Shadows In the Jungle

by Larry Alexander

  Barnes and Boes continued to move east to the rendezvous point, where they finally linked up with Hall and the others. The team was soon all back on the PT boat, much to the dismay of the sailors. After four days in the same clothes in the sweltering jungle heat, the men smelled so badly the crewmen held their noses as they came aboard.

  The Male River mission of March 3-7 was the first and last for the Barnes Team. Since Alamo Scouts were technically on detached duty, their old units had the ability to recall them. Barnes would soon be ordered to return to the 32nd Division to become an aide to Maj. Gen. William H. Gill, and his men were absorbed by other teams. Teeples, who was shortly promoted to sergeant, would also be recalled by his former unit because of a shortage of experienced NCOs. He would eventually win a battlefield commission to second lieutenant.

  * * *

  On March 31, 1944, two new Scout teams were formed under Lts. Woodrow E. Hobbs and William G. Reynolds. A few days later, to keep up with 6th Army advances, the ASTC camp was moved from Fergusson Island to Mange Point near Finschhafen, an area of cleared land in a palm grove some five hundred yards across at its narrowest point and eight hundred yards deep. Scout Bob Sumner, who trained there, recalled it “afforded an excellent training area.” Natives of the nearby village of Kalo Kalo threw the Scouts a feast. As Bradshaw’s adjutant and the Alamo Scouts’ first historian, Lewis B. Hochstrasser later wrote, for over an hour drums were heard pounding in the darkness.

  “We had heard them before, but never like this,” he recalled.

  The natives gathered by torchlight and boys ages six to twelve performed a combination dance and song, as the local missionary’s wife, named Priscilla, and her two daughters sat cross-legged and sang “The Old Rugged Cross” and “God Bless America.”

  Concluding, they said, “Good luck and God bless you, brave soldiers.”

  It was a most touching ceremony.

  * * *

  Then it was back to work, this time for the Thompson and Reynolds teams. Taking the field for the first time, their job was to perform reconnaissance missions for the 158th Regiment, nicknamed the “Bushmasters,” the same unit to which a number of the Alamo Scouts had once belonged.

  Born in Bevier, Missouri, Thompson attended a small school called Central College, where he enrolled in the ROTC program. With the attack on Pearl Harbor, his unit was activated and, amid the national hysteria that followed the Japanese attack on Hawaii, Thompson found himself on the West Coast, attached to a unit patrolling California’s Monterey Peninsula against enemy invaders.

  Once calmer heads prevailed and a Japanese invasion of the West Coast was deemed unlikely, Thompson was sent overseas and attached to the Bushmasters of the 6th Army. That was where he heard about the need for volunteers for a special unit. Being a strong and proficient swimmer, the idea appealed to him and he applied. Accepted, he graduated in the Alamo Scouts’ first class.

  George Thompson’s team, with Sgts. Theodore “Tiny” Largo and Jack E. Benson, and Pvts. Joshua Sunn, Anthony Ortiz, and Joseph A. Johnson, landed at Tanahmerah Bay, and began patrolling the Tablasoefa area.

  Interestingly, Thompson’s team included four of the nine Native Americans who graduated from the first class at the ASTC. Private Johnson, nicknamed “the Ghost,” was of the Eagle Clan of the White Mountain Apaches in Cibecue, Arizona. Sergeant Largo was a Pima Indian from Phoenix, while Private 1st Class Ortiz of Chamitam, New Mexico, was a San Juan Pueblo Indian and Private Sunn of Laveen, Arizona, was of the Maricopa tribe.

  Thompson thought highly of his Native American team members, calling them all “exceptional Scouts.” He was particularly fond of Johnson.

  “I never went anywhere without him beside me or in front of me,” Thompson later wrote. “His eyesight was exceptional, the best I had ever seen on a human. He could distinguish the enemy in dense jungle from several feet and he was absolutely silent. In New Guinea he used to track the natives. He showed them a thing or two about scouting.”

  On this particular mission, however, the eyesight was not needed. The only soldiers the team spotted were other Americans.

  Reynolds’s team had a much grimmer experience.

  Coming ashore near the village of Demta by Humboldt Bay, the team—Reynolds, Staff Sgt. Leonard J. Scott, Cpls. Winfred E. McAdoo and William R. Watson, and Pvts. William C. Gerstenberger and Lucian A. Jamison—had a rough landing. A high surf tossed them against a thirty-foot cliff, destroying their rubber boat. Saving what gear they could, the team managed to scale the cliff to the top, where, exhausted, they collapsed for the night. Moving into the Dutch coastal village of Moeris Besar, a mile south of Demta, the next day, they came across the bodies of three men, two Dutch and one native. The Dutchmen had each been shot in the stomach and head, while the native had his face beaten to a pulp by a bloody club that lay nearby. Under a hut they discovered a fourth body, that of a naked man. Although the corpse had been half eaten by wild dogs, it was easy to see the man, another native, had been castrated and his left hand cut off. For a long moment, the Scouts gazed at the bodies, the only sound breaking the silence the buzzing of the many insects that were feasting on the gore.

  Despite these brutal signs of a Japanese presence, the team saw no enemy soldiers before they turned and headed for home.

  * * *

  While Reynolds and Thompson were returning to camp, Iron Mike Sombar and three members of his team were slogging through six miles of jungle and knee-deep swamp toward the village of Goya. Word had been passed to them that the Japanese were holding 107 hostages at the village, all foreign missionaries and nuns.

  Moving cautiously through the undergrowth, the men came across two native huts, including one with a saddled horse tied up outside. Knowing no native would own a saddle, Sombar crept closer and saw a Japanese soldier inside, sitting on a bed, changing clothes. Not knowing if the man was alone, the Wyoming, Delaware, native slipped a grenade from his belt, yanked the pin, released the lever, or “spoon,” and lobbed it through the window. The explosion shook the hut and Sombar charged inside. Miraculously, he found the Japanese man dazed and on the floor, but otherwise unharmed. As the man tried to rise, Sombar punched him on the jaw, knocking him over. The Japanese soldier started to rise again, and Sombar leveled his carbine and squeezed off several quick rounds.

  Continuing on toward the village, the team came across one of the missionaries, a man sitting on a log, utterly exhausted. He told Sombar the rest were just ahead, and that the Japanese had fled. Sombar, skeptical, assigned Pfc. David M. Milda to escort the missionary back to American lines, and pushed on. (Milda would perform four missions with the Sombar Team in New Guinea before returning to his original unit. He was killed in action on Luzon in 1945.)

  Arriving at Goya, the team spotted the missionaries, but, as the first missionary had said, there was no sign of the Japanese.

  “Spread out and make sure they’re gone,” Sombar told his men.

  They did, and soon flushed out and captured a Japanese naval officer who had been hiding.

  “I won’t run away,” the officer said in perfect English, a gun pointed at his head.

  The missionaries, seventy Dutch, thirteen Americas, three Poles, one Czech, one Australian, and, oddly, nineteen Germans, were overjoyed at the sight of the Americans, and a nun embraced Sombar.

  “Oh, it is so good to see a real man again,” she said.

  Knowing the difficulty of evacuating so many people, some weak from hunger, over the rough terrain with just three Scouts, and convinced the Japanese were gone for good, Sombar decided to leave the freed hostages where they were and head back to Hollekang, where he could send back more help. Taking with them the three Polish missionaries and their prisoner, Sombar’s party began trudging back toward American lines. The prisoner was put to the task of carrying the pack of an exhausted missionary. He refused.

  “You cannot make me do this,” he said defiantly. “You are under the Geneva convention. You can shoot me
if you want.”

  “If you won’t carry the pack, you’re of no fucking use to me,” Sombar said. He nodded to a Scout, who waved two of the missionaries out of the way as he leveled his carbine at the man. “We’ll just kill you and leave you here for the flies.”

  The officer stared at the carbine, then slung the pack onto his back.

  By noon Sombar had made contact with men of the 34th Division. That unit sent a detachment, including medics, to the village and brought out the rest of the missionaries. Escorted back to safety, all were set free except for the Germans, who, as enemy civilians, were turned over to U.S. authorities until the war’s end.

  * * *

  Throughout April and May and on into June, the Scouts were dispatched on a host of missions, often lasting just one or two days. On April 24, Lt. Henry R. Chalko, an instructor at the ASTC, pulled together a scratch team of men from the Hobbs and now-defunct Barnes teams for a short excursion to Ali Island, a few miles north of Aitape. During the mission, they got into a firefight with a small Japanese force. The skirmish lasted six hours, until the GIs were reinforced by two platoons from the 127th Regiment. When the shooting stopped, there were twenty-three dead Japanese in the brush.

  All the while, American forces continued to push westward across New Guinea. In May, Krueger’s 6th Army was advancing toward the Wakde-Sarmi area, 140 miles west of Hollandia. Their job was to establish forward air bases in order to launch future attacks on the enemy on the Vogelkop Peninsula on New Guinea’s westernmost tip.

  On May 3, Sombar’s team was sent on a one-day reconnaissance mission to tiny Vandoemoear Island in Sarmi Harbor. This was followed ten days later by a two-day mission to gather data on roads and beaches near Maraena, west of Sarmi.

  The Thompson and Reynolds teams, meanwhile, were dispatched to Biak Island to look for suitable beaches for landing craft. They completed this task successfully, but not without coming under attack by a Japanese fighter plane. They escaped the strafing plane without casualties.

  On June 17, about two weeks after his one-day excursion to Biak, Thompson and his team boarded the S-47, one of the navy’s aging class of submarines, in Seeadler Harbor for a two-week mission to Sansapor, near the Sansapor coconut plantation on the western side of the Vogelkop. Accompanying him and his men was a special team consisting of Maj. Frank Rawolle of 6th Army G2, Lt. (j.g.) Donald Root, and Coxswain Calvin W. Byrd, both formerly with the Naval Amphibious Scouts, and Lt. Col. G. G. Atkinson and Maj. William M. Chance of the 836th Engineer Aviation Battalion. The group also included Sgt. Heinrick Lumingkewas and his brother, Cpl. Alexander Lumingkewas, of the Allied Intelligence Bureau.

  Their mission, at least initially, was to pave the way for the invasion of the Vogelkop Peninsula, by landing on Waigeo Island. There they would locate three suitable sites for air and naval bases. However, while en route, the men were notified that aerial reconnaissance showed that Waigeo was unsuitable for either. They were rerouted to the Vogelkop itself, landing on the west coast near Cape Sansapor, to see if two enemy airstrips already in existence could be made to accommodate fighter and light-bomber groups.

  Arriving off the coast on June 23, Thompson spent the day gazing through the S-47’s periscope at the shoreline three miles away, seeking a likely spot to go ashore. The submarine popped to the surface at midnight, fifteen hundred yards off the coast.

  “This will be a quick recon,” Thompson said. “We won’t need everyone right now.”

  It was decided that Thompson and three members of his team, Sergeants Chanley and Butler, and Private Moon, along with Sergeant Lumingkewas, would make the first trip, rowing ashore in a six-man rubber boat.

  Reaching the mouth of the Wewe River, the team rowed four hundred yards up the waterway before coming ashore and hiding the rubber boat in a stand of heavy undergrowth. They remained there the rest of the night, ever watchful. As dawn began to streak the eastern sky, they moved toward the intended landing area. En route they discovered an abandoned Japanese campsite, but saw no sign of the enemy or any native inhabitants.

  The S-47 surfaced that night and the men rowed back to the sub, their initial reconnaissance done. On board, and safely back under the water, the landing party spent two hours briefing the others on what they found, and the entire group readied themselves to go ashore the next night.

  The men left the sub at midnight on two rubber boats, and rough surf caused the Americans to land three hundred yards northeast of their intended spot at the Wewe River. They dragged the bulky boats to the river mouth, where they reboarded and rowed inland to near where the group had come in the night before. There they stopped and camped. Early the next morning, while searching the riverbank for a good spot to hide the boats and radios, Chanley and Butler spotted a camouflaged barge. They also saw four Japanese, one of whom seemed to be examining the tracks in the mud the team had left after the first reconnaissance. The two Scouts hustled back to the camp.

  “Japs know we’re here,” Chanley told Thompson. “They found our tracks from the other night.”

  The quiet of the jungle now was broken by the unmistakable sounds of men moving toward them through the bush. Backtracking quietly into the undergrowth and hunkering down, the Americans held their breath as the Japanese patrol, rifles at the ready, passed by.

  The team now split into two groups and spent the next three days reconnoitering. Thompson and his group trekked inland to locate Japanese troops and defenses, while Rawolle and the rest scouted out the most promising landing beaches. Once or twice they heard Japanese off in the distance, but saw none. The two groups reunited on the riverbank on June 29 and retrieved their boats and radios. Rain began to fall, increasing to a downpour, and the Scouts spent six miserable hours soaked to the bone, waiting at the water’s edge for their two a.m. pickup. Around ten thirty p.m., as they sat huddled in the wet darkness, they heard the sound of a barge cruising down the river, heading toward the open sea. An hour later, another chugged by.

  At one forty-five a.m., on June 30, the fourteenth day of the mission, they reinflated their boats, then rowed downriver and out to sea. As their oars bit quietly into the water, the chugging sound of a motor was heard from somewhere out in the darkness. The men froze and ducked low as a Japanese barge churned past them, just fifteen hundred yards astern of Rawolle’s boat. Two more barges passed by within fourteen hundred yards of the bow of the surfaced S-47. As the barges faded into the night, the Scouts continued rowing and nudged up against the sub. After the men had clambered back on board and the rubber boats were stowed away, the S-47 silently dove for the safety of the deep and headed for home. Inside the sleek, pressurized hull, the landing party enjoyed a dinner of steak and brandy.

  The information gathered by the team gave Allied planners details of the terrain, as well as troop numbers, locations, and dispositions. The beaches the team had pinpointed proved ideal for landing heavy equipment, although the site where planners thought an air base was being built was actually nothing more than a tilled field. The overall ground proved to be too rough for an airstrip. However, the area would make a fine base for PT boats, as well as a supply dump. The mission was considered a glowing success, and an invasion date of July 31 was set.

  * * *

  Lieutenant McGowen, reviewing after-action reports of the Scout missions to date, realized that the teams were being “misused,” often because they were sent in where other units had also dispatched patrols. Besides being counter to the reason the Scouts had been formed in the first place, this duplication heightened the possibility of Alamo Scouts and GIs exchanging fire. McGowen also noted how the teams were sometimes called upon by area commanders to conduct combat patrols, which was counter to their training.

  McGowen passed his findings along to Maj. Homer Williams, Bradshaw’s XO. He, in turn, passed them on to Krueger, and such missions soon ended.

  McGowen also informed Williams that the Scouts were having trouble requisitioning the ammunition, weapons, and supplie
s they needed from other units while they were in the field. When Bradshaw mentioned this to Krueger, the general issued each team a four-by-six-inch Alamo Scout Card, which read:

  To whom it may concern:1. The officer whose signature appears below is the leader of an Alamo Scout Team and is on a specially assigned mission for this headquarters.

  2. It is requested that such items of equipment that may be needed by his team for the accomplishment of the mission be made available to him.

  3. It is further requested that utmost cooperation be given this personnel in obtaining air/or water transportation.

  This small but powerful document, which quickly became known as the Krueger Card, because it bore the general’s name, directed anyone under Krueger’s command to give the team bearing it any help or material it needed. Ordinarily, this worked like magic, although Lt. Red Sumner recalled it being challenged once in the Philippines. Sumner handed the card to the supply officer of the 158th Regimental Combat Team and requested two hundred to three hundred rifles, plus ammo and grenades, in order to resupply Filipino guerrillas. The officer dismissed the request, and the card, with a “Hell no.”

  “Fine,” Sumner said.

  He next visited the regiment’s chief of staff, who picked up his field phone and called the S4 officer.

  “Goddamn it,” he stormed. “Give the guy what he wants.”

  Sumner got his supplies from the sheepish S4.

  Throughout their existence, the Scout teams rotated as Krueger’s personal bodyguards, taking ten-day shifts. Traveling in a three-jeep convoy, with two MPs and two Scouts in the first jeep, Krueger, his aide, and driver in the second, and the Scout team leader and the rest of the team in the third, they made the rounds of the units under the general’s command. If Krueger was on foot, the Scouts formed a protective ring around him, seven paces away.

  Bodyguarding was not unwelcomed duty. Krueger was a stern, gruff man, but with a warm heart for his men.