Weller's War

by George Weller

  The Japs next attacked the plateau with overwhelming force. All this went unrecorded in the newspapers of those days.

  Yet Symington, whom your correspondent saw again at bloody Gona, is today one of the few alive out of that campaign and the bride with whom he spent only five days is now the mother of a son. Sometimes these things turn out right.

  Captain Vernon, also deaf, operated on the dying Owen in this mission house when the Japs, crawling over the lip of the plateau, opened machine-gun fire. Owen had been hit halfway up the plateau and been carried here to the top.

  “The Japs are machine-gunning us,” said Vernon's assistant, Warrant Officer Wilkinson.

  “You say rats are bad here?” said the doctor, working patiently on the expiring hero. Then the Japs attacked and soon the gallant Owen succumbed. His body was found by Captain Peter Brewer, one-time district officer of Misima Island. The body had been shoved under the earth, but it was recognized by the epaulets and the dog tags of another Australian known to have fallen with him on July 29.

  The Japs have erected fourteen of their grey, wooden stavelike markers on the plateau, and these are left undisturbed.

  We visited a hut raised from the ground where the graves registration workers are painting crosses below and the district officers live above. Its floor is scarred with American machine-gun fire from the days when Airacobras persecuted the Japs within. What is remarkable is that the scratches of bullets are horizontally long, showing that the American pilots must have approached at a daringly low level before thumbing their buttons of fire.

  It is somewhat disorganized, like most such places. A few scrawny pineapples and bunches of bananas hang on the wall. On a table are scattered copies of Australia's Women's Weekly, which their well-meaning mothers and wives seem to think is exactly the thing to send to grizzled Diggers in the jungle, together with a layer of copies of Life, Time, Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and the New Yorker, which your correspondent flew in with from the nearest American camp. There is a Thompson submachine gun against the wall, just in case anything should happen.

  In a corner under the table you find an old diary. A note dated November 15 reads: American transports today evacuated four litter cases, ninety-five walking wounded, eight prisoners of war, three provost guards and three miscellaneous passengers.

  Just one stray footnote of history.

  Kokoda received the wounded who had been carried three days down the mountains from Myola. It got other peculiar travelers, too. There was a B-25 Mitchell over Myola whose motor began backfiring. The plane fell 1500 feet, with its pilot telling the crew, “Get out.” They did and even took the door with them as they hurtled with their parachutes into the jungle.

  The plane's motor came to life and they got back to Port Moresby two weeks after the pilot who had summarily ordered them overboard. But they had been among Kokoda's honorary citizens.

  Today on Kokoda's green common you can see a native making a soccer goal. Why does he hang leaves on it? Because he believes that by undulating, the leaves make a wind which will blow the oncoming ball away.

  On the cross of one Digger's grave—an A.I.F. [Australian Imperial Force] named “Corp. R.A. Williams”—is written in pencil a pathetic memorandum of another, the elder Williams, who came through Kokoda with the militia. The scrawl reads: Should be A.R. Williams, his dad. Only two weeks separate the dates of the younger Williams' death and the note.

  Kokoda is already a place of memories.

  YANKS IN GUINEA BLESS ENGINEER SWAMP TAMERS

  Somewhere in New Guinea—June 26, 1943 (Delayed)

  Troops who fight in New Guinea are always conscious of the labors of U.S. Army engineers. As they lie in their foxholes before a dawn attack, sleeplessly awaiting the order to go forward, they hear footsteps splashing past in the swamp. Then the footsteps pause and the crouched soldiers overhear engineer officers talking to their men.

  Everything is carefully explained.

  “If we can get this stretch of corduroy built across the swamp today, food can come to the troops from the beachhead instead of the air field,” they say.

  That means that line companies will get bread instead of broken crackers and maybe a fistful of dried apricots per man each week. That means they will get all the ammunition they need instead of just air-transported handfuls.

  And the infantryman, waiting for battle, looks at the luminous dial of his wristwatch in the dark. It is 3:30 in the morning. The engineers will already have been working for three hours when he goes into action.

  Today, with northern Papua transformed from a swampy wilderness into a strong secondary line of defense against Japan—the first line is our war-ranging heavy bombers—the routes once marked out by American engineers under stress of battle are now being extended and developed by other American engineers.

  The Tokyo radio prophesies confidently that Japan someday will use these extensive improvements to New Guinea's hitherto untouched real estate for its own.

  However that may be, the time is certainly ripe to honor those first American engineers under two brothers of Medford, Massachusetts—husky, ruddy Colonel John Carew, decorated by MacArthur with the D.S.C., and his physically slighter brother, Major Lawrence Carew. The first bridges built under fire by Americans in this war, so far as is known, were the handiwork of their outfits.

  Sometimes people think of engineers as just grubby, hairy “dogfaces” doing the dirty work for the Army's progress. They do the dirty work, all right. Before they marched across the Owen Stanley Mountains—the only engineer outfit to accomplish this—they were constructing mountain bridges which Papua otherwise never would have had. They built probably the highest span in New Guinea, 150 feet above a tropical torrent and 180 feet long—all from giant trees lying nearby.

  [probably somewhere in Australia]

  July 9th, 1943.

  MR. AND MRS. EDWARD & EVA SHERMAN,

  NEW YORK CITY.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Sherman,

  My reply to your letter of March 27th has been delayed first by a period of extended illness in New Guinea, and then by inability to find immediately the full circumstances of the sad passing of your son on February 7th.

  It was not possible for me to go directly to the place where your son was killed, because regulations have long forbidden War Correspondents to go there.

  What I tell you, therefore, is the account of a superior officer of your son's organization and not due to my own first-hand observation.

  One of the most essential and at the same time dangerous jobs of the war in New Guinea has been the transport of troops and supplies across the Owen Stanley Range. You have doubtless read how fighter cover is provided for all transports, but nevertheless this system is not perfect and there are occasional loopholes when Japanese fighters creep through.

  In the case of your son, as I am told, he was one of the pilots taking essential materials to Wau, an Australian and American base in the mountains behind Salamaua. At that time Wau airstrip was being closely attacked by Japanese ground troops and it was most essential that help got there.

  From the Japanese point of view it was essential that the air field be captured and the transports cut off.

  On the day that your son was reported missing a force of Japanese planes raided Wau and tried to chop up the transports. And as I am told, your son's plane took off from Wau and was last seen heading up one of the very wild and savage valleys that surround the air field, and was being pursued by Japanese fighters.

  Since then, natives have come in from this extremely difficult country, which is largely uninhabited even by natives, and reported that they knew where the wreckage is of the missing plane. There was a close search of the whole area for several days before hope for the plane was given up.

  According to the natives, as I am told, the plane crashed and burned and there is little doubt but that all in it were lost.

  While the plane lies in country that makes it difficult to find, it
is only about twenty-five miles from Wau, according to the natives.

  At the time I left New Guinea, about a month ago, the plane had still not been found but search parties were again going out to look for it.

  I can assure you of one thing and that is that if it is true that your son has been killed, and his body can be found, it certainly will be found by the efficient and conscientious Graves' Registration which handles these things. But the country is extremely difficult, the area is still very much in the combat zone and it is necessary to be patient about carrying out these things.

  I suggest that you write in a short while again to the Commanding Officer of your son's squadron, and a fortnight after that to its Chaplain as well.

  You have my full sympathy in your loss.

  George Weller Correspondent: Chicago Daily News.

  DODGE BULLETS IN JUNGLE AND BURY YANK DEAD

  Somewhere in New Guinea—July 15, 1943 (Delayed)

  When the sun lies on the tops of the palms and betel gums and the green shadows of evening steal through the forest, you go down to the river to wash your green jungle fatigues and meet there the same handful of quiet young men you met last night.

  Every night they are there, washing the sweat off, standing knee-deep in the brown running river and soaping each other's backs. For young men their behavior seems exceptionally composed. They never splash each other. Everything they do is a little subdued. They never sing. They never raise their voices.

  The war has passed this point six months ago. These men have rifles outside their tents and take them with them whenever they leave their small isolated camp. But the rifles are never used. Even the last Jap stragglers perished long ago in this jungle.

  When the evening's first cool breath comes down the river and the mosquitoes are getting thicker and the water seems for the first time warmer than the air, these quiet young men emerge from the river, dry themselves on the bank and go by the muddy zigzag path across the sagging jungle to their camp.

  The oil lamp is already lit in one of their two tents and they are at home here. In the background stand their two broken-down jeeps, with spades and brush-cutting tools sticking out.

  Someone lights a cigarette over the hissing, bright gasoline lamp, and these unhurried young men gather around the table. Twenty-four-year-old Sergeant Walter McGrane, of Chicago, slowly unrolls a map. It's a map of battle. Yet no thud of mortar or keening message of shell can be heard. For this is a map of a battle now ended, and these quiet young men are those who care for our dead.

  When the War Department informs his parents than an infantryman is missing, this does not mean that hope of finding him has been lost. It means that he is still being searched for. The first hope of the searchers is to find him alive. But when weeks pass and the man still has not been found, new parties set forth after him. The Army's determination to find his body, if he is dead, is no less than its first effort to find him alive.

  That is the work of these quiet young men. The writer has been living near them and witnessing their work. It is impossible to know them without being impressed with the extraordinary conscience and resolution these little-appreciated soldiers bring to duties which few would like to undertake.

  After such fighting as occurred in Northern Papua the jungle is one great conglomerate of marked and unmarked graves. Most are marked. Individual graves are near the fighting scene. Clumps of twos and threes are found near first-aid stations or machine-gun posts. Then, farther back, are small graveyards—often near portable hospitals—where lie those men who survived the battle against the enemy but nevertheless yielded their lives, eventually, to their wounds.

  All around stands the mammoth kunai grass, six to ten feet high, and behind that jungle and more jungle. The tiny temporary crosses are dwarfed and hidden in the long green spines. Where are the bodies? Only the maps of battle can tell that.

  These quiet young men—members of what is officially called the Graves' Registration Service—also go into battle behind the troops and the medical aid men. The jungle is not like the desert, where every fallen soldier can be seen. Here it is almost as important to mark the bodies of the killed as of the wounded. The battle line in the jungle is not a line at all. It is composed of many-branched stems like coral, placed beside each other, with patrols constantly coming forth from each notch, and brook, and turning. It is impossible for these quiet young men to follow every party since many patrols take place simultaneously. When patrols are ambushed, they sometimes cannot return for hours to claim the bodies. Often they get lost trying to find the way back to their starting place. That is what sometimes lies behind the word “missing” so far as an infantryman is concerned.

  When men fall fighting in the jungle, a Graves' Registration soldier attempts to creep forward, often under fire. He tries to reach the body and get one of the two dog tags around the neck. Using a short-handled shovel, he labors to get his comrade underground in a shallow temporary grave, which means protection against the Jap looters roving the glades by night.

  Just as medical aid men frequently lose their lives crawling into fire to help the wounded, so the Graves' Registration man must often choose between exposing himself and protecting his fallen comrade's body from desecration.

  This Graves' Registration operates in the jungle in a manner unlike any other outfit. All the men, including the officers, are licensed morticians. All have staff sergeant rating. The two lieutenants must keep constantly moving.

  For this observer, it was particularly remarkable that these men treated what they found with much more care and attention than might have been expected.

  Often your correspondent has passed beside the grave of one Chicagoan, John Nelson, which lay in deep kunai off the trail between Senemi village and Buna air field, with Eugene Lockard of Three Rivers, Michigan, sleeping at his left, and Ira South of Decatur, Iowa, at his right. He could not help wondering whether the Graves' Registration boys would find this tiny clump of three mounds. They did. The heroes have been taken to one of our three principal forward cemeteries; at Giropa Point, Buna Village and Soputa.

  “We try,” said McGrane, without cataloguing any of the difficulties, “to treat every man with the same respect he would get if he were with his own people at home. That is the real reason behind all this business of coordinates in the jungle. Our own maps are the only ones we fully trust.”

  HOW A CHUTIST FEELS—DREAD, DROP, ELATION

  (With seven parachute jumps—two more than the qualifying count of five—George Weller became, by special permission of General MacArthur, the first war correspondent to pass the regulation tests for a paratrooper in the Pacific.)

  Somewhere in New Guinea—November 26, 1943

  “Stand in the door!” That is the order which rings in paratroopers' ears even in their dreams. That is the last order they hear before the final command, “Go.”

  If your legs could relax, they would tremble. If your heart were not commanding all your blood, it would climb in your throat. But every sense, every tension, every resource is concentrated on this final second.

  “Stand in the door” is a command nobody hears with indifference. Here is the essence of war. It is what that lost word “charge”—never heard in the jungle—once was to infantry. The men get $50 and officers $100 a month extra as “jump pay,” but few volunteer because of the money. As one paratrooper said: “Nothing could pay you for that moment when you are standing in the door for your first jump. You're just numb.” Paratroopers think that any congressional committee which looks askance at their extra pay ought to stand in that door sometime.

  Perhaps you have time to look down at the left of the door through whose windblown emptiness you are about to launch yourself—or be launched, for your comrades will carry you through it in their plunges, should you hesitate.

  If you look down by the door you see the helmeted jump master, crouched in the ripping wind of the propeller blast. His cheeks are distorted, pulled out by the wind. He
peers with terrible intentness along the grey flank of the plane, watching for the tiny patch of land to which you must float. Two lights on a tiny switchboard labeled Jumpers' Signal are against the inner wall of the plane, about head-high and operated by the pilot. Red is warning, green means jump. But it is not the pilot who has the job of starting you down toward the field. His responsibility is the approach. It is that peering officer—sometimes a sergeant, sometimes a lieutenant, sometimes of higher rating—who will send you through the door. His eyes are wind-clouded. Tears creep down his face but are blurred on his cheeks and dry almost instantly.

  The propeller noise whips your ears to deafness. They are dulled anyway, for that vacant door has been staring you in the face ever since you hobbled aboard with your back laden with ammunition, food, gear, rifle and sometimes a telephone.

  The whole plane has been vibrating tinnily Unexpectedly the propeller roar is curbed. The pandemonium of wind dies, and more tinnily than ever you hear the stamping of those high boots which will soon—whatever happens—bite the soil.

  Softer and softer grows the sound of the wind. The pilot is throttling the motors down. It is like that moment when the plane is coming in for a landing and you are uncertain how things will turn out. It seems incredibly quiet.

  “Well, this is it,” says the man behind you. A few seconds before, he checked those grocery-store strings that bind the upper cone of the parachute to a static line.