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 Author  Topic: George Halas - Chicago Bears - Which PT boat?
Alamo Scout

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message   Posted on: Nov 11, 2008 - 6:26pm
Hello everyone, I need some more help. Found this article in a newspaper dated 1945. Trying to find more info on the boat George Halas was on. He was the owner and Hall of Fame coach of the Bears in their early years. Contacted the Bears PR office and consulted Halas's book, but no specifics. Trying to identify the Alamo Scout team. Also, thanks to all who have shared their photos and stories about the Alamo Scouts for my next book. Anyone who has one of their own about the Alamo Scouts and would like to appear in the book, please let me know ASAP. Enjoy!

The following story appeared in the Syracuse Herald (NY) on November 9, 1945. According to research, the event likely occurred sometime during 20-24 August 1944. See explanation at end of article.


Mac Made Bears’ Coach
Before Escape in Jungle

By Henry McLemore

Many honors have come to me in my lifetime. I was made a Kentucky colonel. I was made a Colorado admiral. I was made an infantry buck private. These honors I have mentioned before, but the honor I prize the most will see the light of day right now.
Just a little more than a year ago I was made a lifetime coach of the Chicago Bears football team. Salary: $1 a year. I was signed by Com. George Halas, owner of the Bears, on a PT boat that was riding the swells just off a tip of Jap-held New Guinea.
It was 3 o’clock of a moonless morning, and the commander and I were readying ourselves to go ashore with a group of Alamo Scouts. The Chief Alamo Scout had already put in a call for our transportation. With the lights of Jap campfires blinking from the nearby shore, he had blown a bird call on a conch shell. It had been answered, and we knew that in half an hour or so our transportation would arrive. It would be friendly headhunters, gliding softly across the water in outrigger canoes. The mission of the scouts was to hide in the bush near the crossing of two important trails, and study Jap troop movements.

PT Pickup Arranged

Crouched on the prow of the PT, the chief scout, who wasn’t at all enthusiastic about taking Halas and me along, briefed us on what to do in case the Japs discovered us after we had landed.
“If they hop us,” he said, “don’t, no matter what happens, go deeper in the jungle to hide. You’ll never get out. Make for the beach somewhere near where we’ll land. Then make for the little tip of land about a mile south. When you get there you’ll be able to see a little island. It’s about a mile out. Swim to that island. It is a rendezvous point. In two or three days a PT boat will come and pick you up. Understand?” The scout left and Halas turned to me and whispered: “Can you swim a mile, Henry?”
“Hell, no,” George answered.
As he answered, a silver streak flashed through the water close to the PT’s side. Then another. Then another.
We turned to a sailor.
“What’s that stuff in the water?” Halas asked.
“Sharks,” the sailor said. “The water’s full of ‘em.”
Neither of us spoke for a minute. Then we talked and made a pact.

Shark Bait? No Thanks!
If, when we get ashore, the Japs discovered us, we were going to head into the jungle, the chief scout’s advice to the contrary.
“If we couldn’t swim a mile in a swimming pool back home,” Halas argued soundly, “what would be the sense in getting out in the Pacific and have the sharks eat us up? You know, I am going to make you an assistant coach of the Bears right now. At one buck a year. The way it looks now, I am going to be coaching the Bears from the New Guinea jungle, and I’ll need some help.”
Then the outrigger canoes came up, like phantoms. Dozens of squat, bushy-haired little ape-like men clambered noiselessly over the side of the PT. The natives and the scouts held a conference. The chief scout who had briefed us came back to us.
“Commander, I have a disappointment for you and the sergeant,” he whispered. “We won’t be able to land tonight. Any of us. The natives tell me the Japs are in there by the thousands. We’ll have to come back some other night. Sorry.”
Halas and I looked at one another, shook hands, and heaved a double sight that rocked the outrigger canoes on the water, almost upsetting them.
The next night, safely back on the island of Woendi PT base, we ran into Bob Hope. We kept Bob up until 3 o’clock in the morning—30 minutes earlier than his accustomed bedtime--telling him of our bravery.

Note: Hope and his troupe performed at Woendi Island on August 25, 1944. SUMNER Team was there for the show and had just completed a mission on Pegun Island. LITTLEFIELD and CHANLEY Teams were also there at that time, but it is likely that McGOWEN Team was the culprit!

Lance
Historian,
Alamo Scouts Association

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Alamo Scout

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message   Posted on: Jan 19, 2009 - 10:33am
Hello everyone. I need your help finding PT boat crews to interview for an upcoming book!

As the historian for the Alamo Scouts Assn., I am compiling an oral history of the unit to include accounts by PT boat members who had contact with and/or who supported Scout missions in New Guinea from Dec 43-Oct 44 and in the Philippines from Oct 44-Oct 45. I believe that including accounts from PT boat veterans adds balance and perspective to the Scouts incredible record of some 110 missions behind the lines without losing a man killed or captured, and will help shed light on the importance of PT boats and their crews in the Scouts success. It is hoped that the book will be published late this year. I have already interviewed over a dozen men and hope to continue for another six months.
Those Alamo Scouts missions supported by PT boats operated mostly from Fergusson Island, Mios Woendi, Biak, and Roemberpon Island in 1944, and from and from numerous advance PT bases on Leyte and Luzon. Those PT boats and other naval craft known to have supported Alamo Scouts training and live operations are:

PTs 74, 127, 132, 190, 193, 194, 300, 312, 317, 321, 326, 331, 363, 379, 488, 489, 490, 491, 492, 494, 495, 497, 522, 523, 524, 546, 551. LCIs 364, 432. LCS 10, LST 708.

If you served aboard one the boats listed above or on another boat which supported the Alamo Scouts, please drop me an email. Thanks for your help…and for your service. Please visit our website at: www.alamoscouts.org


Lance

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