Merrill's Marauders -- "The Saga of Hank Stelling"

[forrest747]

While doing research on the 1924 World Jamboree, I found this first person account of Merrill’s Marauders.  So I’m sharing it.

HENRY “HANK” GEORGE STELLING, M.D.
17-year old Henry Stelling attended the 1924 Boy Scout World Jamboree in Denmark.  He graduated from the University of Georgia in 1927, and worked as a professional boy scout until 1931.  He decided that he really wanted to be a doctor and got his M.D. in 1940.  When WW2 came along, Dr. Stelling became a medical officer for Merrill’s Marauders.

These Jamboree scouts kept in touch over the years.  They compiled five Anniversary Books, with current addresses and updates on what everyone was doing.  For their 33rd Year Anniversary Book (1957), Dr. Stelling wrote an account of Merrill’s Marauders.  Albert W. Snoke put the 33rd Anniversary Book together; he added a bit to what Stelling wrote.

Internet research provided a few news accounts of Dr. Stelling’s exploits in Burma, and even three photos.

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THE SAGA OF HANK STELLING AND MERRILL’S MARAUDERS

[Introduction by Albert W. Snoke] A number of years ago, Hank sent me a memorandum that he had prepared following his return from Burma.  It was such a fascinating and exciting account of incredible hardships and adventures that I urged that he should publish it.  The next contact with Hank was when he stopped off on his return from a reunion of Merrill’s Marauders in Vermont and we stayed up to the early morning hours listening to his story of his experiences with the Marauders.

Last September, following a reunion of Merrill’s Marauders in Philadelphia, Hank visited us again and my sons are still recalling with wonder, awe and admiration his stories, his enthusiasm, and his personality.  Hank has finally written an account of his experiences, and I will try to present it with as little editing as possible -- adding some of the things that he told me that are not in his account.

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I was a combat team surgeon -- Merrill’s Marauder’s 5307 Composite Unit Provisional - Official Army designation.

Merrill’s Marauders, as the Regimental Combat Team (5307 Composite Unit Provisional) was later known, was a jungle fighting outfit conceived at the Quebec Conference between Churchill and Roosevelt and their expert advisors, Lord Luis Mountbatten and Stilwell (Vinegar Joe.)

The pattern had been set up by Wingate, the British General who successfully led a column of especially trained jungle fighters against the Japs in Burma in 1943.  However, Wingate and Stilwell had been chased out of Burma by the Japs.  The idea hatched at the Quebec Conference was to so train, equip, and supply a jungle fighting outfit that the Japs would meet their match and eventually be beaten at their own game.

Stillwell requested a force equivalent to at least two divisions, but the grand strategy of the War was to beat Hitler first, and this resulted in allowing Stilwell only one regiment of American fighting men, specially trained in jungle warfare to act as a spearhead to throw the Japs off balance and to keep them off balance, while a larger force of Nationalist Chinese infiltrated and helped push the Japs out of Burma.  Only, the Japs didn’t know that they were supposed to retreat, and Merrill’s Marauders didn’t know it would take weeks to make a Chinese outfit even get within miles of us as re-inforcements -- so, in no time at all, right from the start, after penetrating the Jap lines, we were always surrounded and out-numbered over one hundred to one. One regiment of Americans trying to out-fight and out-maneuver three divisions of Japs.

From the start of the Burma Campaign, we were always behind Jap lines on purpose, always trying to cut their communication and supply lines, and blow up ammunition and supply dumps, and quickly make strategic withdrawals. (That means “retreat,” but it sounds better) back into jungles thought to be impenetrable, only to pop up at some other place when least expected and repeat the performance, over and over again and without getting caught.

Actually, no one thought this was possible -- least of all, the men of the Marauders.  It was just like throwing a rabbit in the middle of a patch of woods in which at least one hundred hungry dogs were already hunting like mad for something to eat.  Only the woods were mountain jungles averaging 8,000 feet high in the foothills of the Himalayas -- the highest mountains -- the whole northern half of Burma.  The ‘‘rabbit’ was us.  The hounds were three divisions of Japs already entrenched in the jungles and hungry for our food, for our supplies and ammunition and weapons.

All of our supplies were received by means of “Air Drops” at intervals of approximately ten days.  There were never any reinforcements or replacements for four solid months of continual on-the-move fighting.  There was no evacuation of the wounded, except at a lucky ten or fifteen day interval between monsoon downpours, a “Cub Plane” might slip into a frantically prepared paddy field, and remove one or two of the most severely wounded.  The wounded had to be hand-carried at all times.

We never stopped for more than an hour at any place without forming a circle and digging fox holes.  The tactics we used were very like the Western Scouts and the Wagon Trains used in fighting the Indians of our western plains.  We never slept except in fox holes -- for cat naps even then.

The only basic reasons which made it possible for us to survive were --

1. Training in jungle warfare -- the skillful use of cover -- good scouting skills in finding and keeping direction and orientation, etc.
2. Overwhelmingly ample supplies of ammunition and weapons dropped from the air within our perimeter whenever required.
3. The fact that we were sub-divided into six smaller self-sufficient combat teams of approximately 600 men each which made it possible to out-maneuver the Japs and keep them guessing as to our actual strength, and our relatively small combat teams could come to each other’s assistance whenever necessary.
4. The fact that the native Kachin “head hunters” of Burma were on our side when they were convinced that we had come to drive the Japs out and that we didn’t want their country, but only wanted very much to get back to our own.  These native Kachins helped as guides and scouts and kept us informed as to the whereabnouts and the size and condition of the nearest Jap outfits.  These Katchins showed us secret trails and helped us escape after striking a blow at a Jap outfit many times larger than ours.
5. The fact that we, the Marauders, were at all times fighting mad, we were mad at the Japs, mad at the Army for putting us in such a predicament, and mad at ourselves for getting into it, and we got madder all the time, especially after we had been promised at least ten times that we would be sent back to the States, and after each promise, we were sent over another range of mountains to fight more Japs.  We were so mad that we had to fight our way out of that “hell” as the only way of getting out.  We fought seven major battles, twenty-seven minor ones, and countless skirmishes with the enemy.  

We lost one third of our original force either as battle casualties, or to jungle diseases, or exhaustion.

Over six hundred pack animals which we had to help carry the load when we hiked out of India into Burma, only less than one dozen survived.  These horses and “Army Mules” for the most part, collapsed and died of hunger and exhaustion, because there were no means of relaxing them or unloading them long enough for them to recuperate.  We could barely carry our own food and weapons and ammunition.  The animals carried only heavy weapons and ammunition and some medical supplies such as plasma.  There was no room for food for animals and no way to carry enough water for them.

Many times the men were forced to go without water for as long as three days -- after the monsoon was over and before it began, there were periods in the high mountains where water was almost non-existent.  This especially because the Japs who were there first, and in such large numbers that they had either consumed all extra supplies of water, or they guarded all existing water holes with great ferocity.

Our men were 100% volunteers.  That is, we all volunteered for “a special mission which will be extremely hazardous but of short duration, and after which those who are left will be sent back to the States.”  At the time of volunteering, two-thirds of us were already overseas.  One-third of the outfit came from men who had already fought through New Georgia and Guadalcanal and several other islands in the South Pacific.  One-third came from jungle trained outfits like the 33rd Infantry in Trinidad, B.W.I.  This particular outfit is the one to which I had already belonged for over a year when I volunteered for the “Special Mission” by Proclamation and Special Request of the President of the United States.  Everybody in the 33rd Infantry was so tired of nothing happening in Trinidad except twenty-mile marches and jungle camping and maneuvers -- with never a real enemy in sight -- no Germans -- no Japs -- no nothing except mosquitos and a few “friendly” boa constrictors ranging from ten to thirty feet each -- that we all volunteered to a man to get out of the place.  We wanted to get the War over and get back home and marry our girls and have our families.  I, for one, had already been engaged for two years before even volunteering at the time of Pearl Harbor to “whip the Japs out of the ocean in six weeks flat!”  Only the Japs didn’t know that either and they resisted the time limit by a considerable margin.  Four more years in the Army and that postponed my wedding day six whole years, minus a few months.

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EDITOR’S NOTE [Albert W. Snoke]:    I wish you could have heard Hank describe efforts to rescue a crashed plane in Trinidad.  He apparently had been traveling by jeep with another officer along one of the jungle roads in Trinidad when they saw a small plane crash over in the jungle, and Hank felt that it would be of value if he hiked over there to give medical aid to the survivors if any were alive, and to wait for the regular rescue team to come.  He left the jeep and started hiking through the jungle -- the spot towards which he was heading being marked by a small plane continuing to circle over the site of the crash, and six days after he left the jeep, he arrived at the crash which they had expected would be a two-hour journey.  Apparently, all he did was to climb down one cliff and climb up another, dodge boa constrictors, and live off the land and protect himself with a pocket knife.

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This Marauder outfit really earned the name before it was all over.  Our three thousand men had the fire power of a division because we all carried automatic weapons -- right down to the last medic.  I was armed to the teeth.  “Praise the Lawd and pass the ammunition!”

The Geneva Conference Agreements are to the treatment of wounded men and medical outfits had long been knocked into a cocked hat by the Japs themselves.  They used the Red Cross arm bands as special targets and intensely practical people they went gunning for doctors early in the War -- knowing that one doctor can keep a lot of men feeling better as long as they know he might be able to save their lives -- but when he’s gone, all hope is gone if a man is seriously injured.  So, I had no qualms at all about carrying weapons and “Being Prepared” in more ways than one.  And I had no qualms about using the weapons I carried. We took no prisoners.  The Japs took no prisoners.  Everybody know exactly where eveyrbody else stood.  We couldn’t take a chance on having six hundred men ambushed by a reinforced regiment of Japs just because one Jap prisoner might give a yell at the wrong time.  So we used Apache tactics in reverse -- “only dead Japs were good Japs.”  We even “de-brayed” the mules.  This we did before leaving India.  One Army mule could be heard probably ten miles through the mountains if he could bray.  We couldn’t afford to let him bray and give away our position -- so we de-vocalized him before allowing him to set foot in Burma.

We used no insignia of any description.  We used no titles such as Captain, Colonel, Doctor, etc.  All of us had fictional names.  Mine was “Red Eagle.”  Another doctor friend of mine, a graduate of Yale Medical School, was called “Purple Panther.”  American slang and all sorts of animals, birds, trees, snakes, and such had their names used.

We volunteered for the mission and the mission was to drive the Japs out of Burma and in so doing to open the Ledo Road, the Stillwell Road as it later came to be known -- so as to open a direct supply route to China.

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EDITOR’S NOTE [Albert W. Snoke]:    All of the preceding was written by Hank in 1955.  He then got mixed up in the Ninth Merrill’s Marauders reunion which was held in Atlanta, and the record he had written up to that date, plus all of his reunion notes were stolen, along with a new typewriter.  Months later, the written material reappeared in a corner of the hotel, but his typewriter still was gone.   After a mild amount of needling, Hank started again and here is the rest of it.

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But, the fact that the JAMBOREE QUESTIONNAIRE specifically puts me on the spot by stating:  What did you do during the War?  If you had a record like Hank Stelling’s ----- please give us some of the details.  This little personal reference is due to the fact that I had the honor of being a guest in the Snoke Family’s home September before last (1954) and at that time, since I was on my way back from the Eighth Marauder Reunion, which was held near General Merrill’s home town in New Hampshire, I was so full of Marauder experiences that I told some of them to the Snoke Family and to John Manz.

Here, before I continue the narrative in written  form, I would like to express my thanks to Al and his family and to John Manz for inviting me to give the facts of my war experiences to JAMBOREETORS.  Also, I offer my apologies to Al and John and Bob and Doc Cole and others for holding up the works by not getting my questionnaire completed and sent in within a reasonable time.  I have talked to Al twice by long distance from Atlanta -- twice in six months -- and each time have promised to get the questionnaire in as soon as possible.  The first time it was still “lost.”  The second time I had just recovered it.  So here goes:

I have mentioned that the outfit known as Merrill’s Marauders consisted of one regiment of American Fighting Men, approximately 3600 foot soldiers, who were jungle trained and combat hardened, and who fought in the high mountainous jungles of Burma for four solid months without ever during this time being relieved or receiving reinforcements.  There was no evacuation of the wounded except very occasionally at long intervals of ten or fifteen days.  These 3600 men were sub-divided into six self-sufficient combat teams of 600 men each.  These teams could and did move about at will in any direction except when pinned down by the Japs -- which was quite frequent.  Most of us, before all the missions were over in Burma, had marched over fifteen hundred miles with full combat packs, and in my case, with a young and growing hospital on my back.  This pack which I carried these hundreds of miles weighed over eighty-five pounds after the campaign was over.  During the campaign, it fluctuated upward many times, especially just after rations and medical supplies were doled out at each air drop -- which occurred about every ten or fifteen days.  As the mules and horses gave up the ghost at first by the ones and twos -- and then by the dozens and later by the hundreds, the men had to increase their own burdens because the precious plasma and ammunition had to be carried by someone.

To give a more accurate picture of what went on inside one combat team and around it, let me give you the general situation of one of the major battles which my own combat team fought.

This was the battle or rather siege of NHPUM-GA.  (The “GA” is Burmese for hill and has nothing to do with Georgia.)  We had already been fighting for almost two months with no more than a day or two rest at a time at the most, and the Japs were getting completely fed up with having their ammunition dumps blown up and their supply lines and communication lines cut as well as themselves shot to pieces at intervals.

The Blue Combat Team to which I belonged and for which I served as Combat Surgeon, (the only doctor for six hundred fighting men) had just finished a forced march (one of those strategic withdrawals) to get away from overwhelming Jap forces at a place called Inkangawtaung where we had cut communication and supply lines and the Japs had poured in hundreds of huge “Jap Marines” to wipe us out.  If you think all Japanese are little men, you should have seen these “Jap Marines.”

After we struck their lines at Inkangawtaung and fought there a day and a night, the Japs pulled back everything they had north of us, including the “Marines” and prepared to “Let Us Have It.”  We heard them unloading trucks all night long -- trucks of Jap fighting men.  This was possible at this spot because Inkagawtaung was located on the Ledo Road which it was our mission to clear of Japs so that American Engineer units could come down the road and improve it so that it could stand up under heavy traffic to carry supplies to China.  But, after cutting their lines at this spot, and fighting until we had killed off several hundred Japs, we withdrew during the night so as not to be caught “napping” as it were.  We headed back for the hill country (“Hill” meaning “small mountains” ranging up to 8,000 feet), and we continued a forced march into the deep mountain jungles for three days and three nights covering a little over 0 miles over some of the most rugged territory in the world.

The Japs were close behind us and we were trying to shake them off.  Our entire strategy called for us never to be caught napping and thus allow ourselves to be surrounded by overwhelming numbers and wiped out.  We struck hard and inflicted all possible damage and then withdrew to strike again and again.  But this time the enemy had become tired of these tactics and the Japs were plenty mad.  They kept after us and another force of them cut off our jungle path near a town called Auche.  We headed for another mountain ridge town called Kauri.  These mountain jungle towns were nothing like anything anyone would dream of unless you actually saw them with your own eyes.  In the first place they were hardly ever visible from any distance.  You just followed a very narrow and very steep trail that was hardly a trail at all, and then all of a sudden, you came upon a clearing on top of a mountain, or on a mountain ridge any side of which may be a sheer drop of from several hundred to several thousand feet.  Many animals and some men lost their lives falling off of such cliffs, almost anywhere along the trail, and especially near the mountain top villages or towns.  The town would consist of a few “bashers” -- bamboo houses on stilts wiht thatched roofs -- scattered about the clearing.

We had one medical army mule who fell off of one of these high ridges and we saw him fall turning over and over for several hundred feet.  Then he vanished in thick jungle tree tops. Since he had been carrying two of our most important medical chests with all of my surgical instruments, and many vital supplies, we had to recover the supplies.  We knew the mule was a goner.  After laboriously climbing down the mountain side searching for our mule and supplies, we found him with all four feet sticking straight up in the air, and he was wedged in between several dozen giant bamboos, which had so gradually cushioned his fall that he was not hurt at all!  Instead, he was chewing on bamboo shoots!  It took us over two hours to get him back up to the trail, but everything was intact.  The chests hadn’t even come loose from his pack saddle and the pack saddle hadn’t even come off.  Naturally, we had to take them off and resaddle and repack before getting him back up on the mountain trail far above.

In such country, we were trying to out-maneuver the Japs and to shake them off our trail.  We of the Blue Combat Team were heading north with the Green Combat Team hoping to pick up another of our teams further on in order to turn and make a stand with enough force to inflict heavy damage upon the enemy and at the same time, to have a chance to survive ourselves.  We had no suicidal intentions or any misgivings as to making a “Charge of Glory” to gain entrance into the “Happy Hunting Ground!”  The Japs were trained to charge en masse on the much renowned “Banzi Charge” technique.  In this manner, they quite frequently charged us yelling madly as they came and threw themselves against our entrenched positions.  And in this manner, our superior fire power made it possible to inflict extremely heavy casualties.  They even charged or attempted to charge across rivers in this manner and against our entrenched positions near the river bank they were attempting to capture.  In one of those river charges, we managed to kill over 900 Japs in a few hours time.  But now, they had us on the run trying to organize several combat teams so as to make a stand.  We made a stand all right!  But when we were forced to make it, we were still only the Second Battalion consisting of the Blue and the Green Combat Teams.

The Japs pinned us down but firmly at NHPUM-GA a few miles from the villages of Auche and Kauri.  They poured in upon us and surrounded us.  They forced our perimeter of fox holes to shrink so that it was an oval only fifty yards wide in the small diameter and a hundred yards wide in the greatest diameter.  The Japs began to throw everything they had at us!  They already had the trail from Auche through Kauri Zeroed in and they had our range on top of NHPUM-GA hill not only with mortars, but with several field pieces capable of throwing shells comparable to our “Seventy-Fives” which we didn’t have with us because they couldn’t be carried by man or mule or horse.  The Japs had pack elephants to help them with such heavy burdens.  Charge after charge was made upon us from every direction and at almost all hours, except the dead of night.

During the nights, the Japs attempted infiltration tactics and at the same time, they retrieved their dead piled up around our perimeter.  Then the next day they would start charging all over again with their “Banzi” technique and yells which they contrived to sound like American Football college yells.  They were very brave, and indeed foolhardy in their bravery and yet they continued to come!  They captured our only small water hole on the second day.  We captured it back on the third.  They captured it back on the fifth.  Then we couldn’t get it back.

Our water supply ran out completely.  We had no water at all except plasma diluent which was used for the wounded and the dying.  Finally our C-46’s and C-47’s and crews, who made our air drops every ten to fifteen days usually, contrived to drop us water in plastic bags swung from parachutes.  It takes quite a bit of special skill to make a parachute land its cargo within a perimeter of only fifty to one hundred yards in mountainous terrain where you can’t even see the little patch of perimeter until the very last minute.  Yet our rear supply air detachments back in Ledo developed such a high skill in these matters that we were never allowed to go without necessary supplies for more than a few days at a time.

Here on top of NHPUM-GA in spite of supplies being flown and dropped to us, we were going from bad to worse.  The Japs continued to come from all directions.  All our fighting men, in order to stay alive and keep fighting, had to be dug in fox holes and connecting trenches wherever possible.  Of course, you can’t dig a fox hole for a mule or a horse.  All of our remaining animals were killed within a few days.  They were all shot down amongst us within the perimeter and they amounted to several dozen dead horses and mules.  Not only is it impossible to dig fox holes for horses and mules, but it is equally impossible to dig graves for them when every available man is needed to keep up the fight against a determined enemy.  It is impossible to describe the horrible stench and the dread pall that engulfs an outfit when death is increasing, and the dead cannot be buried.  Millions and millions of flies come quickly and stay and multiply.  There was no place for us to go to get a breath of fresh air, and no hope whatever of improving our position within the perimeter.  The only shred of hope was to keep fighting night and day -- day and night trying to kill enough of the enemy to force their withdrawal and make them give up the fight.

The Japs were fanatical and we knew it.  The very internal stamina and training which kept them charging us regardless of their own lives and seeming to welcome death, made us know that it was a fight to the death and that we didn’t have long to live unless a miracle could occur.  But no miracle came.  The siege continued day after day -- night after night!  It seemed endless!  We were in a trance-like grip of desperation!  The aid station was within twenty yards of the northeast perimeter and within fifty yards of the Jap held water hole.  Men were being wounded every few minutes with minor flesh wounds and every hour or so, in waves, the Japs sent in their deadly shells and killed our fighting men in great numbers, and wounded many others mortally so that they died in a few days.

To add to the horror and the unspeakable torture of it all, energy was giving out and we could not bury our own dead comrades!  Only energy enough to try to scratch a shallow depression for the severely wounded.  Sleep as restful sleep was unknown.  Only nightmare after nightmare with the cries of torture and sickness calling for help -- “Medics!  Medics!!!  Medics!!!!” night and day -- day and night!  Only there were weren’t enough medics to go around!  Not enough medicine to go around!  Not enough energy to go around!  There were no powerful antibiotics to combat infection.  Penicillin was reserved for the large field hospitals in the rear -- hundreds of miles in the rear.  Any surgery that could be attempted was threatened by gross infection from the start and with only sulfanilamide powder to fight with in the losing battle to the billions of fly-carried germs.

Many men died in my arms -- shot through and through with shell fragments.  Chest wounds always brought fatalities if the wounds penetrated the chest cavity.  Some abcominal wounds could be debrided and intestines sutured back together and washed with plasma, saturated with sulfanilamide powder.  These procedures could only be carried out in a deep fox hole completely covered by a blanket, and by means of a flashlight, all flies were searched out and killed first.  Then in an insufferable humidity and with no sterile drapes, the area of the wound was cleansed with alcohol and sprinkled with sulfanilamide powder.  The wound was then carefully explored with instruments which had been soaked in alcohol, blood vessels were tied, and intestines sutured together in layers by using quick surgical gymnastics never written up in any medical book.

One necessary trick was to remember which parts of certain instruments had not become contaminated while in use, and to only touch the  uncontaminated portion to the inside of the wound, and to touch only the contaminated portion with equally contaminated hands which could not be scrubbed or covered with sterile gloves.  None were available!  The doctors were furnished at first and last and always with medical supplies which had been packed and sealed back in 1914 through 1917 with the date seals still on them!

You see, we of Merrill’s Marauders Medics didn’t know what we would run up against and no one else did either.  We were forced to improvise and invent as we met emergencies.  The Army had been organized for years so as to be able to evacuate wounded through a chain of aid stations and larger and larger hospitals until the seriously wounded finally reached the perfectly organized and equipped general hospital outfits which were either in the States themselves, or hundreds of miles behind the fighting lines.  But in this jungle warfare in our particular jungle, we went behind enemy lines on purpose and stayed there on purpose and this amounted to four months of almost continual combat.  Only a remnant of the wounded ever could be flown out to field hospitals.  The weather itself made flying low enough to land almost impossible, even if there were a place to land and take off from.  Only a half dozen times during the entire campaign did we get a chance to hide from the Japs long enough to smooth down one of those rice paddy fields, which at first were like large waffle irons with the ridges from eighteen to thirty-six inches high.  The few wounded sent out by cub planes by this means were barely a few dozen as compared to thousands of wounded and sick.

A third of the entire outfit were killed or severely wounded, and most of these were killed at NHPUM-GA during the ten day siege which finally ended on Easter Sunday, 1944.  In spite of all difficulties, many lives were saved.  In the beginning of the campaign when most of the men were in the peak of condition and training, wounds healed rapidly, but as time went on and the men had lost on the average of seventy-five pounds each (this is an index of the tremendous energy expended in four months and the havoc that exhaustion and disappointment and downright horror and torture can cause in a human being) and their resistance to disease and wound infection decreased accordingly.

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EDITOR’S NOTE [Albert W. Snoke]:    We have written Hank, telling him that as far as we can see or read, the ten day siege at NHPUM-GA ended on Easter Sunday, 1944. only because everybody was dead.  We are certain that there is another ending, and have urged Hank to give this to us.  The response that we have received from him has been to tell us politely that he would need to write another book, and he just doesn’t have the time.  He says that if we will arrange a reunion of the Jamboree Troop and their families, that he will be delighted to come and prove that he is not a ghost, but the same Henry Stelling that we knew so many years ago.

THE END

 

 

[forrest747]

A few news accounts which mention Captain Henry "Hank" G. Stelling.

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(Ex-CBI Roundup, January 1972.  From reprint of article in Medical Opinion magazine, by William H. Crosby, M.D.)

Crosby disagreed with author Barbara Tuchman’s favorable characterization on General Joseph Stillwell in her book “Stillwell and the American Experience in China.”
James H. Stone edited and annotated a book “Crisis Fleeting: Original Reports on Military Medicine in India and Burma in the Second World War.”  Stone’s book was critical of General Stillwell.

Captain Henry Stelling is quoted about what happened after taking the Myitkyina airstrip when the men dug in and held.  The men’s condition “... was pitiful.  In a period of four months, they had completed a march of 700 miles with full and often overloaded packs, on an inadequate diet, over one of the ranges of mountains and through some of the most treacherous enemy-infested jungles in the world. Never before had the syndrome of severe exhaustion been so manifest on so large a scale, Stelling declared.

“By the third month of combat, evidence of marked adrenal insufficiency began to be noticed in the men.  Blacking out and dizziness were common, in spite of adequate ssalt and vitamin intake ... Lack of muscle tone accentuated diarrheas already present in over 90 per cent of the men.  Anorexia and gastritis, accompanied by nausea and vomiting, were common. Mental and physical lassitude increased.  Weight loss averaged 20 lbs. per man, and in many cases reached as much as 50 lbs. ... .

“They were so exhausted that they were literally on their last days.  All alertness and will to fight, or even to move, left them.  When ordered to dig in, many fell from exhaustion and went to sleep in partially dug foxholes. Others fell without attempting to dig. One man was killed and seven wounded by enemy fire; the wounded who could still move looked dazed, made little effort to take cover. The medical men were too exhausted to care for the wounded, and considerable time passed before the wounded could be finally evacuated.”

A handful of officers spoke up against abuses. Drs. Hopkins, Stelling and Kolodney wrote extensive reports about the deficiencies in sanitation and medical support.  Sent through military channels, these reports were not released by Stillwell’s headquarters; instead, the names of these medical officers were submitted for reassignment.

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( Ortenzo, Carole.  “Baldwin Township Salutes Russell Hamler: Russell ‘Huck’ Hamler PFC WWII Congressional Gold Medal Recipient.”  June 12, 2022.)

THE PURPLE HEART

As the incoming fire started [Russell “Huck” Hamler] said they dove into fox holes, and the fact that he landed on the side of his hole saved him. ...The shell fragment cut across his left hip, causing a severe flesh wound. He also sustained a left knee injury from the blast .... Mr. Hamler ... remembers being tended to by the medics as well as the 2nd Battalion Surgeon, CPT Henry Stelling, whom they called Jungle Jim Stelling.  Dr. Stelling carried a legendary pack that contained more than 100 pounds of medical supplies.

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GEORGIA DOCTOR TELLS BLUFFS MAN ABOUT DEATH OF HIS SON

Lew B. Evans, a Union Pacific railroad machinist living on the Dutch Hollow road, has returned from Atlanta, Ga., where he heard from Dr. Henry G. Stelling how his son, First Lt. Robert S. Evans, 23, died a hero in Burma in April, 1944....

From February to May 1944, men were in Burma.  Near Nhpum Ga, Burma, the Blue and Green combat teams established a defensive perimeter on a ridge and held it for 15 days.

Living on concentrated rations for weeks, the men were ‘skeletons,’ but they continued to fight. In the hot tropical jungle the dead men and pack animals lay in the open—unburied. The wounded were placed in foxholes for protection from steady fire.

Thousands of flies attacked everyone.  April 6, Lt. Evans, a demolition officer, tried to recapture a much needed water hole held by the Japanese. An artillery shell struck his right leg. Dr. Stelling, Bob’s personal friend, did what he could without sterile instruments and scanty medical supplies.

When the wounded were carried or helped to an airstrip five miles away, Dr. Stelling personally placed Lt. Evans aboard the Cub plane for the trip to an evacuation hospital on the Ledo road.

He knew the lieutenant’s leg would have to be amputated. The foot was already infected with gas gangrene. They took the leg off, but Evans’ strength wasn’t up to it.
That was the story Dr. Stelling told Evans to end his long search to learn the details of his son’s death.

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KACHIN GUIDE BIT BY VENOMOUS SNAKE

(15 May 1944.) The Kachin guide leading H Force of US 5307th Composit Unit (Provisional) was bit by a venomous snake, but Colonel Charles Hunter forced him to continue forward to stay on schedule of the Myitkyina, Burma offensive.  For two hours, two officers sucked venom from the wound.  Then the guide was placed on Col. Hunter’s horse.  Without the guide, they would have been unable to make their way through the jungle to reach their objective.

Meanwhile, M Force (Lieutenant Colonel George McGee, Jr.) reached Arang, Burma; by air under the care of medical officer Captain Henry Stelling, while the others continued the march toward their objective of Myitkyina Airfield further south.

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[sunday]

Remarkable account. Thanks for posting!