About six forty-five a.m., fifteen minutes after leaving the cove, a crewman called out, “Sail ho.” A Japanese cruiser was spotted on the horizon. On their current course, the boats would cross the cruiser’s bow. Hoping the sharp-eyed Japanese lookouts might mistake the PT boats’ wakes for white-top waves, Bulkeley spun his steering wheel hard to the right, to run parallel to the enemy warship. As he changed course, Bulkeley turned and saw the slight form of Mrs. MacArthur standing behind him. She looked concerned but not worried.
“My general is asleep,” she said, pronouncing it “my gineral,” with her Tennessee drawl. She always referred to her husband by using his rank, Southern style, and he in turn called her “Ma’am” or “Mrs. MacArthur,” even in private. “Do I need to wake him?”
“No, ma’am,” Bulkeley said. “Let him rest.”
The ruse worked and the cruiser was soon out of sight, and Bulkeley steered his flotilla back on course.
The seas got rougher after midnight, with lightning flashing in the distance. In the Mindanao Sea, waves of fifteen to twenty feet crashed over the bows, dousing the men on deck. Bulkeley was riding in the wake of Kelly’s 34 boat, hoping to make MacArthur’s ride a tad smoother.
The night was cold and pitch-black, and Bulkeley was navigating on dead reckoning. Then, in the first streaks of dawn, he could dimly discern the dark outlines of Mindanao and Negros islands.
It was just after six thirty a.m. when the trio of boats now comprising Squadron 3 tied up at the wharf. Mindanao’s commander, Brig. Gen. William F. Sharp, was there to meet his boss. MacArthur stepped onto the wooden pier, followed by Bulkeley. The general shook salt water out of his cap, then flipped it onto his head and said to the PT skipper, “Buck, I’m giving every officer and man here the Silver Star for gallantry. You’ve taken me out of the jaws of death and I won’t forget it. If these boats never accomplish anything more and were burned now, they’d have earned their keep a thousand times over. If possible, when I get to Melbourne, I’ll get you and your key men out.”
With a salute, MacArthur climbed into Sharp’s staff car for the trip to the Del Monte plantation.
* * *
Even as MacArthur’s plane took off for Darwin, conditions were deteriorating for the men he left behind on Bataan. Sickness and malnutrition had become worse enemies than the Japanese, and by late March, one-fourth of the eighty thousand defenders were unfit for combat. And their spirits were not heartened by MacArthur’s radio message to them from Australia, urging them to continue the fight. That message, and his flight to Australia, was commemorated in true GI style, in a poem the men called “Dugout Doug”:
In Australia’s fresh clime,
he took out the time
to send us a message of cheer.
My heart, he began,
Goes out to Bataan.
But the rest of me’s
Staying right here.
MacArthur knew of the poem, and it stung him deeply, but not as deeply as the fall of Bataan on April 9, or the radio message sent to Roosevelt on May 6 from General Wainwright deep inside Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor: “With broken heart, and head bowed in sadness but not in shame, I report to Your Excellency that today I must arrange terms for surrender of the fortified islands of Manila Bay.”
To MacArthur, Wainwright radioed, “I have fought for you to the best of my ability from Lingayen Gulf to Bataan to Corregidor. Good-bye, General.”
With that, eighty thousand men, including twelve thousand Americans, went into captivity, and MacArthur’s humiliation was complete.
But so was his resolve to return, and from March 1942 on, everything MacArthur did, every military plan he made, every offensive action he ordered was made with one purpose in mind: his promised return to the Philippines.
To begin with, in May the Japanese juggernaut had at last been stopped. An invasion force led by carriers and bound for the vital Allied base at Port Moresby, on the southern tip of New Guinea’s Papua province, had been met by U.S. forces in the Coral Sea. While the Americans had taken the brunt of the beating, with the carrier Lexington sunk and Yorktown damaged, in return for the loss of one small enemy carrier, a Japanese invasion force, for the first time in the war, had been turned back.
In July, the Japanese made another stab at Port Moresby, this time by landing troops on the northern coast of Papua at the villages of Gona and Buna, then along the Kokoda Trail, hoping to take the port through the back door. There, amid the jagged heights of the Owen Stanley Mountains, they were met by American and Australian troops. The result was a running six-month battle as the Japanese were pushed back to the coast, culminating in the bloody slugging matches around Gona, Buna, and Buna Government Station, where men fought wearing gas masks to stave off the stench of putrefying flesh.
But this victory did not satisfy MacArthur, who was still sixteen hundred miles from the Philippines and twenty-one hundred miles from Manila. MacArthur blamed his lack of progress on his superiors, writing to an admirer, “Probably no commander in American history has been so poorly supported,” and calling it “a national shame.”
He disliked the Joint Chiefs of Staff intensely, and they returned the sentiment, especially the volatile Adm. Ernest J. King, the Chief of Naval Operations. King was so forceful in his condemnation of MacArthur at one meeting that the mild-mannered chief of staff, George C. Marshall, uncharacteristically slammed his fist on the table and said, “I will not have any meetings carried on with this hatred.”
This mutual dislike and distrust between MacArthur and the Joint Chiefs spilled over to the battlefield. In planning his eventual return to the Philippines, MacArthur first had to retake New Guinea, as well as the Admiralties, Bismarcks, and lesser island groups, and neutralize the Japanese naval base at Rabaul on New Britain. To ensure success in these movements, MacArthur understood that he needed accurate and dependable intelligence concerning enemy troop strengths, defenses, and morale, as well as beach conditions, waves, tides, and underwater obstacles. But where commanders in other theaters of operation used the highly skilled men of the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, the forerunner of today’s CIA, MacArthur refused, suspicious of its ties to the Pentagon.
Instead, to collect his needed information, MacArthur relied on a hodgepodge of sources, such as the Australian Coast Watcher Service, the Allied Intelligence Bureau, the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service, the Allied Geographical Section, and the navy’s underwater demolition teams.
However, since these services fell under different commanders in both the army and navy, and interservice suspicion and rivalries ran rampant throughout the officer corps, it proved difficult for MacArthur to get accurate and timely intelligence. Commanders, both American and Allied, were reluctant to share their data.
In the fall of 1943, as plans were being made for the seizure of western New Britain, code-named Operation Dexterity, a group called the 7th Amphibious Force Special Service Unit #1 was formed, under the command of Lt. William B. Coultas.
Nicknamed the “Amphibious Scouts,” the small ad hoc force was a joint navy-army operation that would combine the army skills of long-range ground reconnaissance with the navy skills of beach markings, demolition, and hydrologic studies, into a potent intelligence-gathering force.
The Amphibious Scouts were a combined effort between Adm. Daniel E. Barbey and one of MacArthur’s top ground commanders, Maj. Gen. Walter E. Krueger, commander of the sixty thousand men who comprised the 6th Army.
A gruff, wiry Texan, Krueger had been selected to spearhead Operation Dexterity. Krueger, whose father, Julius, had fought under Otto von Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War, was just eight years old when he came to America with his mother in 1889, four years after his father’s death. Krueger joined the army in 1898 and served as a private with the 2nd U.S. Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish-American War. His volunteer enlistment ended after four months, and he reenlisted in the regular army, being assigned to the 12th Infantry. He saw act
ion in the Philippines during the Philippine Insurrection, where he was elevated to sergeant. His actions in the taking of the barrio of San Juan de Guimba led to a battlefield commission as a second lieutenant, and he was assigned to the 30th Infantry.
During the First World War, Krueger held a staff position and by 1919 was a lieutenant colonel. Marshall promoted him to brigadier general in 1941 and assigned him to the 3rd Army, which, by the time of its activation in January 1942, had been redesignated the 6th Army. Krueger, who had settled in San Antonio, Texas, dubbed his command with the code name the Alamo Force, in honor of the old Spanish mission in his adopted hometown.
The Alamo Force, comprised of about sixty thousand men, reached Australia in February 1943, and the general was put at the head of the Papua phase of MacArthur’s New Guinea operations.
Krueger’s hope that the Amphibious Scouts would be the answer to MacArthur’s prayers for reliable intelligence was dashed on the group’s first mission. The assignment was a ten-day reconnaissance, October 6 to 16, of the Gasmata area near Cape Gloucester in New Britain.
Before the unit’s departure, Krueger briefed mission leader Lt. Milton Beckworth of his intelligence, or G2, section, on what to look for, and to report directly back to him upon their return. The information would then be shared with the navy.
The ten-day mission went smoothly, but a communications glitch on the last day meant the PT boats assigned to recover the team failed to arrive. With no way back, the Amphibious Scouts were stranded behind enemy lines. Their rations depleted, and forced to eat what they could scrounge from the jungle, the half-starved men were finally picked up and returned to their base on October 27, eleven days after their initial pickup date.
There was still more disturbing news, especially for Krueger. Beckworth, who was to report to his general as soon as he returned, was instead shanghaied by the navy and taken to Milne Bay at the eastern tip of New Guinea. There, over his protestations, he was held in seclusion and questioned about the mission by Naval Intelligence officers. After the debriefing, he was forced to remain, a virtual prisoner, on a boat anchored offshore. Four days into his ordeal, Beckworth managed to get topside, dove into the water, and swam to shore. Wet and angry, he worked his way back to Krueger’s headquarters.
As Krueger listened to Beckworth’s story, his face reddened in anger from the neck up, like a rising thermometer.
“To hell with this,” Krueger raged. “I’ll form my own intelligence unit.”
Turning to an aide, he said, “Have Colonel Bradshaw report to my headquarters as soon as possible.”
In that moment of anger, the 6th U.S. Army Special Reconnaissance Unit, which would become known as the Alamo Scouts, was born. The unit would play a key role in bringing the campaign in the southwest Pacific to a successful conclusion, and prove itself one of the most potent weapons in American intelligence-gathering history.
CHAPTER 3
Recruitment and Training
“. . . the highest quality of soldiering.”
Seated at his desk at 6th Army G2, Lt. Col. Frederick W. Bradshaw studied the orders he had just received from General Krueger. Dated November 21, 1943, the order read:1. The Alamo Scouts Training Center (ASTC) is hereby established under the supervision of Headquarters Alamo Force at the earliest practicable date prior to 1 January 1944, and at a location in the vicinity of the present headquarters.
2. The Training Center will train selected volunteers in reconnaissance and raider work. The course will cover a six-week period. Specially selected graduates will be grouped into teams at the disposal of the commanding General, Alamo Force, and will be designated “Alamo Scouts”; the remainder will be returned to their respective commands for similar use by their commanders.
3. Commanders of combat units will be called upon from time to time to furnish personnel for the above training. Personnel so selected must possess the highest qualifications as to courage, stamina, intelligence and adaptability.
As directed by Krueger, Bradshaw was to set up a rigorous, innovative program gleaned from the training manuals of other elite units, such as Carlson’s Raiders, Merrill’s Marauders, the Amphibious Scouts, the Devil’s Brigade, and Darby’s Rangers, with a focus on intelligence gathering, jungle survival, and fighting skills. The new outfit was to be called the 6th U.S. Army Special Reconnaissance Unit, or Alamo Scouts, in deference to its parent organization, the 6th Army “Alamo Force.”
Bradshaw was then to put out a call throughout the 6th Army for volunteers who wished to perform hazardous duty and develop them into a reconnaissance force capable of infiltrating enemy lines, gathering needed information, and getting out, preferably undetected. He had the pick of almost any man he wanted under Krueger’s command and free rein to equip them with the best weapons and materials the U.S. Army could provide. The training camp would also be the unit’s base of operations and could be wherever Bradshaw wanted, provided it was within easy reach of Krueger, for the general considered this unit his personal reconnaissance force, and their use in the field was solely at his discretion.
Bradshaw had served as G2 intelligence officer for the 31st Division until he had been plucked from there by Krueger to serve on his staff in January 1943. The general liked Bradshaw’s clear-sighted intelligence and his quiet but firm leadership abilities.
An attorney from Jackson, Mississippi, prior to the war Bradshaw had political ambitions on the state level, including an eye on the governor’s office.
Bradshaw had joined the Mississippi National Guard in 1931, serving as a private in Company C of the 155th Infantry. Shortly thereafter, with his background and abilities, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, and began to climb the command ladder. In October 1940, Bradshaw joined the 31st Division as assistant judge advocate and within four months was promoted to major and assigned to the general staff as assistant chief of staff for the division. Sent to general staff school, he graduated on December 6, 1941, just as Japan’s Pearl Harbor strike force was closing on Oahu.
Now Bradshaw had been assigned to recruit and train an elite, tough team of jungle specialists, and for that he knew he needed an equally elite and tough staff of instructors.
His first selection as executive officer was Maj. John F. Polk, formerly of the 1st Cavalry Division, but he soon lost Polk to 6th Army HQ, where he was made liaison officer.
Bradshaw next turned to Capt. Homer A. Williams as his XO and chief training officer. The Philadelphia native joined the army in 1927 and rose through the ranks, where he developed a widespread reputation as a stern disciplinarian. With a shock of fire-engine-red hair—he was one of several men among the Scouts to be dubbed “Red”—and a gruff demeanor, he was a man to be obeyed. No soldier who served under Williams wanted to be called into his office for a dressing-down, for he handed out punishments long to be remembered.
Williams’s job would be to help Bradshaw recruit and interview candidates, implement the training program, and select the men who would eventually comprise the Scout teams.
For his supply officer, Bradshaw needed someone resourceful, so he turned to 1st Lt. Mayo S. Stuntz. Hailing from Vienna, Virginia, Stuntz was a former member of the Naval Amphibious Scouts. Bradshaw met Stuntz while the two worked together for 6th Army G2 and knew the man was a superior scrounger.
Bradshaw called on Stuntz and told him about the Scouts and what he wanted Stuntz to do.
“I want these men to have the best of everything, weapons, food, accommodations, you name it,” Bradshaw told Stuntz. “Think you can handle it?”
Stuntz nodded.
“Provided you don’t care about where or how I get the stuff,” he said.
Bradshaw smiled.
“No questions asked,” he replied with a wink.
Capt. Richard “Doc” Canfield of Pittsburgh had seen duty as a frontline medical officer on Guadalcanal and was working with the 52nd Evacuation Hospital in New Caledonia when Bradshaw approached him. Canfield agreed to serve as
medical officer, as well as to oversee camp and mess hall cleanliness. He would also be tasked with teaching the Scout candidates advanced jungle first aid. Typical of the tropics, Canfield would also spend a great deal of time trying to prevent or control malaria, dengue fever, dysentery, and the other myriad of afflictions that could knock a man out of action as effectively as a Japanese bullet. Canfield became very popular with the unit as the inventor of “torpedo juice,” a concoction of fruit juice and torpedo propellant, guaranteed to loosen the tongues of even the most tight-lipped of men during the debriefing after a mission.
Assisting Canfield would be his team of medics, men like Dominick Cicippio, a Norristown, Pennsylvania, boy who transferred to the Scouts from the 24th Division. Cicippio and the other medics would not accompany Scouts on missions. Instead, they remained in camp, helping tend those who returned injured or were down with illness. They also implemented Canfield’s program of camp sanitation and safety, a job that included, Cicippio recalled, inspecting the area each morning for any of the island’s ninety varieties of snakes, especially the lethal taipan and the death adder, who might decide to take up residence in the camp overnight.
The post of adjutant was vacant until April 1944, when Bradshaw tapped Lt. Lewis B. Hochstrasser, who had just graduated from the training program and had impressed Bradshaw. A Billings, Montana, native, Hochstrasser had joined the Montana National Guard in 1932 and enlisted in the regular army on January 8, 1941. As adjutant, his duties included payroll and censoring mail, as well as instructing the volunteers in message writing and how to use the army’s Intelligence Handbook.
Shadows In the Jungle Page 5