The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [58]
Three days later, Medendorp and his men dragged themselves into Barumbila, a village down the Kumusi River in the shadow of Mount Lamington, about ten miles southeast of Wairopi. Medendorp was “weak from almost constant dysentery and…a fever.” At Barumbila, which was an ideal site for a dropping ground, he spent the day recruiting a large force of natives to collect and carry supplies for the approaching 2nd Battalion. Soon after, he learned that General Kenney and his Fifth Air Force had airlifted the entire 128th U.S. Infantry Regiment to a village called Wanigela on the Papuan Peninsula’s north coast, where pilots put down on a crude airstrip carved out of the kunai grass by missionaries and area villagers. MacArthur had discovered a better way to get troops across the mountains.
Chapter 9
ONE GREEN HELL
ALFRED MEDENDORP WAS AT THE VILLAGE of Laruni when the 2nd Battalion got the go-ahead. Though Major Simon Warmenhoven worried about the myriad medical needs of nine hundred men marching across New Guinea, there was little he could do now. A team of medics and a platoon of engineers would accompany the battalion. Warmenhoven could only hope for the best.
Company E led the way for the 2nd Battalion with the battalion’s other companies—F, G, H, and Headquarters—following at one-day intervals.
It was fitting for Company E to be out front. When General Harding came to Amberley Airfield to see the company off on September 15, he told the men that they had been selected to go first because they “were the best in the outfit.” He called them the “spearhead of the spearhead of the spearhead.” Lutjens and his men liked the sound of it and began referring to themselves as “The Three Spearheads.” It was a distinction the company could be proud of: The 32nd was the first combat division of the U.S. Army to embark on an offensive mission against the Japanese. That meant that Company E was leading the way for the whole division.
Private Art Edson, who had scouted the coastal route to Gabagaba with Lutjens, took a moment to write his sweetheart.
Dearest Lois,
I take the chance to drop you a line as I may not have the chance again for a long time, as we are now some where in New Guinea…. This island is the Hell Hole of the world. I never expected to see natives used for pack horses or dressed like you see in shows, grass skirts and that is all…. Have seen quite a few crocodiles and have shot a couple. We shot a snake today, nine feet long. Will write more as soon as possible.
Love Forever, Art
On October 13, the day before Company E set out, Lutjens made a brief entry in his diary: “Been three weeks in New Guinea…I’m afraid it will become much worse than this. We are now starting into the foothills of the Owen Stanley Range…. We are going to carry six days’ rations—one pound of rice, one handful of green tea, a little sugar and two cans of bully beef. Plus our field equipment.”
What Lutjens described was a situation in which each man was carrying an almost impossible amount of weight. Provisions and field equipment, ammunition, plus a weapon—a ten-pound M-1, or a nine-pound model 1903 Springfield rifle, or a twelve-pound Thompson .45 caliber submachine gun, or a twenty-pound Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR)—meant that the average man in Company E carried nearly as much as Medendorp’s men—sixty to eighty pounds. In other words, no one had learned from Medendorp’s experience.
The machine gunners had it the worst. A .30 caliber machine gun alone weighed thirty pounds, not counting the tripod and ammunition. Together the gun, tripod, and ammunition were so heavy they were divided among three men. Still, the machine gunners struggled under loads that would have broken lesser men trekking across the flat fields of Kansas.
The men lugged 60 mm mortars over the mountains,