1943 (17 years old - Part 3 of 3)
We had taken all the enemy rations we could carry and, as I said
before, we ate a lot of disgusting things on our trip. So the Jap fish
and rice weren't too bad. At the time though, we were all pushed out of
shape because we had to eat them. All we could carry though, was about
three days worth, so we figured it wouldn't last too long. We started
out again the next morning after almost a whole day to get organized
again and a fairly good nights sleep. The next station was supposed to
be three or four days to the east of us. It took us six days of pretty
hard travel to reach the next one. We had two casualties on the way.
One fell into a rocky dry wash and broke his arm. The other was bitten
by something, nobody ever found out what it was. He died. The location
of the second station was almost like the first. On top of a hill and
surrounded by a bamboo palisade, and as before we took it by surprise
too. We couldn't figure out why they weren't waiting for us. They must
not have had any communication with the station we knocked out a week
before. The enemy never seemed to act with any rhyme or reason. Again,
we had no injured and reformed for the next march. This one would last
eight days.
I haven't mentioned it before, but this country was absolutely full
of every kind of insect, serpent, tigers and some I can't think of or
remember. We had insect repellent, but back in those days their effect
was very minimal, so we were all in constant misery. Every time we
crossed a stream we had to stop and pick the leaches off. Rubbing salt
on them would make them drop of, or touching them with the end of a
burning cigarette or a stick would make them let go. If you just picked
them off, it left the head which just kept burrowing and caused a large
ulcerated sore and was extremely painful. We all had one or more before
we learned how to get rid of them. Everyday, we stopped during daylight
to spend time pawing and picking bugs off of one another. Most of them
were biting bugs, but some were diggers and because of it, somebody was
always puffed up. I tell you, if we had to stay in that country an
extra two weeks, we would have had to be carried out. Keep in mind that
this was 1943 and there wasn't any westerners that knew very much about
Asia or the South Pacific, so all these things were new to us and
sometimes pretty scary. Scary because we didn't know anything about the
environment we were walking into.
The fourth day out on our third try, we were crossing a small
river, maybe fifty feet wide. One of the guys in my squad was attacked
by a Crocodile. It bit him on the butt and upper thigh so badly that he
bled to death before anyone could help him. Then the very next day, a
guy in another company was attacked by a tiger. They killed it, but
this guy was hurt pretty bad. Everybody that was hurt badly enough so
he couldn't walk, well, you guessed it. We had to carry them. Let me
tell you, it was no easy chore and it took a lot of guys working in
shifts. We had a doctor and medics, but their skills were limited
because of where we were and the lack of medical equipment. Caring for
wounded and hurt was taking a major part of our time. About three days
after our next raid, we came to a large river. Our C.O. made
arrangements for our hurt guys to be taken down river by boat to the
coast and evacuated that way. I never saw any of them again.
Presumably, they were hospitalized and then sent home.
I guess that no contact with their other station finally sank in
with the enemy and they realized something was going wrong. Our C.O.
figured the same thing and we stopped our march a half day out and he
sent my squad on a recon patrol to find out what was going on. It took
us about three hours to get to a point where we could see the radio
antenna. When we reached that point, everyone was starting to feel
uneasy. No real reason, we thought, but just not quite right. The
squad leader said, "Lets get the hell off of this trail before we go any
further." I'll bet we hadn't gone three hundred yards when we heard
talking and some activity going on. We all got down and started
crawling on our hands and knees. In about a hundred feet we could see
the enemy had dug emplacements along each side of the trail we had just
left a half hour before. Boy! Talk about intuition. It was a real
stroke of luck. We decided to bypass them and look around further down
the trail. We didn't see anyone else until we got to the bottom of the
hill. We saw several of the enemy installing trip wire and grenade
booby traps. No doubt about it. They were expecting us. The
Lieutenant said we'd go around the hill and take a look over there. By
the time we got there it was almost dark. We packed it in for the
night.
Next morning, we scouted the trail for a couple of miles. It was
deserted. We then made a complete circuit of the hill and found nothing
else of any interest and returned to the unit. After our report to the
C.O., he decided that since the trap on the trail was small, we would
bypass it and continue from that side. We arrived there the next
afternoon and climbed part way up before nightfall. As with our first
station, we were at the palisades an hour after first light. Again, we
surprised them, that is, until somebody fell over something to alert
them and the shit hit the fan. It didn't take too long to take the
emplacement, but we lost three men and seven were wounded. They were
also able to radio about our presence; that was the worst part -- their
knowing just where we were. The dead were buried and we were off again.
According to our orders, we had one more station to go. As I said
before, we shipped out our wounded about three days later. What a
relief that was, a big load off everyone's shoulders. And I mean that
literally! We were entering a different kind of country, less hills and
more swampy. It also got a whole hell of a lot hotter. It seemed that
we spent the rest of our time there slogging through gunky water and
muck. If anyone got even the slightest scratch, it immediately became a
running sore. My feet got so sore and raw from never being dry that
none of the sulfa drugs we had were of much use at all. I finally cut
my boots all to pieces to make a pair of crude looking sandals. At
least my feet got better, and it wasn't long before a lot of the guys
were doing it. We still had to contend with arm pits and crotches. I
swabbed mine out every day with alcohol and kept the infection down. We
also used something call salicytic acid for most skin ailments. It was
real powerful stuff. We had one guy with a real hairy chest. He had
some ring worm like rash on his chest, so the medic painted them with
acid and as a joke painted a big question mark right between his
breasts. The hair turned snow white and boy was he pissed. I never did
find out if it went away. We didn't have too many things to laugh about
right about then, so we made the most of anything that broke the
routine. One guy had a leech right behind his testicles and he was
lying on the ground with both legs spread out like a woman in labor and
there were two medics trying to get it off. I hope you can imagine what
it looked like to see some guy spread eagled on the ground and two
others seemingly trying to play with him. I swear it was the funniest
sight I had seen during the entire war.
We passed on into the delta. We slagged along for another four
days before we saw our objective in the distance. It was a knob
sticking up out of the flats like a woman's breast. I sure seem to be
stuck on body parts here, don't I? We stopped until a plan could be
formulated to take the installation by surprise. That was going to be
very difficult, since they had already been warned about us. What
really amazed our officer, was that no real effort had been made to
intercept us. They figured that there surely was a trap set for us and
that they knew exactly where we were. So much for the surprise. It was
decided that we would have to make our move at night so if we couldn't
surprise them, we would at least be partially protected by darkness.
The hill was pretty bushy and therefore it would be noisy trying to
climb it, especially in the dark. We started out at dusk. It was very
slow going, because we were getting into more and more water. Every
third man wore a combat flashlight on the back of his ammo belt. A
combat flashlight is made with the batteries in a case and the head and
lens are at a ninety degree angle to the body and a belt hook attached
to the body. The lens is covered with paint except for a narrow slit so
that a minimum amount of light escapes. We walked, waded, swam and
crawled until about 3 a.m. when we reached the base of the hill where
the transmitter and antenna were. We were about to start up when
somebody discovered a booby trap. It was a trip wire attached to a
mortar shell. Their C.O. stopped all activity and called us all
together and asked everybody what they would do in a situation like
this.
(It would seem that a portion of the story from this point on has
been left out or lost)
...a short time. Her father, it turned out, was the president of
the New Zealand railroad and was working on the docks loading and
unloading ships to help the war effort. His son, John, was a miner
working on South Island and so was exempt from military service. The
other daughter was a nurse at a military hospital. Her name was Daphne.
The mother's name was Maureen and reminded me of my own mother. They
were a pretty wonderful bunch and I was invited back any time I was able
to come. I started going with Pat. She was my age and we really hit it
off. There's no point in telling you about our dating I guess.
Probably just bore you.
A week later my leave was up and I had to go back to Warkworth.
Boy, did I ever hate to go back. The day I reported for duty my C.O.
volunteered us to help the farmers harvest their crops. Mostly hay.
And since I had spent a lot of time on a hay ranch I thought I would be
a lot of help. It turned out to be just a lot of hard work. Loading
hay by hand onto horse drawn wagons, hauling it to storage barns and
stacking it inside. All the women cooked and hauled food and drink to
the fields to feed us. Our kitchens furnished a good part of the food
but those ladies sure made it taste better and they sure looked a hell
of a lot better than army cooks.
The camp we lived in was made up of two man billets. Little wooden
buildings with four walls, a window and a door. They were wooden studs
with wood siding nailed onto the outside with no insulation or finished
interior. You will see a little later why I am describing our living
quarters. It was right after the hay harvest when we started getting
badly needed replacements. Our outfit had less than 50% of our regular
complement of men. They were men from eighteen to forty. Some were men
who wouldn't have even been considered for military service if the
United States hadn't been scraping the bottom of the barrel for men.
One guy assigned to my platoon was nearly blind without wearing big
thick glasses. One had some sort of deformity in his feet. Another
couldn't hear well. But we were glad to have them. All guys directly
from home. So we questioned the life out of them. One guy came from
Phoenix, Oregon where I was born and we hit it off right away.
I was due for another pass to town and was told I couldn't go
because I had the duty. Well this guy and I took off for Auckland.
About a week later the M.P.s picked us up in town and sent us back to
camp. I was in my billet changing my clothes when the door banged open
and my battalion C.O., Joe Raneska, came roaring in madder than a snake
and yelling at me. He said, "Miller I wouldn't care if you went AWOL.
You probably deserved the time. But, when you took a recruit with you
that's the last straw! Now you and me are going to fight and I'm going
to beat the hell out of you! I give you permission to hit me..." He
reached and took off his insignia and I took a swing at him. He hit me
and I went right through those studs I was telling you about, tore off
the siding and rolled down a little hill. I was out colder than and
iceberg. My roomy said I was out about ten minutes.
When I woke up he was gone. I went into the showers and stuck my
head under a cold faucet till I could see straight and then went looking
for him. He had a billet just like mine in an apple orchard. I walked
up to the door and knocked. When he opened the door I took a swing and
he hit me again. I went backward and my head caught in the crotch of an
apple tree. Seems like apple trees were my downfall in life. At least
I didn't see anything good about them at that time. When I got loose
from the tree I made another dive for him and he grabbed me and said "OK
Miller. You had enough? You can't whip me and I'm getting tired so
let's call it quits." Boy was I ready! I went back to my billet feeling
that my honor was vindicated. I still had to help fix the side of my
billet. I didn't mind that because everybody had heard how Miller had
taken on the Colonel. So I was somewhat of a hero. That all happened
on a Friday.
On Monday I was assigned to Machanics Bay. An Army/Navy
installation right in downtown Auckland on the waterfront. I had a pass
every night so Pat and I got pretty well aquainted. In fact we got so
well aquainted that we got engaged. I wrote home and had my mom buy an
engagement ring. The reason being that they were so much less expensive
in the states than in New Zealand. As it turned out the ring didn't
arrive until after we shipped out for New Caledonia about a month later.
I always got a little chuckle out of the fact that it cost me more for
import duty to get the ring into New Zealand than the ring cost. I'll
get to the rest of that story later.
It was a short five day boat ride to Noumea, New Caledonia. We
arrived there during the worst rain storm since the great flood. I
expected to run into the ark at any moment. We immediately boarded open
trucks and proceeded sixty miles out into the boonies. It rained the
whole way there. We unboarded in an absolute deluge, set up tents,
crawled inside, dryed off the best we could, wrapped up in blankets and
died. That was about four in the afternoon and I never blinked an eye
until the 1st Sergeant woke me up at six the next morning.
The cook had our field kitchens set up and so we were all treated
to boiled spam and dehydrated eggs. You noticed I said boiled and not
broiled spam? What a treat after New Zealand. I gagged and swallowed
it and it tasted like nothing you would believe. For lunch we had
boiled Vienna sausage and it was even worse! Can you imagine? Worse!!
After that memorable breakfast we were put to work setting up our
tents in two rows facing each other about forty feet apart. The space
between was called the company street. We put rocks down in front of
each row of tents, which was about as long as a football field, and then
painted them white. These things were design- ed to keep us busy and
reduce the boredom that always followed removal from a so called
civilized area. It sure worked because they worked the hell out of us
and we were too tired to think of anything else. After a short time we
bagan to realize that we were being prepared for a big operation.
One of the replacements we got in my company was a national middle
weight weight lifting champion. He scrounged around and got some
weights made out of what ever he could find and then set up a kind of
out door gym out in the trees. There were several of us that got
interested in weight lifting and he agreed to help us learn the right
way to do it. This went on for about eight months off and on while we
were in camp. That, I thought, wasn't too often. We were always going
off somewhere on some sort of mission. In between our excursions and
training I got to do quite a bit of weight lifting and related
exercises. It was, by the way, the best thing I ever did for myself.
I went from what I thought was a flabby 195 to a hard 190 and broadened
out enough to show some style. It never did hurt me as I said. Only
helped.
Somebody decided we should go back to Indo China and finish the job
we had started. So my battalion was assigned to a British assault ship
called the HMS Battle Axe. It wasn't a nice ship but there were a lot
of nice guys aboard, all Royal Marines. We'd arm wrestle, roll around
on deck, swim and generally just pass the time. I know some of you may
have wondered about my tattoos? But no one ever asked... That's where
I got my first one. It wasn't much fun but it gave us all a chance to
be Macho. Of course that's not what it was called then. One of the
cooks aboard fancied himself as an artist. So after a few spliced main
braces we got a needle out of a sewing kit, stuck it in a piece of cork
insulation, found some blue ink, dipped the needle and began my tattoo.
The next day my C.O. found out. He said, "Get to Noumea and have that
thing fixed!" I did. That was number one. The R.M. means Royal
Marines. Not Ray Miller as most people may believe. The other one was
in a tattoo parlor in Brisbane, Australia. I had it retouched in Darwin
a little later. That got infected and I spent time in the hospital for
that. All in all kind of a waste.
Click here to
return to Ray's main Story Page.Click here to go to Ray's Story Chapter 8.