Shadows In the Jungle

by Larry Alexander

  Except for Hochstrasser, Bradshaw’s staff was assembled by Thanksgiving 1943. His next task was selecting instructors. For these jobs, Bradshaw turned to former members of the recently disbanded Naval Amphibious Scouts, men who had already mastered such skills as rubber boat handling, infiltrating enemy lines, scouting and patrolling, and communications and intelligence gathering. These were all talents his candidates would need. Only the best instructors would do.

  One of Bradshaw’s first choices was Lieutenant Beckworth, the young Naval Amphibious Scout officer who had led the mission to Gasmata in October and had been kidnapped by the navy on his team’s return.

  As the war progressed and classes of qualified men graduated from the program, some of them were invited to stay on as instructors. One of these was Lt. Sidney Tison, a former member of the Allied Intelligence Bureau who won a Bronze Star in 1943 after he infiltrated Luzon from the submarine Nautilus, linked up with Filipino guerrillas, and led a raid on a Japanese installation that killed two hundred enemy soldiers. Another graduate-turned-teacher would be Lt. Henry “Snake” Baker, another Bronze Star winner in the Philippines, who had rigged the fuses of captured Japanese artillery shells in order to blow up three trainloads of enemy soldiers and equipment.

  * * *

  Having assembled his staff, Bradshaw turned his attention to the camp itself. According to the orders from Krueger, the location was up to him, provided it be in the vicinity of 6th Army headquarters. Also, because of the highly classified nature of the unit and the nature of its training, the location had to be near water and yet secluded.

  At first Bradshaw scouted locations on Goodenough Island, or Morata to the natives, one of three islands in the D’Entrecasteaux Island group, just off the northeast coast of New Guinea. This island had been home to 353 Japanese soldiers of the 5th Sasebo Naval Landing Force, who had arrived there in August 1942 while en route to the fight at Buna, then were stranded when the seven barges carrying them were destroyed by Allied aircraft. Sixty men had been evacuated by submarine, but before the rest could be brought off, they were attacked by U.S. and Australian troops on October 22-23, 1942. Most of the Japanese were rescued by another sub run, but a forty-man rear guard was annihilated.

  Overlooked by the eighty-five-hundred-foot Mount Goodenough, the highest point in the Papuan group, the oval-shaped island, twenty miles long and ten miles wide, and comprised of coastal plain and coconut plantations, was thought to be a good place to establish Bradshaw’s camp. On closer inspection, however, it was determined that the island’s mosquito-infested swamps and rough surf would hinder rather than help the training.

  Then Bradshaw was informed that the Naval Amphibious Scouts were disbanding and their camp was available. Located at Kalo Kalo on the west coast of Fergusson Island, just thirty minutes by PT boat from Krueger’s headquarters, it was tailor-made for Bradshaw’s purposes. It worked well for the former Naval Amphibious Scouts and now Alamo Scouts instructor Milt Beckworth, who would not have to move his gear out of his tent.

  Krueger had directed Bradshaw to erect a training facility on an excellence level beyond anything MacArthur or Admiral Barbey, who oversaw the Naval Amphibious Scouts, had established prior. Heeding those instructions, Bradshaw immediately went about having the camp enlarged and upgraded. Within a month of taking over, a theftproof supply room, a dayroom, and a small-arms range were added, and a second boat dock built. A new shower house was erected, as was a 150-man mess hall with cement floor and screened-in kitchen. New tents were acquired for the men: officers would sleep two to a tent, enlisted men six to a tent.

  To Bradshaw’s amazement, Stuntz, thanks to his “no questions asked” policy, obtained a kerosene-powered Electrolux refrigerator, a radio, electric lights, and a film projector for the regular showing of movies. The permanent latrine, which consisted of two fifty-five-gallon drums buried end to end, even boasted toilet seats.

  The men who would live here proudly came to call the place Hotel Alamo.

  To teach the men physical combat, Bradshaw brought in Lt. Carl Moyer from the 1st Marine Division. Moyer’s program would include ninety minutes of rigorous exercise daily, including running, swimming, calisthenics, hiking, and self-defense techniques, such as judo and karate, as well as instructions on how to use elbows, head smashes, feet, and knees to immobilize an attacker.

  The 260-pound Moyer was an imposing figure who easily tossed both men and officers around, almost with sadistic glee. He sported a brown belt in judo, or what he referred to as “man-to-man combat.”

  One of Moyer’s favorite exercises involved the men standing in a circle, facing inward, all blindfolded. An “attacker” would prowl around the circle and, without warning, throw a stranglehold on a soldier. The victim not only had to break the hold but throw the attacker to the ground and finish him off. To keep the trainees sharp, they were told to attack their fellow Scouts, including officers, at any time without warning.

  Bradshaw also began bringing in auxiliary or “overhead” personnel for the operational and maintenance work at the camp. Cooks, drivers, bakers, boat handlers, radiomen, and supply clerks were recruited. Since some of these men had combat experience, they often played the role of “aggressor forces” to aid in the training of the Scouts. The overhead personnel enjoyed their duty, not just because of the quality of the food or the camp but because they were allowed to perform their jobs without officers breathing down their necks.

  As the camp was being built, Bradshaw turned his attention to the men who would be training there. He decided early that combat veterans would get first preference. He wanted physically fit men of courage, drive, skill, intelligence, and good judgment. Backwoodsmen, or men used to life in the wilderness, were preferred. The candidates would have to be able to swim half a mile in rough surf, and have twenty-twenty vision. Probably most of all, they had to have endurance, to be able to withstand long marches with little or no rest, and prolonged periods behind enemy lines, with a minimum of food.

  Training would be an ongoing process, Bradshaw knew. The rigorous program he and his instructors had mapped out guaranteed that all but the fittest would be weeded out over the six-week course. Of those who completed the training, some, but not all, would be retained and assigned to a team, consisting of one officer and six enlisted men. The rest would still graduate as qualified Scouts, but would be returned to their original units, either because they were not selected for a team or at their own or their commanding officer’s personal request, to perform reconnaissance duties there. After graduation, a new class would be recruited, and the process repeated, to meet the war’s demand.

  As the 6th Army advanced across New Guinea and, eventually, the Philippines, the Alamo Scout Training Camp, or ASTC, would move with it. The Fergusson Island camp, for example, would exist until April 8, when it would be moved to Mange Point near Finschhafen, New Guinea. On July 3, the camp would reopen at Cape Kassoe near Hollandia, the former capital of Dutch-owned western New Guinea. There it would remain until after the invasion of the Philippines, when the ASTC training camp would move to Leyte, then to Luzon, first to Calasiao and, finally, to Mabayo on Subic Bay.

  But that was all still in the future. For now, the first ASTC opened on December 3, 1943, with class set to begin on December 27.

  Orders were sent to every regiment under Krueger’s command to furnish headquarters with the names of one hundred prescreened candidates, enlisted men, and junior grade officers, along with a list of criteria they were to meet. The men were to be interviewed by their platoon leaders and/or company commanders. Usually, but not always, they were told that the duty they were being interviewed for was extremely hazardous, and they could refuse if they so desired. Those who made it through that level were next interviewed by regimental and division officers. Following that process, the top one hundred were sent to Bradshaw.1

  Unless the candidates were at remote outposts, in which case they were accepted based solely on their commander’s
recommendation, each man selected was interviewed by either Bradshaw or Williams. Andy Smith, who would later take part in the Alamo Scouts’ most famous mission at Cabanatuan, was one of the former. Told he “fit the qualifications,” he was sent to the ASTC without an interview.

  Those who did go through the interview would be called into a room and told to sit at a table across from his interviewer. On the table, scattered at random, would be about twenty-five items, such as a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a compass, a pencil, a comb, a watch, a button, and so forth. Throughout the interview, no mention of these items would be made. Instead, the man was asked about his background and where he was from, his prewar occupation, and his family.

  He was asked if he liked the outdoors, and how well he worked with others. If the man was an officer or noncommissioned officer, he was asked how he felt about taking advice or even orders from a private. Throughout this, the prospective Scout was being assessed for his intelligence, his common sense, and his ability to work as a member of a team. Those who fell short in any of these categories were sent packing.

  To test his motivation, a man would again be briefed on the hazards of the duty and asked why he volunteered. If his answer was a flippant “To kill Japs,” or some similar bit of bravado, he was rejected.

  At the conclusion of the interview, the man was dismissed. As he rose and headed for the door, Bradshaw or Williams would say, “Stop! Without turning around, there are items lying here on the table. Name as many as you can.”

  Those who did not recall an adequate number, even to the brand of cigarettes and make of watch, were sent back to their units.

  Robert Teeples, then twenty-five and a member of L Company, 128th Regiment of the 32nd “Red Arrow” Division, volunteered after he transferred out of his former unit “in disgust.” He had been busted to private for missing pill call, during which men were given bad-tasting Atabrine to stave off malaria, after he returned from the hard fighting at Buna.

  Interviewed by Bradshaw, he was asked if he was afraid to die, how far he could swim, and would he be squeamish about killing another human being. Teeples soon became a member of the ASTC’s first class.

  Jack Geiger of New Jersey joined the army in 1943 and, after basic training, was assigned to the 422nd Regiment of the 106th Division. But before the Golden Lions could ship out for Europe (where the division would be decimated during the Battle of the Bulge and two regiments, including Geiger’s 422nd, surrounded and captured), Geiger and a number of other privates were pulled out to serve as replacements bound for the Pacific.

  Geiger ended up with the 31st Division at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia, where the unit prepared for debarkation. He arrived in New Guinea in February 1944 and worked a stint as a jeep driver, ferrying pilots from their barracks to the airfield.

  “It was great,” he recalled years later. “I didn’t have to do all that crazy training with the division.”

  Eventually he was sent back to his unit, I Company, and it was there that he saw a notice tacked to the company bulletin board calling for volunteers for intelligence work. With no idea what he was in for, he applied. Geiger went through the initial interview with his company officers, packed his gear, and was sent to see Bradshaw. Of the almost one hundred men who went with him, only fifteen were selected for Scout training and sent on to the ASTC at Mange Point. Geiger was one of them, joining the Scouts’ third class.

  Lt. Wilbur Littlefield, a twenty-one-year-old Californian with the rugged good looks of a young Clark Gable, was on New Britain with the 40th Division, 160th Regiment, when he caught word that a new unit was being formed. A product of Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, all the Los Angeles-born man knew about this unit, he later recalled, was “that they wanted volunteers for a dangerous mission behind Japanese lines.” Littlefield, who had yet to see any action, was one of three officers and twenty-six men from his company to volunteer, which guaranteed stiff competition since only one officer and six men from the entire regiment would be selected for further consideration. Littlefield recalled that, “in typical army fashion,” the first officer selected by the company “couldn’t even read a map.”

  “I don’t know how he ever got his commission,” Littlefield said.

  Sixth Army G2 was furious that the division commander tried to pawn this man off and sent an officer of their own to make the selection. By coincidence, before the war this officer had been a teacher in the Los Angeles high school Littlefield had attended. The two knew each other and Littlefield got the nod and would be a member of the ASTC’s third class.

  Born on a farm forty miles northeast of Seattle, Oliver Roesler was a Pacific Northwest lumberman. He had been a University of Washington ROTC student until the war broke out, at which time he threw his books into his school locker and went out to join the service. Roesler had wanted to fly, but the military needed infantrymen more, so he ended up in the 31st Division. He quickly discovered the army was tough, hardly what he had been led to believe “by watching Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour movies.”

  Then he heard about men being needed for a new, elite unit. Rumor was that the men selected would perform “two missions behind Jap lines and we’ll send you back to the States,” so he volunteered and joined the Scouts’ third class. Before the war was over, he would do nine missions.

  Terry Santos joined the army in his native San Francisco. A feisty young man of nineteen, he craved action, so he volunteered for the 11th Airborne and, later, a reconnaissance and intelligence platoon attached to the Office of Strategic Services. When he reached New Guinea, he heard about the Alamo Scouts and expressed interest. However, he was informed that General MacArthur did not want any men in his theater of operations with ties to the OSS, so Santos quit that unit and was soon accepted for the ASTC, and would join its fourth class in 1944.

  Robert Buschur was an Ohio farmer who was with the 40th Division recon platoon in New Britain when he read about the search for volunteers on the company bulletin board and decided to “check it out.” Drafted at the age of eighteen, he trained at Fort Riley, Kansas, and, in August 1943, helped mop up Japanese forces on Guadalcanal. Later, he was set to go ashore with his division on New Ireland, waiting with the troops offshore, when the invasion was canceled by MacArthur, who had learned that there were forty thousand Japanese on the island waiting for his men. The island was bypassed, and Buschur and his comrades were sent back, first to Guadalcanal, then on to Cape Gloucester, and, finally, New Guinea.

  Yearning for action, the twenty-year-old Buschur now acted on the bulletin board announcement and volunteered for the Scouts. He was accepted for the ASTC’s third class.

  The end of the interviews was not the end of the weeding-out process.

  William Blaise, who was one of the few men who had joined the army before Pearl Harbor and would become a member of the ASTC’s third class, recalled, “The first night they put us in a big tent and gave us cards, checkers, and different games. They said training would start first thing in the morning. The next morning some of the men were sent back already. The staff was looking for loudmouths and bullies, and where else but in a card game could you find loudmouths and bullies? They sent the blowhards back right away. You had to have men who could live and work together. Same way with the officers. You would look at the teams and you wouldn’t know who the officers were.”

  In the end, less than half of the men interviewed were accepted for training. These soldiers represented a variety of military and ethnic backgrounds, including infantrymen, artillerymen, tankers, paratroopers, signalmen, and engineers. Most were Caucasian, but a number of others were Filipino, Hispanic, and Native Americans from at least twenty tribes, including Chippewa, Navajo, Apache, Choctaw, Sioux, Pawnee, Cherokee, and Seminole. Of the thirty-eight men in the first graduating class on February 5, 1944, nine would be Native Americans.

  On the first day of training, the Scout candidates would gather in the screened-in mess hall, seated on hard wooden benches,
while Bradshaw addressed them.

  “You will certainly agree that this is the nicest all-around camp that you have attended in this theater,” he told the candidates. “It is a good camp because all have worked together to make it so. You are expected to help keep it that way. A part of your training and a thing you will be strictly graded on is the manner in which you conduct yourselves. You may have had the idea that Alamo Scouts is an organization of cutthroats and toughs. We want you to be tough—just as tough as you can make yourselves—but we don’t have any place in this organization for a ‘tough.’ This type of work does not call for bums and tramps. It calls for the highest qualities of soldiering. Self-discipline is one of the first attributes. Be considerate of your fellow soldiers and of temperate disposition. You will be treated as individuals and as men—gentlemen, if you please. You will be expected to respond in a similar manner.

  “Remember, you were not asked to come to this training center. It is our understanding that each and every one of you is a volunteer of his own free will and accord. If there is any one of you who has any reservations, mental or otherwise, make yourself known to the Director of Training and you will be released to return to your organization without any questions.

  “You will be closely observed during all of the six weeks you are here. If it is found that you are not mentally, temperamentally, or physically fit and up to the standards required; if it is found that you are not giving it all you have; if it is found that you are not sincerely trying—you will be returned. Time is too precious to waste on those who do not fit. There are no disciplinary problems here. Breaches of discipline are quickly disposed of by returning the violator to his unit.