A Day I’ll Never Forget
An interview with John Reynolds, 503rd RCT
During the early part of the Negros campaign the Japanese fought tenaciously. At this time, my unit was actually advancing on a very narrow front with the road looking like an umbilical cord trailing behind us. Each day seemed to be a repeat of the previous day, but there is one day, the memory of which is still implanted in my mind.
 

As I recall, on April 20th 1945 at about 1330 the 1st Platoon, under CO Lt. Nickles secured the hill and advanced to the next hill on the right front. The Japanese were stubbornly defending each hill. They were dug in well-prepared defensive positions and had a variety of automatic weapons. They constructed inter-locking fields of fire, making it nearly impossible to flank their positions.

Surprisingly, only mild resistance was encountered on the assault, but as soon as the hill was secured the enemy countered with very intensive machine gun and small arms fire from the front and both flanks supplemented by accurate mortar fire. A mortar shell killed Lt. Nickles, amputated T/4 Upchurch’s leg, causing him to bleed to death and slightly wounding Pfc. McLaughlin. I remember McLaughlin rising, dazed from the mortar fire, yelling: "Nickles is dead, Nickles is dead."
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The men of D Company ride a logging train
into action on Negros. The train was also bombed
shortly after this picture was taken by an American
bomber.

 

A few minutes later, Private Huerter was lightly wounded by mortar fragments. Shortly thereafter, Lt. David, in command of the attached MG platoon, was killed by an enemy sniper. About a half an hour later the 2nd Platoon joined the lst; one squad, under Sgt. Minor, aided in securing the ridge, and the other two squads, under Sgts. Evleth and Stowe, acted as litter bearers. Upchurch was the first of our "group of 26 replacements" assigned to "D" Co. to die. Lt. Nickles had been appointed as CO of "D" Company just prior to the Negros mission, and some of us were told that he did not have to be with the 1st Platoon as we made our attack but wanted to go to understand the nature of the Japanese defenses.

That short half-hour has impacted my life, even today, and it will continue to affect my thinking until that day I depart from this earth. The events provided me with a prescription for overcoming fear. My sincere belief is that one of the factors in bringing me through that particular episode was my basic training, where I was constantly told that the ground was my friend. At the beginning of the mortar attack I was lying on my back, and I wanted to move to a more covered position, but I knew from my training that to get on my feet was to invite certain death. I could hear the "Cough" of those knee mortars as they left the tubes just a short distance away, and I could see them as they arched over towards our position on the hillside. After what must have been only a minute, but what seemed like ages, I couldn’t watch any more and rolled over on my stomach, face down against the ground and thought "I’m going to get killed on my mother’s birthday." I didn’t of course, but my life and approach to life has never been the same prior to this experience.

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A pickup game of baseball on Negros after cessation of
hostilities

As I stated earlier, there are things that I try to remember and can’t, but other events are as clear as in my memory as if they happened yesterday. Two such events occurred later the very same day and early the next morning. I remember them clearly because their relationship was so ironic (and for the superstitious were quite understandable). Late in the afternoon, or early in the evening, three or four of us were going back a short distance to "D" Company CP to bring some "10-in-1" rations. We had already reached the bottom of the hill, whose taking had cost us so dearly, when a corporal named Bokencamp, a long lean lank Texan, came running down the slope, and as he caught up with us he said, "Wait for me, I don’t mind dying, but I don’t want to die alone. "Early in the dark of the following morning, with the company on perimeter, his words would prove to be very prophetic. The Japanese succeed in entering one of the forward trenches, killing Sgt. Ciro and Cpl. Bokencamp.


Source:
Interview by Pat O'Donnell with John Reynolds