Quartermasters got their first taste of what was to come when Japanese forces isolated U.S. troops and their allies in the Philippines. American and Filipino troops on Bataan and Corregidor were slowly strangled. Cut off from supplies, some 6,500 miles from home, these men, including many Quartermasters, went down fighting.
For at least three months after December 7, 1941, the Japanese had the initiative in the Pacific and carried the war to the Allies. Painfully aware of the danger in the region and fighting a desperate holding action while the war in Europe took precedence, U.S. support troops began the job of building bases around the world. As the pendulum of war gradually shifted in favor of the Allies, the QM soldier found himself supplying not a retreat but the beginning of a counteroffensive that was to carry through to V-J Day.
GUADALCANAL. In August 1942, lighters landed supplies at three points along a four-mile stretch of beach on the Japanese stronghold at Guadalcanal. The first waves were under constant aerial attack. Sharp coral, incessant rain, and high humidity meant, from a QM viewpoint, that there was a terrific toll in shoes. Thousands of replacement pairs had to be rushed inland by QMs and native carriers. QMs brought ashore gallons of insecticides and repellents to protect frontline troops from the murderous mosquitoes.
Under steady enemy fire, one bakery platoon operated nine ovens and turned out enough bread to supply 20 pounds a day for each 100 men.
NEW GUINEA. The next stop was Port Moresby, in southern New Guinea From there, the fighting moved inland. QM soldiers pushed beyond frontiers and mountain ranges that had been unexplored until as recently as 1927. There they hacked and clawed their way through mud and jungle with cases of supplies on their backs. They jammed material through by truck, jeep, boat, barge, mule and burro.
In November 1942, when General MacArthur took his next step toward the Philippines by landing at Buna on the north New Guinea coast, QMs found themselves up against a rugged situation. Their dumps had to be hewed out of the undergrowth, and they were cut off from the forward troops by hilly jungle, thick with enemy forces.
First, a sub-base was established at Milne Bay, and small cargo ships were unloaded there. Other small boats, ranging in capacity from 50 to 500 tons, transshipped this cargo and started toward the nearest small harbor on the road to Buna. There, supplies were transferred to even smaller boats and barges, carrying as little as 10 tons.
These were unloaded at night on bare beaches, through pounding surf. On alternate nights, supplies landed. On alternate days, supplies moved forward on the backs of QMs and native carriers until they reached the combat troops. The Infantrymen preferred not to think of what would happen if the QM supplymen did not get through.
JUNGLE IMPS. Improvisation kept the QMs going in their isolated bits of jungle, 2,000 miles from base. They built storage facilities for protection against the rains and terrible humidity. They created refrigeration units, primarily for hospital needs, and mounted them on improvised chassis. QMs of the Americal Division built their own ice plant out of junked materials. During this phase of the war, Japanese infiltrators and counterattacks were a constant danger.
QM operations in the assaults at Biak and Hollandia were mostly a matter of blood and sweat. Said a lieutenant colonel who observed the action: "To stand on a beach and watch these service companies sweat in the tropic heat to move the prodigious piles of supplies and equipment, or to see those drivers coax and wheedle their big vehicles over unbelievably bad terrain; or to witness the growth from chaos to orderliness in the supply dumps is to marvel at the individual back-breaking efforts and collective units' accomplishments."
Back at New Caledonia, one of the main supply bases, Quartermasters took over, set up or built canning factories, packing plants, machine shops, laundries, repair units, and virtually all the Services of Supply installations necessary to wage Pacific-style warfare.
While Allied troops on the other side of the globe were busy driving back the Germans in North Africa, Sicily and Italy and establishing a major base in Iceland, the Pacific forces in the north cleared Japanese invaders from the Aleutian Islands (at Attu and Kiska). In that bleak, muddy, sunless region, QMs tried to keep it a clean war for their fellow GIs. Laundries and dry cleaning plants went to work on a large scale, helping ease an almost unbearable climate.
CENTRAL PACIFIC. The Pacific campaign was steadily progressing, and with it, QM supply techniques. For the assault on Kwajalein, January 31, 1944, Quartermasters devised and built more than 4,000 cargo sleds. Supplies palletized on these sleds could be moved rapidly from landing craft to shore dumps.
Supplymen relied on aerial tactics, too, in support of several operations. Isolated troops in New Guinea had been fed and equipped that way when land transport was too slow and difficult. In the Papuan campaign, concluded in January 1943, assault troops carried a two-day ration supply. When that was gone, it was up to the QMC to keep them going. Air supply again was the answer. It was a big factor, too, in Burma where QM soldiers took to the air to kick cases of rations out of C-47s to troops below.
In November 1943, one Quartermaster officer and 18 enlisted men received three Distinguished Flying Medals and 19 Air Medals. They were the unit which supplied by air the American, British, Chinese and Indian forces operating in the hills of upper Burma, the troops that were pushing the Japanese out of the way of the Ledo road.
SWEATING WAR. While the campaigns that would liberate the Philippines and occupy the Ryukyus were in the making, thousands of Quartermasters were sweating out the war in foul climate and rear-area island bases. There they helped build the supply pressure needed to back the high-powered assaults that came in 1945. Months and years of labor and boredom do not rate battle stars, but without that work, the battles would not have been won by the right side. That knowledge was often the only reward many Quartermasters received for their efforts.
THE FINAL LEG. Quartermasters played a vital role to the very end in the Pacific campaign. They provided direct support to the fighting elements that ultimately liberated the Philippines and along the way had to defend not only their supply installations but themselves as well, against a skillful and determined foe. There were QMs on Okinawa, too, and Ie Shima -- wherever there were combat troops, for that matter.
Much more could be told of the Quartermaster role in the Pacific. Of those who fought alongside the Infantry. Of those who probed for mines to help clear jungle roads and base areas. Of those QMs in India who worked night and day improvising to get fresh meat to the forward-area GIs. Of the courageous truck drivers who daily traversed the Stilwell Road.
There was the dangerous and brave work of salvage companies such as the one which went ashore right behind the Infantry in the Luzon invasion. The Division Quartermaster Company which, in its division's drive from the Lingayen Gulf to Manila, supplied 32,000 men while the enemy threw everything they had at them. The QM pack trains that beat the roadless terrain on Luzon. The Quartermaster Group that supplied Marines for the invasion and occupation of a large part of Okinawa. The citations, awards, Purple Hearts, the countless QMs who died as a frontline Infantryman might have died -- Killed in Action.
The dropping of the atomic bomb prompted Japanese leaders to surrender on August 14, 1945. But it was not the bomb alone that brought victory to the Allies in the Pacific. Nor MacArthur's brilliant island-hopping strategy and continuous assault that wore down the enemy's defenses. No single element accounted for the outcome.
Rather, Japan was defeated by the best fighting combination the world had ever seen. The long road back from Bataan to Tokyo was a team effort. Quartermasters, supporting victory the whole way, were a vital part of that team.