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After settling the business of how we would take
turns staying awake, no doubt also done in every other squad, I fell asleep.
Some time later the sound of explosions woke me. They were about like hand
grenade explosions, and the flashes were just short of the hill’s crest –
short of us. My first, bleary, thought was that the Japanese were advancing up
the hill, throwing grenades ahead. The machine gunner just to our left, must
have also thought that, for he opened up at those flashes.
More awake, now, I realised it was not enemy
advancing, but probably one with a knee mortar – and his rounds were not
reaching us. The flames from that machine gun, though, must have been over two
feet long. In my most authoritative voice I ordered the machine gunner to cease
firing. He did, but the damage was done. About 30 seconds later, there was a
clank right among us and I guess we all realized that, although it was a dud,
the little mortar now had the range.
Another 30 seconds and the next one came in. It was
not a dud. I felt pain in the back of my neck, just below my helmet, and knew
I’d been hit. Ears ringing, I rolled over and started crawling toward the
platoon CP to see the medic. The ringing stopped and I heard Lt. William Sullens,
Platoon Sgt. Harvey Hicks and Pvt Harry Hamilton all say they’d been hit, and
all had much more serious wounds than I did.
Harvey
Hicks told us his leg was
“blown clean off.” I didn’t complete my crawl. Compared to them I was
fine.
No more rounds fell that I heard. The navy had been
contacted and fired star shells over us, illuminating the area. I was later told
that, in the bright light, some-one had spotted and shot the guy with the knee
mortar.
By daylight Sullens, Hicks and Hamilton had died. I
reported the third platoon situation to the company commander and caught a ride
to the regimental aid station. My bleeding had stopped, but I wondered if a
fragment of something was still in the neck. At the aid station I was given a
shot of Novocain by the regimental dentist who “don’t like to fool with a
neck” and turned over to a doctor who probed. Nothing in there. Later I was
assigned a cot, and I spent the night of the 25th in it.
Next morning, when I told the doctor I’d like to
go back to the company, he said I didn’t have to go and that he admired my
spirit. Since then I’ve wondered why on earth I did go back when I didn’t
have to. But I was rested and clean. My wound, though a close call, had turned
out to be no more than a nick. Just about every person I’d met in the past 3
years was up there. I guess I figured I should be too.
I was issued clean fatigues and a rifle covered
with Cosmoline. I cleaned the rifle and started back. The trip was no more than
a mile, and I caught a ride for most of it in a service company jeep driven by
Charles Woodlee who at one time had been in A company. Walking, I found the
company and reported to the first sergeant in the words of General MacArthur,
“I have returned.”
He was not a bit amused and sourly told me,
“We’ve put those left into two platoons. You are now in the second
platoon.” I was told by the second platoon sergeant, “You were a squad
leader. We don’t need any more squad leaders so you’re a rifleman again and
you’re in the second squad. That’s them just going out on patrol.”
I caught up with the patrol and fell in, as I
recall, between Robert Atz and Paul Saul. I never learned the purpose of the
patrol or where we were going – or who the patrol leader was.
Almost immediately we were strung out over the
entrance to a large cave with a metal door. A
Sherman
tank sat broadside about 30
yards from the door. Other patrol members stretched ahead, then down so that the
patrol’s first scout, Ted (“Pat”) White, was at the entrance level and a
little to one side. I was not quite to a point directly over the door and,
looking down to the right, could see Pat, the door and the tank.
Pat called up to us, “There are two dead Yanks
down here.” That’s all I can remember, so it is probably when the explosion
occurred. I have been told that the whole of its force could not escape out the
entrance (but what did tipped the tank,) so the earth over the cave, to my left,
opened up. Likely the concussion from that broke my left eardrum and killed my
left eye’s optic nerve. The broken bones were probably due to falling rocks. I
received casts on both legs, and other care, at our aid station, though I cannot
remember it and was sent to a hospital at
Subic Bay
where I “came to.” Pat
White was not killed by the explosion; Bob Atz and Paul Saul were.
I began the journey towards home. Thirteen months
later, after a couple of operations and the broken bones had healed, I was
discharged from the Army. It had taken me about as long to remove the cosmoline
from that rifle as it did to find my company, start out on patrol and get blown
up.
Howard Lout
503d PRCT
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