"Weaver's Warriors": The 192nd Tank Battalion In the Philippines An M3 light tank crushes the barriers at a Japanese roadblock on the way to Bataan. The painting is from the National Guard Heritage Series

O 1989 by Northern Kentucky State University The men had iust finished lunch. There were a few tank crews Maintaining formation. the aircraft It was about 12"M p.m. They were in a a wooded area near Clark Field. Above them, American Army Air Force planes had been active all morning, but at noon, the planes landed for refueling and further orders. Suddenly, there was the roar of a large number of planes coming from the northeast. The men in the woods decided that the airllcct approaching must be American naval planes. They ran from under the trees to watch the navy in flight. around the air Geld, and some of!he tank men had field glasses. The planes came in waves, in groups of twenty-seven each, flying in perfect formation. The planes were bombers. "They are Japanese!" shouted the tank mcn. There was, for the men on the ground, what seemed to be an unbelievable, time-frozen mo-mcnt. But then all hcll broke loosc. dropped th&r payloads.'As the hom-bers, including dive bombers, passed over Clark Field, Japanese fighters moved in, circling the air-Geld continuously, strafing anything and anyone that moved. On the ground, there was motion, most of it futile. Men looked for hiding places. There were few, if any. Some antiaircraft crews reached thcir weapons and began firing what few shells there were, all of which exploded harmlessly far below thcir 26 ARMOR - JanuaryFebruary targets. The P-40 pilots ran for their planes, but only four managed to take off from the rapidly disintegrating runway. The Japanese fighters - which did perhaps more damage than the bombers - stayed over Clark for 30 minutes o r so, then flew in unmolested by gun or American aircraft, leaving the Americans and Filipinos to cope with the damage, death, and horror of war up close. Wrecked planes (which had been most tidily bunched up, much to the pleased surprise of the Japanese), irreparably damaged, including 18 B- 17s, were strewn all around the Geld. Hangars and quarters were in shambles. Explosions and fires from fuel tanks continued for several hours after the bombing. Amid the wreckage and the fires and the exploding caches of ammunition were the dead - 29 officers, 63 enlisted men, and approximately 135 employees. Doctors and nurses at Clark. themselves stunned by a reality that few could emotionally grasp, noncthe-less coped rather magnificently with the large number of casualties in a station hospital strained nearly beyond its capacity. And so it was that war, long talked about, but an abstraction to most Americans, became a reality of blown-off backs, sheared arms and legs, dangling intestines, and cooked or decapitated bodies at Clark Field, the Philippines, on December 8,1941. To say that the United States was unprepared for WWII is to dramatically understate the situation. In the weeks and months following Pearl Harbor, the American public reeled from shock to shock as it learned that its Army, Navy, and Army Air Force were falling short in every en-Men of the 192nd train at Fort Knox in 1941. Four of the six men who trained on this tank, the “Mae West,” died in POW camps. Another was killed in action on Bataan. counter with enemy forces. What the public did not realize was that American firepower was even more fragile and tenuous than news stories ever revealed. The Philippines campaign was just one striking example. When Japanese ground forces landed in the Philippines in December, 1942, they did so knowing that the first line of defense, airpower, had been decimated. The Japanese could not quite bclieve their good fortune. Why the planes were, as it seemed, arranged for mass destruction so long after Pearl Harbor - and so long after General MacArthur and his aides knew about Pearl Harbor - and why MacArthur did not bomb Formosa, from whence the Japanese bombers flew, are still matters of contention these long years after. But so it was. What even the Japanese did not know was how fragile and paper-thin was the second line of defense, American armor. The only tank units in the Philippines were National Guard units, the 192nd and the 194th Tank Battalions. A hit of history of the evolution of the Guard tank units is perhaps in order. The genesis of these tank units can tie traced to the period following WWI. In 1920, the War Department decided to form tank bitttalions. Twelve states were chosen for tank companies, these to merge into four battalions. The decision of the War Department was not, however, idlowed through with vigor, forethought, or planning. Instead of 12 states, 18 states formcd divisional tank companies, with no effort to coordinate them into battalions or to equip, recruit, and train such battalions in any large-scale, systematic way. It was not until the 1940-41 period that the four-battalion plan became a reality. On Septemher 15, 1940, just before the beginning of the Selective Service System, the country’s first peacetime draft, the Army began moving National Guard units into the Regular Army. The tank units became part of the incremental mobilization, forming as the 191sl. 192nd. 193rd. and 194th. ARMOR - January-February 27

The 192nd, the "Kentucky" battalion, was the first to organize, reporting to Ft. Knox, Kentucky. Captain Bacon R. Moore, from Company D, (which had been organized July 5, 1932, at Harrodshurg, Kentucky), himself a native Kentuckian, was selected as commander of the 192nd. Captain Theodore F. Wickord, from Illinois, became the executive of-At Camp Perry, Ohio, men of C Co., 192nd Tank Battalion, prepared to board buses for Fort Knox. Bcer. Organizing the medical detachment was First Lieutenant Alvin C. Poweleit, a reserve officer from Ft. Thomas, Kentucky. Poweleit, who would later become a battalion surgeon, would remain with the battalion from inception to end in the Philippines, sharing the battles, the Bataan death march, and Japanese prison camps. His remembrances, diaries, insights, and later writings would contribute much as to the historical record of the 192nd, as well as the general history of the Philippines campaign and its aftermath. The 192nd trained at Ft. Knox from November 194) to October 1941 under the watchful eyes of officers, including General George Patton, sent down from the War Department. Despite obvious problems, especially lack of equipment (most heavy equipment was "simulated" - marked-out areas stood for tanks and other heavy equipment; markers were used for guns), the 192nd performed well, and was as well-trained as possible under circumstances of too little time, too little equipment. The tankers were not, surprisingly and unfortunately as it turned out for many of them, given any formal instruction on survival in the Far East.(for the lMnd, though unknown to the men, had already been selected for the Philippines). Such training was, however, given to some of the men through the efforts of Poweleit, who recalled: "I picked up a book, Wzire Dawn, which told of a British army officer who was cashiered from the British Army. It spoke of some of his expericnces on some of the islands in the Far East. This officer, no matter where he was, studied the fauna and flora of the area and tried to learn the dialect of the people. This struck me as an intelligent means of survkal and I used his ideas well. All the officers, non-commmissioned officers, and many of the enlisted men, including our medical detachment, read Write Dawn. In September 1941, the 192nd left Fort Knox for manuevers at Camp Polk, Louisiana. Before proceeding to Louisiana, overage men were transferred. One "casualty" was the battalion commander, Bacon Moore. Theodore Wickord relieved him as commander. It was Wickord who therefore received the secret orders in October 1941 that told him the 192nd would go from Louisiana to "the Pacific," via San Francisco, for extended maneuvers. On board transport ships, the men learned that their specific destination was Fort Statsen-berg, Clark Field, the Philippines. One of the sailors aboard the transport Poweleit was sailing on was Japanese. Poweleit, who had purchased and was studying a Japanese grammar (book), striking up casual conversation with the sailor, found a teacher. He taught Poweleit the fundamentals o l Japanese. By the time he reached the Philippines, Poweleit had memorized dozens of words and phrases. The 192nd arrived in Manila Bay on the morning of November 20, 1941. Tired from the long, monotonous sea voyage, the mcn were happy to be in the Philippines - even when they learned that the islands were under alert. In fact, few took the idea of alert seriously. Poweleit recalled conversations in the Officers Club where cocky officers talked about knocking off the Japanese in three or four months - if war were ever to come. In a diary note Poweleit wrote: W e had the usual morning routine. Colonel \James] Weaver had a meeting on German tank warfare," adding, "It seemed to me that we should be learning more about Japanese tanks and planes than about German ones." Illusions prevail in life - until reality pulls them apart. Such were the illusions by which Americans prepared for the defense of the Philippines. Not all of them so prepared, of course. Poweleit himself was one of those who followed Cervantes' powerful piece of psychology: 28 ARMOR - January-February

"forewarned, forearmed." He continued his study of the Japanese language. He bought a book, 77te Flom arid Fatrrta of the Pltilippines, studied it, supplementing what he read by hiring a young native to teach him "field work." On November 28, 1941, he wrote, "... We went into the fields to check on some of the edible plants... He showed me the Cogon grass, the papaya seed, the Alibang-bang that could be eaten. Also. [he] told me about mudfish and certain types of earthworms that could be eaten.' Poweleit's activities amused some of his fellow soldiers. So did some of his suggestions. On December 24, 1941, he noted: "Colonel Weaver issucd orders for a complete alert for the Provisional Tank Groups. He appeared to be the only officer that was interested in protecting his unit and in being prepared. 1 suggested that since we were so near the 1Clark Field] airport, we dig bomb shelters. This was greeted by loud laughter and glib remarks." In the days between December 3rd and December 8th, there was less derision, more tension among the Army troops, but somehow illusion reigned to the very end. Even after hearing about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and Camp John Hay in the Philippines, the men around Clark Field identified the incoming planes as "American Navy planes" before lamenting, however briefly, all the undug bomb shelters and foxholes, as illusions became shattered realities. To measure the 192nd's deeds in the Philippine battles, it is necessary to measure them against the supreme strategy of the campaign. Specifically, one must measure them against the supreme strategy of War Plan Orange, a plan hat stretched, back to 1922. The plan sketched a response to a sudden, hypothetical invasion of the islands by Japan. It was a plan that went through subsequent drafts. Simply stated, it had three phases. First, the defenders would try to stop the Japanese at landing points. That failing, phase two callcd for well-planned, strategic fallhacks, until, if necessary, the defenders would move onto BaVdan Peninsula, with hedd-quarters on the stronghold of Corregidor, there to hold out until reinforcements reached the islands. The man who did the field work, the surveying 01 Bataan, was none other than General Douglas MacArthur, the recently married (to his first wile) and very recent superintendent of West Point. MacArthur, then a brigadier general, had reservations about Plan Orange when it became painfully obvious that the Japanese (landing first at northern Luzon, then on the eastern coast) were not going to be stopped at landing sites by the U. S.- Filipino troops. The tanks were to perform the mission of assuring and covering the retrograde withdrawal of the armies of Bataan. It was a mission easy to assign, but difficult to execute. Part of the difficulty lay with the idea of command. The two tank battalions had been combined into a Provisional Tank Group. Colonel (later brigadicr general) James R.

N. Weaver, West Point graduate, a career infantryman until his transfer to the Philippines, was put in command of thc group. But there were "turTl difficulties, leaving a clearcut chain of command so much in doubt that, even after the Japanese joined the battle, Weaver often found that any general officer commandeered his tanks to use them as he saw fit. (According to Weaver, General Jonathan Wainwright was one of those who claimed "immediate battle commander" rights, countermanding Weaver's orders.) In odd sorts of ways, confu.ion, in company with its compatriots, luck, chance, and circumstance, can weave favorable designs in the fabric of war. The lack of a fured command, the lack of a fured position (tanks, units, even companies moved from one battalion to the other) makes it difficult to trace the actions of the 192nd into "history." And it made it difficult to coordinate the tank units in battle. But it also had the very lavorable effect of confusing the Japanese. The random, sometimes patternless, movement of tanks led the Japanese to overestimate the number of tanks they were facing, made them more cautious than they had any reason to be, slowed them down, and caused them therefore to fall behind their Philippines timetable. While a retrogradc maneuver is a complicated feat at best, it was a particularly difficult one in the Philippines, for MacArthur was overseeing a double retrograde maneuver, moving at the same time two large forces, the Northern Luzon Force, under the command of Major General Jonathan M. Wainwright, and the Southern Luzon Force, under the command of Brigadier General Albert M. Jones. Sompounding the intricacies of the operation was the fact that the forces had large numbers of Filipino conscripts who spoke no English and were, in most cases, led by Americans who did not speak any of the various Filipino dialects. Americans relied on improvised ARMOR - January-February 29

The crew of "Helen," anew M3 Stuart tank of B Co., 192nd Tank Battalion, in a snapshot taken on Bataan in early 1942. sign language to convey orders. MacArthur later wrote that the operation was basically simple: "Again and again, these tactics would be repeated. Stand and light; slip back and dynamite. It was savage and bloody, but it won time." It was not simple. It was quite complex. And it was brilliant. It was also pure MacArthur. He had clearly missed a crucial move by failing to bomb Formosa. He waf-fled and vacillated over initiating War Plan Orange. But once he did initiate it, he executed it with genius. MacArthur was the walking embodiment of the double helix, the pretty and the magnificent, the attractive and the unattractive, overlooked opportunities and grand, unified strategies, combining in such ways that it was sometimes difficult to separate them and truly assess him in any given situation. But the most obvious trait he exhibited in the "defense-fallback campaign was brilliance. General Masahura Homma, commander of the Japanese forces, believed that MacArthur intended to make his stand at Manila. He discounted the mass movement of his enemy's forces toward the Bataan Peninsula as either diversion or disorganized movements of shocked forces. The Jnpancse had obviously never heard of the Orange Plan. They had no counter-plan for Balaan whatsoever. The key to the retrograde maneuver was Calumpit Bridge, a twin-spanned structure (one for a railroad, the other for a two-lane highway) which crossed the swift, unfordable Pampanga River. The lwidge was the funnel through which all troops and equipment needed for prepared positions in Bataan would have to pass. The key to a successful run of the Calumpit lunnel was the tanks. They had to guard both the Northern and Southern Luzon Forces across the bridge, then cross it themselves before blowing the bridge. The tank units performed superbly, though not without equal parts of courage and chaos, clever tactics, and utter confusion. Grand strategy is bloodless and abstract and theoretical in conception, but it is always played out in the human arena of men and arms, in blood, sweat and tears. The tankers, as was true with almost all troops, were in poor physical condition. Lack of sleep, short rations, and constant alertness took their toll. Dive bombers and strafers persistently harassed the men and tanks, spreading them out on an east-west bias farther than they should have been spread. But they fought well. Even the medical units fought. In defiance of MacArthur's orders that they should not carry arms, the medics kept their guns. Dr. Powclcit joined one firelight, and the noncombatant medical doctor shot to kill. He recalled that, "On the road hack to our bivouac area, we ran into Major Wickord. We told him what had happened, but he said not to mention it, as we were not supposed to have weapons; but (Powelcit added wryly) he commended us for what we did." It was a lapse in orders, but a calculatedly overlooked one. There were other lapses, some not calculated. One lieutenant simply forgot to relay orders to the tankers (with whom Poweleit was traveling) to relocate on the "safe" side of the Pampanga River. A captain from another unit reached them, filled in the order, and the tank unit went hurtling off to try to make up lost time. The unit reached the bridge on the river thal the Japanese had just blown. There was a confusing mill of men and equipment at the site. Someone told Poweleit that one of the M3 tanks had k e non the bridge when it was blown, and that the tank had gone over into the water. Poweleit and others rushed to the water, there to see, just bclow the surface, a track of a Bren gun carrier. Recalled Powelcit, "I then dropped from the bridge into the water and swam over the gun carrier to climb on top... I thought I heard muffled voices, so I dove down in the water and came up under the carrier. I felt a body, which I pulled out and brought to shore, then went back to ARMOR - January-February get the other man. The tank was still hot and I burned my arms and the side of my face while getting the last man out." One of the men survived his ordeal of fire and water. Poweleit recognized him as a sergeant of communications, attached to the 192nd Tank Battalion. Grand strategy and global war had indced hecome personal. (General Weaver recommended Dr. Poweleit fcw the Distinguished Service Cross for his exploits. For some reason, unknown to either Weaver or Poweleit, the award he did receive was the Legion of Merit, rarely awarded to medical officers. He was also the first medical ollicer in the Armored Force to be decorated in WWII.) Other moments of confusion and error prevailed. The tankers of the 102nd worked their way to San Fernando. Alongside the city were rail lines, on which were parked boxcars, some lilled with ammunition. Japanese planes suddenly attackcd, setting off the munitions. From Poweleit's diary, one reads, "The explosions that followed were terrific. The men who heard the explosions thought it was enemy artillery and movcd out. When Major (now Lieutenant Colonel) Wickord came over, he found only the medical detachment and equipment, since the rest of the 192nd Tank Battalion had moved to the rear. Lieutenant Colonel Wickord was very angry when he caught up with the tank outfit. He excoriated them for leaving their positions without an order." (I add here that Lieutenant Colonel Wickord always tried to see that the order of withdrawal was given to all men, no matter where their unit was located.) Barracks on the island of Corregidor are a burned-out ruin following the intensive Japanese bombardment. Note shell holes in the roof. But in spite of lapses of judgement, in spite of the chaos and confusion, and the hundreds and thousands of personal, human dramas that piece together war, Plan Orange was working. The light tanks, M3s, virtually useless in jungles and rice paddy country, were invaluable to MacArthur's double retrograde maneuver. The tanks held whcn it was absolutely necessary to hold. As the retreating forces converged on the bridge, the Calumpit (in all, some 184 vital bridges had to be hcld and blown at the last moment), the Japanese - perhaps just then sensing that the retreat was a plan, not a rout - began massing troops at strategic locations. One such place was Baliuag, in an area near the bridge. Ten light tanks of Co. C of the 192nd were rushed to the areas by General Weaver with orders to "hold the area at all costs." The tanks ambushed a larger Japanese tank unit, scattered it, chased individual Japanese tanks through town, then regrouped near the Chlumpit Bridge to engage Japanese infantry. At one point, the tankers were so low on machine gun ammo that tanks were firing at individual soldicrs with single rounds of 37-mm ammunition. By the time the company withdrew onto Bataan, only two tanks were still operating; but the Japanese had been halted for a tactically long moment. A platoon of Company B of the 102nd. temporarily switched to the lY4th Tank Battalion, also held, and held perhaps under even more harrowing conditions. Reconnoitering for the Northern Luzon Force, five ARMOR - January- February 31

As they rounded the curve, the second tank lost the leader. The driver accelerated to close the gap. Just then a shell exploded behind the tank. The tankers realized they wcre trapped. There was no room to turn around. The tankers followed the old saw that if you are lost, or trapped, double your speed. The four tanks hurtled down the road, smashing gun units and road blocks. Finding a place to turn around, the tanks came back along the road, running through gun nests and over Japanese soldiers. Returning to the site of the original attack, they found the lead tank. It had been hit, the crew dead. Then the second, third, fourth, and fifth tanks were hit. A few men escaped, but most of the platoon was killed. The men of the second tank were trapped inside the tank. When Japanese soldiers inspected the damaged tank, the men inside pretended to tie dead. They survived several Japanese inspections, intense heat, and an artillery attack by American-Filipino forces. After the Japanese, who had seen the tanks roaring up and down, and who again overestimated their number, finally moved out of the area, the men began a three-day trek toward friendly lines. They found two other survivors of the battle along the way. With luck, some timely help from Filipino citizens, they eventually reached Manila, where the wounded were turned over to the Philippine General Hospital. The rest eventually caught passage on a Red Cross boat going to Cnr-regidor. After a brief rest, thcy went to Bataan. joined what was left of the tank group, and fought the Bataan battle until surrender. But the most important contribution held the Japanese at hay and away from the Calumpit Bridge for the last crucial hours. Meanwhile, the Calumpit Bridge was a veritable madhouse. The Northern Luzon Force crossed lirst, the South Force following. Both created and were caught up in a two-day traffic jam, as wheeled vehicles of every variety, from trucks to taxis to oxcarts, brought troops and refugees to the bridge. At dawn on December 311, the South Luzon Force started to cross. On the night of December 3lst-January lst, the bridge was blown. The North and South Luzon Forces became the Army of Bataan. There was one more river - the bridge at Layac - to cross. On January 6, 1942, the army was across. The Layac bridge was blown. Eighty-thousand troops - and 26,000 rcfugces - were now "safe" on Bataan. The tank units were the last to reach Bataan. The 104th and 192nd crossed the Pampango on the night of January 6-7, at a smaller bridge at Culis. The 192nd covered the 194th, then crossed too, the last American forces into Bataan. The retrograde maneuver was now complete. From January 7th to April 3rd, when the Japanese began an all-out offensive against Bataan, the tank units, ranks and equipment greatly reduced, on half rations, raged and worn down, continued fighting. The 192nd assumed beach defense of the east coast. The area hcld by the Army of Bataan shrank dramatically. That the Philippines had been written off as a "lost cause," that there would be no reinforcement of the Philip-troops unurstvou. I et iney iougnr on. The tank units resisted attacks to the bitter end, defending positions and fighting on narrow trails, just as fiercely as they had from the beginning. However they thought of it at the time, the tankers, years later, could take consolation from their despair. The Orange Plan worked, in large measure due to the shield of armor the tanks provided. The execution of the plan - and the continued resistance on the peninsula - altered the Japanese timetable (Tokyo had given Generid Homma February 8 for the conquest of the Philippines), and in so altering, probably saved Australia from invasion. Bataan was the only glimmer of organized resistance to the swift, spreading, and nearly all-encompassing conquests of Japan. The part the tank units played was - and is - little noted: "This unit contributed most vitally in all stages and under extraordinary handicaps to the protraction of the operations and withdrawal (to Bataan)." Inexperienced, hastily trained, rushed into battle with a vastly superior enemy, disorganized, and disoriented, the tank units did indeed have their brief moments of glory... This article was written by Dr. Lew Wallace, faculty regent and professor in the Department of History and Geograpy, Northern Kentucky State University, for the Kentucky National Guard dedication ceremony of the 192nd Tank Battalion in May. James C. Claypool, archivist and curator at the University, edited the account. Photos are from the University archives. 32 AR MOR - January- February