Shadows In the Jungle

by Larry Alexander

  “The officers of the staff are here with the single thought of furnishing you with their best in the way of training. There is no need for you to have the slightest fear of them. They are ordinary human beings, just as you and I are, and they hope you will consider them as such in your contacts with them. Practically all of us started in the army as privates, including myself. Most of us are civilian soldiers doing the simple job of trying to help our country win a war. If you have any suggestions to offer, any real criticism or complaint or anything else you want to get off your chest, we encourage you to discuss it with a member of the staff; or, if you are hesitant to do that, then simply write a note and drop it in the mailbox in the dayroom. You do not even need to sign it. The relationships here are very informal, based as they are on mutual respect and sincere effort.

  “At the conclusion of this class, some of you will be selected as Alamo Scouts and retained to execute such reconnaissance missions as the army commander may desire. The majority of you will be returned to your units, where your training will stand you in good stead and where you will be available to your division, regimental, and battalion commanders for their missions. A few of you will not make the grade for one reason or another. In any event, you will be better soldiers for what you have received here and it is hoped that you always carry with you the tradition and esprit de corps of the ‘Alamo Scouts.’

  “Training begins tomorrow. That is all.”

  * * *

  Bradshaw was as good as his word. At five thirty a.m. the men were roused, and after a breakfast of powdered scrambled eggs, fried corned beef, fresh fruit, such as mangoes, coconuts, and oranges, and coffee, the day began in earnest.

  The men were divided into teams consisting of an officer and six to ten men, depending on the ratio of officers to enlisted men. For the most part they would remain together all through training or until attrition, which often ran as high as 40 percent in the first two weeks, made the team too small to function. At that time they might be combined with another dwindling group. On occasion, Scouts were rotated to different teams in order to get to know other men and officers.

  One of the first orders of business was to draw equipment: black swimming trunks, jungle first aid packets—which included morphine syrettes, sulfa drugs, a small bandage, water purification tablets, and assorted tropical ointments—weapons, compass, binoculars, machete, pistol belt, poncho, cartridge pouch, canteen, and trench knife.

  The standard uniform was an olive green herringbone or two-piece camouflage fatigues with soft cap and high quarter hobnail shoes with optional leggings. Rank insignia was worn during training but was not to be worn in action. Officers’ bars were an invitation for an enemy bullet in the field.

  The teams, on average, were equipped with two pairs of binoculars, two map cases, two compasses, and two canteens per man. Each man carried a personal knife (no machetes) and one hundred rounds of ammo—which was found to be too much and was cut back—four flares, two Handi-Talkie radios, and a rubber boat, complete with CO2 capsule, although some also relied on hand pumps.

  A physical examination was next, after which the men were led to the dock area.

  “You now have some free swimming time,” they were told. “Controlled swimming starts tomorrow. Jump in and have fun.”

  The men did, but soon learned that nothing in the Scouts would be “free.” The water was deep, twenty-eight feet, which meant the men had to paddle around. Those who tired before the “free swim” was over and had to get out or be pulled out were shipped back to their units.

  Controlled swimming meant that the men had to paddle from the dock to a point about half a mile out and back. Sometimes they were taken a mile or more out and dumped over the side and told to swim.

  “Chow will be ready when you get in,” the instructor barked.

  On occasion, the men had to swim carrying gear, the rationale being that their boat might capsize and they would have to save their equipment. Another drill involved swimming out to a waiting boat, where they would find their gear. There, they had to put it on, while still in the water, and swim back. Sometimes strings were stretched out across the water, and when a man came to one, he had to swim under it.

  Lt. Robert “Red” Sumner recalled his first day of training when he and his team, fully dressed, were taken half a mile out into the bay on an LCVP landing craft. Then, by the half-mile buoy, the ramp was lowered and they were told to get off.

  “I gathered my squad and off the ramp we went, jump or dive, and about twenty minutes later we were on the beach, somewhat tired but none the worse,” he wrote years later. “From this point on, we were off and running for our six weeks.”

  One especially memorable, and frightening, drill was on how to avoid enemy fire while in the water. As the swimmers approached a boat or a pier, an instructor stood, brandishing a Tommy gun.

  “Duck,” he would yell, and the men went down as fast and deep as they could, moving left or right as they dove, for an instant later, the water where their heads had been was peppered with submachine-gun fire.

  Teeples recalled one drill where the men dove into the water on one side of the pier, then swam underwater around the front of the pier, to the other side, a distance of sixty or seventy feet.

  Littlefield recalled the intense training and how easy it was for a man to get booted out of the ASTC. His tent mate, for example, was a “helluva fine soldier,” Littlefield recalled, who was sent back to his unit because he snored loudly, which would never do for someone behind enemy lines.

  Bob Buschur worried. He was not a great swimmer, and swimming was an important part of Scout training. During his first time swimming out to the rubber boat, he recalled reaching it and placing his hands on the boat to rest. An instructor on board the boat stepped on Buschur’s fingers, forcing the young man to let go.

  “You came out here to swim and practice diving, not to rest,” he was gruffly told.

  By far, the most physically demanding and dangerous part of the water training was learning to handle the ungainly rubber boats. Ten hours a week were devoted to this, including rowing the boats through the hazardous coral spray on the windward side of a cove at Hollandia. To practice nighttime navigation, two men would row a mile out, pick out a landmark on the shore, and fix a compass reading on the mark. Then they were required to cover their heads with a poncho and, using just the compass, row to shore in an attempt to land as close as possible to the mark.

  During the first day of training, each team was issued a six- or ten-man rubber boat with oars. Their instructors, Lieutenants Beckworth, Frederick A. Sukup, Daily P. Gambill, and Henry R. Chalko, taught them how to inflate the craft with lung power, pumps, and CO2 cartridges, how to board and launch them from PT boats and J-boats, and how to maneuver and land in rough surf. They also learned how to conceal and recover boats once onshore.

  The men drilled in daylight and at night. The drills were often dangerous and, on one occasion, deadly. At Tami Beach near Hollandia, a rubber boat capsized and two Scout candidates drowned. They would prove to be the unit’s only fatalities in two years of active duty.

  * * *

  Onshore, training included communications skills in Morse code and radio. Every Scout candidate underwent this training in case the team’s appointed radioman was killed or wounded. They were also taught the use of the blinker light and had to be able to send ten words per minute. The Scouts were trained on the SCR-288 walkie-talkie; the SCR-300 radio, which was carried on a man’s back; and the SCR-694 radio, which was powered by a hand-cranked electrical generator, and which, with its greater range, came in handy later in the war during extended missions in the Philippines, when the men were living and moving with the guerrilla bands. They also learned to use the Australian ATR-4 radio.

  But sometimes communication would involve dealing with natives and the enemy verbally, so members of the Netherlands East Indies Administration taught the men Melanesian pidgin English, a language developed thro
ugh interisland trade that blended native words with English. The Scouts would not be fluent in the language, but would at least know how to ask for food, water, and inquire about the location of the enemy troops. In the Philippines, pidgin English was replaced by Tagalog. The Scouts were also taught basic Japanese, particularly key military words they might overhear.

  Courses taught included map reading, the use of the compass and how to find one’s way through unfamiliar terrain, how to read latitude and longitude to call in airdrops or guide boats in to shore. They learned how to recognize rivers, valleys, and mountains.

  For intelligence-gathering skills, the men were schooled in how to plan missions, including how many men to take, how much food and ammo would be needed, the types of weapons best suited, and the length of the mission. They attended classes on Japanese order of battle and how to handle prisoners. They sketched coastlines, beaches, and other terrain features, to clear the way for invasions, and learned to analyze beach gradients, tides, reefs, vegetation, fresh water sources, soil and sand composition, roads and trails.

  Classes were also held on how to evaluate enemy morale, physical condition, defenses, both fixed and mobile installations, bivouac areas, bridges, roads, ammo dumps, airfields, lines of communication, and other targets of opportunity.

  “When, where, what, why, who covers everything you need to find out on an intelligence operation,” Bradshaw told them. “Never forget that and never vary the order.”

  Methods of concealment were taught, ways to protect themselves by the use of grease paint, mud, grass, and other ways of blending in.

  To survive in the harsh environment of the jungle, the men learned basic reconnaissance and patrolling skills, including escape and evasive techniques, taught by Australian 1st Lt. Raymond “Moose” Watson, on detached duty from the Australian New Guinea Administration Police. Earlier in the war, deep behind enemy lines, Watson and another soldier, along with two native police officers, somewhat derogatorily called “police boys,” had trekked across northern New Guinea, including unexplored regions, to observe enemy shipping. The Japanese jumped them, and though they escaped, they lost all of their weapons and supplies. The police boys helped the white men to survive by showing them the ways of the jungle.

  Now he was teaching the Scouts those same survival techniques and jungle skills, including tracking, which beetles and grubs were edible, and how to tap drinkable water from certain vines.

  Doc Canfield discussed medical and sanitary regulations with the men and stressed ways to prevent malaria and other diseases. He instructed them to take five Atabrine tablets with their evening meals each week, Monday through Thursday. He issued mosquito netting, which was to be put up around their beds in the evening and taken down each morning. Swimming was only allowed between seven a.m. and six p.m., the hours when mosquitoes are less active.

  “Shirtsleeves must be worn down and trousers tucked into socks or leggings,” Canfield said. “Clothes will be boiled when possible, and a fresh uniform will be worn daily.”

  While the main mission of the Alamo Scouts was to observe rather than fight, they had to be prepared to fight if need be. For that reason, Krueger demanded the men have the best possible weaponry. Any piece a man wanted was obtained for him. Carbines were the most popular, although some men armed themselves with the Thompson submachine gun and a few preferred the M1 Garand rifle.

  Requests were also made for the M1A1 carbine with the folding wire stock. Designed specifically for the paratroopers, it was issued only to the airborne units. Yet if an Alamo Scout wanted one, the ever-resourceful Stuntz could supply it.

  Each man also carried a Colt .45-caliber automatic pistol.

  Weapons training included the use and maintenance of the Garand, the carbine, the Thompson, the M3 “grease gun,” and the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), as well as grenades, pistols, knives, garrotes, and clubs. Sniping techniques, with and without a silencer, were also taught. The men worked with the standard Mark II fragmentation grenade, the M15 white phosphorous, or “Willie Peter” grenade, and the AN-M14 incendiary grenade that burns to two thousand degrees and could melt steel.

  In one drill, Teeples said, “We had to climb into a foxhole, then place a grenade on the lip of the hole, pull the pin, and duck until it exploded.” He also recalled learning to fire a 60mm mortar without a base plate or elevating mechanism. Instead, he placed the mortar against the crotch of a tree, bracing his elbows against the limbs, and, with another Scout assisting, visually aimed and fired it at a barrel anchored out in the water.

  The Scouts were instructed on how to make and use snares and booby traps, how to rig explosives and set demolition charges, and were even drilled on the use of enemy weapons. They learned how to move at five- and ten-yard intervals through jungle, to negotiate wire entanglements and avoid booby traps. They were blindfolded and told to move through jungle without being caught.

  During this phase, overhead personnel acting as the enemy sniped at the Scouts with live ammo, placing their rounds so close to the trainees that a few Scouts were treated for minor gunshot wounds.

  By the fourth week, the men were swimming up to five miles and were given a written examination on what they had learned. By this time, some classes had less than half the men they had started with.

  The Scouts also were used as a testing ground for experimental weapons and ideas. Sumner recalled testing silencers for the M1 carbine, the 1903 bolt-action Springfield, and the M3 submachine gun.

  “The .30-caliber carbine models got a good testing too, and we found them to be too heavy, the core material unsatisfactory and the silencers generally unacceptable,” he wrote. “The mechanisms were steel tubes stuffed with various quantities of steel mesh or wool. Some had exhaust vents, some did not. We found too that the internal packing deflected the round fired or affected the flight of the round, usually skewing it, and we could never be sure of the strike on the target. We were too expert at our marksmanship to miss very often, and not being able to depend on the hit offset any value of the silencer. We did find that at close range—ten feet—it was effective, but if we closed to that distance, why not go all the way and use a knife or machete in a close attack.”

  The army also tried to inject some medieval warfare into the Scouts’ repertoire of weaponry by testing crossbows developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories. The bows were made of aluminum and steel, and fired bolts or darts of various dimensions with a wide array of barbs and cutting edges. Poison tips could even be used. The weapon came in two styles, a rifle model and a pistol-style bow.

  The rifle model proved unwieldy, Sumner recalled, and good for only one shot because the loud clack emitted by resetting the bow was “earth shattering.” The pistol-style bow was better, with a maximum range of fifty feet and a killing range of twenty to twenty-five feet, and a resetting mechanism that was easy to use and virtually soundless. Bill Littlefield’s team used such a bow near Vanimo in New Guinea in August 1944, killing a Japanese sentry, the bolt passing cleanly through his body.

  * * *

  Not every hour was spent in training. During their off-duty time, the Scouts fished, boated, and hunted wild pigs. They also played baseball and volleyball.

  The men enjoyed the best of army food. Lieutenant Stuntz traded surplus items, native goods, and war souvenirs (especially the much-sought-after helmets, swords, rifles, and flags) to the navy or air corps, in exchange for fresh meat, eggs, butter, and vegetables. Stuntz also swapped cigars, chewing tobacco, pineapples, and bananas for meat, eggs, potatoes, apples, and oranges.

  The first thing Bill Littlefield noticed about the eating arrangements, besides the quality of the food, was the lack of segregation in the mess hall. Officers and enlisted men stood in one chow line, and the first man in line, regardless of rank, was the first one served. Officers and enlisted men did eat at separate tables, however, since the officers used this time to discuss the next day’s schedule.

  Not only were Bradshaw’s m
en happy with the arrangements at the ASTC, but so were the locals. Understanding the value of good relationships, Bradshaw employed natives as guards, laborers, and in other jobs, in exchange for which the natives received ample food, clothes, and medical care. This latter included an emergency delivery of a set of twins by Doc Canfield, who, even though one infant died, was rewarded with a fine pearl.

  On Christmas 1943, the entire camp spent the holiday with the natives. On Christmas Eve, the wife of an Australian missionary to Fergusson Island led natives into the Scout camp, singing carols in English for the benefit of the men so far from home and loved ones. In return, the singers received gifts of tobacco, calico, candy, cigarettes, knives, soap, and matches.

  Bare-breasted women and laughing kids presented the Scouts with tubs of flowers and fruits, and even a live chicken. For the finale, four native men gave Bradshaw a roasted goat.

  * * *

  During the last two weeks of training, the men put into practice everything they had learned by going out into the jungle. Sometimes one team would hide while another was sent to find them. Other times, natives were used in place of Japanese. Littlefield recalled nighttime exercises, lying in wait for the “enemy,” in this case Watson’s police boys, only to have a police boy come up from behind, unheard, and tap him on the shoulder.

  Bradshaw often bribed the natives, saying they could have cans of food if they found the Scout team. The Scouts soon caught on to this, and buried cans of meat. Once the natives found the cans, they gave up the hunt.

  On other occasions, teams of Scouts were sent behind Japanese lines in lightly held areas to watch for movements of enemy troops and supply barges. This gave the men a true sense of what they would face.

  Galen “Kit” Kittleson, who would later be a member of the Cabanatuan mission, spent one night sharing a nipa hut with the skeleton of a Japanese soldier who, possibly, had chosen this spot to die of starvation. It was a rainy night, and the roof leaked. Andy Smith, always quick with a joke, had propped up the skeleton, put a cigarette in its mouth and a GI cap on the head.