Line of Fire

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Text originally published in 1948 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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LINE OF FIRE

BY

JACK BELL

JAMES M. GAVIN

ILLUSTRATIONS

East meets West

Chinese at Myitkyina

Dr. Seagrave’s Nurses

Operation at Livergnano

Paratroops under fire

Night firing

A Belgian town

Keep ‘em short!

Ardennes spy hunt

Relief for Bastogne

Moving up

Christmas, 1944

Dragon without teeth

First across the Rhine

Patrol into Zweibrücken

Dead American

INTRODUCTION

THE PRESS camps of World War II were many and varied, set up to fit the tempers and temperaments of war correspondents with amazingly divergent ideas of what constituted coverage of a tragedy so stupendous that no one knew just how to tackle the job.

The old foreign correspondents resented intrusion of mere reporters into foreign fields and couldn’t get away from the time-worn idea that war coverage meant interviews with none but the highest governmental and military dignitaries.

Another group, serving the press associations, tried to chart the war in detail, with pins on a map, names of every hut village and quotes from top command.

Then there were the thrill chasers, both women and men reporters who wrote passionately of three G. I.’s (who probably were looking for loot) who walked fearlessly into the massive jaws of one of Hitler’s death-dealing fortifications.

There were the writers of think pieces sitting in New Delhi, in Calcutta, Rome, Paris and Brussels. There were master military tacticians who looked wise and wrote of the big pictures, moving corps and armies with the greatest of ease.

And there were writers who walked among the rifle companies under fire, who saw war as it was and wrote it as they saw it. Some died under enemy guns and bombers, both reporters and photographers. They were the men who really covered the war, who wrote of the little picture. Their reports enabled correspondents far back to fashion the big picture. They were great guys, men with pride-of-craft and the courage to ask for tough assignments because they really wanted them. And they told you in America, England and Australia what was going on.

This book is a story of the American soldier on the battlefront. I do not attempt to tell General Stilwell or Eisenhower what he should have done, though every G. I. in the army always was ready to do just that. I have tried to paint a picture of the soldier as I came to know him, from Burma to Berlin. He could beef louder and longer, stand up under greater strain and punishment, and fight with greater courage than any soldier in the world. He showed these traits because he had a sense of loyalty, and a sense of humor.

To the best of my ability I have pictured these traits. I have, insofar as was feasible, written in the frontline vernacular. The rifle company soldier had a language all his own—both officer and enlisted man. This was natural because up there when the chips were down they fought and talked and died side by side.

You will find the expression, We owned Livergnano-Paris-Berlin. It meant our troops had driven out the enemy. The Germans were Krauts or Jerries, the Italians were Eyeties or Paesanos, the Indians were Wogs, the Chinese was a Ding How, the Japanese a Nip or Jap—and every human in the Near East and north Africa was an A-rab.

The G. I. swarmed over the world, taking his carefree outlook on life, his strange jargon and his conviction that the whole war was set up just to bring him personal misery. I was with him in the Far East, the Middle East, in northern Italy and the Western Front. This book is my picture of the G. I.; the guy who, when you asked him, why are you sticking your neck out?, replied It beats the hell out’a me, Mac, and stuck it out again: the best soldier in the world.—JACK BELL

FOREWORD

Jack Bell has been around, not only in our last clam-bake but in World War I. In this respect he is unique among combat veterans and correspondents alike. Some saw fighting in both wars, but few—none that I know of—were so closely mixed up with all of the fighting in both wars, and in the last one, in both theatres. He got winged, actually, in World War I when he tangled with kraut artillery. Why he didn’t get more of the same in World War II God knows. He certainly spent most of his time where the stuff was flying pretty thick.

He saw and knew the war as it really was—the machine gunner sweating out the next attack; the advancing BAR man clinging closely to a stone wall; the lonely man on an outpost listening with every pore of his body; the thousands of guys who, more often than not scared as hell, carried the fight to the krauts; the exhilaration and excitement of intense firing and fighting and the depressing feeling that came with surveying the killed and wounded in the silence that followed. He knew all of it and much more. He knew the people that fought it, their fear, their worries, and their moments of greatness. And this, finally, is the essence of war. For it is a composite of men, gun crews, air crews, seamen, and thousands of small fighting teams, all of whom regardless of their origins and fears do their jobs when the chips are down. It is these things rather than broad arrows on bright maps with thumb smudged evidences of staff cerebrations that is war. And this was Jack Bell’s war.

Jack Bell spent his time with the fighting men, usually where the fighting was the thickest. The troops had expressions for the rear echelon characters in UK, in fact they had many, mostly unprintable, but one that I remember was Pub Commando. I suppose the correspondents had like handles for their colleagues who dug in at the Hotel Scribe in Paris. But whatever they were, they certainly never applied to Jack. He knew the troops and lived with them. He was the kind of a correspondent who would patrol the frontal areas, get voluminous motes, go back to his typewriter and write enough stuff to fill his requirements for a week, then go out again for another basketful of names and hometowns.

War correspondents can be a source of great morale to fighting troops—the opinion of William Tecumseh Sherman to the contrary. Their presence means that what they are doing is going to get back home, and there are times when nothing is more important than this. Every soldier wanted to feel that his folks back home knew what he was doing and what his outfit was doing, especially if they were doing an unusually good job. Everyone knows of cases where a hard-won victory of a town, river, or a hill was credited to the wrong outfit due to careless reporting or no reporting. A series of such incidents soon were reflected in the troop morale. Correspondents who risked their necks to get their stories were good to have around and were an asset to any command. During the Battle of the Bulge I remember seeing at least one correspondent up at the forward mortar positions with a notebook out taking down names of the crew. It seemed like a reckless thing for him to be doing because the stuff was coming in pretty heavy every once in a while. But he remained calm and unperturbed and even managed to get a laugh or two. The troopers were eagerly asking questions about what in the hell the big picture was and he had the answers. It was in places like this that you would usually run across Jack Bell.

So his story here is the soldier’s story. The story of the fighters, enlisted and commissioned alike, who met the demands of combat anywhere anytime. Grand strategy, higher politics, and empires were not his first concern, instead it was war’s lowest common denominator—the fighting man.

MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES M. GAVIN

CHIEF OF STAFF, FIFTH ARMY

DEDICATION

I WROTE

THIS BOOK

FOR NORA

PART I: CHINA-BURMA-INDIA

1. Monsoon Madness

GENERAL JOE STILWELL, a great soldier and a true American, sat in a tent on a hillside at Shaduzup and told me about the war in Burma. It wasn’t going well in that spring of 1944. No army ever had tried to move through Burma in monsoon weather. Experts said it couldn’t be done—all except General Stilwell.

The tall white-haired General had infinite faith in the Chinese people and unbounded hatred of the Japanese army. He had been chased out of Burma in 1942, a remarkable long-distance trek north from Rangoon with advance units of the notorious Japanese 18th division at times surrounding his little band in the jungles. Stilwell knew Gen. Renya Mataguchi who had led the 18th into the battle of Hangchow bay in 1937. They had met frequently prior to the war when Stilwell was stationed in Shanghai.

There was a long score to settle. The Japanese 18th had moved from Hangchow to Nanking. It led the assault that took Shanghai. When the Japs hit us at Pearl Harbor the 18th was poised for one of the most dramatic phases of the early years of war, the steady march through the Malay jungles into the mighty city of Singapore. From there the 18th moved on to lead the attack that captured Rangoon—and sent Stilwell and his small military detachment fleeing for their lives. Small wonder Stilwell had uttered the frank statement characterizing the early results of American troops in action: We took a hell of a beating.

With Stilwell on that 1942 retreat were two Chinese divisions, the 22nd and 38th. They were typical Chinese troops, poorly armed, half-starved, miserably officered. The General, bitter and determined on revenge, took the remnants of the two divisions to a camp at Ramgavr near Calcutta, brought in American officers as instructors and went to work. Never did he deviate from a plan which combined military necessity with revenge—a campaign to drive the Japs back south in Burma thus opening a supply route to China; and to administer a sound whipping to General Mataguchi who had been relieved of command off the 18th division and given full charge of operations in Burma.

So again in 1944 it was Stilwell against Mataguchi. Those two Chinese divisions, along with Gen. Frank Merrill’s famous Marauders fought one of the most remarkable campaigns of this war. On Feb. 7, 1944 they crawled up the rugged mountains of north Burma and started a trek of more than 180 miles, headed for Myitkyina, fighting Japs every foot of the way day and night.

The Marauders had fought on Guadalcanal or trained in Puerto Rican jungles. They were perhaps the roughest don’t-give-a-damn outfit of the whole American army. And the Chinese with them were no less canny and courageous. It was terrific campaign, for the Japs were dug in, the jungles steaming and filled with malaria, jungle rot, booby traps, snipers who lurked in trees. Often they were am-bushed—and fought out. Time and again bands off Jap fanatics stayed behind, courting certain death but in position to blaze away with their deadly Nambu machine guns until withering fire cut them down.

It was a sadly depleted army that finally chased the Japs off the Myitkyina airstrip. Fatigue and illness had taken the greatest toll. The records will show that the Marauders ended forever the old belief that the Jap is a superior jungle fighter. The Marauders were better shots, learned jungle fighting, out-foxed the Japs time after time and left a trail of dead through the jungle.

When I arrived at the Burma front the Eastern campaign wasn’t getting much attention. Everybody at Home and in England was waiting for Allied invasion of France. And a great soldier sat discouraged in his tent that afternoon in Burma, the monsoon beating furiously all around us. Good soldiers weren’t coming East fast enough. In fact good soldiers weren’t coming at all.

Merrill’s men and the 22nd and 38th Chinese were so worn out I had to relieve them when we took the airfield, Stilwell said, I had sent for a good regiment drilled for jungle war. I got casuals, and after four days had to pull ‘em out.

The full significance of General Stilwell’s statement didn’t hit me until I flew down to the airfield next day and saw what was going on. There, 1,500 yards behind the battle front American troops were getting routine infantry drill in an open meadow, going to the rifle range every afternoon. Such a scene—troops from the greatest nation in the world getting basic training in the middle of a World War at the front during a big campaign. It couldn’t happen, but there it was!

This was one phase of the action I dared not write. In fact the censors in the CBI theater were most touchy young men who seemed to find great pleasure in figuring out how copy might comfort the enemy.

Here’s what had happened. Instead of sending a regiment of trained troops to General Stilwell some army decision in America sent a few thousand men culled from signal, ordnance, quartermaster, medical, and engineer corps. There were drummers, buglers, artists, air corps washouts—officers and men too. Gen. Gilbert Cheeves later told that when the troops reached Calcutta they didn’t even have rifles. He issued arms and ammunition and sent them on.

The Marauders were relieved at the Myitkyina airfield by these green troops, flown in straight from Calcutta. When they got off the planes the field was under Jap machine gun fire—and half of them didn’t know how to put a clip of shells in a rifle. They didn’t even know their officers, who were no more trained than they. Perhaps in all history of war a sadder tragedy is not known.

Those troops were thrown into foxholes the Marauders had vacated during the night. Two green Chinese divisions replaced the worn-out veteran Chinese. During the night they added to the general tragedy when one regimental leader read his compass wrong and soon had his men under fire of another Chinese regiment. Each unit, thinking the other was an advancing Jap outfit, fired all night—and in the morning discovered both virtually were annihilated.

The green American troops went into low grassland and jungle on the north edge of Myitkyina. The alert Japs soon learned they weren’t facing the fearsome Marauders any longer. So they let our inexperienced patrols virtually step on them in the jungles. The patrols would report the area cleared of Japs, next day a company or two would move in—and few ever got out. They were shot down, left to the mercy of insects which ate them alive, became lost and wandered screaming through the woods until they went mad, fell into Jap hands and were tortured to death: a sorry blot on the pages of American military.

Col. C. N. Hunter (who had taken over when his skip-per, General Merrill became ill), saw something had to be done—but fast! American and Chinese troops had carried out a magnificent campaign straight to the gates of Myitkyina. Any kind of organized assault would have completed the Jap defeat two days after the airfield fell. But the Japs, quick to sense the change in both American and Chinese troops, dug in quickly and reinforcements came up from Mandalay, hoping to surge back northward and retake all Stilwell had gained.

Then came the order which drew criticism of many an American nincompoop upon the head of General Stilwell. He called for all able-bodied men in the theater for emergency fighting. The situation was grave.

Two combat engineer regiments flew in from the Ledo road. They hadn’t a day of infantry training. Up in the Assam valley, taking a well-earned rest were the Marauders. The order said all able-bodied men, and though they were weary most of them had no wounds. But a few did have wounds, superficial ‘tis true, but wounds just the same. And doctors, over-zealous in ordering men back into the lines, listed these wounded men as able-bodied, and off they went to Myitkyina.

Well! they didn’t get into action because cool combat doctors up front caught them and sent them back. But the harm had been done. The Marauders let out a yell heard even in Washington. Wounded men forced into the fox-holes....Men with 90 days of frontline action forced to go back....Marauders put back in action after they had been promised furloughs in America if they took the Myitkyina airstrip.

Politicos spouted wildly. Magazines seized on half-truths and turned them into vicious attacks on General Stilwell. And all the time, sitting along the Myitkyina airstrip hearing the unjust criticisms over both American and British radios, I was forbidden to write the real truth. Somebody in Washington wouldn’t like it. Of course they wouldn’t have liked it. But the man (or men) who shipped an entire regiment of untrained and unequipped Americans into the steaming Burma jungles to fall under Japanese rifle and mortar fire should not go unpunished.

China was the General’s big headache, however. Every day the Japs were pushing farther south from Shanghai toward the great American airfields of southeast China. We had been building them for two years, bases from which we planned to bomb China sea shipping, retake Manila, land troops in south China. Stilwell told us how he had asked Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek to mass two large Chinese armies, one east, one west of the Japanese march southward. They were to let the Japs go far south, lengthening their supply lines—then cut the line in two places and hold tight, letting the Japs die on the vine because of lack of provisions. This, you see, could have been done, whereas open attack might have been fatal because the Chinese were poorly armed. This would have saved our airfields.

But the Chinese armies never moved! Up north, along the southern border of Communistic China sat 12 fully equipped divisions, the Generalissimo holding the Communists in check while Japs swarmed over the richest part of China and drove the 14th American air force out of their hard-won airports. I met fliers when they came out, tears of rage and disappointment in their eyes as they told how they were forced to blow up the airfields, run like beaten curs, hide like rats—all because the Chinese armies didn’t fight.

Yes, things were pretty low in CBI when first I started covering this war. We couldn’t budge the Japs at Myitkyina. We were being driven out of our airfields. Monsoon rains had washed out great stretches of the Ledo road. The Jap wasn’t weakening anywhere, except in the air. Our tanks were mired down. Bridges were out and we had to rely on planes for cargo. The new Chinese troops weren’t too hot, our combat engineers little better. Plus which, the heat was terrific and the rains never ceased. It was a sorry, disgusted, discouraged army—all except the man Stilwell.

We’re not going to let any Japs beat us, he said. We’ll train men right here. An American can lick a Jap any day. We’ll show ‘em." Which we did!

2. Chinese at War

EVERY NIGHT down here is Fourth of July, explained the sergeant as I looked in questioning wonder at the fireworks over Myitkyina just after dark. The sky was filled with flares. Tracer bullets sailed majestically toward the stars. The rattle of machine guns and the soft plunk of exploding mortar shells came across the plain to the airstrip.

The Chinese and Japs had started their evening exchange of souvenirs. Chinese regiments at Myitkyina were boys with new toys—rifles and machine guns and mortars. They also had military flares, and a good supply of Chinese fireworks. So, every evening at dark they began to shoot.

But for the fact that many were being killed and wounded ‘twas a comic opera war.

The armies battled fiercely during the day, with our planes aloft most of the time to bomb and strafe, our artillery booming, our front line troops sniping, rushing pill boxes, repulsing occasional Jap patrols.

The Japs had an old 77mm cannon they used sparingly. One day a new chaplain came down to the airport and nobody thought to stop him as he posted notices on all bulletin boards telling of a Mass at 7:30 next evening on the airstrip just outside the warehouse door. Some 300 worshipers dutifully gathered and at 7:35 the Japs dropped some shells a few yards from the padre, killing two and wounding several more. Some spy—the camp was overrun with refugees and nobody ever knew which side they were on—had read the notice and, slipped into the Jap lines. We lay in our water-soaked holes for hours that night.

Somewhere in the Jap lines was a machine gunner we called Typewriter Joe. He had the night shift. His first act was to fire a peculiar burst on his Nambu, always the same. When we heard that we knew it was 5:30, so everybody, Japs and Chinese, went to chow.

From 5:30 until dark the war front was quiet as a country meadow. The boys ate their rice and greens, the Chinese being great hands for collecting various leaves from the fields. After chow they sat around smoking, and occasional voices from across no man’s land told us the Japs were doing the same. Then some Chinee would decide ‘twas dark enough to try a flare. Another Chinee would shoot tracer bullets at the flare hanging in the sky, the Japs would reply with a few bursts of gunfire, a few flares—and pretty soon the night would be filled with a crazy patchwork of darting fire.

I wasn’t much impressed with the army at first: neither the Chinese nor our own command. Two brigadiers were there, General Wessels who was in command and General Arms who wanted to be. General Wessels was afraid to protest because General Stilwell had sent General Arms into camp along with 50 other officers the Japs had chased out of China where they had been instructing Chinese troops. So we had officers all over the place and not enough riflemen to attack.

My first trip to the infantry front was with General Arms. At breakfast he said, if you want to go with me, I think we’ll have these Chinese moving pretty fast. That was just what the Chinese had not been doing with great enthusiasm, so I went along. We jeeped out to a Chinese regiment and General Arms said, through his interpreter (we had 50 or more Chinese students, intellectuals, who thought Hemingway and Steinbeck represented the true America, as interpreters); Tell General——that General Arms wishes to speak to him at once. We sat half an hour in the stifling heat of a low dugout, General Arms’ temperature rising each time he wiped his forehead. Finally in stern tone he cried, Tell General——he has kept me 30 minutes and the American general will not be kept waiting. I want him here at once.

Some 30 minutes later the Chinese general came in.

General, you’ve kept me waiting an hour, cried General Arms, "General Stilwell will