[0:00:06.8]
“Today is December 20th, 2011. I am [Kathryn Lerch] interviewing Mr. Bernard Floyd Edmond Browning at 3164 Bonham, Indianapolis, IN 46222. And we are doing an interview about his service during World War II with the 37th Infantry Division, Co. K, of the 148th Regiment. He served during WWII in the Pacific. He went from New Caledonia to Guadalcanal to Bougainville and the Philippines (USS Harris) and participated in the Battle for Manila also Baguio, Balete Pass, Aparri and so forth. He received a variety of citations: 2 bronze stars, 2 purple hearts, and for good conduct.
[0:00:53.5]
KWL: So, Mr. Browning just to jog your memory a little bit, could you tell me a little bit about where you were let’s say December 7, 1941? What do you remember?
BFB: Oh yes. I was, we lived in a small town and we were, and I was sixteen. And I had just turned 16 and I was out riding my bicycle and I came home and my mother said, “Good God, they’ve bombed Pearl Harbor!” and my brother is there. He was on a destroyer and, of course, the family was listening to the radio and we, we paid attention but we couldn’t find out anything. But my brother was on a destroyer in Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning when the bombs started dropping. But they didn’t, they were lucky they never got hit. Yea, that’s where I was at on December the 7th.
KWL: Pretty scary for your family. Can you remember the name of the destroyer your brother was on?
BFB: No, I can’t. It was either the Phelps—I think it was the Phelps.
KWL: It sounds familiar.
BFB: Yeah.
KWL: So you were obviously in high school at the time?
BRB: I was in school, yes. Yeah.
KWL: And so then you had to wait until you were old enough to either…
BRB: Well, as soon as the war started, they’d been taking so many young men from around there. We lived in a rural area and they’d been taking so many young men that they was taking kids out of high school to do farm work and service work and there’s some people adopted me to drive a truck and so we hauled produce from farm to market for two years ‘til I could get in the army and the neighbors didn’t want me to go. They wanted me to ask for deferment ‘cause they needed the service. Can you imagine a kid sixteen years old driving a truck down Old U.S. 40 with a load of cattle coming into Indianapolis to the stockyards? Would you trust a sixteen-year-old to do that today?
KWL: No! [laughs]
BFB: Well that’s what I did.
KWL: Mm-hm.
BFB: And, I came, I came to Indianapolis probably two times a week and we’d take, we’d go to VanCamps’s Hardware and Iron or some other place and pick up hardware and take it back to either Montrose or Teutopolis, Effingham. So we had a service going both ways and the wages was 35 cents an hour. And when I turned eighteen, I wanted to enlist in the navy ‘cause my brother was in the navy, but they wouldn’t let me enlist. They Draft Board said, “No, no. We’ll tell you where you’re going” and so they did. On about November the 23rd of ’42, they sent me a notice, just three days after I turned eighteen, sent me a notice to report to someplace in Chicago and so we caught a train at Effingham and rode it to Chicago and took our examination and they swore us in and told us to go home and wait that we’d be called. So we went home and yea, we waited a couple of months and then we was called. So then we went back to Chicago to Camp Grant. And from Camp Grant, we went to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. And I spent twelve weeks in Fort Leonard Wood and we got infantry training in the 75th Division. I don’t, don’t remember what regiment, and anyways I was in regimental headquarters. I was supposed to be a truck driver, but after we got our training there was a call for replacements for units already overseas and they’d made preparations to ship certain people out, so a fellow by the name of Page got home on leave and went over the hill and they couldn’t find him so I was walking out across the parade ground and they said, “You take Page’s place” and that’s how I got involved to go overseas.
KWL: Can you remember how to spell his name? Is it P-A-G-E or P-A…?
BFB: P-A-G-E.
KWL: P-A-G-E. Ok, because there are a couple ways of spelling it.
BFB: Yep.
KWL: Okay, thank you.
[0:06:37.3]
BFB: Anyways, he went over the hill and I had to take his place. Well, they put up on a train. Of course, the trains came right into camp. They put us on a train and shipped us to Pittsburg, California. We was on a train about four days and five nights or something like that. And they stopped the train ever so often and we’d take exercise and, of course, they’d bring rations on board for the cook our… and we got out at Utah and the guys when they got off to do the exercise and they just went all over town. It was some little town and everybody was trying to buy booze but we couldn’t buy it.
KWL: In Utah? [laughs]
BFB: No, yeah, you have a state permit besides we was all too young.
KWL: Mm-hm.
BFB: Anyway, the train commander had to have ridden a bicycle and he’d ride all over town encouraging people to come back to the train. [laughs] And then we, I can remember we was going into Camp Stoneman, there was two great big sand dunes out there. And we got off the train at Camp Stoneman and they assigned us to barracks and then they take us for a march up over those sand dunes. (But they’re gone now! We was out there just recently and the, the sand dunes are gone. We could only find one location where the gate was to Camp Stoneman. Everything’s gone.) Anyway, we spent, I don’t know how long, at Camp Stoneman. Of course we trained every day and all the activities. They had a bowling alley and we’d go into a little town by Oakland—I believe it was Oakland for recreation. Then they put us on a ferryboat like the Delta Queen, it was about that size. And we went down the bay, which they told us was 100 miles. We sailed around Alcatraz a couple of times, pulled up on one side of the pier, got our barracks bags and marched across the pier and got on Moormac [?] Seas, It was a ship that had been a coffee freighter for the Moormac lines. And we was on, we was on this ship about fourteen days and we ended up in New Caledonia. But now on the way down there, of course, there’s always some details, something needs to be done, something had to be painted or somebody had to stand guard and they had these big columns they would go up for the rigging and I got the duty of the crow’s nest.
KWL: Oh boy.
BFB: That was exciting! The ship was like this and they’re way up there and their stomach goes like this. [laughs] And anyway, that was so much for the Moormac Seas. We was at New Caledonia we was unloading the ships and I don’t remember where the camp was. Some of them went to Dunbea [?] and Nouméa and anyway we was on a detail unloading ships and I was on a stack of, like prefabricated house and they stack ‘em up real high and one of the soldiers said, well, I know how to operate that crane. We would do away with the manual labor. Okay, this is fine except when got up there about thirty feet he come around with a crane and knocked that whole thing over and I was on top of it and here come and then I was on the bottom and I didn’t know anything about it until I woke up in the hospital the next day. And I was there in the hospital about four or five days. Got on the Rexi, the hospital ship and they sent us away of New Hebrides and we stopped two to three places and we ended up in Guadalcanal, where I met the 37th Division. We ran problems, it was like on-the-job training. Like patrols and situations like they have in the jungle there on the canal and we loaded up all the ships and we went to Empress Augustus Bay on Bougainville and that’s where we were at. Of course, we pushed inland and it was jungle some of it was swampy water up to your waist and maybe you might be high and dry for a mile or so, but anyway they just had a big line and they built an airport behind us. We spent over a year on Bougainville. Of course, we had some battles, run patrols out in the jungle, and done a regular army thing, you know. Had an O.P. up on the tenant [?] house. Jaba River.
KWL: Ruva?
BFB: Jaba – where it empties into the ocean. And then some, we’d take patrols up the beach. See, the Japanese was on the other side and there’s a volcano there. And quite often that volcano would do its thing. We’d get a shaker. Sometimes the trees would fall. When we was on Bougainville, I went deaf, couldn’t hear a thing. And I went to battalion medics, they washed my ears out, told me to quit malingering and get back to my unit, and that was it. It was pretty scary, being out there in the jungle other people could hear what’s going on and you can’t hear. It’s not funny. Well, there’s a lot of fun things that happened while we was there. People in the navy and air force – they’d give anything for a souvenir and we could sell a Jap bayonet for 50 bucks or sell it for a fifth of whiskey. So got a little of that or you could trade your money for a ride on an airplane. Yeah, it just all depended on how bad they wanted the souvenir. And we’d go back whenever they was flying from Bougainsville to Rabaul to bomb the Japanese at Rabaul and whenever they’d come back if you was lucky enough you could go back to the airport and listen to the young pilots describe about their actions that day. We were on the line all the time we was there I guess, but sometimes we would have a day off like if we’d go out on an O.P. for a day or two days when they come back we’d get that day off. We could go to a creek and wash our clothes or take a bath and stuff like that. But if you was sharp enough or had a vision, you could hitchhike back to the airport and get to see the other parts of the island and get associated with the other services. In fact, after we were relieved by the Aussies, they encouraged us to interact with like the SeaBees and we’d go back and trade with them. We’d trade souvenirs. Then when we got to, like I said the Austrailianers relieved us and oh, I can tell you something funny.
[0:16:51.1]
These Aussies built a camp real close to us and they was always talking about dingoes and Australian-type stuff and one time we got a food ration that included ten mutton, I guess sheep.
KWL: Yeah, yeah, lamb.
BFB: Anyway, the mess sergeant said we might as well send them to the incinerators, these guys ain’t gonna eat that mutton. And so a fellow by the name of Elmer D. Long, Elmer said, “If you’ll go with me, I know where we’ll trade that mutton for beef.” So I said “Sure, well let’s go.” So, we went over to these Aussies and talked it up a little bit and we made a trade. We traded those ten mutton carcasses for a side of beef. Now, we were heroes. [laughs] Yeah.
Well now, let me tell you something else. When we first landed there, when we left Guadalcanal we put our stuff into crates and we was only supposed to take the bare essentials like ammunition and stuffs that you really needed. If I remember right, we had four blue triangles that we painted on everything. So, we sent—somebody was sharp enough that they crated up a stove. Now back in those days they had like a gas stove, I forget what they called ‘em…
KWL: Coleman?
BFB: Yea, anyway the pots, pans, they come in a kit. And the ladles and everything all came together. So somebody had the forethought enough to crate one of them stoves up and mark it as ammunition and it went on the ship. They mixed that, they crated up the makings of pancakes, like five gallon of syrup or ten gallon of syrup and whatever it takes to make pancakes, dried eggs. But anyways, we get up to Bougainville and they, the commander says we need some volunteers to go back to get our equipment off the beach. So they drag this stuff up there. We got all the makings of all the makings of pancakes, but we don’t have no gas. It runs on white gas. So, Elmer D. Long and I, we go back—not far from the beach, they’d started a gas dump where fifty-gallon drums of the gas, oh, Elmer and I went back there and we found a fifty-gallon drum of white gas. We got it to the road, well by then it was probably two or three days after the landing, but anyway, when we got it out to the road then the MPs got us. And so they charged us with stealing government property. And so we told this Provost Marshal, we told him, we said, “How can we be stealing, it’s not for personal gain, it’s for GI guys gonna eat GI food, it’s gotta be cooked. So, we gotta have gas.” So he kinda gave us a half a smile and contacted our unit and they sent us some lieutenant down there where there was a Jeep and a driver. They released us into his custody. So, we’re going back up the road and here’s that drum of gas laying out there. And Elmer says, “Hold it! Hold it!” like we was gonna hit a landmine or something. And so the Jeep driver stopped. We jump off and throw that drum [laughs] in the back of the Jeep and take off. And so we got the pancakes made. So this officer, he liked to throw the fifth, and he said, “Hear you guys have been stealing and I get you out of jail, and here you are stealing with me. You get me a court martialed!” Nothing ever happened about it, it was just a fun thing. But the next day we had pancakes.
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KWL: Thinking about food and the tropics, I know the tropics took a toll on anything that was canned. Can you tell me a little bit more about your food supplies on a regular basis? What were they like?
BFB: Well, to start out with we had the 1918 c-rations. They had meat and vegetable stew and you got a can with about six or eight biscuits in it, and there were a couple of pieces of hard candy, and sometimes two cigarettes. On the landing, why they give us, what, three D bars, and they was chocolate bars, terrible stuff! But then later the c-rations got better and we got noodle-o’s and better grade, but it wasn’t good yet. After we was there for about four or five months, why they set up a regular mess hall and we had regular food out of the kitchen, but it wasn’t too great. Yea, we got a lot of stuff that people didn’t like, but they ate it anyway. And they gave us Atabrine every day. They had an officer stand in line, and you had to take this Atabrine and vitamin pill. He had to see you throw it in your mouth and then he’d check your name off. Then we always had, you go on a patrol today and you come back tomorrow or come back maybe late that day. Most times we stayed out overnight. And then we had an O.P., go on an O.P. for whatever period of time, and then when you came back you had the next day off, like I said. You could go down to the creek to wash your clothes and take a bath and if you got vision enough you could go back to some other unit. I don’t know why but we went back just to kill time I guess.
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KWL: I know that in the tropics too, that anytime you got scrapes on coral or shrubbery, infection set in very quickly. Of course you had mosquitoes, that’s the other reason you were taking the Atabrine for malaria.
BFB: Yea. Oh there was, I remember several people who got what they called ‘jungle rot.’ It just looked like their skin was gonna rot right off. Yea, where was I going with this? Anyway, if you got a cut or something you had to put—we had sulfa-powder.
KWL: Sulfa, uh-huh.
BFB: Put sulfa-powder on it and bandage it up. Yeah. I was fortunate, I never got hurt where I had to have any care like that.
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KWL: OK, so you went then further north after you left Bougainville. You headed to the Philippines.
BFB: Yeah. We stopped at Manus Isles for Christmas. We saw the U.S.S. Harris. Oh, I could tell you something about the Harris. When we was boarding the Harris, they have a—cargo net, and you had to climb up the cargo net. There’s supposed to be two guys down at the bottom to keep the net tight. Some of the people coming on after I was, got caught between the mother ship and the tank liner, and they got scrunched. Anyway he happened to be a demolition man. He carried a bag with six 1-pound boxes of TNT. So, I think it was Van Pelt was the lieutenant. Lieutenant Van Pelt gave me this bag of TNT and told me to hang onto it. Well, they didn’t want me down in the hole. I had to get somebody to watch it while I went to eat. They wouldn’t let me in the cafeteria. So, I had to get someone.
BFB: Oh—I got the wrong ship— But anyways, this is some other story. Anyway, I went up to the officers’ country and I was laying there asleep with my head on these blocks, with a white bag about oh, fourteen inches high and about six inches wide, and it had a six-one pound box of TNT and I was using that for a pillow. And I was laying up there asleep. And this officer came up and took he foot and kicked me like this and said, “Hey, you know you’re in officer country?” Well okay, no sweat—so when I picked that thing up, I picked it up by the bottom and flipped them six one-pound blocks of TNT out across the deck because he said, “Well what have you got there?” and I said “TNT.”
KWL: [laughs]
BFB: And he said, “Well, what are you doing with it?” And I said, “Well, a demolition man got hurt, and I ended up with it. And they won’t allow me down in the hole. The guys chased me out of there.” So he said, “You got the primer cord?” And I said, “Oh yeah.” So, I shook it out on the deck and he said, “Take it easy with that stuff! Take it easy!” [laughs] So, I said, “How ‘bout the caps? They’re at this other end, in a little pouch.” And he said, “Tell you what, the rest of the troops stay up here, you just stay away from the rest of the troops.” And there was only one, we had a supply sergeant. His name was Fisher. He was the only guy, as long as I was carrying that bag, he was the only guy that would associate with me. [laughs] But I got that story—it wasn’t on the Harris; well maybe it was, yeah, I’m pretty sure it was. Yeah, Yeah.
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BFB: So, anyway, when we got ready to disembark off of that ship some officer was standing there and he wasn’t just up to par. And so I handed him that bag, and he took it! And so I was clear! [laughs] I just had to do it. When I walked by him and I said, “Hi, Sir!” and I handed him this bag and he reached out and grabbed it. I got rid of the bag!
KWL: And the responsibility. [laughs]
BFB: [laughs]
[0:29:36.1]
KWL: So, from Manus you went on up to Lingayen Gulf, right?
BFB: Yeah.
KWL: After Christmas?
BFB: Yeah, Christmas. We spent Christmas there.
KWL: Then you would have sailed the rest of the way up to the top of Luzon.
BFB: Right, yeah. And we went up to, we went around to the Strait of, what’s it, Borneo?
KWL: The Strait of San Bernardino?
[00:30:05]
KWL: So from Manus [Island] then you went up to Lingayen Gulf, right?
BFB: Yea. We spent Christmas there. And we made a loop and went around to the strait of San Bernardino. We had air raids occasionally. The Japanese they knew we was out there and I remember our ship, when we was going to the straits, we picked up a mine on a paravane. As long as the ship was moving a certain speed, that mine stayed way out at the end of a cable, but whenever we would slow down, the mine would come back toward the ship, so they had to figure out a way to explode it while it was out there.
[00:31:10]
KWL: You said it was connected to a paravane?
BFB: Paravane, that’s what they call it. It just looks like a little submarine. It had wings on it and a tail.
[00:31:28]
KWL: So then for the New Years, for 1945, you land in Lingayen. What were your thoughts when you were on that ship and you knew you were going to land in the Philippines back where MacArthur had left?
BFB: I just hope we’re lucky. I landed the first wave, sixth boat. Of course the rest of the unit landed off each [?] side of us. Well, it was kind of an adventure for a young guy. There we were in a foreign country, the sun shining bright. It was beautiful. When we was getting off the ship, two Bettys came over and here the sailors were just waving their white hats at us and some guys took shots at them with their M1 rifles and they told us, “Hold your fire, hold your fire.” We asked, “Why not shoot them?” you know. They said, “Well if you happen to cripple them, they’ll dive into one of our ships, but maybe otherwise they’ll go away.” I guess that made sense. Our Navy guy, a coxswain they call him, he was a good operator. He ran the Higgins boat up on the beach. But the one right beside us, he stopped out several feet and when they run off, they went in clear to their necks, when they come off the ramp. There was a guy from the mortar squad. His name is Melvin Yost. He was a little short guy, and he was an ammunition bearer. I remember when he went off the end of there, he almost drowned. Two guys grabbed him by the arms and drug him up on the beach. And then we went inland and before we went inland, we ran into a school and it had a Japanese machine gun in it. By then, it was getting dark. The next morning we attacked that schoolhouse and eliminated those Japanese. Then that night, I was on night patrol and [we had] rice paddies. We was walking on those little dikes and I was a scout, and I come to a caribou and so I petted the caribou and I talked to him and I passed the word back. There’s a caribou laying on the trail up here and go around him. That meant you had to wade around him. The next guy, he was a sergeant, it was his last day. One day he come up there and the caribou got up and he fired at that caribou and he shot him. I was on the other side. I wasn’t four feet from the end of that rifle. When they shoot them, the fire comes out of that thing about three or four feet long. I was just standing there and he said, “Are you alright?” I hadn’t figured it out yet. I was still seeing if I could feel any blood.
[00:35:04]
BFB: So anyway, the first town was Binmaley. What I remember about Binmaley was, of course, there was daylight by now, with a wedding going on. The navy had been bombarding, and they sent a shell right through the belfry of the church. You could see that hole in the belfry. So I asked a Filipino, “Did that ring a bell?”, and he said, “Oh yeah, it ring the bells!” So then after Binmaley was San Carlos, I think. Of course we had a little excitement on way every once and a while. It was getting dark and we was on the march and the Colonel Shultz, I was pretty close to the front, Colonel Shultz come walking up past me and I said, “What are you doing up here?” and he said, “I want to make sure you dodos don’t head off on the wrong road.” There was an old road and the bridge had been damaged and we were supposed to go on that road and he wanted to make sure we got on the right road. Here is a colonel up front, strange! But he was a tall straight as a stick, just a good guy. Then we come to this river. One section of the cantilever bridge had been blown out and we had a board oh about ten inches wide and about fifteen feet long and we had to balance ourselves to walk across the top of that bridge. Then we just kept going.
[00:37:17]
BFB: I remember this mountain. There is a mountain that’s out there that recently blew up I think, Pinatubo . Sometimes when we was going, Pinatubo would be on the right, and a day or two later, Pinatubo would be on the left so that was telling me we was doing a zigzag course, we wasn’t going straight. So when we got down close to this mountain, some other outfit had passed us, and the Japs had ambushed them there and when we was out on patrol, we found one of their Jeeps, but we never found anybody. The Japs had run a patrol up that mountain every morning. They would go up to a certain kilometer post. They’d take a break and then go back down. They never went up to the top.
[00:37:17]
BFB: So then come along Clark Field. That was an airbase. And the 129 [regiment] was fighting like mad at Fort Stotsenburg and we was passing Clark Field on the opposite side and two P-40’s came over and Japanese would fire at these airplanes and, of course, the shrapnel would rain down on us and this went on for a day or so. Anyway, they couldn’t silence the guns there on the airport. We couldn’t find them, so there was an artillery observer flying a T-3, landed on the runway and when the Japanese fired he could see the muzzle blast moved their camouflage and he called in an artillery barrage and eliminated these guys on the airport. We, of course, proceeded on down to San Fernando, Pampanga I think and of course we zigzagged. Someplace we was held up by a river while they liberated the prisoners out of Cabanatuan. We was in the neighborhood I mean a few miles away. We didn’t know why we was sitting there waiting, but I guess General Kroot knew what was going on.
[00:40:23]
KWL: You said that you had walked the whole way. And you said that the First Cavalry got to ride in trucks. What did your men feel about that?
BFB: We hated the First Cavalry, hated them. We were just about as soon to take them on as anybody else. When we got to San Fernando, Pampanga, they told us that, “You guys are going to get to ride in a truck for thirty miles.” So, it’s getting late in the day. We get aboard these trucks and start out and all of a sudden they stop. We didn’t go half a block. “What’s going on?” and they said, “We got some action up here. You guys have to get off!” That took care of that. They took us off the trucks. We were on our feet again.
[00:41:30]
KWL: Coming all of those directions, since you were walking this whole way, did you have a lot of resistance from the Japanese?
BFB: Occasionally. We would have some here, some there. Our outfit, one time somebody got in trouble we had to go back him up. We was in what they call reserve.
[00:41:53]
KWL: Did you run into the Filipino Scouts at all? Were they there? Or Merrill’s Marauders, that group?
BFB: No, and there were really no Marauders. We would run into groups especially at night that called themselves guerillas. You’d ask them, “How’s come you’re not on the front line, Joe?” He said, “Greeting from Manila Post Number Five.” “How come you are not on the front line, Joe?” “I’m waiting on my dog tags.” Everybody was waiting on their dog tags. There were two or three Filipino guys that tagged along with us. Everybody wanted to carry a rifle. But we wouldn’t turn loose them our rifles. We would let them carry out pack and let them carry whatever we was carrying, but we wouldn’t turn loose the arms. Maybe they’d carry it all day for a share of rations or a couple cigarettes, or something like them. In fact, there was one Filipino guy that was loyal to the end of the earth. He attached himself to our company and, of course, somebody supplied him with a uniform and gave him rations and I think he even ended up with a rifle. But he went with us until he got killed. There was only one that I remember being that loyal. Most of them were pretty skitty [?]. They were just into it for themselves.
[00:43:59]
BFB: Like when we got close to Sugar [?] Central. Anyway, we was going down this railroad track at night. I think I was about the fourth man back. We ran into these guerillas—people who call themselves guerillas. They were a bunch of thieves but they carried the American flag and the Filipino flag and we were close to the railroad station and somebody fired a shot. I know we layed out there maybe two or three hours negotiating with these guys. They didn’t believe we were who we were. We sure didn’t believe they were who they were. There was a railroad bridge really close by where the Japanese would take two engines and just run them together on that bridge, but I can’t remember the location. When we was at the Sugar Central , two P-51’s come around and we had out what they call aircraft panels, it was a thing about three feet wide and about twenty feet long, with real bright color and these two P-51’s come around and strafed us and dropped two five-hundred-pound bombs. Somebody on the radio kept telling, “Raise your fire, raise your fire,” but they didn’t. They kept at it and they made two passes and finally went away.
[00:46:03]
BFB: We went down that railroad and we ended up close to Highway 3. That railroad was close to Highway 3 and went in the north part of Manila. It was getting about dark and I guess we stopped close to this river and ate supper, ate rations. A sergeant come down and says, “Drop your packs boys. Put your shirttails in and put all your—three days’ worth of rations in your shirt and all of the ammunition you can carry. We are going in tonight.” That’s when I told you that patrol went in there. That was before the First Cavalry got there, but the history is screwed up. They don’t listen.
[00:47:15]
KWL: What was the objective of going in that night—to do reconnaissance?
BFB: To do reconnaissance and well they went to Santo Tomas University. I almost had his name—Harold, the sergeant that left the gate open from Coldwater, Ohio. But later, the First Cavalry showed up and of course they had the publicity, you know, and they got all of the credit.
[00:48:03]
KWL: Tell me about you coming in on this night and you come across Santo Tomas, and somebody opened the gate for you?
BFB: One of our sergeants opened the gate—Harold Harold [?]. But anyway, this sergeant who opened the gate he was in charge of our patrol. One of the people who comes to our reunion all of the time remembered him and he said, “Well I opened the gate for you.” Yea, but we was afraid to go out because they didn’t know if it was a trick or not. And too, we’d had the experience where they tried to liberate some American prisoners of war and the prisoner of war didn’t want to go with the young guys and said, “You guys can’t belong to the American Army. You’re too young. They would never have babies like you.”
[00:49:48]
KWL: What was your impression of this whole environment there at Santo Tomas when you first saw it and you saw the Americans that had been incarcerated there?
BFB: It didn’t make—it was just a big building. After you have been over there for that long a time, you just get kind of numb, I guess.
[00:49:35]
KWL: Were you surprised to see Americans there?
BFB: Not only that but I was surprised to see the architecture. It was so much like back in the States—a lot of huts. Here you got these grass huts, what you call a barrio and then all of a sudden here you see like a modern city. I remember there on Highway 3, going in that night, there was a Japanese—Highway 3 goes over the railroad. And the Japanese had an American tank—an old tank, the little tanks we used to have.
[00:50:26]
KWL: Abrams? Sherman? Before then? Probably vintage.
BFB: Before then. He was at this family’s house and he had supper with him but he had this tank—this little tank and it had 30 caliber machine gun and 37mm tank gun. But anyway, he attracted some attention and I remember when they shot him and these people that lived in that house said they were sorry that he had to be such a young man that gets killed. Right after going under that overpass—now I remember that feeling inside whenever they said, “Drop your pack.” It’s just like a big hand grabs you and now you realize things are going to happen and so your stomach kind of empties out. So I remember when they shot the Japanese that had that tank.
[00:51:47]
BFB: Then we went a little further and there was a like a construction company or something, it was like a big yard where they make tile and stuff like that. And there was a water tower there and a sniper up there in that water tower and they told us not to shoot him. “What do you mean don’t shoot him?” We didn’t want to put holes in that water tower. Someone said, “We’ll have to deal with him.” There he was up in that water tower shooting at us and we can’t shoot back. So they we brought a sniper up there and erased him. Then we had to cross a fishpond. Now this was like a big septic tank. It smelled about that way too. When you buy those foreign fish, that’s where they come from too. The Japs had a machine gun at one end of it. So they decided that we would wade across that pond, so we waded across the pond and come in from the backside. There we were with crusty stuff all over us and smelling bad. There had been a fire or something close by in a building and the firemen never got the fire hydrant closed off and I laid down and took a bath right there and then I had to go around with wet clothes the rest of the night.
[00:53:44]
BFB: Then after we got into Manila, we were going up [Rosario?] That’s close. It was a Spanish name. We were going up that avenue—[side comments] it is before we got to the university. But anyway, we got into what we called Chinatown and we went to the Rex Theater —was our headquarter which would be our center of operation and then we went around—anyway we was up that street and the Japanese set the buildings on fire all around us. They had a pillbox in the middle of the street—it’s on one end and on the other end they had eight 500 pound bombs laying out there on the bridge that goes across the canal.
[00:55:40]
KWL: How many were there with you in your group, in your company?
BFB: About a 140—a 130.
KWL: This is the first time you had to deal with urban fighting too because you had been in the countryside.
BFB: I think they call that the Tondo. [Short interruption. Comes back with a book of scenes.]. I think that call that the Tondo. That was where we made the landing. [looing through book.] There was this tank outfitter who was with us part of the time. That is that the school house—[KWL: Calmay School] That was the first day—second day. [KWL: Here is San Carlos] Yes, San Carlos. We had already been at Binmaley before we had been to San Carlos. [KWL: Quite an artist. It says Joe Cawthorn. Down the valley.] See this. This is that mountain. [KWL: a few caribou along the way and the nipa huts.] We had a patrol went out in Jeeps in this place here and they didn’t report back for three days, so that we thought the Japs had him. There was this one guy from Ohio. His name was Dorson. [side comments] Anyway, the captain asked him, “What’d you think Red Rider?” and his nickname was called ‘Red Rider’. His voice kind of changed pitch and he said, “Well sir, it was just like in the movies!” [KWL: Another page has all the autograph names on the back.]
[59:23:5] [continue looking through memory book from Browning’s unit]
BFB: Then Victoria Station that's where we got on the trucks, but we didn't need to go no place. San Fernando. That's the place—Chinatown-Tondo. We was trying to go up that street they had a pillbox there and they were shooting at us and they set the place—we lost six people there. That's where—I don't know whether you heard about it or not, but that's where Lt. Vielli got the Congressional Honor from there. We was up in one of them buildings, and he couldn't--somebody was holding him up. He couldn't pull the pin on the grenade he had—somebody pulled the pin and handed it back to him and let the handle fly off and held it up to himself. See, they were in this little room and rather than wound everybody in that room he held it to his abdomen. Now that's Pasig River, [KWL: I want to hear about that]. That's right down by the Malacañang Palace and we went across in one of these—it looks good there, but that's how I got wounded. I came out of the tank and got shot. There's a golf course across the river and we crossed that golf course and I caught up with the company. And one of the guys says, "Hey, Browning, you've been hit!" "Yeah, I know I have. They shot up our rations and they were running down my back and everybody thought I had been hit back there. I only had one hit in the right arm.
KWL: You said you were in a tank coming across there?
BFB: Yeah, there were no bridges. They called it an “Amtrak”. The first wave when they put smoke out there they went out in little wooded bridges. That didn't work. See, the San Miguel Brewery was right up the street and they had a machine gun up there in the San Miguel Brewery and they were shooting down like that. Now the tank I was in they was shooting down in the tank, and I don't have any idea how many idea how many people was in there. I know that we got a new officer from the United States that morning. That was the first time he had even seen any fire. Now he wasn't too anxious to get out that tank, so it was either take these men out of the tank, or they would all get killed right in the damn tank. Anyway, he said, "If you are so brave, you take 'em," and like a stupid hero, I stood up, and said, "Alright men, follow me!" And when I went out over the front of the tank, why that's when the machine gun opened up.
KWL: But they followed you, right?
BFB: O yeah, everybody got out but one man, the one guy that just come from the States got killed. Now this is close to the Manila Hotel.
KWL: Now this should be Rizal Park.
BFB: Yeah. When we was fighting in the Manila Hotel, we could look out and see the railcars.
KWL: Now here is the Hairpin Curve up to Baguio, that you were mentioning.
BFB: By that time I had been promoted and I was a radio operator.
KWL: Now you will have to tell me more about that. Now here is the Hairpin Curve up to Baguio, that you were mentioning.
BFB: By that time, I had been promoted. I was a radio operator. No more money, no more rank, but I got a different job.
KWL: I-r-i-s-a-n Bridge.
[1:04:04]
BFB: That's between the Hairpin Curve and Baguio. Now there is a big gully goes down the mountain like that. Now this lieutenant I was telling you about, he got the idea we couldn't take that bridge-- he would take a contingence down that gulley and we'd come up on the other side. So we had [??] of Filipinos with us, when we got down at the bottom, they throwed mortar shells in on us and the Filipinos all disappeared so that just left four Americans. So we went up the other side, but we got the job done.
KWL: So now there is Balete Pass—B-a-l-e-t-e. That looks like miserable weather. [monsoon rain shown at Balete]
BFB: It was. It was a miserable life. It rained.
KWL: Was it typhoon season--it does not matter it was wet, and miserable I'm sure.
BFB: It rained. I could swear I saw snow when I was up at Baguio. Everybody says it's crazy.
KWL: You never know, it was up high enough.
BFB: It was 10,000 feet. Okay, after the war was over, we set up what you called "surrender posts"—[in the Cagayan] Valley—anyway it was close to Aparri. We set up surrender posts, and this guy, it was General Yamashiti. He come to our post to surrender, but he wouldn't give up his sword. He come to our surrender post and I knew he was so important, I told him to go up to our mess hall, and anyway he surrendered at our surrender post and they put him on a truck to Baguio, and from Baguio they surrender up there and eventually hung him. But I talked to him first, and said "Hi" and that's about it. There are different people's names in there.
KWL: Here is Sgt Joe Cawthorn, Seattle, Washington. [BFB: He was the artist.] He did a good job.
BFB: He became teacher.
Mrs. B: Here is one picture of Bernard after he first got out.
BFB: Have you ever heard of “Baby Browney" it was a camera about that big. My brother took it. My son found it.
KWL: This looks like Stateside after the war, because there are your Purple Hearts. Let's go back to Manila. Do you still have energy? Are you going strong here?
[1:07:04]
BFB: Oh yeah.
KWL: I never want to turn off a good story. [Mrs. B. he could probably talk all night]--and I could listen, too. So we've gotten into Manila, been to Santo Tomas, tell me more about the Manila Hotel.
BFB: Well, first we crossed the river there at Malancañang Palace, and went across that golf course, and to the gas company and to Dewey Boulevard, and there is another famous boulevard there. I had been wounded and they sent me back to a hospital while I was there about three or four days and I go to come back. Rizal Stadium. Then we ended up--and there is a big blank space there someplace. We ended up close to the Manila Hotel. Somebody else had been fighting there a period of time and we ended up securing it. Then we ran patrols between Pier 7 and the Walled City, in that area and we'd go out and find two or three Japs, and we kept thinking they was coming up out of the sewer, but we come to find out there was a big tunnel that went from the Walled City to the Pier. But we didn't know that.
[1:09:44]
KWL: The Manila Hotel was a big hotel and the Japanese obviously took it over. MacArthur and his family had been living on the top floor where the Penthouse is. It was the only area of the hotel that was air-conditioned. The rest of the hotel was not, but MacArthur's part was.
BFB: It was in pretty sad shape. I remember, I don't know how long we had been around there. We came in off a patrol and when you walk in the front door and looked to the right, you see a set of stairs go up and three great big windows and turn right and you go up to the first floor. It's a real bright moonlight night—a real beautiful night and so we was up there and of course we had communications with the outside—it's called sun-power [??] telephones and somebody called up and said the Japanese just come in the front door. So we come up that first flight of steps and turn right and I was up at the top of the steps of course, my carbine jammed and I got off one shot and somebody else who was there shot him, and he fell down and was there by the steps for I don't know, as long as we was there. We didn't do anything with him. We explored the whole thing—it was in very sad shape and then MacArthur sent maintenance people over there and they stole all of the bathroom fixtures for his headquarter. I asked them guys, they were going into the building unarmed. All they had was tools. You know what you are liable to run into? So when we got relief from there, we went out to San Juan. We were at San Juan for thirty days for rest and relaxation. Oh yeah, on the way to Manila, or maybe in Manila, we captured a warehouse full of saké. There was enough saké for a bottle and a half per man—I think there was. The company commander put it in a building someplace, he always has people on the sick list and they can't do patrols and stuff like that. Anyway, he put these two or three men on watch to the saké, while we done the rest of Manila. So when Manila was over and we were out at San Juan, he says he's going to issue the Sake to the guys and they sent it to a lab to have it tested, see. See if it was safe to drink. He wanted one big drunk and everything would be over with. [??] So while was up there, it happened. We was up at San Juan about thirty days and that's when they put us on a train and we went up close to Baguio. [long interruption and side discussion about another interview. Bernie would never talk about this and last night he started talking . . continue looking through book. Browning returned with a tray souvenir in his hands]
[1:19:44]
BFB: This came out of the Manila Hotel in 1945. I had several souvenirs, but I missed the boat coming home and they shoved us down and took our souvenirs.
[KWL: They didn't take this, though.] That's because I had a silver tray and they took that.
KWL: You scratched on the back, too: "37th Division –B F Browning taken from Manila Hotel". I feel like I've come full circle in my life.
BFB: I have a lot of souvenirs, it was pure silver. It was so pure , you could bend the edges and straighten it out. They had silver mines there. Anyway, two of us had been sent to Manila to write the history. The officer got up and said, we don't want the little stories about your squads or and your platoons. We want the big picture. So I told him—a guy by the name of Walker. Sergeant Walker and myself were the last two people to help write the history—Donald Walker from Missouri. I told Walker, I said, as soon as this guy turns his head, and I am gone. He turned his head and we was out of there. We were in camp at Cabanatuan. It had been an army base at one time, but anyway our outfit was camped there and they had agreed if we would go to Manila and they got orders to go home, they would send a jeep down to pick us up. So they got orders, and we're up in Manila to write the history, and the jeep driver got afraid he'd miss the boat so he turned around and went back. So when we got back to Cabanatuan, all that was left was ten mess halls made out of corrugated tin, and framework where the tents had stood and our barrack bags, there was none there and we got full of hootch and got to throwing rocks on the buildings and made a terrible noise in that valley. And MPs came down and got us and they said, "What are you guys doing here?" Said, “Well, our unit was here and they went away and left us.” “Well, they've gone Stateside,” and we're here and they put us on a train and sent up to San Fernando Layunion [?] They had a pier there that goes more than half a mile out into the ocean and the ship tied up there. Well, of course, we weren't the only people. There was a unit already going on board this ship, but they made us put down our ponchos and empty our bags out, and then these two officers and some sergeant came along there and took whatever they wanted. They said, "This is captured equipment and you have got to turn it in." So the people wouldn't move so they had to take Hoagy off the dock.
[1:24:51]
KWL: Let's back up a little bit. You were saying when you were in Manila, you had the Manila Hotel and you went along Dewey Boulevard at some point, and you stayed in Manila until about the 3rd of March until the city was finally liberated and you went back north again—is that right?
BFB: We went to Baguio. . .
KWL: That's right. How did you end up having to write the history of Manila?
BFB: We were supposed to write the whole history. Well, they put out an order and I was a sergeant in the communications—head of communications, and they put out an order that everybody—if you didn't help write it, you at least went and read it and put your stamp of approval on it or turned it down. Anyway, they put out the order so many men would have to go back to Manila to write the history, so we were at the end of the list I guess, Donald Walker and myself--so we were the last and we kind of fudged too. We didn't want to go. Why, we was afraid there would be orders to go back to the States and we'd be left over there. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah, it really got down to there were just two men. "They've got to go—that's an order." General Krug, I think pronounced the order.
[1:26:41]
KWL: We haven't talked about Baguio. So after you leave Manila, you went up into the mountains 10,000 feet high, and the Hairpin Curve, and those—the horrible weather. Tell us a little more about that.
BFB: Well, like I told you they put us on a train. I can't remember how we got there, but we got to this valley below the Hairpin Curve. The valley has been bracketed in by heavy mortars--240's—so we got in there at night. On the opposite side was more mountains, you know, so they decided we'd have to sleep on the side of the mountain. So, it was so steep that you had to hold on to trees or roots or whatever you could to climb up anything. "Keep going! Keep going!" If you happened to go to the—take your pack and put the strap around a little sapling or something to keep from falling off. If you happened to go to sleep, you could roll down there and hear cussing and man every once in while would say, "Get out of there!" Somebody had gone to sleep and rolled down the mountain. [laughs] But anyway, some other outfit was already fighting up there and we relieved them. We couldn't make it--they had machine guns up there on the Hairpin Curve and we couldn't get around that Hairpin Curve. I lost several friends right up there.
Oh, I can tell you one thing. They had dug a tunnel through part of the curve, and they had a hole on the other side, what they call an aperture and they had a machine gun inside. Now they come through the mountain--see, here's the mountain. They come through. They was in there. Anyway, this Jap was in there and every time we'd throw a hand grenade in, he'd throw it back out. So, I had a bad reputation and the company commander said, "Browning, why don't you put an grenade in there." "Okay." See, what I'd do, I'd pull the handle off, let the handle fly off—they call it a spoon nowadays, and I let the spoon fly off and I'd toss it into the hole and he didn't have time to throw it back out. Anyway, I slid it there by the hole and threw that and the spoon fly off and dropped the grenade in there and of course that took care of everything. So, then we went on up like I told you we got up to Arisol [over Irisan River?] Bridge, which isn't too far from there and Col. Schulz decided we're going to take patrol and he was going to command this and go down the deep gully and come up the other side, but that's when they threw the mortars in there on us, and our support troops took off and left us there. But we ended up on the other side later in the day and did I tell you about the Belgian nuns?
[KWL: yes, you mentioned but I didn't have it on a tape and with big head dresses. . . ]
KWL: Tell me a little more about that.
[1:30:15]
BFB: Well, we set up there what they call an O.P. (there is a cemetery up there)-- real close to the cemetery--we set up an O.P. and it was getting daylight next morning and we saw these figures--white—so I keep telling my friends, "Hold your fire! Hold your fire!" They said, "Shoot! Shoot!" I said, "No, no, don't shoot! Hold your fire!" So there come those two Belgian nuns with 32 little kids, I mean little people! They came across the mountain pass about that wide in the night. They come out there and gone on the road and they was strictly oblivious to the fact that we were even there and they just trotted around and on to the road. Of course when they got back a little ways, troops picked them up and hauled them away. That was amazing to think they would bring little biddy kids out across that pass. I that pass—here's Baguio—Trinidad—maybe this little town or neighborhood of Trinidad up there. I am pretty sure it is, because we ended up there in Trinidad after Baguio. When we was out on patrol we found where there had been a Japanese convoy that was trying to make it up north--trying to get out of there loaded with silver and money and I mean good pesos. I filled—[??] was always kidding me about that—I filled this ammunition bag full with silver pesos. It was so heavy I couldn't carry it. So I asked him to help me carry it, and he said, "Go to thunder!" So I threw it the back of this jeep and people had been riding in that jeep and put their feet on that and almost wore that bag out and you know I found that jeep and looked in there and there was my bag of money. I don't remember how much it was, but it was silver pesos.
KWL: All I could see were the centavos—they only had paper pesos.
BFB: Well, I got this bag of pesos. What am I going to do with them? You can't send them home. So the women who do the laundry in the rivers [KWL: lavenderas.] I would go down there and trade them the silver pesos for paper pesos. I traded two silver pesos—they would—they were willing to trade. They wanted the silver pesos and I would trade two silver pesos for three pesos in paper, you know. And I have a stack of paper and that is another story. After I finally got rid of all the pesos, went down to the post office to fill out a money order and send it home. So, “Whoa! Wait a minute here, how does a guy get this much money? Must be in the black market!” So, I got to take it in and got questioned and they said, "Where did you get your money?" "I sell souvenirs, sir." "Souvenirs?" Yeah, well I didn't tell them there were silver pesos. "I sell souvenirs. And these rear echelon guys will pay any price for a thing like that. That's where I got it." Well, they bought my story and then I sent the money home.
Mrs. B: You had to have it changed over.
BFB: Well, yeah, you went to the post office—they had a regular US Post Office and you buy a money order. The way I got it changed over, I went down by laundry ladies down along the river in different places and I sell them the silver pesos for the paper.
KWL: Very clever.
[1:35:29]
BFB: Now back to San Juan. I don't remember, San Juan must have been a pretty good sized place. I remember on our way to Manila we went through San Juan. ‘Caus Ernst J. Covesa and I went to a Catholic church on Sunday morning and that's when we met that family—mama, dad and three or four kids and their name was Enfante. The girl's name was Juanita Rodriguez Enfante. I remember Thomas, and Carlos and I think there was one more. Anyway, we was months later we was at like I told you, ready to go to Baguio and here's the trucks lined up out on the road and here come this family—they're Spanish. In fact, they owned the owned the sugar central. Here comes this family looking for me. Now, if you don't think that don't put a lump in your throat—here is momma and dad and four kids, and so my officer said, "What kind of relationship you got--you got people down here?" They come down and brought me a rosary and prayer book and that's the last time I seen them. That's the kind of people they were—they lived at 124 [F.] Blumentritt [in San Juan].
Mrs. B: How do you remember all this? I just don't understand.
BFB: It just came back. I just happened to think if it.
KWL: And you asked me how I remembered the stuff. I don't remember what I did yesterday sometimes. So you finally got to head home from the Philippines. You didn't have to go to Okinawa and you didn't have to go to the landing in the potential invasion.
BFB: We were supposed to go to Honshu, but we had—we was up in the mountains. We must have made it through Balete Pass and on our way to Aparri, anyway, I remember being up on this—I guess call it a mountain and somebody had this CW radio and we heard somebody on the radio say, "Dropped the bomb on Nagasaki." Then a long pause and somebody says, "Damage report—no more Nagasaki. No more Nagasaki.”
KWL: You didn't have to go to Japan which was good.
BFB: We saw enough. I don't know how some of those older people were over there 40 months and I was just a replacement. We always had plenty opportunities for promotion.
KWL: You said you came back—was it to Long Beach and got to see Hoagy Carmichael on the pier. Where did you go from Long Beach?
BFB: Riverside, California, and from there to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. I got there on Christmas Eve and they were trying to talk us into signing up--signing over--they offered us one or two grades in rank if we would just reenlist, but I had had enough and I would have been right in the middle of the Korean thing if I had stayed in.
KWL: So your final rank when you finished was sergeant?
BFB: Yeah, buck sergeant.
KWL: So they got you back to Jefferson Barracks and then home. Tell me about coming home and what you did after the war.
BFB: Well, I got discharged late at night—oh, let's see, I guess about 7 o'clock and I got on a bus and road to a train station and it was 100 miles from St. Louis to my home town. I think I had to get out off the coal chute because the train didn't even stop at the train station. I am pretty sure I had to walk two miles to train station and my brother and my dad picked me up. Some trains--like the Spirit of St. Louis—was express from NY to St. Louis and they didn't stop at the regular train depot. They stopped out at the coal--they had steam engines then, they didn't have diesels. I am pretty sure where I got off.
Mrs. B: And Carl was already out.
BFB: Carl was already out. He had been in six years.
KWL: He was you thought on the Phelps—so he served all over the Pacific.
BFB: He was all over the place.
Mrs. B: One time Bernie was going over there and something about Carl's boat and you yelled out, "Is there a Browning down there?"
[1:42:08]
BFB: As I said, that was a dumb thing--that's when we was going to land on Bougainville and we went--our landing craft went under the guns of a destroyer and one of the gunners I guess he was a gunner, he was at the rail and I shouted up to him, "Did they have a Browning on board?"
KWL: I have heard of another couple of examples where fellows crossed over with their brothers and found them with pure luck of Ulithi or other places, or ships that docked.
BFB: When we was up at Baguio, there was a fellow by the name--he belonged to the same church we did in Montrose and he was in the 129th and I was in the 148th and our patrols crossed and see somebody from home—kind of a shock. I can't remember anybody's name.
KWL: You have remembered an incredible amount. So what did you do once you got home and you say your dad and your folks? You got a job?
BFB: My brother and I went into business. We had trucks for six years and I decided--sometimes I would be gone for a month—I decided this was no life. What I wanted to do when I come home was go to school—pick up and go back to school. My brother said, "Well, what will happen to poor Carl?"—that's my brother. I thought about it and said, "Well, we can go into this business together." So that's what we did. Anyway, I done that for six years and decided that's no way to make a living. But in the meantime, I went to flight school and I got a commercial pilot's license. So I think I—wow, I get me a job and had an appointment with TWA out at Kansas City and went out there for interview and they didn't need no pilots. Pilots were a dime a dozen and all those guys came back from the service. So I came over to Indianapolis and got a job with Allison General Motors and spent 38 years out there.
KWL: That was good decision then. Best decision I ever made. I've got some slides you might be interested in. [break for slide show—hold button not working.]
[1:45:57] End of interview.
Endnotes for later research.
1. Solomon Islands and Jaba River: http://ww2db.com/images/battle_solomons61.jpg
2. USS Harris (APA-2) attack landing craft for Lingayen Gulf. Research further with DANFS
3. See map for Binmaley: http://navy.memorieshop.com/Adair/Cruise-Book/Lingayen-Gulf.html
4. A volcano, Mt. Pinatubo, was west of Clark Field, northwest of Manila.
5. Tarlac was the central sugar growing capital of Luzon.
6. Work on this discrepancy: http://www.4point2.org/hist-82-p3.htm
7. Rex Theater on Ongpin, in part of Chinatown. http://senorenrique.blogspot.com/2008/04/quiapo-and-golden-age-of-filipino.html
