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By Al Zdon
Alton Knutson's worst fears were realized when he looked on the floor of the Jeep and saw it was covered with oats.
Knutson had arrived at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, in 1943 for basic
training, and he had been warned by the "people who knew" on the base that he should avoid mule pack training like the plague.
"They told me it was one tough outfit," Knutson recalled. "They said I
should stay away from mules, no matter what."
Four or five days after he arrived, Knutson's name was called and he was told to get his duffle bag and wait in the front of the barracks. He obeyed his
orders, and a Jeep pulled up.
"I threw my duffle bag in the back and I looked down at the floor. It was covered with oats. I knew where I was going."
Knutson was not unfamiliar with domesticated
animals. He grew up on a farm near Ashby, Minnesota, during the depression. His Norwegian family worked hard to survive. "We had plenty of food on the table, and that was about it."
He left school
after the eighth grade to work full time on the farm, but then became part of a special high school program at the University of Minnesota's School of Agriculture at Crookston.
The students crammed
nine months of school into the span between October and March so they would be free to work on the farm during the growing season. Knutson stayed at the school until 1942, tacking on an additional year
at the school's college prep program.
Knutson, though, knew he wasn't going to be a farmer. "I got the call to the ministry when I was 15 years old. It said in my high school yearbook, 'He will be a
pastor.'"
At the Crookston school, Knutson remembers that he entered a speech contest, and he orated on the fact that the Japanese shouldn't be harshly criticized for their ongoing war with China. "Of
course I didn't know anything about the atrocities or what was really going on, but I did win the speech contest."
He was 20 when he finished up at Crookston and became eligible for the draft. He
signed up with the Navy's V-12 program that allows students to stay in college.
He started at Augsburg College in Minneapolis in 1942, but then contracted what doctors thought was rheumatic fever and
he had to drop out. He informed the Navy of his illness and they discharged him.
Feeling better that summer, he went to work for a neighboring farmer and was given a farm deferment. "But I wasn't
comfortable with it. It was part of my upbringing that I should do my duty no matter how difficult. I let the Selective Service know I was giving up my deferment." In September, he was drafted.
Earlier in the year, Knutson had met a pretty nurse, Margretta Ramaley, at Fairview Hospital, where he worked part time as a janitor and elevator operator. They were both interested in becoming
missionaries, and their first date was a missionary conference at Augsburg.
"It was almost love at first sight. Things blossomed pretty fast."
When Knutson was ordered to report to Ft. Snelling he
told Margretta, known as Toodie, and they decided to get married. The families agreed and after the proposal on Monday, the couple was married in a church wedding on Friday. They had two weeks to
honeymoon before Alton had to report.
At Fort Snelling, Knutson had to wait for an assignment. His first job at the fort was to scrub the floor of the historic round tower in the old part of the fort.
After two weeks, he was ordered to report to Fort Sill, the home of the Army's artillery training.
The Army had a long history of using mules to move supplies and equipment, and it had been proven
that the four-legged transports could move artillery pieces where motorized vehicles could not go. Pack mule battalions had already been sent to Italy to fight in the mountains there.
Knutson was
assigned to a group of soldiers who were put in charge of seven mules and one 75 mm howitzer. The gun could be broken down into pieces and put on the backs of five mules. Other equipment was put on the
remaining two mules.
His wife, Toodie, came down to Fort Sill and worked as a maid for an officer family. Knutson was able to see her on weekends, and whenever else he got the chance.
The training
group was all moved to another training camp at Colorado Springs to train with the mules at altitude. Again Toodie followed along, and the two rented a basement apartment.
It was in Colorado that the
613th Field Artillery Battalion (Pack) was formed and began training as a unit. One day after a hike of about 14 miles, the unit settled in for the night in their tents.
"We woke up in the morning and
our pup tent was squeezed down tight. About 14 inches of snow had fallen during the night. All we could do was pack up our 200 mules and march through that snow back to the base. It was one of those
times I was really tired.
"But I think growing up on the farm always helped me. You learn to endure, to keep on plugging no matter what."
A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female
horse. The result is an animal with good size and the ability to carry heavy loads. "I had always worked with horses on the farm, but never mules. I would say that the mule has a different temperament,
much more solid and not as excitable."
Knutson was a gun loader on the howitzer crew. Someone would hand him the shell, and he would slam it home before someone else pulled the lanyard. "I don't think
it did anything good for my hearing."
On the 20th of September, the unit was put on a train and sent to Ft. Ord. On Oct. 22, the 613th boarded the USS General Butler, en route for the Far East.
"There were 4,000 U.S. troops on board, and 2,000 Chinese troops that had been training in the United States. With the Chinese on board, we figured we were probably going to India."
The ship was not
part of a convoy, but zigzagged by itself across the Pacific, stopping in Australia and then arriving in Bombay on Thanksgiving Day, 23 November, 1944. Immediately, the battalion was put on a train and
shipped across India to Calcutta. There, at Dum Dum Airport, the men were loaded in transport planes and taken to Myitkyina in central Burma. The city and airport had been freed from the Japanese by
Merrill's Marauders earlier in the year.
When the Marauders were disbanded, many of them joined a new composite unit that included the 475th Infantry and the 124th Cavalry (dismounted), a National
Guard unit from Texas. The new group, along with the 612th and 613th field artillery battalions, was called the Mars Task Force, and they took up where the Marauders had left off.
The Japanese were
retreating south and west, with Chinese troops in pursuit. The Mars Task force was making an end run to the east, and was traveling some of the roughest terrain in the world without the benefit of a
highway.
"We left with 60 lb. packs, and it was hot and it was dusty. Plus we were not in condition anymore to march after being on the ship for 31 days. It was a very, very long first day."
The
task force marched every day, the mules carrying the howitzers. They skirted around the city of Bhamo, and they could hear the fighting going on in the distance, their first intimation of combat.
"Some of the more ingenious men rigged up carts for the mules to pull, and so much of the gear was hauled that way. And some of the officers had commandeered Jeeps. But south of Bhamo, we struck off into
the jungle and all the carts and Jeeps had to be abandoned or sent back."
Knutson said that none of the men of the Mars Task Force wore any type of uniform markings of rank or unit. "We had learned
that the Japanese snipers looked for anyone with rank."
As the mule train headed onto the narrow trails, Knutson said that's when the discarding began. "Anything you didn't think you needed, you
tossed. The natives along that trail must have had a field day."
The discarded items included tennis shoes, an extra blanket, any extra clothing, and half of the mess kits including the knife and
fork. The men kept their machetes, knives, ponchos, canteens and first aid kits, plus the other half of the mess kit with the spoon. A spoon was all you needed to eat K-rations.
The traveling group
was supplied by air drop every three days, but it wasn't a perfect system. If the rains came, it could get pretty hungry along the trail. The K-rations consisted of a tin of tuna, scrambled eggs, beef
stew or pork plus a hard tack biscuit, a square of chocolate, powdered coffee and powdered lemon juice.
While the K-ration boxes were covered with wax, the humid climate made its mark on the GIs'
food. "The biscuits were stale, the chocolate had turned white and the coffee was one hard glob."
The food need of the mules was accomplished with double thick burlap bags full of oats that were
simply pushed out of the airplanes without the benefit of a parachute. "You didn't want to be standing under one of those. We killed several mules that way, and had some close calls with the men."
Knutson had teamed up with another GI to share blankets and ponchos. The two matched each other in working hard at the end of the day's journey, and so had extra time to pick out the best camping spot.
On Christmas Eve, the 10th day of the march, Knutson's roommate wandered off into the jungle.
"He was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian and a great guy. But that night he just disappeared. He must have
used his instincts, but somehow he found some native liquor. He came back to the tent singing.
"It's the only time in my life I slept with a drunk."
Knutson had spent his Christmas Eve reading the
Christmas story out of the New Testament to the other GIs. He said it was somewhat difficult to maintain his Christian demeanor in the rough and tumble of a combat army.
"The one thing I would not do
was to use the crude language. In fact the other guys would say, 'Knutson wouldn't say horse____ if his mouth was full of it.' But it was my way of witnessing, letting them know what my Christain faith
meant to me."
Every morning the men would pack up and get ready to go. They would grab a quick bath at a nearby stream if they had a chance. The pieces of the howitzer were so heavy that it took four
men to put them on the mule's back.
Knutson's mule was a reddish color and so naturally was called "Red." All the mules were tied to picket lines strung between trees during the night.
The cooks
had prepared the water for the day by boiling it and then storing it in large 30 or 40 gallon "Lister" bags.
When the troops set off, it was a long line with 430 men and about 300 mules. By January
7th, they had reached the Schweli River, and they were now getting closer to the fighting.
"It was about a mile and a half down to the river, and it was raining. It was just mud, mud, mud. To keep the
mule from tumbling over, I took his halter and we would step together, step together, sometimes slide together. We made it somehow."
The 613th crossed the river one at a time on a makeshift bamboo
bridge, and they were told that once they got across there was an air drop waiting for them. They were completely out of food.
"When we got there, we found that the infantry had gotten to the air drop
first and all that was left was what they considered inedible – like the biscuits. We were pretty sad. It was the only time we were seriously starving. But the next morning we lined up for mess, and they
served us hot oatmeal.
"We don't know how they did it, but they must have pulverized the mule feed somehow and made oatmeal out of it. It saved us."
On the 16th and 17th of January the battalion
made a forced march down a valley, found that they were trapped, and marched back for the high ground. "There was a stream in the middle of the valley, and I kept count. That day we crossed that stream
49 times."
By the 19th, the 280-mile march began to pay off as 613th dug emplacements in a mountain side and finally began firing its weapons in support of the infantry advance in front of them. "Ours
was the first gun to zero in on the enemy."
Telephone wire was laid from the forward observers back to the firing position, and the battery fired several hundred rounds over the next two days as the
spotters phoned back the coordinates. The only problem was that the firing tipped off their own position, and the Japanese began firing back.
"There were two kinds of shelling. One was a big cannon
that just went 'woof, woof, woof.' The other went 'whisssshhh-bang, whisssshhh-bang. That was by far the most dreadful."
The GIs had dug deep fox holes and bunkers, but the shelling was still lethal
with gunners being killed and wounded. It was during this time, Knutson said, that he offered his life to the Lord.
"I just told him that if I survived, I was going to go wherever he wanted me to go.
I wasn't bargaining with God, I was just telling him my intentions."
After some days, the emplacements were moved to a location on the other side of a ridge that was more protected from the Japanese
shelling. Knutson said the men were not too happy with officers for picking the original exposed position.
How did Knutson justify his deadly work with his Christian values? "I would pray as I loaded
the shells that the enemy wouldn't be killed by our shelling, that they would only get gangrene."
The daily shelling went on until Feb. 4. The next couple of days there were no calls for artillery
support, and the men assumed the battle was over. In fact, it was as the remaining Japanese again took up their retreat to the south. This latest action, though, had freed up the Burma Road and allowed
an overland supply route to China.
The 613th packed up its guns and headed down the Burma Road where the scenes of the battle were all around them. Many dead Japanese soldiers were alongside the road.
"I saw the body of one Japanese soldier. The GIs had already rifled his personal effects, and there were pictures scattered around. One was of a little girl. It really struck me. They were men with
families just like us. I knew he'd never see that child again. It's the awfulness of war."
The further south the men marched, the worse the heat became. "It was just miserable. They made us wear our
steel helmets. It was more than hot. The flies were just terrible, trying to crawl into your eyes, your ears and your nose."
As he led his mule down the road, Knutson noticed a building that was
different than the usual shacks. It was made of corrugated metal, and it had a cross on top. It was a makeshift church.
"Right there in that godforsaken place was the cross of Christ. I wasn't so
miserable after that."
The 613th finally made it to a rest camp and their mail caught up with them. "I got a letter from my dad, and I was apprehensive because he rarely wrote. He told me that my
older brother had died. That was a hard one for me."
After some time in the rest camp, the unit was told to turn in its mules. Knutson said there was little sentimentality about it. "We didn't feel
too bad about it at all."
The next journey for Knutson was on May 10th on a C-47 to Kunming, China, a major army base for the Chinese. On Sept. 8, after the war was over, the 613th was officially
disbanded.
Knutson had no job. "They hauled us to China, but they didn't know what to do with us. So I volunteered at the dispensary."
One day Knutson was one of the artillerymen, and the next day
he was giving them shots. "And they didn't even let me practice on an orange."
Knutson later was moved to Shanghai where he was assigned to take care of vehicle needs for officers. He also made
contact with British missionaries there, and he learned how to drink English tea, "with plenty of milk and sugar, what a treat."
Back in the United States, Knutson was discharged on Feb. 4, 1946. He
used his GI bill to finish up at Augsburg and then do three years of seminary school.
In 1951, he fulfilled his pledge to the Lord and his longtime dream and became a missionary – in Japan. He and
Toodie spent the next 33 years of their life in Japan. They had four children, two born in the United States and two in Japan.
The Knutsons came back to the United States in 1984. He has served three
stints as pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Forest Lake where he and Toodie still live. In fact they live at the same place where they spent their honeymoon 65 years ago.
Alton Knutson goes to
national reunions of his artillery battalion, and he serves his comrades as their chaplain.
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