Reluctant Warriors (31 page)

Rodgers chuckled. “Well, that's good enough for me. But I'm assuming that, whoever
these people are, they can't match us in speed. If I'm wrong, we'll be in the water
soon enough. Thanks, Frank.”

“I'll be getting back, sir.” Clark scurried out. Rodgers turned back to the signalman.

“Signalman, get this off to Humbolt Bay as soon as you can. Don't bother
to waste
time encrypting it: ‘Sighted superior enemy surface force. Request air support.'
Give our position.”

Word came from “Guns” again. “Sir, the big ships are definitely Myoko-class heavy
cruisers along with three destroyers.”

“That's just great!” Cashion complained. “You want to pull out?”

“No!” Rodgers said firmly. He sat down in his chair as the guns fired and thought
to himself:
More Myokos. Just like at Huon Gulf. They keep coming up with these things.
At least it can't be the pair we beat up there. Well, even if I had
Grand Rapids
,
we'd have to retreat before this bunch. Orders. I would sure like to oblige them,
but not today.

Cashion said, “Sir, we're closing at about sixty knots a minute with the new column.
They'll be in range in a few minutes.”

“Get the guys again,” Rodgers said. He waited till the three captains were on the
phone. “I want all of us to slow to ten knots now and turn to, ah, ten degrees to
put all of your turrets, fore and aft, in against these people. Up your rate of fire
if you can. That'll give us both some more time and firepower. We need to put these
people away! When the time comes, I'll want you to execute another smart ninety degrees
to starboard and we'll get out. I'll probably want you to launch torpedoes at somebody
during that last turn, so get ready.”

The range had closed to about six miles to the wounded light cruiser. It was almost
dead in the water. The wounded Japanese destroyer continued to flee, but its speed
was now only about ten knots, and the range was also six miles. The Japanese destroyers'
designers had made the error of placing electrical conduits on the inside walls of
the hulls. A shell had blown a hole in
Mishi
's side, shattering major circuits, leaving
the ship almost helpless. Now, both
Mishi
and the cruiser
Akasi
received a number
of additional hits.

By 1620, at extreme range, the Japanese heavy cruisers opened fire. The destroyer
had slowed to only several knots and was no longer firing. The cruiser continued
to absorb hits. The Americans could now see fires on both ships without binoculars.

At 1625, one of the monstrous eight-inch projectiles came to within
about seven hundred
yards of
Reed
. Still, the American commander sat calmly in his chair, smoking his
Camel cigarettes one after the other, not having moved appreciably for some minutes.
Feeling the pressure, Cashion walked onto the wing and asked again.

“Sir, are we going to pull out soon?”

“No!” Rodgers looked up at Cashion. “You might as well get the others on the phone.”

Once the other captains were on the line, Rodgers said: “Listen, these people are
at extreme range. No one can hit anything at extreme range. Sam and I battled ships
just like these last year.”

Cashion thought to himself:
Yeah, and they sank us!

“It took them a long time to hit us,” Rodgers added, “and we were closer and in a
bigger target. They couldn't hit Yankee Stadium at this range. Listen to me! For
all you are to care, those cruisers are on the
moon
! You understand me? My orders
are to ‘destroy enemy forces of equal or inferior strength,' and we're going to do
just that.” His Southern drawl was particularly evident now. “You do the shooting,
and we'll do the worrying. When it's time to pull out, we'll let you know.” His voice
was adamant, and the others knew it was not the time to argue.

But standing next to his commander, Cashion was not sharing his boss's confidence.
As he looked around the bridge, every other face seemed to agree with what he was
thinking:
We need to pull out!
He looked anxiously at Rodgers and marveled at his
composure.
There's absolutely no emotion on his face at all! He just lights his cigarettes
and calmly asks the steward for a drink.

Cashion had to shake his head.
He just sits there and continues joking with the men!
I can feel those Japanese ships lining up on us, just licking their chops to put
their next salvo right down our throats. In thirty minutes they'll be literally on
top of us! We could throw rocks at them!

How long until they have our range? One hit from one of those things could sink one
of us. And he looks like he did when I came for him on the bridge of
Grand Rapids.
I wonder if he'll ever pull out! Maybe he has a death wish. I see the men's faces,
looking at me. I can see the sweat pouring down their faces and on the
backs of their
shirts. He looks absolutely crisp, no sweat on his brow and his shirt completely
dry! If only I could order that turn and get out of here.

Several minutes passed. Shells were getting closer and closer. Finally Cashion caught
himself.
No!
he thought, looking at Rodgers out on the wing of the bridge.
He's never
made a bad decision yet. Even if he wants to pitch in against those heavy cruisers,
that'll be fine by me.

By 1630, the range to the heavy cruisers was down to only twenty-two thousand yards.
That was optimum range for their guns. Their salvos were coming very close.

Finally, when one came within 150 yards of
Kaulk
, jolting her violently, Rodgers
stood up and walked toward the phone.

“Get the guys,” he said, referring to the phone. He muttered, “That's enough. They
have our range. Three, four more minutes and they'll hit one of us.”

Cashion jumped across the bridge to the TBS voice system and called as fast as he
could. The other captains must have been at hand, since they answered almost instantly.

“Here, sir.” Cashion handed the phone to Rodgers.

“I want you to wheel around now to 170 degrees magnetic, launching your torpedoes,
you two at the destroyer, and Pete and us at the little cruiser.” Cashion breathed
a sign of relief. “Then up your speed to thirty-five knots and clear out. We'll join
up south of here. Keep firing as fast as you can on those targets.”

“Sir,” Hennessey reported, “that destroyer (
Mishi
) just turned over.”

“Good,” Rodgers responded. “You two point your torpedoes at the big cruisers, and
we and Pete will aim at the little cruiser. If those shells come close, start weaving.”

The eight-inch shells did come very close, as the destroyers' helms slowly responded
and they began their launches, burying them under tremendous geysers of water.
Bindle
was rocked repeatedly. Several times, an inch or more of water landed on her bridge.

As their torpedoes streaked out, the Americans turned south and began
weaving. Strangely,
none of the US torpedoes hit anything. But they did force the Japanese heavy units
to veer off, allowing the Americans to make good on their retreat and rapidly draw
out of range. The light cruiser remained afloat. Taken in tow by one of the heavy
cruisers, she reached the Japanese anchorage off Ceram in thirty-two hours. The battle
of Noemfoor Island was over.

At Ceram, experts flown out from Japan observed some twenty-nine shell hits on
Akasi
.
Many had burst against the various armored parts of the ship and caused comparatively
little damage. But fourteen were judged serious. The galley had been destroyed, as
well as the gun director system, a turret with its hoist mechanism, and all of the
torpedo tubes. One of the two funnels had collapsed and lay half in the water. The
engine was partially unseated, the bow warped, and the armor belt seriously compromised.

A second examining team, flown from Tokyo a month later, judged that the engine could
not be repaired short of Sasebo Naval Base near Nagasaki in southern Japan. The armor
belt alone would need a year of repair. Fissures in the hull from the concussion
of many near misses forced them to judge it unsound. Towing the ship seventy-four
hundred miles to Sasebo, with American submarines dominating the waters in between,
was clearly out of the question. She was declared a total loss and finally scuttled
on September 14, 1944. Ironically, the first American bombers to take off from Biak
flew over the anchorage at Ceram the next day looking for the cruiser. Finding nothing,
intelligence concluded that she had gotten away.

Captain Rodgers and company knew nothing of this until after the war. All they knew
was that they had expended some 1,400 shells and sunk one ship, a destroyer. They
saw the failure to sink the light cruiser as a terrible blow, the worst thing that
had happened to the team in all of the months they had worked together. They returned
to Humbolt Bay two days after covering the landings on Noemfoor on July 2.

In actuality, Destroyer Division 29's mission was a towering success. It prevented
reinforcements from arriving at Noemfoor, allowing the landings
to go on as scheduled
and without any serious opposition. It made Biak's flank secure. Within a few months,
General MacArthur's forces made the leap up to the Philippines. Only the division's
vaunted expectations hid the truth from them. They had dominated an enemy of equal
size, driving them from the area and destroying two-thirds of their force in the
process. They had made thirty-five hits on an elusive enemy but only been struck
several times themselves. Some 450 of the enemy had been killed while only 10 Americans
had been lost.

Noemfoor was to be Rodgers' last battle against surface forces. He spent the rest
of the war commanding destroyer screens for the fast carrier task forces as they
advanced and contributed to the destruction of the Empire of Japan.

In 1947, when the details of the victory were made public by the release of Japanese
records, the outcry from the hundreds of districts representing the crews was such
that Congress voted the command a Presidential Unit Citation. As a result, on October
14 of that year, Captain Theodore R. Rodgers, Jr., was voted the very unusual Thanks
of Congress. A week later he was named rear admiral, the youngest in the US Navy.

Joseph Wiley Stories

Two Sergeants

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, . . .
It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness,
It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
We had everything before us, we had nothing before us . . .

–Charles Dickens,
A Tale of Two Cities

I
n their first great offensive against the Germans in World War II, American forces
landed on the west coast of North Africa in November of 1942. In the following months,
they advanced hundreds of miles to the east without opposition toward Tunisia, where
the Germans had retreated before British forces that had chased them west all the
way from Egypt. In their first taste of battle, the Americans were decisively beaten
by German armored units that mauled them badly at the Battle of Kasserine Pass, driving
them back eighty miles.

West of the Kasserine Pass, February 22, 1943

It was 0400. What men there were lined up. They were a dirty and beaten lot, these
men of the 26th Infantry Regiment of the hallowed First Division.

“Anyone see Sergeant Renko or his squad?” Captain Miner asked.

The men shook their heads.

“What about Lieutenant Mosely?”

“I saw him get it,” a private volunteered. “Half-track.”

“Lieutenant Christopher or Sergeant Tallemy and any of his squad?”

“Sir, I saw Christopher at that bridge over that wadi about ten miles back. It was
near that river that was supposed to be dry,” a private piped up.

Another man recalled him too. “Was that him? I saw him there. I think he may have
been wounded. Sir, it was all a blur. I didn't know that shells could land like that
and not kill every one of us. I had to get outta there.”

Several others thought they might have seen the lieutenant but were not sure.

“That artillery was on us, sir,” a dirty-faced and dejected private added.

“Those half-tracks, sir. I don't know how those bullets missed me. I just ran. My
buddy got it and I just ran and didn't even look back,” a corporal stated, with a
miserable look on his face.

“I want volunteers to go back out and look for Christopher,” the captain said.

No one responded.

“I know you're down,” he said earnestly. “But he might be out there, wounded but
still alive.”

There was another long pause. Then, eighteen-year-old Private Joseph “Chip” Wiley
stepped forward. “I'll give it a throw, sir.”

“Good. I need two more men.”

The men were uneasy. Many knew Christopher well and liked him. But they had just
had their first taste of defeat, and it was a new and terrible feeling to them. It
was humbling that Americans could be beaten. Some hated themselves for not volunteering,
but none would step forward.

Wiley collected a few rations and replenished his ammo. He took a grenade offered
by guilty comrades, and then stopped to fill his canteen from one of the few supply
trucks that had escaped the debacle. By himself for a minute, he wondered:
Why'd
I volunteer? That was real stupid. I guess I can't go back on it.

He had been scouting well behind enemy lines with two other men when the panzers
broke through behind them. They had come back much farther than the others. He had
a small wound too, which should have let him out of
duty altogether, although he
knew many others had wounds as well. True, he had been caught up in the panic, but
so had everyone else.

The answer was plain enough.
I'm ashamed that fear took such a holda me that I panicked,
and I'm angry at being beaten when I believed that crap they taught us that we would
never lose.

Then fear gripped him again, the fear that had made him panic and run. He sat down
on some ammunition boxes. It was a sensation deep in the pit of his stomach, the
same sensation he had had as a boy knowing that his father was about to beat him.
That was the last time he had been afraid. He had stood partially to prove to himself
that he was no longer afraid.

But he was afraid, terribly afraid, more than ever. Deep down, fear grabbed at him,
and he felt physically sick. It was the same fear that had overtaken him in the disastrous
retreat, a sudden, terrifying, and consuming fear of death at the hands of the German
armored units that had ripped the Americans to shreds and seemed to have no weaknesses.

Wiley thought he would be a coward again, that he would again run in the face of
the pitiless machines that had come so close to running him over. He sat for a long
time in the cool desert dark, knowing that he should go but not wanting to.

Without any reason to stand, he stood. He didn't know what made him stand at that
particular moment. Perhaps it was duty, or stubbornness, or stupidity. He might just
as well have never stood again in the rest of his life. But he did anyway and began
walking, oblivious to those around him, not hearing those guilty few who wished him
good luck as he walked past.

He had been looking out into the blackness. Perhaps he recognized that if he got
up he could be alone. He had always looked forward to being alone. There was something
in being in the open, or by himself in the woods, that always comforted him. Watching
his breath in front of him in the predawn cold, he felt a slight exhilaration as
he blithely walked away from his lines.

The battle sounds so continuous in the previous few days were now silent. As Wiley
proceeded southeast, the sun began to show itself, and he saw the
area of the retreat
unfold in front of him as though giants had turned lights upon the Earth.

“I promised myself I'd never come back here,” he whispered to himself. “So, here
I am! Why did I volunteer? That was stupid.”

But he continued on.

The Grand Dorsal appeared some twenty miles off to the east, the line of peaks that
the Army had passed through a week before, completely unaware of the enemy forces
waiting to pounce on them from behind the Eastern Dorsal. The men had last seen Christopher
somewhere in the area in between the American lines and the First Dorsal. But Wiley
had not seen the bridge they mentioned and had only a vague idea where to look.

Into these vast badlands the private ventured alone, armed with his rifle and enough
food for three days. He had been scouting for the company ever since they came to
Africa, and soon he fell back into the rhythm of being a scout. But this time, he
decided that he couldn't be as careful as he usually was.

“It'll take too long,” he told himself. “If Christopher's out there, wounded, he
might die if I take eight hours instead of four to reach him. I gotta take the chance
of someone shooting me.”

Then, with a small amount of bravado, he added: “I'm not afraid a somebody shooting
me. That's what bein' a scout is. Part of volunteerin' is to maybe get yourself kilt.”

His stomach felt somewhat better now. He walked boldly, but warily, ahead in the
open.

Other than the peaks in the Dorsals and a lone peak of perhaps a few hundred feet
before him, the entire area appeared as flat as a tabletop. However, Wiley knew from
traversing it that there were thousands of depressions, mere dips, or beds of streamlets,
some with water in them from the recent rains but most dry. Knowing the near impossibility
of finding anything in many square miles of such ground, he walked slowly toward
the peak in front of him, listening for every sound.

It took almost three hours to reach that peak in front of him. The sun was almost
directly overhead by the time he got there. He sat behind a large
rock and ate and
drank—warm, stale water and a tasteless K-ration—before spending another thirty minutes
climbing to get a good vantage point.

Once he reached the top, Wiley sat, took out his binoculars, and attempted to scan
every foot of the vastness around him. Minutes passed by as he searched for a glint
off a weapon, anything that would give away a man's presence. The only real landmarks
were Highway 17, which traversed the area left to right paralleling the peak he was
on, and the Hatab River further off. The Army had used the highway in their advance
toward the pass and then taken it in their chaotic retreat toward Thala, where they
had made their stand and finally halted the panzers with a massive artillery barrage.

Most of an hour passed in this process. He was about to give up when he saw something
off to his right in the direction of the pass.

“Explosion!”

He turned the glasses to the right, east.

“Grenade . . . I think.” He looked carefully through the glasses as the cloud of
debris came back to earth, but he was too far away to see much. “That's most of a
mile, maybe more. I'll have ta get closer.”

A glance to his right told Wiley that the peak he was on ran in the direction of
the sighting. Quickly, he was up and jogging. Carefully watching his footing on the
loose rock, he went as fast as he could, sometimes sliding, sometimes almost falling,
his gear smacking him disrespectfully.

He maintained his elevation and aimed toward a particularly prominent point in front
of him. When he reached it, he stopped and looked through the glasses. “I think it
was over that way, not sure. Naw, I can't see nothin' from this little plateau.”

Then he began hearing occasional gunfire. He turned the glasses a good bit to the
right. “There it is. Can't see much. Still too far.”

He got up and started running again. Once, the cold air carried the sounds of the
firing to him so clearly that he thought he had gotten too close and stopped in his
tracks.

DAT . . . DAT–DAT–DAT . . . DAT.

Thompson submachine gun,
Wiley thought
. No gun sounds like it. That'd
have ta be
a sergeant or officer because they's the only ones who carry it.
He couldn't remember
if Christopher carried a Thompson or a Williams carbine.

Finally, he got close enough. It was an area many hundreds of yards across, scrub
ground with occasional cacti and low lying bushes. At first he saw nothing. He sat
and got out the binoculars. Then the gun fired, and he looked right at it.

DAT . . . DAT . . . DAT.

He's gone off semiautomatic ta single shot with the Thompson. Must be low on ammo.
There he is, must be four or five hundred yards off in a depression. Looks like one
of our guys,
he thought, not really sure.

The gun fired again.

I can't see who he shootin' at.
In a few more moments he heard other weapons firing.
Can't see where they're comin' from. I'll have ta get closer.

Wiley stood and ran along the edge of the escarpment, toward a closer high point
about five hundred yards off and maybe two hundred yards from the firing.

In several minutes, listening to the mixed gunfire below, he came to the high point.
For the first time, he could see well. He brought up the glasses for the third time.

That's a G.I. for sure,
he thought,
but it's not Christopher. Guy's gone to his pistol,
a Browning .45. I'd know that sound anywheres. Thompson's probably outta bullets.

The Browning's distinct sound echoed: BUNK, BUNK . . . BUNK.

The wind shifted. Now Wiley couldn't hear the firing very clearly, but the G.I. continued
shooting, running from one side of the low point to the other. Wiley searched in
his glasses for the soldier's targets.

I thought so. A band of A-rabs, probably six of 'em, no . . . seven. Maybe some of
the same guys that chased me. I'll fix those shits!

Quickly, Wiley twisted his rifle from his shoulder. The eight-pound M-1 Garand fit
perfectly in his hands. He hiked up the rear sight to the notch that said “200.”
He picked out an Arab who was some yards behind his comrades.

He sat motionless. Even a degree off, the bullet would miss or perhaps barely wound
the Arab. He squeezed the trigger.

There was a loud crack, and the man fell over. Wiley got out his field glasses again
and looked at the other Arabs.

Wind's in my favor,
he thought.
They don't know I'm up here.

The G.I. continued to fire: BUNK . . . BUNK.

I'll shoot 'em all
, Wiley thought, aiming again.

He picked out another man, squeezed off another round, and again the figure slumped.
He picked out a third Arab. Just as he fired, the man moved.

The round, in the air for less than half a second, barely wounded the Arab. He began
to yell to his comrades. Unaware of the direction the bullets came from, the man
moved clearly into view. Wiley was on target this time.

CRACK. The man spun around and fell.

With that, the remaining Arabs bolted. Wiley saw no reason to give away his position
by firing any more. He watched them scurry off in their woolen robes.

He waited a few minutes, until they were out of sight, and then stood up. He fired
in the air, waved, and yelled at the American in the trench: “Over here. Hey!”

He fired again, and the soldier looked his way.

“Come on, come on!” he yelled.

The G.I. saw him and waved.

“Come on! Get outta there. Come on!”

But the man didn't move. He only shook his head.

Then Wiley had a thought:
Maybe Christopher's down there, wounded. I gotta go down
there. Jeez, I sure hope those creeps don't come back or there'll be more of us trapped.

Cautiously, but hurriedly, he ran down the incline and then toward the depression,
his gear hitting him again. Once he stumbled awkwardly on the lip of a depression
and almost fell. In not quite five minutes, he and the man he had observed stood
face-to-face.

The other soldier was a bulky barrel-chested man, a staff sergeant about forty years
of age, maybe six feet tall, perhaps 180 pounds. Wiley noticed he was helmetless
and balding, with no coat despite the cold temperatures.