Move to Sansapor

The Move to Sansapor

The middle of July 1944 the 1897th moved from Finschhafen to Cape Sansapor. As usual in the Army the order to move came without warning and we were to be ready to go instantly. We worked for 48 hours stopping occasionally for quick meals. It was raining continuously and we packed while calf deep in mud. Loading construction equipment on trailers requires tying down with heavy chains and come-alongs, all slippery with water and mud. Our night time illumination was acetylene construction lights. By the time we were loaded aboard a Liberty ship and had everything secure I was so exhausted I crawled under a truck and fell asleep without taking my boots off. Eighteen hours later I woke so hungry I could have eaten my boots.

Four days later we landed at our staging area, Maffin Bay on Wakde Island, in the middle of the night. By some miscalculation the damned infantry had not cleared out the Japs holed up in caves in the cliffs overlooking the beach. The Japs had mountain howitzers pull back in the caves and would periodically run one to the mouth of the cave, fire a shell and then pull back into the cave. The Navy shelled the cliffs but the Japs kept digging out.

In pitch darkness we were somehow guided to a reasonably flat area to pitch our pup tents in the rain and set up a perimeter. It was an uneasy night as some idiot would now and then fire his M-1 at nothing. It was dangerous to stand up to urinate.

At day break we moved back to the Liberty ships to offload to LCVTs, Ducks and LCTs to shore and from shore to LSTs. We worked twenty four hours a day but the merchant seamen did not. When the merchant seamen knocked off we manned the ship winches. We would unhook one corner of the cargo net, and signal the winch operator to hoist away. This would dump the net contents into the boat. Into something small like a Duck some of the contents would spill into the deep.

There is one picture of offloading from a Liberty ship into a LCT with the ship’s heavy duty crane. This crane could offload our bulldozers and other heavy equipment into an LCT but it was scary.

After a day and a half we were loaded onto LST’s and happy to be on our way, away from the Jap howitzers.

Comments

[David Gunn]

The time and conditions existing at what you call Wakde Island, sound more like the time and conditions at Biak in mid July, 1944. Wakde Island had been occupied in late spring and was relatively flat. Biak had been invaded in June with action continuing into July and August. There was a cliff line on the south coast of Biak with extensive caves which the Japs had fortified. The Jap action from these caves delayed the operation of bombers from the fields on the beach plain below the cliffs. It took some time to clear and/or seal the caves. I flew one mission out of Biak in the later part of July and during that time, a Jap was found in our chow line one morning.