Volckmann's Guerrillas

Some 20,000 Japanese retreating up the end of northern Luzon in the Philippines were suddenly stabbed in the belly, tactically speaking, then kicked in the rear.

Thirty-five miles behind the front lines a phantom U.S. force sprang on the town of Tuguegarao and, captured a major Japanese airfield. Next day another force appeared 50 miles behind this force, at the end of the Jap retreat line, to nab the final escape port of Aparri and its airfield.

On the front line the fighting was more conventional, with the U.S. 37th Division striking fast and hard along the Cagayan Valley, rolling the Japs back in front of it eight miles a day. But the forays into the Jap rear and middle were largely the work of a first-rate guerrilla outfit and its blue-eyed, sandy-haired commander.

Colonel Russell W. Volckmann was a lean West Pointer from Iowa. When Bataan fell in 1942 he took to the hills and organized one of the best guerrilla teams in the Philippines. By the time the U.S. forces came back, Volckmann and his band had already cleared the Japs from a large portion of northwestern Luzon's mountains.

Throughout the Luzon campaign Volckmann and his Ilocanos--short, dark-skinned, sensitive northern Filipinos--worked on their own within the planning orbit of Lieut. General Walter Krueger's Sixth Army. With air support they swept around the western and northern coasts of Luzon, ranged down the west bank of the Cagayan River and kept the Japanese nervously watching on every side.

Volckmann's Ilocanos, aggressive and stealthy, had reasonably good military discipline, permitting their wives and girl friends to come along only when the woods were not too full of Japs. Their own leaders included a guitar-strumming Visayan (major in the Philippine Army) and a dashing, bantam-sized onetime provincial governor and newspaper reporter.

For both guerrillas and regulars, the campaign was drawing to a close. If Japan's Lieut. General Tomoyuki Yamashita had not fled Luzon by now, he had little hope of escape. His effective troops were broken into isolated groups. The pressure came from three sides.

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