World War II: Lloyd L. Kessler Recalls His Time in the 209th Engineer Combat Battalion in Burma

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After our first failed offensive, the men spent their time becoming more used to their new role as infantrymen. I spent the first couple of weeks as a runner. My job was to carry messages from my battalion commander to the commander of a nearby Chinese infantry battalion. Although off the front line, I had ample opportunity to see the effects of combat. On one occasion I remember passing by a medical tent. The ground all around the tent was red with the blood of the patients.

This routine continued until June 12, when I was ordered to report to the battalion’s intelligence officer. I obediently reported to an oversized foxhole where I found a lieutenant and sergeant conferring over a large-scale map. They invited me to join them, so I sat on an upturned 10-in-1 ration box and wondered how I could be involved in whatever was being planned.

Tomorrow morning, Company B, followed by Company A, will move a mile closer to the city, our intelligence officer announced. Colonel Combs will be in command. [Colonel William H. Combs was a highly respected officer in the Marauders.] You will lead a squad to lay wire and establish communications between the colonel and our headquarters. Why me? I silently asked myself. Why not wireless radios?

I left with Combs’ column in the dark at 0400. As we marched I busied myself unwinding wire and trying to keep up with the last soldier of Company A. All went well until we crossed a rice paddy. I spliced the wire in the middle of the paddy while Chinese and Japanese troops manning the hills on each side of us exchanged shots. We fell so far behind that we almost lost Company A. The situation improved after we found our men crouching in ditches on each side of a road.

Word came back to leave the ditches, disperse into the brush, move and be alert. I moved toward the front, searching for Colonel Combs. He stood in the middle of the road, shouting orders, directing us to jump into the foxholes lining the road on each side. The Japanese had retreated, leaving us ready-made foxholes.

I waved the phone and yelled, Colonel Combs! Colonel Combs! He jumped into my hole and grabbed the phone. Standing next to me, he reported that we had reached our objective without opposition. His eyes moved constantly, surveying the jungle around us all the time he talked. Finally he said: This is the Old Ranger signing off…Roger on that…Roger and out.

Then all hell broke loose. Mortar shells exploded, rifle fire sprayed us from all sides and a machine gun opened fire far down the road. Combs tried desperately to contact our headquarters, but it was too late. The wire had been cut.

This was my introduction to the horrors of short-range mortar fire. The Japanese 50mm grenade launcher, commonly called a knee mortar, had a range of 700 yards, far beyond what was needed to annihilate us. I grew to fear the noise from incoming mortar rounds more than the whistling of the big guns.

I knew that they were at each end of the road and behind dense jungle on each side of us. They were hidden; we were like clay pigeons in a shooting gallery, defending a perimeter about 50 feet wide and 70 feet long. I saw Colonel Combs kneeling in the ditch across from me, having an animated conversation with a Chinese officer. Two soldiers waited nearby. Suddenly they turned and crawled off into the jungle. Seconds later a burst of gunfire shattered the stillness. I never saw Colonel Combs again. The Old Ranger gave his life for us.

Some accounts of the action that day state that Combs died trying to warn us about a Japanese ambush. Actually, he led us into the ambush, but he died trying to get us out.

We were still surrounded by the enemy when monsoon rain hit us in full force. The downpour turned my foxhole into a muddy quagmire. The mortars soon resumed their now familiar cycle of death. I tensed during the pauses, filled with fear, counting the explosions as they came closer and closer. If it continued, how could they miss me? I pressed against the side of my foxhole, reasoning that if I could cut a niche in the wall, I could protect my head and survive, even if I was wounded. I used my helmet to dig, but the wall collapsed. Then the rain and the mortars stopped. The sun came out.

A Douglas C-47 circled above us, and I watched and prayed as the parachutes bringing medical supplies, ammunition and food slowly drifted down and landed a few yards outside our perimeter.

Late in the afternoon of the 15th, I realized time was running out. Either we would be shot or we would die of starvation. Better to die trying to escape than to wait for the inevitable. I decided to leave late that night, when the Japanese might be less alert. Unknown to me, a better plan was taking shape. Word was passed around that Staff Sgt. Alvin Miller, one of the Marauders who was still working with us, had reconnoitered an escape route. We would leave when we heard the word Messcall.

At dusk I heard a voice speaking perfect English, Surrender, Americans! Surrender or die! This was followed by a loud monologue in Japanese. The enemy soldiers responded with clapping, laughter and cheers.

Then I heard Messcall. Shadowy shapes emerged from foxholes around me, some barely able to stand. I watched a sergeant from Company A pass by, carried by two of his buddies, his left foot dangling from the stump of his leg. Hold it up! he kept repeating. Hold it up, dammit.

Only about a dozen of us reached our perimeter. The others either drowned in deep, water-filled foxholes or wandered into Japanese hands. Americans along the perimeter told me later that the survivors of the patrol were like zombies, literally back from the dead. Another small group was also able to break out and joined us later. Our officers allowed those of us who had survived the Japanese ambush about a week to rest and regain our strength before returning to our normal duties.

For me, that meant a return to the position of company runner. Although not on the front lines, I was reminded that death was never very far away. Japanese snipers were everywhere. In one instance, I looked up from my foxhole while shaving to see an enemy sniper in the top of a tree about 200 yards away from my hole. Early in July I was relieved from my duties as a runner and prepared to return to the line. I would not be there long.

Thursday, July 13, 1944, dawned clear and hot. What remained of my company was ordered to replace casualties on the perimeter. I passed our medic’s tent on the way to a line of foxholes. Orders are to shoot every so often so they can’t surprise us, someone said, and I shot a few rounds blindly into a wall of elephant grass.

I didn’t realize at the time that the gnawing emptiness in my stomach was about to become my downfall. I heard talk about 10-in-1 rations being available at the medic’s tent, bringing back memories of how I had rummaged through one of those large cans, surprised by all the goodies, and feasted for a day. I rationalized that I could share it. The Japanese were not shooting…it was only 100 yards. Cover me, I said, as I started to run toward the tent, bent over, zigzagging as I went. When I was only about 30 yards from the tent an explosion hit just behind my head. The next second found me on the ground, flat on my face, staring at my right hand. Someone had driven a red-hot poker through it. I rolled on my side and saw shreds of flesh hanging out of my palm.

Fortunately medics rushed to my side and I was soon on a jeep, riding in a morphine-induced stupor to a field hospital where two young lieutenants cheerfully worked on my hand. After scrubbing it with a wire brush, one of them said, Hey, look at this, as he held a long sliver of bone. His partner held my arm out, stooped and looked upward. I can see light. Chuckling, they sprinkled sulfa and applied a plaster cast to my mangled arm.

The next morning, at the airfield where I had first landed two months previously, I had fruit cocktail and real coffee, better than the rations that had led to my wound. At midmorning a C-47 arrived and I filed aboard, bound for the 69th General Hospital at Ledo, unfit for further combat, to be detached from my outfit.

Myitkyina fell on August 3, 1944, after a three-month siege. About 600 Japanese soldiers tried to escape down the Irrawaddy River; my battalion killed a third of them.

The Mars Task Force, a newly formed regiment that included some Marauders, cleared the way for a reorganized 209th Engineer Battalion to return to its construction duties on the Ledo Road through Myitkyina and on to Mong Yu. By war’s end, more than 5,000 vehicles carried 34,000 tons of materiel to Kunming, China. The engineers had done their job, and become veteran combat soldiers as well.

This article was written by Lloyd L. Kessler and originally appeared in the March 2001 issue of World War II magazine. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today!

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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