Soldier Artist Monk

Soldier

On February 17, 1945, with our hair freshly shorn, wearing new fatigues, and with numbers chalked on our helmets for quick identification, we boarded USS General Butner in San Francisco's harbor. We filed down to the crowded quarters in the hold, unaware that we would be spending one solid month at sea before we reached our destination, the island of Leyte, in the Philippines.

I did not yet know the men of my squad very well, but I discovered that I was a replacement, assigned to the first squad of the first platoon of K Company, 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Division (34/24), commanded by Maj. Gen. Roscoe B. Woodruff. From Leyte, we traveled to Mindoro, where a force was being readied for an invasion of yet another island. We were on our way to the last campaign of the war — to take the Philippine island of Mindanao from the Japanese.

After the fall of Manila, the largest group of remaining Japanese forces, estimated at 50,000, was positioned in and around Davao, on the southern side of Mindanao. They expected to be attacked from the south and had cut fire lanes through the jungle in that direction. But the 34/24, part of an invasion force that also included the 19th and 21st regiments of the 24th Division as well as the 31st Division, landed instead at Parang, south of Malabang, and advanced from the northwest. The assault was planned so that when we came on the Japanese from the opposite direction, they would be unable to bring their full firepower into play.

Woodruff's division landed unopposed on Mindanao on April 19, 1945. Poking through the island's jungle canopy and rising 9,690 feet was Mount Apo — cool, serene and aloof above the steamy, breathless green tangle. Occasionally, in the more open country and through gaps in the overhead greenery, I could see the top and flanks of the mountain, and I began to imagine it as a kind of presence that gazed down on the puny efforts of the soldiers at its feet, but was too detached to consider them a part of its world.

The rains were punctual. They came at 5 o'clock practically every evening, a drenching downpour. Ten minutes later the skies would be clear and bright. My usual practice was to grab a huge leaf, as large as an elephant's ear, and use it for an umbrella.

But nothing really stayed dry. The only relatively dry place was up inside the top of one's helmet, a place reserved for matches and toilet paper.

Soon after we arrived on the island I learned how quickly heat and humidity can slow up even the most willing troops. Except when the mobile field kitchens caught up to us during our trek through the jungle, we lived with what we could carry on our backs — food, water, and ammunition.

In addition to 12 magazines of Browning automatic rifle (BAR) ammo, I carried my M-1 and its ammo, three days' supply of K rations, a field pack and two canteens of water. It was enough of a load to work up a sweat on a cold day in Montana. In Mindanao's hot, humid jungle — as well as on the occasional open plains, where the sun beat down on us mercilessly — the effect was devastating.

To help combat heat exhaustion, a salt tablet a day was added to the Atabrine [a synthetic quinine substitute] we took to fight malaria. My back and thighs were never dry, and by 4 o'clock in the afternoon I was dizzy, exhausted and close to fainting. About that time one afternoon the BAR man, hot and tired as well and having forgotten to set the safety on the gun, accidentally goofed off a round, earning himself a few caustic remarks from the lieutenant.

Our first firefight came at night. We had dug in on either side of a road, facing into the black jungle. Sometime after we settled down there was the crackle of gunfire. I jumped up in my foxhole, saying, "Where are they?  Where are they?"