The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 384

4 sr-i Knltenbaugh receives the first of two Iver star medals for bravery in World War campaigns. evened two years later. The revenge began within three weeks. Heading a patrol probing enemy defenses, he spotted the helmet of a Japanese lookout. Crawling through the brush, Kalten-baugh had to contain his anxiety if he were to stay alive to collect "the debt." He hissed and the inquisitive lookout rose, only to have Kaltenbaugh squeeze off a full clip of tommy-gun bullets.

5) lis Pb of That was the first entry in the black I book. The second was when he "dis- patched" the rear guard of a Japanese troop column with a knife in the throat. And so it went. One-on-one combat "kills" only were entered in the ledger. Each is a horror story.

Kaltenbaugh's "best" day was to three. It took several clips of car-I Dine ammo to get two. He charged at the i third, smashing the weapon on the Japa-! nese soldier's body, and finally fired his pistol in the enemy face. Others he "could have taken prisoner, but killed." The entire regiment knew of Kalten- Kaltenbaugh today stands with wife Doloris on steps of their Stoystown home. He's still a super patriot, and displays the flag proudly.

When Kaltenbaugh found the victims, his squad had to take cover from attack. When a sufficient force moved in later, the beach was clean and the patrol listed "missing in action." It was only the day prior to this interview that Kaltenbaugh read about the unit's situation on the island. A newly published book by a former Japanese officer declares the minor Marine contingent was "surrounded by 10,000 troops." Shrugging off the circumstance that he survived, Kaltenbaugh reflects about the patrol. No one else is left. The last survivor who escaped the massacre died last year in an auto accident.

"The only reason I'm talking about it now is that recently I was informed about the death of the mother of one of the slaughtered boys. "She had kept a daily vigil on her porch up in the West Virginia hills, expecting her son to come back, because he was officially 'missing in "Maybe it was cruel to let her keep believing he might return," he muses. Now partly disabled and with his two sons running the family business, Kaltenbaugh prefers to reflect on the ups and downs of 37 years of family life and earning a living: His first child died of a mysterious bone malady. A setback on a coal deal cost him a ruinous $50,000. But he bounced back.

Two racehorses he owned were killed by autos when they broke the fence in front of his home. He gave up raising track ponies. A bout with blood poison last year, brought on by a diabetic condition, nudged him closest to death since the war. As a dropout ana without a single credit toward an engineering degree, he masterminded Gray Mine Supply which builds sophisticated mining equipment. He talks of his approaching 60th birthday in July and how the children are going off on their own.

And he is still a super patriot. On the front porch hangs a flag that once flew over the nation's Capitol. It's a tribute from people who know of his war record. Which might partly explain the ex-Marine's equanimity over the years and his present reaction that if he had to do it all over again: "I can't say what would happen, what I'd do but I have no regrets." Finally, the score was settled miles inside enemy territory on Okinawa. A Japanese creeping through the brush was the final payoff: He was stabbed.

Kaltenbaugh took out the ledger and in the mud beside the corpse, made the last entry: "ACCOUNT CLOSED (signed) CLARK R. KALTENBAUGH." But the now first lieutenant was to go on killing. The greatest toll was when snipers in Okinawan caves pinned down his unit. He ordered bulldozers to seal off the caves' entries, leaving one space open to pour gasoline from a nearby Japanese fuel dump into the catacombs. Then he torched the fuel himself.

After the war, investigators found "about 500 cindered bodies" in the caverns. Kaltenbaugh's final victim was to be a week before surrender. Again at "the point" of a patrol that was resting, he dozed against a tree, cradling an automatic shotgun in his arms. Wakened by a noise, he squeezed the trigger into the onrushing face of a Japanese. "I'd have fired if it had been my own commanding general stalking up on me," the Dutchman says.

Division brass figured it was time Kaltenbaugh was shipped out of the war zone. Peace was only a few days away. He returned home to marry Violet Covitch of nearby Tire Hill, but stayed in the Corps for another year. The couple eventually settled in Somerset County to raise a family. The ex-Marine began a coal-hauling business, branched out into coal mining and eventually specialized in the equipment business.

The first Mrs. Kaltenbaugh died four years ago. In 1977, he married his second wife Doloris who had two children of her own to add to the household. As much as memory will allow, the war is behind him. Can't Forget Snafu Yet, he frets about the snafu which led to the massacre.

He is distressed that the officers who were victims with the rest of the patrol hurried to be in on the first significant capture of enemy troops on Guadalcanal. "It's hindsight," he reflects, "but caution might have saved many of my buddies." Also, a 37-year anguish is that none of the patrol's bodies was recovered. 1 baugh's crusade. The tide of battle took them to two campaigns on Cape Glouces- I ter, plus Okinawa and Peleliu, site of some of the fiercest hand-to-hand com- bat in the South Pacific, By February, 1944, Kaltenbaugh I earned two silver stars, was wounded 1 twice by shrapnel plus other injuries and 1 contracted a still-nagging malaria. Also, he won a field commission to second lieutenant.

I But not every day was carnage. On a I rest and recreation leave to Australia, I the lucky Pennsylvania Dutchman "cleaned house" in a crap game. I "Everyone from the commander on down owed me monev from the came. I vStringbean' War Hero Evened Combat Score For 19 Slain Buddies sent $4,000 home (to his parents and six brothers and sisters), but held back a huge chunk for the best suite at the Melbourne Hotel. "It was open house at the suite for every Marine in the unit until we went back into the field," Kaltenbaugh recalls.

He adds with a chuckle, "I had never shot dice before in my life." Impatient with hospital stays, the cause-consumed Marine ignored sick 1L I -ciu iur me maiana ana tne Dayonet cuts and bruises incurred in combat. I "Yes, I was paranoid to fulfill my promise. Luckily, over the years since, I i haven't suffered any real nervous prob-? lems," he says. 45.