THE ARMY'S MIGHTY MIDGETS

by Capt H.W Grathwohl, reprinted from a June 1945 Cosmopolitan article.

AS THE ARMY TAKES TO WATER EVEN THE NAVY TAKES NOTICE AND BOWS TO MAGNIFICENT JOB AS A GROUP OF FEARLESS SOLDIERS OFFICIALLY DUBBED THE ENGINEER SPECIAL BRIGADES GO IN FIRST AT MANY COMBAT LANDINGS. A REALLY AMAZING STORY OF UNSUNG HEROES.

The skipper, white-haired, weather beaten veteran of half a century of deep seas sailing experience, stood with his first officer on the bridge of his transport, watching the busy harbor around him. Taken from the Japanese by MacArthur's men only a few days before, this newest base in the Pacific had scores of ship of all sizes and types lying at anchor, with hundreds of landing boats, barges and tugs busily shuttling back and forth between ships and shore.

Shaking his head incredulously, the Old Man said, "Look at that harbor there! Vessels no self-respecting sea-fearing man ever dreamed could exist! It wouldn't surprise me a damn bit to see one of those Liberties suddenly sprouts wing and take off. Nothing could surprise me in this war anymore!"

Undoubtedly, the Japanese share the Old Man's shocked amazement at the almost unbelievable development in amphibious warfare, for they are now feeling its full force. Probably never before has a new idea in offensive warfare been so rapidly exploited. What old-line Army and Navy officer could imagine five years ago that a full sized ship could be driven onto shore so it's passengers could step from ship to dry land, or that a ship could have boats sailing in an out of her hold, or that the Army would one day own more boats than the Navy? Yet these things are commonly accepted today and because they were made possible long ago by the foresight of our chiefs of staff, the successful end of the war has been advanced by many weary months.

Amphibious warfare is not basically new; the Greeks and Phoenicians used it, and General George Washington may have taken a lesson from them when he used Colonel John Glover's Amphibians, the famous "Marine Regiment" of the Continental Army to make the Delaware River crossing. The Japanese modernized it for their sweep southward through the Pacific Islands, but it remained for American vision to recognize its full potentialities and Yankee ingenuity to build it into its present role of knockout power.

Few people realized the part the Army played in developing amphibious operations or know that the Army today carries its own men, in its own boats, on the majority of its combat landings. Established in a new zone of battle by ship to shore landings under naval control and joint Army/Navy operation, the Army forges ahead in expanding beachheads, in encircling and pinching off movements, using its own boats in shore to shore movements. Some of these water jumps may be only a few miles, involving fifteen or twenty boats, others may be major invasions of a hundred miles or more.

Quietly, doggedly, without fanfare of front page headlines the men who put the doughboys ashore in the Army's mighty midgets have built up a reputation for themselves among fighting men second to no other outfit in the armed forces. From the early days with the Australians in New Guinea, word of mouth praise for the skill and daring of these small boatmen has trickled back to the home front. In letters to parents and friends, soldiers who have come in contact with the landing craft outfits have expressed open admiration for the boys who make beachheads their business. As more men return from overseas these stories will become more revealing of an organization which has hitherto worked under an almost total security blackout.

The "boys who run the bloody barges" as the Australian "Rats of Tobruk" immortalized them in ribald verse, are the Engineer Special Brigades prosaic name for an outfit which includes tug boatmen and fishermen, yachtsmen and ship fitters, shipwrights and dozens of other highly specialized craftsmen. In May 1942, their organization existed only as an approved War Department blueprint but three months later their first contingent sailed for England to take part in the initial African landing!

That they were able to establish such a speed record of organization, involved not only the training of men in boat handling, but also the training of infantrymen in amphibious landing, the procurement of small boats and the mountains of supplies to keep them running, is tribute to the operational skills of the men who carried the ball in the early days: Major General Daniel Noce, Brigadier Generals; Arthur G. Trudeau, D.A.D. Ogdam, William F. Heavey and Henry C. Wolfe, Colonels; T. L. Mulligan and Oliver van der Berg.

The plunge that put the army into the landing boats resulted from a series of meeting with high ranking American and British officials. In late April and early May 1942, Lord Louis Mountbatten, then chief of the Commandos and Sir John Dill, head of the British Joint Staff Mission, were invited to Washington to begin plans with Army and Navy officials here for the crossing of the English Channel. It involved carrying many thousands of men, and the English idea was for a shore to shore operation in small boats. The United States had already started amphibious training, but from a different angle, for the Navy to carry small boats on davits of ships and release them near the enemy beach in a ship to shore landing.

The English plan, already proved practical by their experimental Commando raid was adopted; but the question which immediately confronted the meeting was who could handle the small boats? Should it be considered primarily a transportation job for the Army or did its combat aspects put it under Naval operation? Both forces were involved, closest cooperation was vital. Perhaps influenced by the fact that the British landing boats were part of the Royal Engineers, General Breh on Somervell accepted the challenge and the Army was committed to the job from that moment.

To Major General (now Lieutenant General) Eugene Reybold, chief of the Corps of Engineers, went the responsibility for the new project; and Reybold turned to the job of organizing the amphibians over to two West Pointers who had already made names for themselves as hot men to handle tough jobs, Major General Noce and Brigadier General Trudeau. He gave them carte blanche with one admonition; "Get it done--fast!"

On May 10, the actual number of boats needed was decided upon, based on the number of men to be put across the Channel. Plans were made for eight brigades each to be made up of about 7,500 men and 550 boats. Three days later, top priorities were established for the building of the boats, and the first of June, contracts were let to the full capacity of the boat building industry.

Meanwhile, Somervell returned to England with Mountbatterr and Dill, where their meetings were continued. One May 29, it was decided that initial Amphibian training would be done in the United States, with the final training in England. The Commando patch of gold tommy gun, anchor and eagle on a blue shield, denoting land, sea and air combined operations, was adopted, the outfit was name the Engineer Amphibian Command.

Even at that time, with MacArthur just established in Australia with a handful of men, the eventual needs of the Pacific were in Development of the Amphibians called for both an Atlantic and Pacific force, with two brigades slated for the Southwest, after the top priority of the Channel crossing had been cleared.

The Amphibians had a big job ahead of them; first, to carry the fighting doughboys to the enemy beach, with complete facilities for running and maintaining their boats; second, to expedite the movement of the infantry across the beach. The latter function meant clearing the beaches of mines, building roads, establishing supply dumps of food and ammunition.

Trudeau and Noce were working eighteen hours a day. They broke their brigades down into three regiments, each of which would be able to handle a division of infantry and work as a complete unit. They divided their regiment into a battalion for the boats, a battalion to building up the beach, and threw in enough maintenance men, signal men, ordinance men, medics, supply men and so forth to support their goal landing team.

They called in the Thirty-seventy Engineer Regiment as cadre men or nucleus for their outfits. They put in a bid for 9,000 officers and men from Replacement Training Centers to be screened for experience the boat and shore regiments demand. Undaunted at the prospect of making expert boat handlers out of soldiers who didn't know bow from stern, they brought in Lieutenant Colonel R. L. Solzmann to put on a special recruiting campaign for small boatmen who had the qualifications and ability to train their embryo organization.

Solzmann, who had already had some experience on naval ship to shore training, the United States Power Squadron, an organization devoted to the advancement of piloting and navigation among yachtsman. Working with it and backed by yachting magazines, he canvassed yacht clubs throughout the country and offered direct commissions from second lieutenant to major, according to age, to men with necessary teaching qualifications. He called the yachting fraternity to hotel meetings to New York, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and other boating centers to sell the new organization. Goal was twelve hundred men with small boat experience, and when the drive was finished, 1, 197 men had stepped from the docks of the pleasure-craft fleet to the grim, gray-painted landing barges.

Appropriately enough, Camp Edwards, near Falmouth, Massachusetts, was selected as the Amphibians training ground, appropriately because it was in Massachusetts that Glover's Amphibians were trained 167 years before.

Paperwork finished less than thirty days after they had been called in to Reybold's office, the two organizers moved to Edwards, with Noce commanding and Trudeau as chief of staff, to become activated officially as the Engineer Amphibian Command at one minute past midnight on June 28, 1942. Five days later they activated the first brigade, and on the twentieth, officially recorded the birth of the second.

They made arrangements to train men as ship carpenters and mechanics by setting up schools at the Gray Marine Motor Company, Michigan; Higgins Industries, Louisiana Evinrude Motors and Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company, both in Wisconsin. They started with almost as many officers as enlisted men, with twenty-eight from the Regular Army, 825 from Officer Reserve Corps, 163 newly commissioned second lieutenants from Officer Candidate Schools and the first contingent of 138 directly commissioned men from civilian life, or a total of 1, 154.

For a closer understanding between Americans and British, several Amphibian officers left for England to train with the British, and a group of Army and Navy officers arrived at Camp Edwards from England. The Training program moved into high gear!

While the First and Second Brigades were training in Vineyard Sound waters, the perplexing problem of where the line would be drawn between Army and Navy landing boats was solved when it was decided that the Army would confine its efforts to the 16 - 50 foot boats, and the Navy would handle everything above that. While the First Brigade was enroute to England, the joint chiefs of staff put the entire amphibious operation under naval jurisdiction, and the Navy entered into a broadened Program of amphibious training: but while control of the operation passed to the Navy, the Army was still charged with the responsibility of moving its men from ship to shore.

In view of this change of command, plans set up for the landing at Oran, North Africa, in the latter part of 1942 were altered to take the Amphibians off the boats and concentrate entirely on beach work, but when the landing was actually made on the eight of November, last minute tactical changes put many of them back at the wheels of their landing boats.

Meanwhile, the war was stepping up in the Pacific. The Second Brigade was ordered westward instead of eastward, with Trudeau as advance agent to set up its operation with General Douglas MacArthur.

The Japanese had been stopped cold at Guadalcanal, turned back at Port Moresby and the bloody Battle of Buna was being fought. It was essential to push the enemy back before he had a chance to reorganize. MacArthur had men available: the Thirty-Second and Fifty-First American Division and the Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Australian Division, but how could he carry them up the coast? Mountains and impenetrable jungles made overland travel impossible; air travel was unobtainable. The Navy still licking its wound from Pearl Harbor, has its hands full with the Japanese fleet and was in no position to help. Water transportation was needed desperately.

MacArthur had only two small, ancient Australian coastal vessels for the job; the Koomeela, home port Tuladi, and Keranaru of Singapore. Deck space on westward bound cargo ships was filled with vitally needed planes to hold Japanese air power in check; there was no room to ship landing boats.

The Second Brigade, with Trudeau as mouthpiece, offered a solution; bring over prefabricated landing boats in the hold of cargo ships where space was available, set up an assembly plant in Australia, put the boats together and, if necessary, run them under their own power from factory to battle!

Offering completed boats in weeks instead of months was a daring plan, but it worked! The plant was built in Cairns, in northern Australia, and the 411th Base Shop (Battalion) started an assembly line that took knocked down boats in small packages from the United States and turned out completed landing crafts. The first boat slid into Pacific waters, from the yard on April 27, 1943, and on June 29 elements of the Second Brigade pushed off in its first combat landing from Morobe, seventy-five miles above Buna, to the enemy beach on Nassau Bay.

Thirty-three wooden LCV's carrying a part of the Forty-first Division, escorted by two PT boats from Lieutenant Commander Bulkeley's famous Bataan Squadron, made the cruise in utter blackness on the tail of a storm that whipped up mountainous seas, in waters where, as the "Sailing Directions for New Guinea" point out gloomily, "navigation is of the most dangerous character." The landing was made successfully, but the booming surf tore into splinters twenty-two boats of the little convoy.

The Nassau Bay -- Salamaua -- Lae campaign furnished undisputed proof that the Army could carry its own men on shore-to-shore operations -- and that its Amphibians had the skill and courage to do it.  The brilliant record of that campaign caused the movement of the Third and Fourth Brigades, held in abeyance until then, across the states to New Guinea.  The Amphibian star was rising in the Pacific!

First of the brigades to work as a boat-and-shore unit, according to the original blueprint, the Second experimented with new types of weapons and landing craft. The first rockets launched in Pacific fighting were sent against the Japs by the Amphibians at Sattel Mountain in the Battle of Finschafen. On December fifteenth, rockets went to sea for the first time in two experimental DUKWs (amphibious trucks), each equipped with 120 tubes, and helped blast the enemy out of Arawe in the New Britain landing. The 50-foot, steel, twin-screw landing craft LCM was lengthened to 56 feet and made standard by both Army and Navy.

The Second developed its own pint-sized gunboats, which were later formed into Support Batteries: LCM’s each carrying 240 rocket tubes in the hold, armed with twin .50-caliber machine guns, whose mounts and turrets were salvaged from disabled medium bombers, and several 20-mm antiaircraft guns.

In the same landing, the Second worked with buffaloes -- cross between a seagoing tank and the familiar “duck” -- carrying the veteran First Marine Division into action. These buffaloes, or alligators as the early model was called, and the homemade gunboats helped materially in the success of the Arawe action.

Name now changed to “Engineer Special Brigades”, the Third arrived in Pacific waters in December, 1943, and the Fourth came in about four months later. Together, the E.S.B. has made over seventy-five combat landings (to April 1, 1945), including Cape Gloucester, the Admiralities, Talasea, Aitape, Hollandia, Wakde, Biak, Manokwari, Morotai.

Operations then shifted to the Philippines, where the Leyte landing was, of course, a combined ship-to-shore operation. However, the Amphibians operated 173 landing boats in the assault landing and brought in more than 200 additional boats for the unloading of transports and immediate shore-to-shore landings where were in prospect: including Cebu, Ormac, and Marinduque. Ship-to-shore movement put the troops at Lingayen in another combined assault, and the Amphibians went into action at Subic Bay, COrregidor, Bataan, and Mariveles. Then came Zamboanga, Palawan, Tawi-Tawi -- with the list growing every week!

On the other side of the world, after the completion of the Southwest Pacific campaign and prior to the Philippine landings, the Fift and Sixth Brigades wrote their share of Amphibian history. Early English plan for the Channel, adopted in 1942, was abandoned for the original American idea of a ship-to-shore naval operation. Consequently, when the Fifth and Sixth were formed in England, they worked primarily as Shore Engineers. They fought valiantly at Sicily and Salerno. They went ashore to Omaha and Utah beaches in the Normandy landing, an hour before the doughboys, to clear the beach of mines and obstructions. They were met by raking German fire which cost one of their units casualties of more than thirty percent. There is a monument on Utah Beach today in honor of Amphibian dead.

Writing of their work during the Salerno landing, William Stoneman of Command United States Press, declared, "Theirs has been the greatest feat of collective heroism ever witnessed. While other troops have been able to concentrate on defending themselves and destroying the enemy, they have been unable to take cover a minute. We shall never forget them...."

Someday, total figures on the number of soldiers the Amphibians have carried into battle may be compiled, it will run into millions, and to date, no one has been lost or drowned due to faulty boat handling. It's a combat record in which every man who wears the blue and gold shoulder patch feels a deep sense of pride and achievement.

Carrying millions of men on combat landings and handling untold millions of tons of cargo, vehicles and tanks from either ship to shore or shore to shore is a hazardous undertaking that calls for expert planning and close cooperation between Army, Navy and Air Corps. The soundness of the Amphibious program laid down three years ago has paid off now, as the Pacific war moves from the islands to the mainland to enter its decisive phase.

 REPRODUCED BY THE I & E OFFICE, 594 E.B.&S.R.