Above the Thunder (36 page)

At dawn one morning, I was called up to investigate some kind of enemy activity outside one of the company perimeter. The perimeter was on the nose of a grassy ridge surrounded by ravines except where the ridge continued rising gently toward Hill 3000. Out there about two hundred yards, I spotted a Japanese officer lying on his stomach and looking toward the perimeter with field glasses. He seemed to pay no attention to me as I searched for the troops I thought must be with him. But I could see no one else. I suggested to the company commander that he drop a few light mortar rounds out there and see what developed.

When the first 60 mm mortar round burst, the officer leaped to his feet and headed back up the ridge on the run, and with him went fourteen men who had been perfectly camouflaged in the grass. Not far up, the ridge narrowed to a small peak overgrown with brush, and over that the enemy could not be seen by the Americans on the ground. But I could see that the path they were following led them up to the head of a ravine, then cut back left around a grassy hillside in full view from where they had been when I first saw them.

Anticipating that they would continue to follow that path, crouching low in the grass while crossing the hillside, I suggested to the company commander that he send a machine gun out to where he had fired the mortar rounds and set up to cover a point where the enemy's route would pass around the nose of the hill and, therefore, could be seen from the ground. I would give the gunner the word to open fire when the enemy was most exposed and vulnerable.

A squad of men with rifles and a couple of BARs moved out and, once in position, established radio contact with me. The Japs moved, crouching, across the hillside, then turned the corner to go around and behind the nose of the hill, where they would be safe from our direct fire. As the leading man was almost to safety and the maximum number of them were exposed, I told the infantry to fire. There was an instantaneous hurricane of lead along that pathway, and twelve of the fifteen men fell. Only three got over the hill and kept going.

The officer was among those fallen, and I could see a light machine gun lying in the path among the bodies. The company agreed that it was worthwhile to see what of intelligence value might be found on the officer and started the squad moving around the same route the enemy had used. The route was completely concealed from the enemy line on what I'll call “the giant's footstool,” although we didn't call it that then, because it would have made a footstool for a giant seated on Hill 3000 and facing us. Meanwhile, I watched the fallen enemy troopers very closely from very low altitude to try to detect any signs of life. I saw only one.

A soldier who looked young and was tall for a Japanese got up from where he had fallen in the grass just off the path. He drew a knife
and began stumbling about, slashing at the air all around him. It was obvious that he was blinded, and I was immediately struck with pity for him. His blind wandering, always fighting imaginary enemies with his knife, took him on around the hill in the general direction they had been going, but he strayed down the hillside until he came up against the bushes along a ravine. He followed the edge of the ravine for a short distance, stabbing and slashing at the bushes. Then, as if his sanity had returned to him, he stopped fighting, walked up the hill a few paces, and sat down. He laid his head back on his pack. Flying over within a few feet of him, I could see that his eyes were just bloody holes in his head, as if a bullet had gone through from side to side and taken both of them out. After a few minutes, he put a white cloth over his face. It was soon discolored with blood.

Meanwhile, the American squad traversed the hillside and arrived at the point where the trail turned and they could see the bodies lying in the path. I had told them about the machine gun and a man I judged to be an NCO who lay near it. I had asked the squad leader to halt and contact me again before turning the corner. He did so, and I told him I had seen no movement other than the one blind man, but I warned him again about the machine gun, which lay pointed back toward the turn. Serving as point for his squad, the sergeant cautiously moved toward the gun.

Quick as a flash, the Jap NCO rolled over and had the gun firing. I could see the grass movement and the dust as the bullets cut through just in front of the American sergeant's feet. He leaped back a step, but the instant the machine-gun burst ceased, he leaped forward again, leading with his tommy gun, and the Japanese gunner slumped in death that this time was not a pretense.

The squad searched the enemy bodies and carried back the weapons, but they did not venture over the hill to get the blinded soldier. He sat there on the hillside all day, the cloth over his face his only protection from the blazing sun. All around him the war went on—infantry firefights, artillery fire here and there—but he could only wait in darkness and what must have been terrible pain. I looked at him several times during the day, and the only movement I saw was when he would occasionally
wring out the bloody cloth and put it back over his face. Next morning, he was gone. I wonder whether, somewhere in Japan, that man is still living today. I hope so. I feel responsible for his blindness, and I hope that it has not kept him from enjoying a good life.

American forces came into closer proximity to Baguio, and as the food supply in that city dwindled, General Yamashita permitted many civilians to leave and seek refuge wherever they might. Groups began making their way through the mountains to our lines. It wasn't an easy trek. Besides the possibility of trouble from the combat activity, there was the very serious problem of food and water. For this reason, we pilots were directed, when not flying combat missions, to load our planes with emergency rations and go looking for refugees in the mountains needing help. We were to be especially watchful for any of the Belgian or Filipina nuns from the convent at Baguio.

One day I sighted a group of refugees that included several of the nuns. Their position in a small vale between steep mountain walls, on a trail surrounded by forest, made getting into position for the drop a difficult proposition. I had to go into a diving turn, then pull level at the last minute and drop the rations. During the turn, I heard a loud noise, like a round of light antiaircraft artillery bursting close by. I wondered how that could be, in this remote situation, but I heard no more, so I soon forgot about it.

Arriving back at the Aringay strip, I approached in our usual steep slipping turn and landed. As I rolled up to the tie-down spot, all the men came running out to the plane. As usual, Wendell Young was first on the spot. He dashed up with a very concerned look on his face.

“Are you OK, sir? What happened?”

I didn't know what he was talking about, and I said, “Nothing happened. Why? What's wrong?”

“Well, how did you get that big hole in your left wing?”

When I made my slipping turn, they had seen it, and they thought the plane had been hit by artillery. All the fabric had been torn off the top of the outer three feet of the left wing. That's why I said earlier that the Dixie Division certainly didn't send me the best plane they could dig up.
²

Vin really did get hit by artillery about that time—our own, in fact, artillery he was adjusting. He came in from a mission looking just slightly pale, and he called me into our tent. He showed me a hole in the right hip pocket of his trousers, a mangled handkerchief that had been in the pocket, another hole through his shorts, and a blistering red burn on his hip. Then he showed me a shell fragment that had come through the bottom of his L-4, through his canvas seat, and—well, you've heard the rest.

“Crash, do you think I should report this?”

“Why, certainly you should report it, Vin. Technically—and actually—you're wounded. I wouldn't hesitate a minute.”

And he did report it.

Getting hit by fragments of our own shells was not at all uncommon for us pilots. I've already mentioned it happening to me—to my plane, that is. And it had happened to Vin before, too. Fred Hoffman had his aileron cable cut by a fragment and had to use rudder only for bank control on the way home. A fellow I knew later, Capt. Sidney Richardson, was flying an observer in Europe when a 155 mm shell passed through his L-5 without exploding; however, the bourrelet—a ridge on the shoulder of a projectile that centers it in the tube of the weapon—grazed the observer's back and killed him. On many occasions, usually when the sun was low in the sky, I have been able to see the yellow HE projectiles zip past my plane on the way to my target. Thinking about it now, I'm astounded to recall that we gave little regard to the danger at the time, but we normally tried to fly a little to one side of gun-target line, a little beyond the target, or at a higher or lower altitude that we thought would keep us clear of the trajectory. But some targets required us to get in very close.
³

There was another hazard of which the L-4 pilot needed to be careful, but only when he carried an observer or passenger. I learned of it one day when I was carrying Lt. Keith F. Kirkbride, a very nice young officer of HQ Btry. The mountain winds were boisterous, as they often are, but Kirk was all business and made no complaint. And then I was shocked to feel a blow squarely between my shoulders, and something hot flooding
down my back. Good Lord! I'd been hit, I thought. Funny, it didn't hurt a bit. Must be a temporary numbing effect. Before I got further along in my thoughts than that, I heard the strangled voice of Kirkbride.

“Oh-h-h. I'm sorry, Kerns, I'm sorry. I thought I could hold it back, but it came on all of a sudden. I've ruined your shirt. I'm sorry.”

When we landed, Kirk insisted on giving me one of his clean khaki shirts, and I had it for many years.

Kirkbride needn't have been so concerned about my shirt. I was probably about the grungiest looking pilot in the entire Army. I wore the same uniform as the others but had only an almost fleshless and ill-proportioned skeleton to give it shape. When I took my flight physical in 1944 in New Guinea, the doctor said I was three pounds under the minimum weight for my age and height and should not be on flying duty. But then he asked me whether I wore combat boots when I flew. I said I did, and he said that since my boots must weigh about three pounds he would pass me.

There were a couple of exceptions to the uniformity of my attire. One was that I habitually wore a shapeless old HBT field cap, although I had a baseball-type cap that had written under the visor the name of Maj. Sanford Wolff, one of our infantry officers, who had used it when he went along as an observer at the taking of Kwajalein Atoll. The other exception was that I had traded my pistol to CWO Rudy Krevolt, our personnel officer, for his carbine, because I couldn't hit the side of a barn with a .45 automatic. But most of the boys carried their .45s in shoulder holsters and wore baseball caps.

One day when I was tooling around up in the mountains, looking for something worthwhile to shoot at, I was told to knock off and head back to the Aringay strip immediately. When I got there, Vin said I'd have to get into a clean khaki uniform, wear a baseball cap, and carry a .45 in a shoulder holster. General Clarkson was to be there in a short time and there would be a formation. I had a clean uniform but I couldn't find my Wolff cap, so I borrowed an extra from one of the other pilots. With Vineyard's shoulder holster and pistol, I was all set.

Lieutenant Kerns receives an Air Medal from Maj. Gen. Percy W. Clarkson, commanding general of 33d Infantry Division.

The pilots who were to receive awards lined up between my plane and Vin's. Dick Bortz, who was in charge, stood a little ahead of us. The general presented Air Medals to all of us except Bortz, Mossman, and Vineyard, mine being for the New Guinea activities. Vin had already received one for New Guinea, and I think Bortz and Mossman had theirs presented at the general's office. For the rest of us, unless we had received the Purple Heart this was our first decoration, and that made it a red-letter day.