WW II in the Aleutians

World War II

RETAKING OF KISKA – AUGUST 1943

by Ed Thomas

The following account of the landing to retake Kiska I have extracted from my wartime account of service with the US-Canadian 1st Special Service Force. This unit was organized in 1942 to parachute into Norway to destroy hydroelectric plants powering Norwegian molybdenum mines. This plan was shelved after which we became a unit of the task force aimed at Kiska. Following this we served in Italy and Southern France.

In late June, we loaded up on trains for "destination unknown." When the train got to Schenectady and headed west, we knew that the Japs, not the Germans, would be our first combat opponents. It was a hot, dirty, four-day trip. Rumor was that the Catholic chaplain got deeply into the sacramental wine on the way. Finally, we ended up at the docks in San Francisco, our Port of Embarkation (POE), and were ferried across to Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, our departure point for the Pacific Theater.

KISKA INVASION
7/43 – 8/43

On July 9th, 1943, we moved to the docks at Angel Island, loaded ferries to the San Francisco Docks, then onto the troop carrier Liberty ships that were to transport us to the Aleutians. 2nd Regiment loaded onto the John B. Floyd. We got settled down as best we could in our allotted spaces on this old boat. The other ships were still loading equipment.

On the afternoon of July 11th, the ships raised anchors, sailed into the open harbor,
formed up in convoy and in late afternoon sailed under the San Francisco Bay Bridge. We were on our way to our first combat - we thought. As we sailed under the bridge, we made plans for the great return party we'd have in San Francisco, at least by those of us who survived the operation.

Soon after we entered the open sea and turned northward we sailed into what is known as the "potato patch," a stretch of rough water. Our boat began to pitch and heave and the seasickness started. The rough seas lasted a couple of days, not a very pleasant experience on a troop ship, with bunks in 8-high tiers in the hold. Our food ser-vice was provided by our unit cooks but for those two days there was little incentive or desire for food. The cooks were as sick as the rest of the men. By some miracle, I was spared. I think there was only one other Force member who was not sick. I could not understand my escape because of my first and only experience in rough seas some years earlier. On my trip to Alaska with Aunt Helen we crossed the Gulf of Alaska in rough weather and I became very, very seasick.

An exciting part of our trip through the rough water area was the shifting of heavy construction equipment that had been lashed on the deck, a real danger to anyone in its path as it slid around. Somehow it was finally secured by the crew.

The 2nd Regiment had the dubious honor of being accompanied on the Floyd by Force HQ personnel. The Plans & Training Officer, to justify his existence, con-ducted classes for officers at night, mostly giving us tactical problems to solve. One night we had as a problem an assault on a harbor town in Alaska. We worked in pairs, and Tom McWilliam, 1st Battalion CO, and I worked together. We did not take this too seriously and we proposed using a parachute operation to secure the objective. When we presented this solution it was strongly criticized as being im-practical because parachute operations in Alaska were not feasible for reasons of terrain, wind and fog. When making the Kiska invasion plan a few weeks later the Force Plans Officer seemed to have forgotten these problems.
After about 11 long days on the ship, we reached the island of Adak and anchor-ed offshore. After a few hours, we hoisted anchor and headed westward to the island of Amchitka, which would be our base for almost a month. With great difficulty we un-loaded our equipment, carried it to our bivouac area, set up pyramidal tents, and began our preparation for the Kiska invasion.

Amchitka is an island bare of trees and covered in muskeg to a depth of many feet, and we got well acquainted with it as we transported equipment over it. Essentially, it is very wet peat moss, so there is no bottom that we discovered as we walked on it and set up our tents in it. Officers had been told to bring their footlockers, which we certainly did not need, and they were a burden to haul from the ship docking area to our tents.

Our water supply point was some distance away. There were few roads and we had no vehicles, so all water had to be backpacked in, which took many man-hours. There was almost constant thick fog. During our time there we saw only three or four clear days.

On one foggy morning I was leading our battalion of about 200 men on a training march, single-file, in our designated training area. The column was stretched out over a considerable distance. We were slogging our way over the muskeg in the fog, when I saw dimly ahead some other soldiers. I commented to the company commander with whom I was marching that our training area had been invaded, but the closer we got, the more familiar the figures looked and I soon discovered that I had led my column in a circle. The men I had called invaders were the tail end of the column I was leading.
Near our area was an Air Force officers' club in a Quonset hut. I occasionally visited it and got acquainted with some of the pilots who were flying missions over Kiska. It was their opinion that the Japs had evacuated the island because they had been able to fly low without attracting fire.

Eventually the combat order was issued. It called for 1st and 3rd Regiments to make the initial landings in rubber boats to secure the beaches for the main landing force. Despite what we had been told on the way up, 2nd Regiment was ordered to land by parachute in an area behind the beaches in support of the seaborne operation. An interesting part of this was that to approach this area, our aircraft would have to pass very near an extinct volcano on Kiska that raised its cone a considerable height above the island.

This must have been one of the strangest airborne operations ever conceived. The men of the Force had been qualified with two parachute jumps and there had never been any training in tactical jumps, nor in the most important element of a parachute operation, assembly on the ground. I was the only one in the Force at that time who had any actual experience in or knowledge of real parachute operations.

The initial plan was to drop all weapons, including rifles, in bundles. I made a strong effort to get the Griswold container used. This container allowed men to jump carrying their rifles and avoids searching for their weapon bundles. The supply officer was able to get these flown in. I volunteered to put on a demonstration jump to show how easily they are used. I got Murray Kirkwood and Sgt. Major Mickeljohn to join me in this jump, and arranged the jump details with Lt. Rimmer, the Force's pilot.

We chose a DZ not too far from our bivouac area, between two lakes. To make this demonstration more spectacular, I had Rimmer use a technique I had seen a couple of times at Ft. Bragg, where the jump planes would come in ”on the deck”, then climb to jump altitude. The first two attempts to hit the DZ at the right altitude failed. On the third approach, he missed the DZ again. He was climbing when we were over it so I led our group out anyway at about 250 feet. We all landed with no problem. Muskkeg is a great cushion on which to make a parachute jump. This was my nineteenth and final jump.

A parachute operation creates a myriad of details that must be handled, but in an exper-ienced airborne unit many of these become standard procedures. As executive officer of the Battalion, I had most of these details to handle, and on the last day before the opera-tion they crowded in on me. The Chaplain had communion prepared in late after-noon of D-Day–1 but by the time I got to his setup, he had closed shop.

On D-Day, August 15th, we were up around 2:00 am, made our way to a new roadway at the bivouac area, and were trucked to the Amchitka airstrip where we drew parachutes. We moved to our assigned aircraft identified by “tail numbers”, and then began a long wait. The soldiers broke out cards and dice and the games began.

It was another foggy day. If Kiska were as foggy we’d not be jumping that day. It was a tedious wait. About 6:00 AM a message from Gen. Frederick to Col. Williamson, the regimental commander, was passed down the line. The seaborne landing had found no enemy on the island and the parachute operation was cancelled.

In the hours before going into action it’s normal to build up anticipation, and cancellation creates a psychological letdown. However, when this passed I was glad for the outcome. We were ill trained and unprepared for such an operation.

This was my only chance to make a combat jump and over the years I have had regrets that I never made one. When I join with friends at 505th Parachute Regiment reunions, many of whom made three, this frequently comes to mind. My regret, of course, is always tempered with a critical condition: Subject to survival.

In preparation for what might have been my ultimate fate I had written a rather sentimental letter to a young lady I was serious about, and in the cold, gray light of that morning, as I thought about that letter and that I was not even going into combat, it seemed not to have been too wise. As soon as we got back to our bivouac area I sought out our postal clerk and persuaded him to illegally return it to me. This gave him a good laugh.

The next few days we spent cleaning up our area, as well as the areas of the other regiments. We found that they had been left in very poor condition. One supply officer had floored his tent with mortar shells in their cardboard packing tubes.

Again, we embarked on the John B. Floyd, headed back to Adak. There we transferred to the destroyer USS Heywood for our return to San Francisco. We debarked on the docks, and that was as close as we got to San Francisco for the great “coming home” party we’d planned as we left. We immediately loaded onto a ferry and went upriver to Camp Stoneman to prepare for our return to Ft. Ethan Allen.