove thru the center across narrow palm-fringed spits enclosing the inner harbor of Humbolt bay.

     A few minutes after the assault troops hit the beaches a naval party went ashore to set up a liaison between ground forces and naval fighters and dive bombers.

     Steaming for many of the prelanding hours within range of Japanese aerial reconnaissance, the Allied invasion armada had succeeded in keeping the enemy guessing about the ultimate objectives until it was too late for the Japanese to organize any counter-action.

     approaching Hollandia from different directions, carrier and attack fleets had rendezvoused at a point which even if detected still gave the enemy no indication of its destination.  Friday night the invasion force abruptly changed its direction and warships' heavy salvos were probably the first warning the Japanese received that Hollandia and Aitape were being invaded.

     Thruout Saturday hundreds of United States navy planes monopolized the skies while fleet units steamed offshore in case the Japanese navy decided to accept the challenge to battle which the American navy has been flaunting in the Pacific since the invasion of the Gilberts last November.

     

    

Anticlimax - or is it? (29)

Members of the 92nd Evac are facing their first battle.  How will Gene react?

April 23, 1944  Sunday
     Woke up at 0300.  I had to sleep on the hard cushions again.  "And the condemned ate a hearty breakfast" says Hiram.

Humbolt Bay from Pancake Hill - note tanks and LCVP's (Landing Craft:
Vehicle Personnel)

     We landed about 8.  On the way in we watched some of our Navy planes dive bombing some air strips.  One started a big fire.  Some fellows were in swimming so we knew things weren't bad.
     At the beach, not 30 yards from our boat, a battery of 75's were shelling someplace, probably Hollandia [Airdrome]. There were more down the coast and we heard their shells screech a little as they went by overhead.  There were large Jap stores of rice, soy beans, artillery shells, food in boxes and small kegs, bombs, plane motors still in crates, parachutes and medical supplies, all along the beach.  The beach at high tide was very narrow, and terribly congested with vehicles.  Some were stuck in the sand and bulldozers pulling them out.  I'm glad we weren't being bombed or shot at.  There were shell and bomb craters and slit trenches everywhere.  I saw the first body of one of our soldiers, on a litter and wrapped in a blanket.  It took my vehicle (we walked) about 1 hour to get on the beach.  After another hour of barely  moving (it was hot!) we tied our packs to the water trailer back of the weapons carrier and walked ahead to our area.  It was up a new road along the side of Pancake Hill, a bare hillside.  The landing on D day was made without much opposition.  In fact, not a dozen Japs were killed.  One of our Companies was straffed [ sic strafed] by our own planes - 6 killed and 8 wounded.  On a campaign they figure 5% casualties from our own guns and planes!

Pancake Hill from behind the surgery

     We went to the 41st CP [command post] and heard the news.  A soldier was killed by a sniper about 200 yards up the trail about an hour before we were there.  We took over some fox holes - mine didn't even need remodeling.  But if it rains tonight - this red mud!  Not even a pup tent or a tarp.  But I have a Jap silk parachute to sleep on.  We ate K rations [according to Wikipedia they consisted of two packages of dried biscuits, cigarettes, gum, sugar (granulated, cubed or compressed), and a key (dubbed a P-38) to open a small canned portion; items specific to the breakfast meal were canned meat and eggs, a fruit bar, and instant coffee; specific dinner (lunch) items were canned cheese and a lemon (early), orange or grape (late) drink packet; specific supper items were toilet paper, a bouillon packet, and a lemon, orange or grape drink packet (later production rations had a disposable wooden spoon, too); if all three meals were eaten, about 3000 calories were provided; they were produced by the Cracker Jack Company with a waxed paper ration box about the same size as the Cracker Jack box] - not too good.  I perspired something terrific and have a headache in spite of 4 salt tablets.  The sun is fiendishly hot.  All of us have our clothes and persons covered with red clay.  Desultory shelling of Jap positions has gone on all day.  On the beach I took pictures, including a bomb explosion when a bulldozer clearing the dumps pushed it on a burning dump.  One fellow was wounded.  A while later there was a terrific explosion at about the same place.  Several small gasoline dumps had been burned.  The 50 gallon drums were pooched out in peculiar shapes.
     This evening about 40 native men, women and children, in all stages of dress and undress, went past under guard.  I wonder what they are - prisoner or refugees.
     In 2 days the Yanks have made more roads than did the Japs in 2 years.  Pim [on Jautefa Bay about 4 miles south of Hollandia] was taken yesterday and Hollandia by noon today.  Certainly we haven't been in much danger today.  I hope this night is quiet.  They said that in this area Jap snipers bothered some last night.  There is a tremendous concentration of troops and guns and machines, etc., and we haven't seen a Jap plane.  They say several thousand tough Jap marines went to Wewak a few days before, for that is where the Japs expected us to strike.  Mostly service troops are left here.
     At night you crawl in your fox hole with loaded carbine and knife handy, and don't get out for anything, for the rest are apt to shoot at anything that moves.

Little did they know what was in store for the U.S. forces in the area.  The undated article below is from the Yank Magazine.  It is mostly about the portable hospitals which are smaller than the Evac hospitals and are usually closer to the front. 

"MEDICS UNDER FIRE: They're non-combatants according to treaty so they don't get extra pay like the infantry but they do draw plenty of enemy lead" by Sgt. Charles Pearson, YANK staff Correspondent [with comments in parenthesis and underlinings presumably by Gene]
     Dutch New Guinea - A portable surgical hospital is a medical unit of four doctors and generally 32 enlisted men.  They're supposed to work directly behind the line of battle and patch up casualties so they can be removed to an evacuation hospital.  Sometimes part of the portable hospital's personnel have to be removed, too.
     During one of the Dutch New Guinea campaigns a portable unit was brought up by buffaloes [a type of landing vehicle] to a position behind the advancing infantry of the 41st Division.  They were moving up a coastal road from the landing beach toward Jap-held airstrips.  The road was on a narrow strip of land with the sea on one side and a strip heavily wooded coral terrace on the other.
     The portable hospital medics arrived in late morning and set up their tents in a coconut grove.  The infantry up ahead was moving along without much resistance.  The hospital personnel were getting the idea they might have an easy show ahead.  The coconut grove was picturesque.  Just off the shore was a reef.  A lot of the men were out on it looking for cat eye shells.  It was all quite peaceful.
     In the distance could be heard the occasional chatter of machine guns and the popping of small arms.  It was a comforting sound.  They were our guns.
     Suddenly they noticed the fire was rapidly intensifying.  The thump of heavy mortars was almost blotting out the sound of the machine guns.  The operator at the field phone called out that they had run into a strong force and were being heavily pounded with 90-mm mortars.  The first casualties were already on their way back.
     Shortly a captured Japanese truck sputtered into the hospital area with six wounded on it.  All of them were badly torn up.  Capts. Edward L. Waisbrot of Canton, Ohio, and Theodore Moss of Kew Gardens, L.I., were quickly working on a man whose arms had been smashed to jelly.  It was an amputation.
     At the other table set up in the pyramidal tent which was serving as an operating theater, Capts. Bernard Sollod of Baltimore, Md., and Sydney Kahn of Chicago were amputating the leg of a soldier.  It had been badly fractured and the main blood vessel hopelessly torn.
     The six casualties had now multiplied to 20 and they were still streaming in.  T-4 Cecil Wells of Hockersville, Okla., a former boxer and carnival pitchman now wardmaster, was going from one soldier to another trying to ease his pain while patients were coming in faster than they could be treated.
     A call was sent back for more doctors.  Three came up later in a jeep.  Lt. Burroughs from Oakland, Calif., (Oscar!) came from the evacuation hospital.  Capt. Krupke of Chicago was from another portable unit and Capt. Ludden came from a clearing company.  Another table was set up in the already crowded tent.  Three teams of doctors continued work steadily.
     Up ahead the infantry was stopped.  Jap artillery and a naval gun were ranging in on them.  Down between the hospital and the beachhead a second Jap force was driving a wedge between the fighting battalion and the rest of the force.  It was now dark.  The doctors were working by the illumination from one hospital light hitched up to a generator, one Japanese headlight powered by a storage battery, several Coleman lamps and all available flashlights in camp.  It was hot in the tent and the surgeons were stripped to their underpants.
     The casualties continued to come in, now from both directions.  The patched up ones were being evacuated by landing craft and buffaloes.  The force ahead was slowly giving ground.  The battle was coming closer.  An occasional mortar shell landed in the area.  The supply tent and extra equipment had already been blasted into ribbons.  One hospital attendant had been hit by a shell fragment.
     Down in the kitchen tent Sgt. John Millner of Washington, D.C., T-5 Arlen Bradstreet of Stockton Springs,.Maine, and T-5 Lucien Nadeau of Matawaska, Maine, were brewing hot coffee and bringing it to the operating theater.  Operating room assistants Pfc. William Abbott of Sommerville, Mass., Sgt. Emerson Hein of Tonawanda, N.Y., T-5 Richard Lucier of North Adams, Mass., and T-5 Sydney Shub of Ithica, N.Y., were giving plasma and morphine and setting the wounded onto litters in slit trenches.  Knee mortar shells were coming down from the ridge and exploding around the ward tent.
     In the pitch black of the night it had not been possible to bring some of the wounded from the lines of fire.  They had to wait until daybreak.
     At 0500 the next morning all the wounded had been cared for.  The doctors knocked off for a bit of sleep.  An hour later in the early light of dawn the stream of casualties began again.
     At 1030 a message came up from the beachhead to be ready to move out at a moment's notice but to continue working as well as possible.  Dr. Moss was working on a man whose head had been split open and whose brain was injured.  He was hemorrhaging badly.  A patient on another table had had his arm blown off at the shoulder.  The fighting was getting closer.  Wounded men were walking back from the lines and collapsing at the hospital.
     The battalion was withdrawing trying to consolidate its position.  The Japs had cut the supply line and were moving up the beach from both directions.  Cpl. Ted Hunter of Macwahoc, Maine, and T-5 Leroy Faulkerson of Columbus, Ohio, climbed up a bamboo ladder against the coral terrace and brought down a soldier with a hip wound.  Infiltrating Japs were working down through the wooded terrace behind the hospital, setting up knee mortars and trying to hit wounded going out in the buffaloes.  Pfc. Leonard Solow of New York City had the job of getting them away from the jetty.
     One Jap reached the ledge directly above the ward tent.  An infantryman shot him.  He fell into a slit trench behind the kitchen tent.
     At noon the last American vehicle came through.  The fighting was now right in the area.
     At 1300 hours the hospital started to evacuate, but at 1400 those men whose lives depended on immediate attention were still being worked over.  An hour later the last of the doctors climbed into the buffaloes and traveled back to the evacuation hospital with the wounded.  Half an hour later the Japs were swarming over the area.
     Back at the (92nd) evac hospital the portable surgical unit doctors continued working. (and how!)  Two days later they were again sent up to the area of their hectic 24 hours.  This time the Japs were in headlong flight, being pursued by the reorganized battalion supported by tanks.  This time the portable surgical unit could patch up the wounded without ducking for cover every few minutes.  As one tired medic put it, "If I was in the Infantry I might be getting that extra 10 bucks fighting pay they talk about.  But then, they say the medics never see combat."