The morning of May 27, 1944, the convoy reached the island of Biak, a Japanese fortress that blocked the way for any force planning to go to the Philippines. Biak was needed for its harbor facilities and its airfields.
The landing was a piece of cake. The 162nd infantry went ashore against almost no opposition and headed left toward the principal prize the island offered, Mokmer airdrome. A three-man I & R patrol led the way. Folsom [edit: Folsom was the lieutenant who led the I&R platoon after its first leader lieutenant Rod Orange died] took turns as point on the patrol with Arnie Neerman and me. We led the third battalion. Which was followed by the second.
Biak was even closer to the equator than New Guinea. The sun shown brightly and reflected off the island’s coral. The air shimmered with heat.
We walked westward along the south shore, following a trail that sometimes went along the beach and sometimes wormed its way inland a short distance. The first mile or so was uneventful. But then, with Neerman in the lead, we surprised a pair of Japanese, as they were digging a hole, apparently trying to mine the trail. There were three of us and two of them. They were killed easily and our people continued westward with only a brief delay.
Several more times we encountered Japanese and were able to slay them without halting the march. Folsom decided the Japanese were coming down to the seaside trail from towering cliffs just inland. He called for a fourth member of the I&R platoon and this man was assigned to walk atop the cliff, always staying in sight of the point patrol. Thus the Japanese could not launch a surprise attack.
Once a sniper fired upon us and he was shot dead. Then, early in the afternoon, we had a major clash. This came when the trail moved along between the beach and the cliffs that reached almost to the water’s edge. Waves had created caves at the base of the cliff and Neerman looked into a cave and spotted a Japanese boot. He waited for Folsom and me to catch up.
Folsom gave the order. He and Neerman would lie down in firing positions. I was to throw a hand grenade into the cave and then join them to fire on the Japanese who might emerge.
The grenade went off in the cave with a muffled “whoomf.” I ran back and dropped down beside Folsom and Neerman. Suddenly, Japanese began running from the cave. The first one was an officer who was waving a Samurai sword (what a souvenir!). The three of us opened fire. The officer dropped. Then, in single file, more Japanese came out of the cave. They were a different breed of cat, bigger than most enemy soldiers we had seen and wearing khaki uniforms, complete with neckties. They must have belonged to some elite unit. A couple of them fled down the beach before we could kill them. Others ducked back into the cave.
While we figured out what to do next, a navy landing ship armed with one hundred and forty-four rockets in racks on its decks came up the coast. Using semaphore, which we had learned a long time ago at Rockhampton, we asked the navy to fire those rockets on the cliff. Twelve dozen rockets screamed from the ship and smacked the face of the cliff. Great chunks of stone peeled from the face and slid down onto the beach, burying the first officer who had charged and his saber too along with any of the enemy still in the cave.
We moved around the rubble and continued west on the trail that led to Mokmer airfield, always staying in touch with the I & R man on our flank, except when the cliff came down to the beach. The flank man then was forced to join us for a distance.
By evening, we had gone about four of the seven or so miles to Mokmer. Folsom returned to the regimental headquarters, advising us to keep the battalion moving the next day as we had on this day. “Remember that man on the flank,” he said, “He can save lives.”
Next morning the regimental commander approached Neerman and me and said we should continue to lead the way, adding: “But let’s not keep that man on the flank. He slows us down.” I tried to tell him that Folsom had ordered us to keep a man up on the hills and that to move out without this protection was foolhardy. The colonel did not appreciate being advised by a dogface enlisted man. “Do as I say,” he barked. Reluctantly we moved west with our flank exposed.
In about an hour we came to a place called Parai where the high inland hills contained a defile, a gentle slope that reached almost to the sea.
By now G Company of the second battalion had fallen in behind the I & R patrol. The Japanese initiated an intense bombardment by artillery and mortars. Where was the barrage coming from? I started to crawl up an embankment to see if I could find out. A mortar shell exploded in a tree behind me. Two G Company men were hit by shrapnel and died on the spot. I was hit in the thigh.
Oof!
I wondered how it would feel to be shot or hit by shrapnel. Well, now I knew. The shrapnel felt like Lou Gehrig had hit me with a forty ounce bat.
Sergeant Jim Cassidy of G Company called to the men of his unit, ordering them to join him in an orderly withdrawal. The defile was a deadly trap. The two dead men were beyond help and were left there with me. I could have used some aid.
I was bleeding heavily and slit open my pants leg. Blood spurted several inches from a smallish wound each time my heart beat. I tore a piece of my trousers and made a primitive tourniquet, which slowed the bleeding. Finding that I was alone, I started crawling east, the direction from which we had come. After going a couple hundred yards, I decided to stand and run. My right leg refused to cooperate. It was paralyzed. I went on crawling, dragging my carbine with me. Suddenly I realized that the gun was of limited value. If I encountered any Japanese, I wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight.
I threw the carbine into the weeds and crawled for half an hour to a battalion aid station. Ralph Sparrage, a friend from F Company (my old unit before I joined the I & R Platoon), bandaged the wound and said, “I told you to avoid the I & R Platoon. Too dangerous.”
A jeep delivered me to a field hospital on the beachhead. That evening Folsom visited me. He sized up the situation and said, “Boy, what some guys won’t do to get out of the army.” He told me to take care and left.
Biak was a disaster of the highest order, the definition of fubar. The Japanese had dug into the hills and cliffs and settled into caves on the high ground. The army did not know this before attacking the island and had failed to plan for the situation. The I & R Platoon went on repeated missions seaking the enemy in their holes. One one mission, Dave LeBaron toted along a flame thrower and, when his patrol came upon a cave full of Japanese, he unloaded a couple gallons of napalm into the cave, killing scores of Japanese.
A day or two later, Folsom led a patrol up into the hills to find a weak point in the Japanese defenses. He told Vic Svagdis to guard the rear while half a dozen I & R men trailed behind him. He walked over a rise and was hit with a blast of machine gun fire. One man on the patrol noted: “geez, I could see daylight through him. I knew he was dead.”
Folsom, the charismatic, conscientious Californian, found his way for getting out of the army. Had he known that this was to be his fate when he told Sister Francis, his sibling, that he would make no plans for the future? This seemed likely.
The I & R Platoon continued to function on Biak, leading others to places where the Japanese were dug in. After some weeks, our people took the island. But without Folsom things were not quite the same. One man said, “It’s like losing your big brother.” The family was broken.
After Biak, the platoon, minus its big brother, went with the 41st Division to Zamboanga in the Philippines, saw heavy scouting duty and suffered more casualties. Little by little its strength ebbed. New men were brought in as replacements for those wounded or those sent home on rotation. One of the last original platoon members said of its operation in the Philippines, “We did alright. We had to do alright. We were the I & R Platoon”
His story: He joined the I & R Platoon at Rod Orange’s suggestion. He had been a misfit in his rifle company, hated the army ways and officers. In the I & R Platoon, he was spared most of the things he disliked. He never had to work in the kitchen or swab out latrines. He never once had to shine the brass on his uniform. He almost never was required to salute officers or address them in the lofty manner prescribed by military courtesy. Orange, Folsom and the platoon noncoms treated him as an equal.
He kept his dignity as a member of the platoon, given meaningful assignments in combat and appreciated when he performed well.
But most of all he found in the platoon kindred spirits, men who felt as he did about exaggerated courtesy and discipline, men who treated him as a true brother. He was welded to them in an uncommon brotherhood.
In the Philippines, the platoon sergeant was sent home via the rotation plan. Who should replace him? Everybody agreed it had to be the last of the original I & R Platoon men. He was the last of the yeast that made the platoon a unique and special fighting unit.
[edit: My father’s right leg was paralyzed below the knee. He could not move his foot for the rest of his life. According to my mother, he had constant pain. As Kurt Vonnegut would say in his fine novel, Slaughter House Five, so it goes.]