1943 (17 years old - Part 1 of 3)
Fijians were fierce fighters and none of the enemy would ever meet
them in any kind of fighting if it could be avoided. A little later on,
we had a company of Fiji scouts attached to our unit. We were all
gathered around one day getting a cup of very rare fresh coffee, when
several U.S. Marine Raiders came by. They were invited for coffee and a
marine sargeant wanted to know who the gooks were; referring to the Fiji
scouts. My Lieutenant told them who the scouts were and that they were
the best fighters, trackers and scouts in the world. The marines,
typically, said bullshit, that there weren't any better fighter and
scouts than marine raiders. The talk went back and forth and the scouts
just drank coffee and said nothing. Finally we made a bet that the
scouts could infiltrate the marine lines that night without the marines
knowing they were there. It was decided that we give the scouts pieces
of chalk and they would put an "X" on everything they came in contact
with. The stakes were two cases of whiskey; which was also very rare
and very expensive.
That night we all got down in our fox holes for the night. The
rule in combat was that anything moving around at night was the enemy
and was treated accordingly. This area we were in, was more or less a
rear area and was not subject to direct assault, so the units had field
kitchens set up in the middle of the protective lines or perimeter as it
was called. Like a big circle with everyone inside. After dark the
scouts left our perimeter and we settled in for the night. Nights were
long. As I said we couldn't get out of our fox holes. If you had to
take a crap, you crapped in an old "C" ration can and set it out till
morning or dug a small hole in the corner of your fox hole and used
that. That was not a real good way, because if it rained during the
night and it usually did. The crap in the corner of your fox hole was
apt to float and its bad enough to lay in water all night, but pushing
turds away from your face wasn't too much fun. Next morning we all made
for the marine perimeter at first light. You absolutely wouldn't
believe it. There were little white X's on everything we saw. On
helmets still on their heads, rifles, hand guns, inside the ovens on the
field stoves, a couple of guys even had chalk marks on their ears. The
marines never even knew they had been there. About three weeks later
the marines had a unit of Fiji scouts attached to their unit. Live and
learn, I always say.
I neglected to tell you that we had landed on Guadalcanal in the
Solomon Islands on New Year's Day 1943. We landed at a place called
Lunga Beach. We all expected to be involved in heavy fighting. As the
landing craft circled while the first wave of the assault force all
unloaded, the Navy lay back about six miles and shelled the beaches to
soften them up for our landing. There were some enemy aircraft over us,
but the navy and Marine fighter aircraft drove them off. Boy, was it
ever a sight. It seemed like all the noise in the world. Gradually all
the landing craft lined up for our assault. The rule was that when we
started in, everybody was to keep this head down below the steel sides
of the landing craft. Of course nobody could resist a peek to see that
we weren't all alone, or how close to shore we were. The Navy Conswain
driving the boat always told us when to get ready, and we all ran like
hell for some kind of cover. Some guys didn't make it out of the water.
I can still see dead bodies floating in the surf after all these years.
We probably lost about 50 or 100 guys, but we secured the beach and all
the other troops landed without a casualty. It really wasn't a bad
landing. Not nearly as bad as some of the ones that were still to come.
We always envied the sailors, because we thought they got to go
back to the ships at night and have a hot dinner and a dry bed. Most of
them, as it turned out, slept in their landing craft and ate the same
stuff we did. At that time, field rations, as they were called,
consisted of the following: corned beef hash, meat and beans, meat and
vegetable stew, with canned dry biscuit to go with it. The biscuit cans
also contained either powdered coffee, cocoa, or lemonade, a piece of
hard candy and two cigarettes. It was really classy eating. The "C"
rations I have just described were left over from World War I. It is
true! Every time we opened a new carton, we had to look for cans that
were spoiled, and about half of them were. You can't imagine how many
concoctions a person can dream up out of three kinds of slumgullion.
The lemonade I mentioned was so strong, that we used it as a paint
remover. When planes crashed and were beyond salvage, we removed all of
the aluminum and titanium parts to make nik-naks out of it. All those
metals were coated with zinc chromate as a primer for painted surfaces.
We would soak those parts in the lemonade concentrate to remove the
paint. Then, with whatever hand tools we could find, we made rings and
bracelets, letter openers and such. You can imagine what the stuff did
to our stomachs.
When we landed on Guadalcanal the Marines, according to them, had
the island well secured and were in complete control of the forces.
Between January and May 1943, my unit killed 18,000 Japanese soldiers
and sailors. We captured about one-third that many. The wounded
numbers were not counted to my knowledge, but there were a great many of
them. We never knew what our casualties were. In those days everything
was a military secret. A short time after our landing, we moved up to
the main line of resistance or M.L.R. The M.L.R. was, at that time, a
place called "bloody ridge". It was a big long ridge covered with
elephant grass. At least that is what everybody called it. It was head
high and would cut you if you bumped it just right. We arrived on the
ridge about noon one day and started to set up our perimeter, which is a
three quarter circle with everyone inside.
We dug our fox holes about ten feet apart. The holes were long
enough to lay down in and deep enough to protect us against any sort of
attack. I soon learned that attack meant at least twice a night. I can
only remember one daylight fight. As I told you before, anything that
moved at night was assumed to be the enemy and was treated accordingly.
As night approached, we all tied ourselves together with pieces of
string and got in our fox holes. One guy slept and one stayed awake.
When it was my turn to stand watch, my buddy pulled my string to wake me
up. The reason for the strings was so we didn't have to talk. If you
talked, it gave away the location of your fox hole. There were quite a
few Japanese infiltrations. They would wait until the darkest part of
the night and start infiltrating our perimeter. They couldn't see any
better than we could, so they depended on sound to locate us. Someone
snoring or rustling around to get more comfortable was used as a guide
to find us.
The second night on the line, I'd guess it was around three in the
morning, I was laying on my back in about three inches of water and
dreading to turn on my side because my body had warmed the water, and
the second I turned, it would expose my warm parts to the night air and
that would make me feel really cold. Anyway, as I lay there
contemplating a turn and looking at the stars in the night sky, all of a
sudden quite a few stars just blanked out. It took me a second to
realize what was happening. It was someone between me and the stars.
As I said before, anything that moved at night was the enemy. I was
also scared to death and kept my trench knife in my hand from dark to
dawn. Well, when I saw the shadow I just raised up and started
stabbing. Whatever I was stabbing grunted for the first three thrusts
and then all the sound stopped. I pulled my string to wake up the guy
next door to me in case there were others trying to get at us. The rest
of the night was uneventful, but I still lay there with my eyes as big
as saucers and scared spitless.
When dawn came, sure enough it was an infiltration laying there
dead. A great deal of his blood had run into my fox hole and the water
was all red and the part of me that was in the water was too. There
weren't any clean clothes and no place to take a bath, so I had to stay
like that until the next rain, (which was pretty often) to wash it off.
Some of the guys thought it was pretty funny, but even to this day, I
still think about it. It was the first human being I had killed and I
had nightmares about it for years. What happened the next night was
kind of funny, though. The very same thing happened again, except when
daylight came, the infiltration turned out to be what they called a
jungle lizard. They were harmless. About three feet long and looked
like an alligator. The natives we used to carry our supplies cooked the
lizard and had a great feast. None of us ate any although the carriers
wanted me to eat a piece because I had killed it and eating some would
bring me good luck. After having eaten rattlesnake as a boy. I wasn't
opposed to eating it, except that when they (what we laughingly called)
cooked it, which meant they singed it on both sides and ate it raw, I
just couldn't do it. All the guys ribbed me for weeks. "Hey Miller,
you got any lizards left? How about saving me some rare meat from the
next one you get?"
The first week went by with little else happening except for those
two nights. Then on about the seventh or eighth day, we were settled in
for the night and it seemed like all hell broke loose. Yelling,
screaming, banging, whistles blowing and lots of shooting. We were
having our first banzai attack. I'm telling you, it was hair raising.
It is so dark you couldn't even see your hands and there was all this
great commotion out in the dark. I was about to panic when somebody
shot off a flare. A flare is made out of magnesium and has a little
parachute attached to it and when it goes off, it's brighter then the
sun floating down in the night sky. When the flare went off, the Japs
were caught out in the open like ants on a newspaper. We absolutely
slaughtered them. The first flare went out and we put another one up
immediately. This time the Japs had gotten into the tall grass and a
good many were hidden and the first thing we knew they are right on top
of us. This was my first hand to hand fighting with bayonets. I really
can't remember anything in detail, but I did do damage to two or three,
before they gave up and retreated. Keep in mind that all this happened
under the light of the flares and lasted about ten minutes and seemed
like hours and didn't seem real at all. We lost seven dead and twenty
wounded. They said we were very lucky and had done a great job. I
can't remember how many of the enemy were killed, but it was a bunch.
I was telling you about not having water to bathe in. To expand on
that situation. Drinking water was also sometimes scarce. Why couldn't
we drink the rain water you ask? All the water was contaminated once it
touched the ground. We used water purification tablets in our water,
but it wasn't always enough. You may not believe this, but so help me,
it is true. Our native carriers brought our water from a water
purification plant near the beach. One time it broke down and we were
without clean water for almost a week. It was terribly hot during the
day, so we all drank a lot of water and without a fresh supply coming
all the time, we got our water wherever we could. And of course that
meant ground water. My company had moved off to another position called
Grassy Knoll. We were separated from the rest of the unit and were more
or less isolated. When the water stopped coming, we stared to look for
another source. We weren't allowed to leave our positions, so we took
what we could get. There was one big hole right near us caused by a
bomb explosion and it was full of water. The only problem was that
there were dead enemy soldiers in the water. Two, to be exact. We
dragged the bodies out of the water, not without some difficulty,
because they were partially decayed. I hope you never have to smell a
rotting human. They smell is worse than anything you can imagine.
After the bodies were removed, there were still bits and pieces and a
lot of maggots left in the water that were impossible to get out. We
took off our undershirts and held them over the mouths of our canteens
to strain the rot and maggots out and dipped them into the water. Then
we put water purification tablets into the canteens and drank the water.
Some guys drank it with no problem, some gagged, some threw up. We all
drank. We drank it for three days, before our clean water came. About
one third of the guys had to be hospitalized because of it.
Not only that, but if you got a small cut, even a pin prick, it
became infected within an hour or so and strong and large doses of
medicine were required to overcome any infection. At that time we were
introduced to Atabrine. An anit-malarial drug. It was an innocent
enough looking little yellow pill about the size of an aspirin. They
tasted awful. The natives used them to make a dye for their clothes.
We traded tee shirts to the natives for fresh fruit and coconuts. The
women dyed them and cut holes in them so their breasts hung out. I
don't know why. Maybe so it would be easier to nurse their babies. As
it turned out, the Atabrine came a little late for me. I contracted
malaria about two months after we landed on Guadalcanal. Even so, the
Atabrine lessened the severity of the disease. I was sent to a field
hospital for about two weeks and then directly back to my outfit.
At that time our unit was put in reserve, because our manpower was
so badly depleted that we had to have replacements before we could be
committed to combat again. So, we were sent to Tulagi Island. We were
spread around from Tulagi to anit-aircraft emplacements on Tanambago and
Gavatu. Neither was as big as a city block. Their wasn't a tree of any
kind on either island, bombing and naval shelling had taken care of
that. Remember how hot it was in the jungle? Try to imagine how hot it
was without any shade. There was a Cee-Bee or Naval Constitution
Battalion on Gavutu building a water treatment plant and we were sent to
help protect them. As if they needed protection. They were all older
men. Supposedly too old to be in the military, or to fight, so they
volunteered to lend their skills for building airfields, roads or
anything else that we needed. All great guys and someone you were glad
was on your side. The Cee Bee's had a real kitchen and mess hall set up
and since my platoon was assigned to then, we got to eat with them.
They had the same rations we had, but they had real cooks. It was
heaven.
About this time we started digging new "AA" gun emplacements for
some dual barreled 40 mm "AA" guns that were loaned by the Navy. I
really hated digging, so when the Cee Bee's asked for a couple of us to
work in the kitchen, Miller volunteered. I was put to work as a baker's
helper. Remember the "C" rations and the hard biscuits you could throw
thru a rock wall? I spent 6 weeks helping to make bread and rolls and
pastries. In six weeks, I gained about twenty pounds. All the time we
were in the Solomans, it seemed like there was always an air raid or an
air battle. It was a fascinating experience being able to watch the dog
fights between the enemy Zero's and our P-47's and P-38's. We could see
the planes diving and turning and the puffs of smoke when their guns
fired, kind of like long rows of dots made of smoke. Very often a plane
would explode or catch on fire, or just spiral into the ocean. Almost
every small island had a couple of picket boats on station. Picket
boats were a kind of high speed boat used for many purposes, but during
air battles, they looked for parachuting pilots. The guys on the boats
picked up a lot of pilots. At night the Jap bombers came over.
Usually, they were twin engine Mitsubishis or Betty's as we called them.
It might be interesting for you to know that all the Japanese car
manufacturers which sell cars here today were making war ships,
airplanes and bombers during the war. It is ironic. They couldn't beat
us at war, so they are slowly but surely buying us.
During the air raids, we would watch the searchlight seek out the
enemy planes. They looked like moths caught in the light of a car. The
anti-aircraft guns would light up the sky when they fired. The enemy
bombers didn't bother us at all. When they dropped their bombs, we just
rolled into a hole and waited until they went off. What really scared
hell out of us was the shrapnel coming down from our exploding
anti-aircraft shells. They sounded like buzzing bees zipping by and
there wasn't anyplace to hide, unless there was something handy to crawl
under, which wasn't often. The best thing to do if there wasn't
anything to crawl under, was to stand as close to a tree as possible.
You remember that I said there weren't any trees on Gavuntas? We did
have lots of water, though. And showers. As I said, the Cee Bee's were
very resourceful people.
It seems that every time we got settled into a place and a routine,
something happened and we were off again. One bright morning, they came
for us -- a big old LCT, or landing craft tank. The rest of our company
had already been picked up and after we loaded on, we went back to
Guadalacanal to a staging area for a push into the Northern Solomans.
My outfit was the 1st Battalion 27th Infantry regiment, 25th Infantry
Division, closer to home. My unit was an Anti-Tank and reconnaissance
platoon, Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion. There was a Headquarters
Company, fourline company, a motor pool and a medical unit in a
battalion. Again, my outfit always, I mean always, got the dirtiest and
most dangerous missions assigned. This one was for us to go on a
submarine at night to the south coast of New Georgia, which was in the
Northern Solomones. Our mission was to land under cover of darkness and
secure an area large enough for our engineers to land heavy equipment
and to protect them after they landed while they started building some
sort of roads through a huge swampy area. The reasoning was that by
going through the swamp, we would come up on the enemy's rear and
surprise them. Early one afternoon, my platoon and two line company
platoons sandwiched onto a submarine. I mean it was crowded. We filled
every nook and cranny and spilled over into the officers' quarters. We
immediately submerged and started for New Georgia, about 180 miles if I
remember correctly. We arrived just after dark and off loaded onto
rubber rafts that we had to pump up first. There were gas cylinders
attached to the rafts to inflate them, but most of them had lost their
charges. We paddled ashore in the dark, expecting all hell to break
lose any minute. Nothing happened. We went ashore and set up our
perimeters and waited for the engineers to arrive in the morning. At
dawn, they came. LCT's, navy destroyers and more infantry on LCI's or
landing craft infantry. It looked like the whole army was coming
ashore. Not a shot was fired. I don't think there was an enemy soldier
within five miles.
We started to move inland before the equipment was unloaded. We
found out pretty damn soon, that when they said swamp, they meant swamp.
We waded up to our armpits in the dammedest stinking gooey muck you can
imagine. It was terribly tiring. I guess we must have made about a
mile the first day, I really don't know, but that is what it seemed
like. When we stopped for the night, there wasn't anyplace to get out
of the muck, except climb a tree, and some of the guys did that. The
jungle was really thick, with vegetation growing all over and around us.
Someone finally figured that if we cut branches and poles and laid then
on top of the mud, they would support one or two guys if we were
careful. It kept us from sinking into the mud okay, but the water still
seeped up and kept us wet. Even so, I think I slept sounder that night
than any other since I had come to the islands.
At dawn we were at it again. The heavy equipment just couldn't do
anything. First, there wasn't any good solid earth to build a road with
and second, the swamp was bottomless. One of the tractor drivers almost
sank with his tractor. It sank in the muck and he just barely got off.
They probed with fifteen foot poles and couldn't find the tractor. They
finally decided that road building wasn't going to work. They decided
that we would get all our supplies with air drops. At that time, there
weren't any helicopters and about 90 percent of air cargo was hauled by
DC-3's. They, even now, have some left flying. They are a twin engine
Douglas cargo plane. Very noisy and the wings flap like they are going
to fall off, but the most dependable airplane ever built. Anyway, I'm
sure you have seen air drops in the movies or on TV. The planes were
loaded with supplies attached to parachutes. They would fly over our
area and drop the supplies at a point we marked with smoke canisters.
The planes flew real low so they wouldn't overshoot our positions.
Sometimes they did overshoot and the enemy ended up with our stuff.
About that time our battalion commander's body guard came down with
a bad case of malaria. So guess who got the job? Me. It wasn't a job
anybody wanted, but he said do it and you did it. I think the part I
hated worst, was that along with the body guard job, went a Thompson
sub-machine gun. The one we had used round magazines that held fifty
rounds of 45 caliber ammunition. They weighed 14 pounds and I had to
carry four of them in pouches attached to a shoulder harness. I also
had another one in the gun. That plus all my other equipment made for a
heavy load. I should point out that when we first started into combat,
we were using World War I helmets, the old 5 shot Springfield rifle and
Thompson sub-machine guns. They were all good weapons, but obsolete.
We were gradually getting new helmets, Garand M-1 eight shot
semi-automatic rifles, M-1 Carbines that used either 15 or thirty round
clips and a sub-machine gun called a grease gun, an awful looking thing,
but a real shooter. You could strap it into the mud and grind it
around, fish it out and fire thirty rounds in about 3 seconds. I can't
remember the military I.D. number, but I guess it doesn't make any
difference.
It seems like I am trying to tell you what a hard time I had during
this campaign and the truth is, maybe I did, but I really thought I was
some kind of hero defending his country from the dirty filthy enemy. I
am trying to be realistic. At that time, we all heard and experienced
first hand, the atrocities committed by the Japanese against anyone they
came in contact with. As you will see later on, I was brain washed into
believing that the Japanese weren't so bad after all. I believe, to
this day that the Japanese were and are, contrary to appearance and my
own willingness to forgive and forget, an inherently cruel and unfeeling
people. Further, I believe that since they couldn't beat us at war,
they are buying us. Piece- by-piece and most of it with money and aid
we gave to them after the war, just as we did before the war. I have
lots of opinions. I did not arrive at my conclusions in haste. It took
years and years of contact with all kinds of people from all over the
world to bring me to my present state of cynicism. So don't think I am
just shooting my mouth off.
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