By Marc R. Crowe
PALO, Leyte, Philippines (UPI): Alva Smith stared out at the placid gray water of the Leyte Gulf last Thursday where allied warships had gathered to reenact U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur's triumphant return to the Philippines during World War II.
His pale blue eyes moist with recollections of the fallen, Smith recounted the harrowing assault against Japanese troops on Red Beach at 10 a.m. on Oct. 20, 1944.
The battle marked the beginning of the liberation of the Philippines and punctuated the victorious U.S. march across the Pacific following the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
But what Smith remembered was a photograph taken of him and seven friends in Hawaii shortly before the Leyte landing. By the end of the assault, four of the eight had been killed and three including Smith, were wounded.
"They were dropping a lot of mortars on us," said Smith, a former private first class with the Army's 96th Division. "I remember saying to myself: What the hell am I doing here?'"
As the 73-year-old Californian traveled a half century back in thought, U.S. Marines staged a mock assault on the beach in one of the largest ceremonies commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Pacific War.
With tens of thousands of people watching under a scorching sun, dozens of soldiers ran through the surf and bellyflopped on the beach pretending to return fire of Japanese troops. An American actor, wearing MacArthur's trademark khaki uniform and aviator sun glasses, waded ashore from a landing craft as a general did half a century earlier with Philippine President Sergio Osmena at his side.
After U.S. and Philippine flags had been planted in the sand, the actor delivered MacArthur's arrival speech -- an address that displayed the general's mastery of battlefield theater.
"People of the Philippines, I have returned," he said. "By the grace of the Almighty Lord, our forces stand again on Philippine soil consecrated by the blood of our two people."
Nearly 200,000 U.S. and allied troops participated in the simultaneous assaults on five island beach heads in the Leyte Gulf, 355 miles (568 km) southeast of Manila, against some 80,000 Japanese.
Although they put up only mild resistance on the beaches, Japanese ships and planes counterattacked the U.S. armada two days after the landing.
For the next five days, Japanese and allied forces engaged in the largest naval battle in history, involving 231 ships and some 2,000 aircraft. In the end, 26 Japanese and six U.S. ships were sank.
The Heroism
"We have been reminded of the dangers and the daring, the hazards and the heroism that made the Philippine liberation one of the epic stories of World war II," said U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, who led the American delegation to the rites.
Some 4,000 Americans died and 12,000 were wounded during six months of fighting on Leyte. Only 800 of the Japanese Imperial Army troops were captured alive as most refused to surrender.
But it was MacArthur's Leyte landing that had unique resonance for the Filipino people, in part because it was a fulfillment of a promise he made when he fled the country in May 1942: "I shall return."
"The Filipino people remembered the pledge in their hearts," said Philippine President Fidel Ramos.
"We always knew during the war that he would come back," said Ignacio Palad, 72, a former Filipino guerrilla fighter on the southern island of Mindanao.
Like many Filipinos, Palad regards MacArthur with a reverence befitting the savior of a nation. The larger-than-life statue of his landing near MacArthur Park speaks volume about his place in Philippine history. "We owe him a lot of gratitude," said Palad, now chairman of the Filipino-American Veterans of Chicago. "MacArthur is like a God here." But on the 50th anniversary of the Leyte Landing, Alva Smith"s thoughts were not of MacArthur, who many US soldiers regarded as a brilliant tactician and also a self-serving egomaniac. Smith's thoughts were of young men with names such as Winders and Dawson and Trainer -- and the local Filipino with whom he developed a lifelong bond. He is part of a group of American veterans who have built four libraries in Leyte province.
For Smith, the story of the assault on Blue Beach is in part, the story of George Winders, a young newlywed who transferred from a medical unit into an artillery squad to play a bigger role in the war.
Winders had led the religious services aboard the ship the night before A-Day during the tail end of as typhoon that rocked the allied ships moored offshore.
At 10 a.m. on that crystal clear day in 1944, Smith and Winders were the first two people to hit the shore after the ramp of the landing craft slapped the water.
"He went out the left side and got shot right between the eyes," Smith recalled. "When I look back on my life I feel that these guys like Winders really got cheated."