Wholesale Jungle Scouts by John Justin Smith

[Globe Pequot Publishing] They were a platoon of misfits—and proud of it. Soldiers like Rodney Orange, Myron Wadsworth Folsom, Tex Whaley, Vic Svagdis, Ace Meyer, and Bruiser Neerman, rebellious young men who bristled at military authority, who had a chip on their shoulder and something to prove. Among them were a Chicago cop, a Los Angeles milkman, a Pennsylvania coal miner—and a budding reporter, John Justin Smith, who joined them in a handpicked U.S. Army Intelligence & Reconnaissance Platoon that acted as their regiment’s eyes and ears in the jungles of New Guinea in World War II. They didn’t always get along, but they got the job done. In this vivid, punchy memoir, Smith remembers the campaign for New Guinea—one of World War II’s longest and most brutal—as experienced by this unit of free spirits and malcontents who rejected army discipline and just wanted to have a go at the Japanese. Recruited for their unmilitary demeanor and trained in commando-style warfare, Smith and h