The Stories Best Kept From Love Ones

The Stories Best Kept From Love Ones

The hardship of combat is sometimes far too painful to relay even to loved ones.  The problems may be the word, “loved one”; the veteran does not wish a loved one to live through the reality of battle.  No matter how you try to sanitize battle, in truth, combat is killing fellow humans. The only way to do this for long periods is to dehumanize the enemy.  Sometimes, the enemy’s actions make this dehumanizing process easier.  The atrocities committed by an enemy can greatly facilitate the dehumanizing process. This makes combat impossible to take lightly.  When it is all over, a person faces several realities.  If a person survives after seeing so many die, there is guilt.  Why and how did it happen that I survived?  Aside from death, there are the terrible wounds that will change a person’s life forever.  Permanent disfigurement may be the reality for the rest of your life.  If you have not been there, then you know nothing about the reality of combat.   

My father, James Lawrence Wright, was in combat during the Second World War. Drafted in 1941, he left behind a new baby girl and his wife of only one year. Before his enlistment, he was a farmer working on his family farm between Lowell and Cave Springs Arkansas.  He trained at Camp Crower in Southwest Missouri. After his basic training and advance infantry training, he was posted to Australia to prepare for the invasion of the islands of New Guinea.  In Australia, he had a rather Gung-ho captain.  To impress the Inspector General and his commanding officer, he instructed his company to paint their tents white.    The commanding officer was not impressed; in fact, he was rather irritated.   He dressed the captain down by informing him that these men were about to go into battle with those tents.  The tents were painted a beautiful glowing white and would make a very nice target for the enemy. Everyone was ordered to remove the paint and camouflage their tents.

My father was assigned to the 2^nd battalion, 19^th infantry regiment of the 24th infantry brigade.  The units’ first taste of battle was in the New Guinea campaign.  The fighting in New Guinea was some of the most brutal fighting of the South Pacific Theater. This was the Army's first jungle engagement.  The jungle battles took a toll on both enlisted and officers.  Some were to perform bravery and brilliantly in the ensuing battles; others were left with a bitter taste that would not go away long after the war.  The fighting in the jungles of the Owen Stanly Mountains was brutal with the Japanese launching Banzi attacks on Dad’s company’s position.  The fighting was fierce, and the outcome was impossible to predict.  The company commander and a second lieutenant escaped the fighting and reported to the battalion commander that the company was overrun and there were not any survivors.   The battalion commander sent in an assault company to assess the fighting.  They found C Company still intact and fighting off the attack.   C Company had twelve casualties with three killed in action.     The company commander and his Lieutenant were sent back to the states to face charges.  This incident only led to the distrust that enlisted men had for their officers. In the action, James received a bronze star for leading a fire team to take a Japanese bunker.  The Japanese were isolated in New Guinea, which put a serious kink in their supply line.   The major strong point during the campaign was overlooked and left isolated.  The Americans who fought in the New Guinea acquired a deep respect for the Australian soldiers with whom they fought.  James always spoke well of the local natives.  They helped with the process of acclimatizing to jungle fighting.

The completion of hostilities in New Guinea saved Australia from possible invasion.  Some historians claim that the Japanese never intended to invade Australia. Concerning the times, an invasion was a possibility.   The Battalion was ordered back to Australia for rest and recuperation and to acquire reinforcement for the invasion of the Philippines. James became a scout for the brigade.  Their next combat assignment would be the invasion of Leyte. 

This was to be the start of the campaign to retake the Philippines.  James had a personal reason to want to retake the Philippines.   He had an older brother in the Marines, who the Japanese captured. He had survived the death march, but at this time, he did not know if his brother was dead or alive.   His brother was transported to Japan and forced to labor in a coal mine. 

As the scout, James was one of the first off the landing craft at Leyte.  The invasion party met little or no resistance on landing.  As the soldiers moved off the beaches, they began to meet with resistance.  The Japanese had a rather unique strategy for meeting an invasion force.  They would let the Allies land and then try to defeat them after they had a beachhead established.  This strategy worked exactly zero times.  The invasion force is most vulnerable on the beach.  Because of the ease of which the landing took place, General Douglas MacArthur decided to make his dramatic appearance on the beachhead.  The General’s theatrics turned many of the men fighting the enemy against the general.  I have heard very few encouraging words about the General from family members and friends who served under him.   After all, how many fighting soldiers received the Congressional Medal of Honor for running away from the fighting? No doubt, he was facing some danger but not nearly, the danger that Wainwright was facing.  MacArthur did not approve of the president awarding Wainwright the Congressional Medal of Honor. 

Real war began when MacArthur was back on his ship.  The combat soldiers faced a month of continuous fighting.  The battle fatigued assault troops of the 24^th were ordered to advance across the mountains to set up a roadblock against Japanese resupply and reinforcements.  Loaded down with supplies and ammunition, the battalion had to fight the enemy and the tortuous mountain terrain for four days to reach the roadblock area.  To control the road, the assault team had to take the heights.  For 24 hours, they fought without resupply and the only food they had was rice recovered from packs of dead Japanese soldiers and palm tree hearts.  Air drops provided a fraction of a meal per man.  The soldiers were able to establish the roadblock and held it for our days against enemy tanks, truck column, artillery fire, and fanatical charges.   Patrols had to fight for food dropped by airplane near the enemy and for water from a mountain stream.  One story I heard was that one soldier had drawn the short stick to go down to the stream to obtain water.  After he had filled two jerry cans with water, he looked upstream and saw several dead Japanese soldiers in various states of decay in the water.  Because of the danger involved, he took the water back to the camp and did not tell anyone about where it came from.  With low rations and medical supplies and casualties mounting every day, the situation was becoming desperate.  The team was ordered to pull out and leave the wounded to be picked up later. Most of the soldiers knew what this meant to the wounded.  They refused to leave the wounded and carried them out all the way.  The trip down the mountain was not a cakewalk; they were constantly battling the Japanese, the terrain, and the weather.  When the battalion finally reached the main American forces, their casualties amounted to 10 percent of the battalion strength.   Enemy losses from combat counts were 600 killed. 

James was wounded in action in the Philippines.  His company was on patrol and ambushed by a Japanese company.  James received wounds to his left arm, which crushed his radius and ulna.    Doctors replaced the destroyed bones in his lower arm by removing the fibula from his left leg. He spent several months in various hospitals recovering from his wounds.  By the time he returned to Cave Springs, James was a hero. His friends and neighbors in northwest Arkansas knew that many owed their life to him and the others that refused to leave them behind.

Looking back with new knowledge of the battles, some considered the invasion of the Philippines a waste of resources.   The Japanese knew after they lost the Marianas that they could not hold on to the conquered territories.   Sources say that the Japanese were ready to pull out of the Philippines to protect the home islands.   In any assessment, one must consider that in the naval battles, the Japanese navy was for all military purposes destroyed.    

Total casualties the liberation of Philippines. 

U.S. Army and Army Air Forces

Location	Killed	Wounded		Total
Leyte	3,593	11,991		15,584
Luzon	8,310	29,560		37,870
Central and Southern Philippines	2,070	6,990		9,060
Total	13,973	48,541		62,514
Location	Killed		Captured		Total
Leyte	80,557		828		81,385
Luzon	205,535		9,050		214,585
Central and Southern Philippines	50,260		2,695		52,955
Total	336,352		12,573		348