RECOLLECTION
John V. Lindsay 1989
During the seizure of the Admiralty Islands a volunteer was called for from the destroyers offshore to serve ashore as Naval gunfire spotter, teamed up with the First Cavalry spotter. The Navy had supplied one during the landing of the first support troops on Los Negros, but he had been ill-advisedly withdrawn.
I got the job and took off in my steel helmet, etc. towards Los Negros Island which had already been mainly secured.
The arrangement was that the Army spotter would have more knowledge of the turf and where to spot himself and the naval gunnery person would know the firing capacity of destroyers and could transmit the detailed orders. This is exactly what happened. The Army Lieutenant and I became good friends and stuck well together, as we had to .
I particularly can recall the bright moonlit night before we jumped off in the morning at dawn from Los Negros to Manus in landing barges, and more especially I remember the church services that were held in which obviously we were prayed over with hopes that most of us would survive. That was a very moving event under the moonlight.
I then recall most clearly two Australian guides in their floppy “digger” hats and short pants, going off in native canoes in the evening before to spread word among the natives that there would be a pulverizing bombardment in the morning at dawn and to move out. I’ll never forget those two Australians with their two native paddlers, standing up in the dugout canoes as light was falling on their way to enemy territory. It was a brave business.
The next morning at dawn we struck. B-25’s came in low and repeatedly bombed the beachhead. Then came the strafers and fighter planes. I could not see how any living thing could have survived on the Island of Manus. Then we went forward in the landing craft, with the landing craft that I and the Captain and the Army Lieutenant were riding on in the front ranks. Most of the Army had rifles, including my friend , and I was armed with a .45 revolver. We landed , got wet up to the knees, and dug in. I recall seeing my first dead Japanese soldiers – only they were not Japanese but Korean. I had wondered why they were so large. They had been impressed into service and I gathered that 100 percent of the Manus military population were Korean. But little did we know as they were all in Japanese soldier’s dress and I’m quite sure if we had not slaughtered them in the bombardment that they would have slaughtered us.
Then I remember seeing immediately wounded men coming back on stretchers from sniper fire. The Japanese were good at that and apparently many of them had escaped the bombardment. That went on for quite a while and meanwhile my Army friend and I inched our way up forward and as dusk began to fall in the front ranks we dug in deep. It was the American military practice to dig in at nightfall, whereas the Japanese moved about. It was a long night and not without terror. At one time both the Army Lieutenant and I were convinced that a Japanese had moved into our dugout and was about to let fly with a hand grenade, which meant we both quietly placed shells in the chambers of our guns and cocked them. It turned out to have been unnecessary.
And so it went , day after day, and we got more accustomed to it.
I do remember very strongly the terrible thirst that I had. The canteen was quickly exhausted and we were encouraged never to drink the water on the grounds that it had been either deliberately poisoned or was poisoned anyway. Getting enough clean water turned into a fairly strong obsession with both of us.
One last thing, to get even with my dear colleagues on board I remember firing my ship, Swanson , at intervals all night long. We worked them hard. But the Captain had zeroed in on just in front of us and all around us and it hot only gave me some pleasure to know everybody was working as hard as we were back in the ship, but we thought it was highly necessary ---- and possibly was.
On my return to the SWANSON I had not bathed for a week and was dirty and smelly but had survived.