One-Man Blitz

Captain Arthur W. Wermuth, 57th Filipino Scout Regiment, has a Vandyke beard, a 45-caliber tommy gun, a Garand rifle, and an unerring eye. Fellow officers on Bataan Peninsula swear admiringly that, although thrice wounded, he has "absolutely accounted for" at least 116 Japanese dead and an inestimable number of prisoners. He dotes on lone reconnaissance patrols; for two weeks in January he spent more time behind Jap lines than in his own. How he works (according to Associated Press's Clark Lee):

On one of his reconnaissance patrols Captain Wermuth, from a foxhole, spotted a long line of Japanese crossing a ridge. "I worked them over with my tommy gun," said he, "and got at least 30 like ducks in a Coney Island shooting gallery." Attracted by the shooting, five Filipino scouts rushed to the scene, helped Arthur Wermuth polish off "50 or 60" more of the enemy party.

"On Jan. 14," wrote Reporter Lee, "he volunteered to burn the enemy-held town of Samal. He crawled through the Japanese lines before dawn with five gallons of gasoline and walked behind the shacks where the Japanese were sleeping. He sprinkled the gasoline, threw a lighted match and fled.

"He formed a 'suicide antisniper' unit with 84 volunteers to eliminate 300 enemy snipers who had infiltrated behind the American lines. . . . The unit cleaned up one sector of the sniper area every morning between daybreak and 8:30. They killed at least 250 and also wiped out a number of Japanese machine-gunners with hand grenades."

Colonel Royal Page Davidson, superintendent of Northwestern Military and Naval Academy (Lake Geneva, Wis.), where Arthur Wermuth played football and graduated in 1932, received news of the 116 bag like a schoolmaster. Said he: "Is that all? . . . He'll have to do better than that."

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