A Marine patrol crosses a
flooded stream and probes for the enemy in the
forests of New Britain. Department of Defense
(USMC) photo 72290

On 26 December 1943, Marines
wade ashore from beached LSTs passing
through a heavy surf to a narrow beach of
black sand. Inland, beyond a curtain of undergrowth,
lie the swamp forest and the Japanese
defenders. Department of Defense (USMC)
photo 68998

[pg 1]

Cape Gloucester:
The Green Inferno

by Bernard C. Nalty

On the early morning
of 26 December 1943,
Marines poised off
the coast of Japanese-held
New Britain
could barely make out the mile-high
bulk of Mount Talawe against
a sky growing light with the approach
of dawn. Flame billowed
from the guns of American and
Australian cruisers and destroyers,
shattering the early morning calm.
The men of the 1st Marine Division,
commanded by Major General
William H. Rupertus, a veteran
of expeditionary duty in Haiti and
China and of the recently concluded
Guadalcanal campaign,
steeled themselves as they waited
for daylight and the signal to assault
the Yellow Beaches near Cape
Gloucester in the northwestern part
of the island. For 90 minutes, the
fire support ships blazed away, trying
to neutralize whole areas rather
than destroy pinpoint targets, since
dense jungle concealed most of the
individual fortifications and supply
dumps. After the day dawned and
H-Hour drew near, Army airmen
joined the preliminary bombardment.
Four-engine Consolidated
Liberator B-24 bombers, flying so
high that the Marines offshore
could barely see them, dropped
500-pound bombs inland of the
beaches, scoring a hit on a fuel
dump at the Cape Gloucester airfield
complex and igniting a fiery
geyser that leapt hundreds of feet
into the air. Twin-engine North
American Mitchell B-25 medium
bombers and Douglas Havoc A-20
light bombers, attacking from
lower altitude, pounced on the only
Japanese antiaircraft gun rash
enough to open fire.

The warships then shifted their
attention to the assault beaches,
and the landing craft carrying the
two battalions of Colonel Julian N.
Frisbie’s 7th Marines started shoreward.
An LCI [Landing Craft, Infantry]
mounting multiple rocket
launchers took position on the
flank of the first wave bound for
each of the two beaches and unleashed
a barrage intended to keep
the enemy pinned down after the
cruisers and destroyers shifted
their fire to avoid endangering the
assault troops. At 0746, the LCVPs
[Landing Craft, Vehicles and Personnel]
of the first wave bound for
Yellow Beach 1 grounded on a narrow
strip of black sand that measured
perhaps 500 yards from one
flank to the other, and the leading
elements of the 3d Battalion, commanded
by Lieutenant Colonel
William K. Williams, started inland.
Two minutes later, Lieutenant
Colonel John E. Weber’s 1st
Battalion, on the left of the other
unit, emerged on Yellow Beach 2,
separated from Yellow 1 by a thousand
yards of jungle and embracing
700 yards of shoreline. Neither
battalion encountered organized
resistance. A smoke screen, which
later drifted across the beaches and
hampered the approach of later
waves of landing craft, blinded the
Japanese observers on Target Hill
overlooking the beachhead, and no
defenders manned the trenches
and log-and-earth bunkers that
might have raked the assault force
with fire.

The Yellow Beaches, on the east
coast of the broad peninsula that
culminated at Cape Gloucester, provided
access to the main objective,
the two airfields at the northern tip
of the cape. By capturing this airfield
[pg 2]
complex, the reinforced 1st
Marine Division, designated the
Backhander Task Force, would enable
Allied airmen to intensify their
attack on the Japanese fortress of
Rabaul, roughly 300 miles away at
the northeastern extremity of New
Britain. Although the capture of the
Yellow Beaches held the key to the
New Britain campaign, two subsidiary
landings also took place: the
first on 15 December at Cape
Merkus on Arawe Bay along the
south coast; and the second on D-Day,
26 December, at Green Beach
on the northwest coast opposite the
main landing sites.

Sidenote: (page 2)

Major General William H. Rupertus

Major General William H.
Rupertus, who commanded
the 1st Marine
Division on New Britain, was born
at Washington, D.C., on 14 November
1889 and in June 1913 graduated
from the U.S. Revenue Cutter
Service School of Instruction. Instead
of pursuing a career in this
precursor of the U.S. Coast Guard,
he accepted appointment as a second
lieutenant in the Marine Corps.
A vigorous advocate of rifle marksmanship
throughout his career, he
became a member of the Marine
Corps Rifle Team in 1915, two years
after entering the service, and won
two major matches. During World
War I, he commanded the Marine
detachment on the USS Florida, assigned
to the British Grand Fleet.

Between the World Wars, he
served in a variety of assignments.
In 1919, he joined the Provisional
Marine Brigade at Port-au-Prince,
Haiti, subsequently becoming inspector
of constabulary with the
Marine-trained gendarmerie and finally
chief of the Port-au-Prince police
force. Rupertus graduated in
June 1926 from the Army Command
and General Staff College at
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and in
January of the following year became
Inspector of Target Practice
for the Marine Corps. He had two
tours of duty in China and commanded
a battalion of the 4th
Marines in Shanghai when the
Japanese attacked the city’s Chinese
defenders in 1937.

During the Guadalcanal campaign,
as a brigadier general, he
was assistant division commander,
1st Marine Division, personally selected
for the post by Major General
Alexander A. Vandegrift, the
division commander, whom he succeeded
when Vandegrift left the division
in July 1943. Major General
Rupertus led the division on New
Britain and at Peleliu. He died of a
heart attack at Washington, D.C.,
on 25 March 1945, and did not see
the surrender of Japan, which he
had done so much to bring about.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 69010

MajGen William H. Rupertus, Commanding
General, 1st Marine Division,
reads a message of congratulation after
the capture of Airfield No. 2 at Cape
Gloucester, New Britain.

Two Secondary Landings

The first subsidiary landing took
place on 15 December 1943 at distant
Cape Merkus, across the
Arawe channel from the islet of
Arawe. Although it had a limited
purpose—disrupting the movement
of motorized barges and other
small craft that moved men and
supplies along the southern coast of
New Britain and diverting attention
from Cape Gloucester—it nevertheless
[pg 3]
encountered stiff resistance.
Marine amphibian tractor crews
used both the new, armored Buffalo
and the older, slower, and more vulnerable
Alligator to carry soldiers of
the 112th Cavalry, who made the
main landings on Orange Beach at
the western edge of Cape Merkus.
Fire from the destroyer USS Conyngham,
supplemented by rocket-equipped
DUKWs and a submarine
chaser that doubled as a control
craft, and a last-minute bombing by
B-25s silenced the beach defenses
and enabled the Buffaloes to crush
the surviving Japanese machine
guns that survived the naval and
aerial bombardment. Less successful
were two diversionary landings by
soldiers paddling ashore in rubber
boats. Savage fire forced one group
to turn back short of its objective
east of Orange Beach, but the other
gained a lodgment on Pilelo Island
and killed the handful of Japanese
found there. An enemy airman had
reported that the assault force was
approaching Cape Merkus, and
fighters and bombers from Rabaul
attacked within two hours of the
landing. Sporadic air strikes continued
throughout December, although
with diminishing ferocity, and the
Japanese shifted troops to meet the
threat in the south.

The other secondary landing
took place on the morning of 26 December.
The 1,500-man Stoneface
Group—designated Battalion Landing
Team 21 and built around the
2d Battalion, 1st Marines, under
Lieutenant Colonel James M. Masters,
Sr.—started toward Green
Beach, supported by 5-inch gunfire
from the American destroyers Reid
and Smith. LCMs [Landing Craft,
Medium] carried DUKW amphibian
trucks, driven by soldiers and
fitted with rocket launchers. The
DUKWs opened fire from the landing
craft as the assault force approached
the beach, performing the
same function as the rocket-firing
LCIs at the Yellow Beaches on the
opposite side of the peninsula. The
first wave landed at 0748, with two
others following it ashore. The
Marines encountered no opposition
as they carved out a beachhead
1,200 yards wide and extending 500
yards inland. The Stoneface Group
had the mission of severing the
coastal trail that passed just west of
Mount Talawe, thus preventing the
passage of reinforcements to the
Cape Gloucester airfields.

The trail net proved difficult to
find and follow. Villagers cleared
garden plots, tilled them until the
jungle reclaimed them, and then
abandoned the land and moved on,
leaving a maze of trails, some faint
and others fresh, that led nowhere.
The Japanese were slow, however,
to take advantage of the confusion
[pg 4]
caused by the tangle of paths. Not
until the early hours of 30 December,
did the enemy attack the Green
Beach force. Taking advantage of
heavy rain that muffled sounds and
reduced visibility, the Japanese
closed with the Marines, who called
down mortar fire within 15 yards of
their defensive wire. A battery of
the 11th Marines, reorganized as an
infantry unit because the cannoneers
could not find suitable positions
for their 75mm howitzers,
shored up the defenses. One Marine
in particular, Gunnery Sergeant
Guiseppe Guilano, Jr., seemed to
materialize at critical moments, firing
a light machine gun from the
hip; his heroism earned him the
Navy Cross. Some of the Japanese
succeeded in penetrating the position,
but a counterattack led by First
Lieutenant Jim G. Paulos of Company
G killed them or drove them
off. The savage fighting cost Combat
Team 21 six Marines killed and
17 wounded; at least 89 Japanese
perished, and five surrendered. On
11 January 1944, the reinforced battalion
set out to rejoin the division,
the troops moving overland, the
heavy equipment and the wounded
traveling in landing craft.

MacArthur’s Marines

After the fierce battles at Guadalcanal
in the South Pacific Area, the
1st Marine Division underwent rehabilitation
in Australia, which lay
within General MacArthur’s Southwest
Pacific Area. Once the division
had recovered from the ordeal of
the Solomon Islands fighting, it
gave MacArthur a trained amphibious
unit that he desperately needed
to fulfill his ambitions for the capture
of Rabaul. Theoretically, the 1st
Marine Division was subordinate to
General Sir Thomas Blamey, the
Australian officer in command of
the Allied Land Forces, and
Blamey’s nominal subordinate,
Lieutenant General Walter Kreuger,
commanding the Sixth U.S. Army.
But in actual practice, MacArthur
bypassed Blamey and dealt directly
with Kreuger.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 75882

During the planning of the New Britain operation, Gen Douglas MacArthur, right, in
command of the Southwest Pacific Area, confers with LtGen Walter Kreuger, left, Commanding
General, Sixth U.S. Army, and MajGen Rupertus, whose Marines will assault
the island. At such a meeting, Col Edwin A. Pollock, operations officer of the 1st Marine
Division, advised MacArthur of the opposition of the Marine leaders to a complex scheme
of maneuver involving Army airborne troops.

When the 1st Marine Division became
available to MacArthur, he
still intended to seize Rabaul and
break the back of Japanese resistance
in the region. Always concerned
about air cover for his amphibious
operations, MacArthur
planned to use the Marines to capture
the airfields at Cape Gloucester.
Aircraft based there would then
support the division when, after a
brief period of recuperation, it attacked
Rabaul. The decision to bypass
Rabaul eliminated the landings
there, but the Marines would nevertheless
seize the Cape Gloucester
airfields, which seemed essential for
neutralizing the base.

The initial concept of operations,
which called for the conquest of
[pg 5]
western New Britain preliminary to
storming Rabaul, split the 1st Marine
Division, sending Combat
Team A (the 5th Marines, reinforced,
less one battalion in reserve)
against Gasmata on the southern
coast of the island, while Combat
Team C (the 7th Marines, reinforced)
seized a beachhead near the
principal objective, the airfields on
Cape Gloucester. The Army’s 503d
Parachute Infantry would exploit
the Cape Gloucester beachhead,
while Combat Team B (the reinforced
1st Marines) provided a reserve
for the operation.

Revisions came swiftly, and by
late October 1943 the plan no longer
mentioned capturing Rabaul, tacit
acceptance of the modified Allied
strategy, and also satisfied an objection
raised by General Rupertus. The
division commander had protested
splitting Combat Team C, and
Kreuger agreed to employ all three
battalions for the main assault, substituting
a battalion from Combat
Team B, the 1st Marines, for the
landing on the west coast. The airborne
landing at Cape Gloucester remained
in the plan, however, even
though Rupertus had warned that
bad weather could delay the drop
and jeopardize the Marine battalions
already fighting ashore. The altered
version earmarked Army troops for
the landing on the southern coast,
which Kreuger’s staff shifted from
Gasmata to Arawe, a site closer to
Allied airfields and farther from
Rabaul with its troops and aircraft.
Although Combat Team B would
put one battalion ashore southwest
of the airfields, the remaining two
battalions of the 1st Marines were to
follow up the assault on Cape
Gloucester by Combat Team C. The
division reserve, Combat Team A,
might employ elements of the 5th
Marines to reinforce the Cape
Gloucester landings or conduct operations
against the offshore islands
west of New Britain.

During a routine briefing on 14
December, just one day before the
landings at Arawe, MacArthur off-handedly
asked how the Marines
felt about the scheme of maneuver
at Cape Gloucester. Colonel Edwin
A. Pollock, the division’s operations
officer, seized the opportunity and
declared that the Marines objected
to the plan because it depended on a
rapid advance inland by a single reinforced
regiment to prevent heavy
losses among the lightly armed
paratroops. Better, he believed, to
strengthen the amphibious forces
than to try for an aerial envelopment
that might fail or be delayed
by the weather. Although he made
no comment at the time, MacArthur
may well have heeded what Pollock
said; whatever the reason, Kreuger’s
staff eliminated the airborne portion,
directed the two battalions of
the 1st Marines still with Combat
Team B to land immediately after
the assault waves, sustaining the
momentum of their attack, and
alerted the division reserve to provide
further reinforcement.

The Japanese in
Western New Britain

A mixture of combat and service
troops operated in western New
Britain. The 1st and 8th Shipping
Regiments used motorized barges to
shuttle troops and cargo along the
coast from Rabaul to Cape Merkus,
Cape Gloucester, and across
Dampier Strait to Rooke Island. For
longer movements, for example to
New Guinea, the 5th Sea Transport
Battalion manned a fleet of trawlers
and schooners, supplemented by
destroyers of the Imperial Japanese
Navy when speed seemed essential.
The troops actually defending
western New Britain included the
Matsuda Force, established in September
1943 under the command of
Major General Iwao Matsuda, a
specialist in military transportation,
who nevertheless had commanded
an infantry regiment in Manchuria.
When he arrived on New Britain in
February of that year, Matsuda
took over the 4th Shipping Command,
an administrative headquarters
that provided staff officers for
the Matsuda Force. His principal
combat units were the understrength
65th Infantry Brigade—consisting
of the 141st Infantry, battle-tested
in the conquest of the
Philippines, plus artillery and antiaircraft
units—and those components
of the 51st Division not committed
to the unsuccessful defense
of New Guinea. Matsuda established
the headquarters for his
jury-rigged force near Kalingi,
along the coastal trail northwest of
Mount Talawe, within five miles of
the Cape Gloucester airfields, but
the location would change to reflect
the tactical situation.

As the year 1943 wore on, the Allied
threat to New Britain increased.
Consequently, General Hitoshi Imamura,
who commanded the Eighth
Area Army from a headquarters at
Rabaul, assigned the Matsuda Force
to the 17th Division, under Lieutenant
General Yasushi Sakai, recently
arrived from Shanghai. Four
convoys were to have carried
Sakai’s division, but the second and
third lost one ship to submarine torpedoes
and another to a mine, while
air attack damaged a third. Because
of these losses, which claimed some
1,200 lives, the last convoy did not
sail, depriving the division of more
than 3,000 replacements and service
troops. Sakai deployed the best of
his forces to western New Britain,
entrusting them to Matsuda’s tactical
command.

Establishing the Beachhead

The landings at Cape Merkus in
mid-December caused Matsuda to
shift his troops to meet the threat,
but this redeployment did not account
for the lack of resistance at
[pg 6]
the Yellow Beaches. The Japanese
general, familiar with the terrain of
western New Britain, did not believe
that the Americans would
storm these strips of sand extending
only a few yards inland and backed
by swamp. Matsuda might have
thought differently had he seen the
American maps, which labeled the
area beyond the beaches as “damp
flat,” even though aerial photographs
taken after preliminary air
strikes had revealed no shadow
within the bomb craters, evidence
of a water level high enough to fill
these depressions to the brim. Since
the airfields were the obvious prize,
Matsuda did not believe that the
Marines would plunge into the
muck and risk becoming bogged
down short of their goal.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72833

Marines, almost invisible amid the undergrowth, advance through the swamp forest of
New Britain, optimistically called damp flat on the maps they used.

Besides forfeiting the immediate
advantage of opposing the assault
force at the water’s edge, Matsuda’s
troops suffered the long-term, indirect
effects of the erosion of Japanese
fortunes that began at Guadalcanal
and on New Guinea and continued
at New Georgia and Bougainville.
The Allies, in addition, dominated
the skies over New Britain, blunting
the air attacks on the Cape Merkus
beachhead and bombing almost at
will throughout the island. Although
air strikes caused little measurable
damage, save at Rabaul, they demoralized
the defenders, who already
suffered shortages of supplies
and medicine because of air and
submarine attacks on seagoing convoys
and coastal shipping. An inadequate
network of primitive trails,
which tended to hug the coastline,
increased Matsuda’s dependence on
barges, but this traffic, hampered by
the American capture of Cape
Merkus, proved vulnerable to aircraft
and later to torpedo craft and
improvised gunboats.

The two battalions that landed
on the Yellow Beaches—Weber’s on
the left and Williams’s on the
right—crossed the sands in a few
strides, and plunged through a wall
of undergrowth into the damp flat,
where a Marine might be slogging
through knee-deep mud, step into a
hole, and end up, as one on them
said, “damp up to your neck.” A
counterattack delivered as the assault
waves wallowed through the
damp flat might have inflicted severe
casualties, but Matsuda lacked
the vehicles or roads to shift his
troops in time to exploit the terrain.
Although immobile on the ground,
the Japanese retaliated by air.
American radar detected a flight of
enemy aircraft approaching from
Rabaul; Army Air Forces P-38s intercepted,
but a few Japanese
bombers evaded the fighters, sank
the destroyer Brownson with two direct
hits, and damaged another.

The first enemy bombers arrived
as a squadron of Army B-25s flew
over the LSTs [Landing Ships, Tank]
en route to attack targets at Borgen
Bay south of the Yellow Beaches.
Gunners on board the ships opened
fire at the aircraft milling overhead,
mistaking friend for foe, downing
two American bombers, and damaging
two others. The survivors,
shaken by the experience, dropped
their bombs too soon, hitting the
artillery positions of the 11th
Marines at the left flank of Yellow
Beach 1, killing one and wounding
14 others. A battalion commander
in the artillery regiment recalled
“trying to dig a hole with my
nose,” as the bombs exploded, “trying
to get down into the ground
just a little bit further.”

[pg 7]
By the time of the air action on
the afternoon of D-Day, the 1st
Marine Division had already established
a beachhead. The assault
battalions of the 7th Marines initially
pushed ahead, capturing
Target Hill on the left flank, and
then paused to await reinforcements.
During the day, two more
battalions arrived. The 3d Battalion,
1st Marines—designated
Landing Team 31 and led by Lieutenant
Colonel Joseph F. Hankins,
a Reserve officer who also was a
crack shooter—came ashore at
0815 on Yellow Beach 1, passed
through the 3d Battalion, 7th
Marines, and veered to the northwest
to lead the way toward the
airfields. By 0845, the 2d Battalion,
7th Marines, under Lieutenant
Colonel Odell M. Conoley, landed
and began wading through the
damp flat to take its place between
the regiment’s 1st and 3d Battalions
as the beachhead expanded.
The next infantry unit, the 1st Battalion,
1st Marines, reached Yellow
Beach 1 at 1300 to join that regiment’s
3d Battalion, commanded
by Hankins, in advancing on the
airfields. The 11th Marines, despite
the accidental bombing, set up its
artillery, an operation in which the
amphibian tractor played a vital
part. Some of the tractors brought
lightweight 75mm howitzers from
the LSTs directly to the battery firing
positions; others broke trail
through the undergrowth for tractors
pulling the heavier 105mm
weapons.

Meanwhile, Army trucks loaded
with supplies rolled ashore from the
LSTs. Logistics plans called for these
vehicles to move forward and function
as mobile supply dumps, but
the damp flat proved impassable by
wheeled vehicles, and the drivers
tended to abandon the trucks to
avoid being left behind when the
shipping moved out, hurried along
by the threat from Japanese
bombers. Ultimately, Marines had to
build roads, corduroying them with
logs when necessary, or shift the
cargo to amphibian tractors. Despite
careful planning and hard work on
D-Day, the convoy sailed with about
100 tons of supplies still on board.

[pg 8]

Department of Defense (USMC) photo

As the predicament of this truck and its Marine driver demonstrates, wheeled vehicles, like
those supplied by the Army for mobile supply dumps, bog down in the mud of Cape Gloucester.

While reinforcements and cargo
crossed the beach, the Marines advancing
inland encountered the first
serious Japanese resistance. Shortly
after 1000 on 26 December, Hankins’s
3d Battalion, 1st Marines,
pushed ahead, advancing in a column
of companies because a
swamp on the left narrowed the
frontage. Fire from camouflaged
bunkers killed Captain Joseph A.
Terzi, commander of Company K,
posthumously awarded the Navy
Cross for heroism while leading the
attack, and his executive officer,
Captain Philip A. Wilheit. The
sturdy bunkers proved impervious
to bazooka rockets, which failed to
detonate in the soft earth covering
the structures, and to fire from
37mm guns, which could not penetrate
the logs protecting the occupants.
An Alligator that had delivered
supplies for Company K tried
to crush one of the bunkers but became
wedged between two trees.
Japanese riflemen burst from cover
and killed the tractor’s two machine
gunners, neither of them protected
by armor, before the driver could
break free. Again lunging ahead, the
tractor caved in one bunker, silencing
its fire and enabling Marine riflemen
to isolate three others and
destroy them in succession, killing
25 Japanese. A platoon of M4 Sherman
tanks joined the company in
time to lead the advance beyond
this first strongpoint.

Japanese service troops—especially
the men of the 1st Shipping
Engineers and the 1st Debarkation
Unit—provided most of the initial
opposition, but Matsuda had
alerted his nearby infantry units to
converge on the beachhead. One
enemy battalion, under Major
Shinichi Takabe, moved into position
late on the afternoon of D-Day,
opposite Conoley’s 2d Battalion, 7th
Marines, which clung to a crescent-shaped
position, both of its flanks
sharply refused and resting on the
marshland to the rear. After sunset,
the darkness beneath the forest
canopy became absolute, pierced
only by muzzle flashes as the intensity
of the firing increased.

On D-Day, among the shadows on the jungle floor, Navy corpsmen administer emergency
treatment to a wounded Marine.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 69009

[pg 9]

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72599

The stumps of trees shattered by artillery and the seemingly bottomless mud can sometimes
stymie even an LVT.

The Japanese clearly were
preparing to counterattack. Conoley’s
battalion had a dwindling supply
of ammunition, but amphibian
tractors could not begin making
supply runs until it became light
enough for the drivers to avoid tree
roots and fallen trunks as they navigated
the damp flat. To aid the battalion
in the dangerous period before
the skies grew pale, Lieutenant
Colonel Lewis B. Puller, the executive
officer of the 7th Marines, organized
the men of the regimental
Headquarters and Service Company
into carrying parties to load
themselves down with ammunition
and wade through the dangerous
swamp. One misstep, and a Marine
burdened with bandoliers of rifle
ammunition or containers of mortar
shells could stumble and drown.
When Colonel Frisbie, the regimental
commander, decided to reinforce
Conoley’s Marines with Battery D,
1st Special Weapons Battalion,
Puller had the men leave their
37mm guns behind and carry ammunition
instead. A guide from
Conoley’s headquarters met the column
that Puller had pressed into
service and began leading them forward,
when a blinding downpour,
driven by a monsoon gale, obscured
landmarks and forced the heavily
laden Marines to wade blindly onward,
each man clinging to the belt
of the one ahead of him. Not until
0805, some twelve hours after the
column started off, did the men
reach their goal, put down their
loads, and take up their rifles.

Conoley’s Marines had in the
meantime been fighting for their
lives since the storm first struck. A
curtain of rain prevented mortar
crews from seeing their aiming
stakes, indeed, the battalion commander
described the men as firing
“by guess and by God.” Mud got on
the small-arms ammunition, at times
jamming rifles and machine guns.
Although forced to abandon water-filled
foxholes, the defenders hung
on. With the coming of dawn, Takabe’s
soldiers gravitated toward the
right flank of Conoley’s unit, perhaps
in a conscious effort to outflank
the position, or possibly forced in
that direction by the fury of the battalion’s
defensive fire. An envelopment
was in the making when Battery
D arrived and moved into the
threatened area, forcing the Japanese
to break off the action and regroup.

Sidenote (pag 10)

Rain and Biting Insects

Driven by monsoon winds, the rain that
screened the attack on Conoley’s 2d Battalion,
7th Marines, drenched the entire island
and everyone on it. At the front, the deluge flooded
foxholes, and conditions were only marginally better
at the rear, where some men slept in jungle hammocks
slung between two trees. A Marine entered
his hammock through an opening in a mosquito net,
lay down on a length of rubberized cloth, and
zipped the net shut. Above him, also enclosed in the
netting, stretched a rubberized cover designed to
shelter him from rain. Unfortunately, a gale as fierce
as the one that began blowing on the night of D-Day
set the cover to flapping like a loose sail and drove
the rain inside the hammock. In the darkness, a gust
of wind might uproot a tree, weakened by flooding
or the effect of the preparatory bombardment, and
send it crashing down. A falling tree toppled onto a
hammock occupied by one of the Marines, who
would have drowned if someone had not slashed
through the covering with a knife and set him free.

The rain, said Lieutenant Colonel Lewis J. Fields,
a battalion commander in the 11th Marines, resembled
“a waterfall pouring down on you, and it goes
on and on.” The first deluge lasted five days, and recurring
storms persisted for another two weeks. Wet
uniforms never really dried, and the men suffered
continually from fungus infections, the so-called
jungle rot, which readily developed into open sores.
Mosquito-borne malaria threatened the health of the
Marines, who also had to contend with other insects—”little
black ants, little red ants, big red ants,”
on an island where “even the caterpillars bite.” The
Japanese may have suffered even more because of
shortages of medicine and difficulty in distributing
what was available, but this was scant consolation
to Marines beset by discomfort and disease. By the
end of January 1944, disease or non-battle injuries
forced the evacuation of more than a thousand
Marines; more than one in ten had already returned
to duty on New Britain.

The island’s swamps and jungles would have
been ordeal enough without the wind, rain, and
disease. At times, the embattled Marines could see
no more than a few feet ahead of them. Movement
verged on the impossible, especially where the
rains had flooded the land or turned the volcanic
soil into slippery mud. No wonder that the Assistant
Division Commander, Brigadier General
Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., compared the New Britain
campaign to “Grant’s fight through the Wilderness
in the Civil War.”

The monsoon rains flood a field kitchen at Cape Gloucester, justifying
complaints about watery soup.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72821

Flooding caused by the monsoon deluge makes life miserable
even in the comparative comfort of the rear areas.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72463

The Capture of the
Cape Gloucester Airfields

The 1st Marine Division’s overall
plan of maneuver called for Colonel
Frisbie’s Combat Team C, the reinforced
7th Marines, to hold a beachhead
anchored at Target Hill, while
Combat Team B, Colonel William A.
Whaling’s 1st Marines, reinforced
but without the 2d Battalion ashore
at Green Beach, advanced on the
airfields. Because of the buildup in
preparation for the attack on Conoley’s
battalion, General Rupertus requested
that Kreuger release the division
reserve, Combat Team A,
Colonel John T. Selden’s reinforced
5th Marines. The Army general
agreed, sending the 1st and 2d Battalions,
followed a day later by the
3d Battalion. The division commander
decided to land the team on
Blue Beach, roughly three miles to
the right of the Yellow Beaches. The
use of Blue Beach would have
placed the 5th Marines closer to
Cape Gloucester and the airfields,
but not every element of Selden’s
Combat Team A got the word.
Some units touched down on the
Yellow Beaches instead and had to
move on foot or in vehicles to the
intended destination.

While Rupertus laid plans to
commit the reserve, Whaling’s combat
team advanced toward the Cape
Gloucester airfields. The Marines
encountered only sporadic resistance
at first, but Army Air Forces
light bombers spotted danger in
their path—a maze of trenches and
bunkers stretching inland from a
promontory that soon earned the
[pg 11]
nickname Hell’s Point. The Japanese
had built these defenses to protect
the beaches where Matsuda expected
the Americans to land.
Leading the advance, the 3d Battalion,
1st Marines, under Lieutenant
Colonel Hankins, struck the Hell’s
Point position on the flank, rather
than head-on, but overrunning the
complex nevertheless would prove
a deadly task.

Rupertus delayed the attack by
Hankins to provide time for the division
reserve, Selden’s 5th
Marines, to come ashore. On the
morning of 28 December, after a
bombardment by the 2d Battalion,
11th Marines, and strikes by Army
Air Forces A-20s, the assault troops
encountered another delay, waiting
for an hour so that an additional
platoon of M4 Sherman medium
tanks could increase the weight of
the attack. At 1100, Hankins’s 3d
Battalion, 1st Marines, moved
ahead, Company I and the supporting
tanks leading the way. Whaling,
at about the same time, sent his regiment’s
Company A through
swamp and jungle to seize the inland
point of the ridge extending
from Hell’s Point. Despite the obstacles
in its path, Company A
burst from the jungle at about 1145
and advanced across a field of tall
grass until stopped by intense
Japanese fire. By late afternoon,
Whaling abandoned the maneuver.
Both Company A and the defenders
were exhausted and short of ammunition;
the Marines withdrew behind
a barrage fired by the 2d Battalion,
11th Marines, and the
Japanese abandoned their positions
after dark.

A 75mm pack howitzer of the 11th Marines fires in support of the advance on the Cape
Gloucester airfields.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 12203

Roughly 15 minutes after Company
A assaulted the inland terminus
of the ridge, Company I and the
attached tanks collided with the
main defenses, which the Japanese
had modified since the 26 December
landings, cutting new gunports in
bunkers, hacking fire lanes in the
undergrowth, and shifting men and
weapons to oppose an attack along
the coastal trail parallel to shore instead
of over the beach. Advancing
in a drenching rain, the Marines encountered
a succession of jungle-covered,
mutually supporting positions
protected by barbed wire and
mines. The hour’s wait for tanks
paid dividends, as the Shermans,
protected by riflemen, crushed
bunkers and destroyed the weapons
inside. During the fight, Company I
drifted to its left, and Hankins used
Company K, reinforced with a platoon
of medium tanks, to close the
gap between the coastal track and
Hell’s Point itself. This unit employed
the same tactics as Company
I. A rifle squad followed each of the
M4 tanks, which cracked open the
bunkers, twelve in all, and fired inside;
the accompanying riflemen
then killed anyone attempting to
fight or flee. More than 260 Japanese
perished in the fighting at Hell’s
Point, at the cost of 9 Marines killed
and 36 wounded.

With the defenses of Hell’s Point
shattered, the two battalions of the
5th Marines, which came ashore on
the morning of 29 December,
joined later that day in the advance
on the airfield. The 1st Battalion,
commanded by Major William H.
Barba, and the 2d Battalion, under
Lieutenant Colonel Lewis H. Walt,
moved out in a column, Barba’s
unit leading the way. In front of the
Marines lay a swamp, described as
only a few inches deep, but the
depth, because of the continuing
downpour, proved as much as five
feet, “making it quite hard,” Selden
acknowledged, “for some of the
youngsters who were not much
more than 5 feet in height.” The
time lost in wading through the
swamp delayed the attack, and the
leading elements chose a piece of
open and comparatively dry
ground, where they established a
perimeter while the rest of the
force caught up.

[pg 12]
Meanwhile, the 1st Battalion, 1st
Marines, attacking through that regiment’s
3d Battalion, encountered
only scattered resistance, mainly
sniper fire, as it pushed along the
coast beyond Hell’s Point. Halftracks
carrying 75mm guns,
medium tanks, artillery, and even a
pair of rocket-firing DUKWs supported
the advance, which brought
the battalion, commanded by Lieutenant
Colonel Walker A. Reaves, to
the edge of Airfield No. 2. When
daylight faded on 29 December, the
1st Battalion, 1st Marines, held a
line extending inland from the
coast; on its left were the 3d Battalion,
1st Marines, and the 2d Battalion,
5th Marines, forming a semicircle
around the airfield.

The Japanese officer responsible
for defending the airfields, Colonel
Kouki Sumiya of the 53d Infantry,
had fallen back on 29 December,
trading space for time as he gathered
his surviving troops for the defense
of Razorback Hill, a ridge running
diagonally across the
southwestern approaches to Airfield
No. 2. The 1st and 2d Battalions, 5th
Marines, attacked on 30 December
supported by tanks and artillery.
Sumiya’s troops had constructed
some sturdy bunkers, but the chest-high
grass that covered Razorback
Hill did not impede the attackers
like the jungle at Hell’s Point. The
Japanese fought gallantly to hold
the position, at times stalling the advancing
Marines, but the defenders
had neither the numbers nor the
firepower to prevail. Typical of the
day’s fighting, one platoon of Company
F from Selden’s regiment beat
back two separate banzai attacks, before
tanks enabled the Marines to
shatter the bunkers in their path and
kill the enemy within. By dusk on
30 December, the landing force had
overrun the defenses of the airfields,
and at noon of the following day
General Rupertus had the American
flag raised beside the wreckage of a
Japanese bomber at Airfield No. 2,
the larger of the airstrips.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 71589

On 31 December 1943, the American flag rises beside the wreckage of a Japanese
bomber after the capture of Airfield No. 2, five days after the 1st Marine Division
landed on New Britain.

The 1st Marine Division thus
seized the principal objective of the
Cape Gloucester fighting, but the
airstrips proved of marginal value
to the Allied forces. Indeed, the
Japanese had already abandoned
the prewar facility, Airfield No. 1,
which was thickly overgrown with
tall, coarse kunai grass. Craters from
American bombs pockmarked the
surface of Airfield No. 2, and after
its capture Japanese hit-and-run
raiders added a few of their own,
despite antiaircraft fire from the
12th Defense Battalion. Army aviation
engineers worked around the
clock to return Airfield No. 2 to operation,
a task that took until the
end of January 1944. Army aircraft
based here defended against air attacks
for as long as Rabaul remained
an active air base and also supported
operations on the ground.

Clearing the Shores
of Borgen Bay

While General Rupertus personally
directed the capture of the airfields,
the Assistant Division Commander,
[pg 13]
Brigadier General Lemuel C.
Shepherd, Jr., came ashore on D-Day,
26 December, and took command
of the beachhead. Besides coordinating
the logistics activity there,
Shepherd assumed responsibility for
expanding the perimeter to the southwest
and securing the shores of Borgen
Bay. He had a variety of shore
party, engineer, transportation, and
other service troops to handle the
logistics chores. The 3d Battalion of
Colonel Selden’s 5th Marines—the
remaining component of the division
reserve—arrived on 30 and 31 December
to help the 7th Marines enlarge
the beachhead.

Department of Defense (USA) photo SC 188250

During operations to clear the enemy from the shores of Borgen Bay, BGen Lemuel C.
Shepherd, Jr., (left) the assistant division commander, confers with Col John T. Selden, in
command of the 5th Marines.

Shepherd had sketchy knowledge
of Japanese deployment west and
south of the Yellow Beaches. Dense
vegetation concealed streams,
swamps, and even ridge lines, as well
as bunkers and trenches. The progress
toward the airfields seemed to indicate
Japanese weakness in that area
and possible strength in the vicinity
of the Yellow Beaches and Borgen
Bay. To resolve the uncertainty about
the enemy’s numbers and intentions,
Shepherd issued orders on 1 January
1944 to probe Japanese defenses beginning
the following morning.

In the meantime, the Japanese defenders,
under Colonel Kenshiro
Katayama, commander of the 141st
Infantry, were preparing for an attack
of their own. General Matsuda
entrusted three reinforced battalions
to Katayama, who intended to hurl
them against Target Hill, which he
considered the anchor of the beachhead
line. Since Matsuda believed
that roughly 2,500 Marines were
ashore on New Britain, 10 percent of
the actual total, Katayama’s force
seemed strong enough for the job
assigned it.

Katayama needed time to gather
his strength, enabling Shepherd to
make the first move, beginning at
mid-morning on 2 January to realign
his forces. The 1st Battalion,
7th Marines, stood fast in the vicinity
of Target Hill, the 2d Battalion remained
in place along a stream already
known as Suicide Creek, and
the regiment’s 3d Battalion began
pivoting to face generally south.
Meanwhile, the 3d Battalion, 5th
Marines, pushed into the jungle to
come abreast of the 3d Battalion, 7th
Marines, on the inland flank. As the
units pivoted, they had to cross Suicide
Creek in order to squeeze out
the 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, which
would become Shepherd’s reserve.

The change of direction proved
extremely difficult in vegetation so
thick that, in the words of one Marine:
“You’d step from your line,
take say ten paces, and turn around
to guide on your buddy. And nobody
there…. I can tell you, it was a
very small war, and a very lonely
business.” The Japanese defenders,
moreover, had dug in south of Suicide
Creek, and from these positions
they repulsed every attempt to cross
the stream that day. A stalemate ensued,
as Seabees from Company C,
17th Marines, built a corduroy road
through the damp flat behind the
Yellow Beaches so that tanks could
move forward to punch through the
defenses of Suicide Creek.

[pg 14]

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 69013

Marines and Seabees struggle to build a corduroy road leading
inland from the beachhead. Without the log surface trucks and
tanks cannot advance over trails turned into quagmire by the
unceasing rain.

While the Marine advance stalled
at Suicide Creek, awaiting the arrival
of tanks, Katayama attacked Target
Hill. On the night of 2 January, taking
advantage of the darkness,
Japanese infantry cut steps in the
lower slopes so the troops could
climb more easily. Instead of reconnoitering
the thinly held lines of
Company A, 7th Marines, and trying
to infiltrate, the enemy followed a
preconceived plan to the letter, advanced
up the steps, and at midnight
stormed the strongest of the company’s
defenses. Japanese mortar
barrages fired to soften the defenses
and screen the approach could not
conceal the sound of the troops
working their way up the hill, and
the Marines were ready. Although
the Japanese supporting fire proved
generally inaccurate, one round
scored a direct hit on a machine-gun
position, killing two Marines and
wounding the gunner, who kept firing
the weapon until someone else
could take over. This gun fired some
5,000 rounds and helped blunt the
Japanese thrust, which ended by
dawn of 3 January. Nowhere did the
Japanese crack the lines of the 1st
Battalion, 7th Marines, or loosen its
grip on Target Hill.

The body of a Japanese officer
killed at Target Hill yielded documents
that cast new light on the
Japanese defenses south of Suicide
Creek. A crudely drawn map revealed
the existence of Aogiri
Ridge, an enemy strongpoint unknown
to General Shepherd’s intelligence
section. Observers on Target
Hill tried to locate the ridge and the
trail network the enemy was using,
but the jungle canopy frustrated
their efforts.

While the Marines on Target Hill
tabulated the results of the fighting
there—patrols discovered 40 bodies,
and captured documents, when
translated, listed 46 Japanese killed,
54 wounded, and two missing—and
used field glasses to scan the
jungle south of Suicide Creek, the
17th Marines completed the road
that would enable medium tanks to
test the defenses of that stream.
[pg 15]
During the afternoon of 3 January, a
trio of Sherman tanks reached the
creek only to discover that the bank
dropped off too sharply for them to
negotiate. The engineers sent for a
bulldozer, which arrived, lowered
its blade, and began gouging at the
lip of the embankment. Realizing
the danger if tanks succeeded in
crossing the creek, the Japanese
opened fire on the bulldozer,
wounding the driver. A volunteer
climbed onto the exposed driver’s
seat and took over until he, too, was
wounded. Another Marine stepped
forward, but instead of climbing
onto the machine, he walked alongside,
using its bulk for cover as he
manipulated the controls with a
shovel and an axe handle. By dark,
he had finished the job of converting
the impassable bank into a readily
negotiated ramp.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72292

Target Hill, where the Marines repulsed a Japanese counterattack on the night of 2-3 January,
dominates the Yellow Beaches, the site of the main landings on 26 December.

On the morning of 4 January, the
first tank clanked down the ramp
and across the stream. As the Sherman
emerged on the other side,
Marine riflemen cut down two
Japanese soldiers trying to detonate
magnetic mines against its sides.
Other medium tanks followed, also
accompanied by infantry, and broke
open the bunkers that barred the
way. The 3d Battalion, 7th Marines,
and the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines,
surged onward past the creek,
squeezing out the 2d Battalion, 7th
Marines, which crossed in the wake
of those two units to come abreast
of them on the far right of the line
that closed in on the jungle concealing
Aogiri Ridge. The 1st Battalion,
7th Marines, thereupon joined the
southward advance, tying in with
the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, to
present a four-battalion front that
included the 2d Battalion and 3d
Battalions, 7th Marines.

Once across Suicide Creek, the
Marines groped for Aogiri Ridge,
which for a time simply seemed to
be another name for Hill 150, a terrain
feature that appeared on American
maps. The advance rapidly
overran the hill, but Japanese resistance
in the vicinity did not diminish.
On 7 January, enemy fire
wounded Lieutenant Colonel David
S. MacDougal, commanding officer
of the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines. His
executive officer, Major Joseph
Skoczylas, took over until he, too,
was wounded. Lieutenant Colonel
Lewis B. Puller, temporarily in command
of the 3d Battalion, 7th
Marines, assumed responsibility for
both battalions until the arrival on
[pg 16]
the morning of 8 January of Lieutenant
Colonel Lewis W. Walt, recently
assigned as executive officer
of the 5th Marines, who took over
the regiment’s 3d Battalion.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72283

From Hell’s Point, athwart the route to the airfields, to Suicide Creek near the Yellow
Beaches, medium tanks and infantry team up to shatter the enemy’s log and earthen
bunkers.

Upon assuming command of the
battalion, Walt continued the previous
day’s attack. As his Marines
braved savage fire and thick jungle,
they began moving up a rapidly
steepening slope. As night approached,
the battalion formed a
perimeter and dug in. Random
Japanese fire and sudden skirmishes
punctuated the darkness. The nature
of the terrain and the determined
resistance convinced Walt
that he had found Aogiri Ridge.

Walt’s battalion needed the shock
action and firepower of tanks, but
drenching rain, mud, and rampaging
streams stopped the armored
vehicles. The heaviest weapon that
the Marines managed to bring forward
was a single 37mm gun, manhandled
into position on the afternoon
of 9 January, While the 11th
Marines hammered the crest of Aogiri
Ridge, the 1st and 3d Battalions,
7th Marines, probed the flanks of
the position and Walt’s 3d Battalion,
5th Marines, pushed ahead in the
center, seizing a narrow segment of
the slope, its apex just short of the
crest. By dusk, said the 1st Marine
Division’s special action report,
Walt’s men had “reached the limit
of their physical endurance and
morale was low. It was a question of
whether or not they could hold their
hard-earned gains.” The crew of the
37mm gun opened fire in support of
the afternoon’s final attack, but after
just three rounds, four of the nine
men handling the weapon were
killed or wounded. Walt called for
volunteers; when no one responded,
he and his runner crawled to the
gun and began pushing the weapon
up the incline. Twice more the gun
barked, cutting a swath through the
undergrowth, and a third round of
canister destroyed a machine gun.
[pg 17]
Other Marines then took over from
Walt and the runner, with new volunteers
replacing those cut down by
the enemy. The improvised crew
kept firing canister rounds every
few yards until they had wrestled
the weapon to the crest. There the
Marines dug in, as close as ten yards
to the bunkers the Japanese had
built on the crest and reverse slope.

At 0115 on the morning of 10 January,
the Japanese emerged from
their positions and charged through
a curtain of rain, shouting and firing
as they came. The Marines
clinging to Aogiri Ridge broke up
this attack and three others that followed,
firing off almost all their ammunition
in doing so. A carrying
party scaled the muddy slope with
belts and clips for the machine guns
and rifles, but there barely was time
to distribute the ammunition before
the Japanese launched the fifth attack
of the morning. Marine artillery
tore into the enemy, as forward
observers, their vision
obstructed by rain and jungle, adjusted
fire by sound more than by
sight, moving 105mm concentrations
to within 50 yards of the Marine
infantrymen. A Japanese officer
emerged from the darkness and ran
almost to Walt’s foxhole before fragments
from a shell bursting in the
trees overhead cut him down. This
proved to be the high-water mark
of the counterattack against Aogiri
Ridge, for the Japanese tide receded
as the daylight grew brighter. At
0800, when the Marines moved forward,
they did not encounter even
one living Japanese on the terrain
feature they renamed Walt’s Ridge
in honor of their commander, who
received the Navy Cross for his inspirational
leadership.

One Japanese stronghold in the
vicinity of Aogiri Ridge still survived,
a supply dump located along
a trail linking the ridge to Hill 150.
On 11 January, Lieutenant Colonel
Weber’s 1st Battalion, 7th Marines,
supported by a pair of half-tracks
and a platoon of light tanks, eliminated
this pocket in four hours of
fighting. Fifteen days of combat
since the landings on 26 December,
had cost the division 180 killed and
636 wounded in action.

LtCol Lewis W. Walt earned the Navy Cross leading an attack up Aogiri Ridge, renamed
Walt’s Ridge in his honor.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 977113

The next objective, Hill 660, lay
at the left of General Shepherd’s
zone of action, just inland of the
coastal track. The 3d Battalion, 7th
Marines, commanded since 9 January
by Lieutenant Colonel Henry
W. Buse, Jr., got the assignment of
seizing the hill. In preparation for
Buse’s attack, Captain Joseph W.
Buckley, commander of the
Weapons Company, 7th Marines,
set up a task force to bypass Hill
660 and block the coastal trail beyond
that objective. Buckley’s
group—two platoons of infantry, a
platoon of 37mm guns, two light
tanks, two half-tracks mounting
75mm guns, a platoon of pioneers
from the 17th Marines with a bulldozer,
and one of the Army’s
rocket-firing DUKWs—pushed
through the mud and set up a roadblock
athwart the line of retreat
from Hill 660. The Japanese directed
long-range plunging fire
against Buckley’s command as it
advanced roughly one mile along
the trail. Because of their flat trajectory,
his 75mm and 37mm guns
[pg 18]
could not destroy the enemy’s automatic
weapons, but the Marines
succeeded in forcing the hostile
gunners to keep their heads down.
As they advanced, Buckley’s men
unreeled telephone wire to maintain
contact with higher headquarters.
Once the roadblock was in
place and camouflaged, the captain
requested that a truck bring hot
meals for his men. When the vehicle
bogged down, he sent the bulldozer
to push it free.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 71520

Advancing past Hill 660, a task force under Capt Joseph W. Buckley
cuts the line of retreat for the Japanese defenders. The 37mm gun in
the emplacement on the right and the half-track mounted 75mm gun
on the left drove the attacking enemy back with heavy casualties.

Gaunt, weary, hollow-eyed, machine gunner PFC George C. Miller carries his
weapon to the rear after 19 days of heavy fighting while beating back the Japanese
counterattack at Hill 660. This moving photograph was taken by Marine
Corps combat photographer Sgt Robert R. Brenner.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72273

After aerial bombardment and
preparatory artillery fire, Buse’s
battalion started up the hill at about
0930 on 13 January. His supporting
tanks could not negotiate the
ravines that scarred the hillside. Indeed,
the going became so steep
that riflemen sometimes had to
sling arms, seize handholds among
the vines, and pull themselves upward.
[pg 19]
The Japanese suddenly
opened fire from hurriedly dug
trenches at the crest, pinning down
the Marines climbing toward them
until mortar fire silenced the enemy
weapons, which lacked overhead
cover. Buse’s riflemen followed
closely behind the mortar barrage,
scattering the defenders, some of
whom tried to escape along the
coastal trail, where Buckley’s task
force waited to cut them down.

Apparently delayed by torrential
rain, the Japanese did not counterattack
Hill 660 until 16 January.
Roughly two companies of
Katayama’s troops stormed up the
southwestern slope only to be
slaughtered by mortar, artillery, and
small-arms fire. Many of those
lucky enough to survive tried to
break through Buckley’s roadblock,
where 48 of the enemy perished.

With the capture of Hill 660, the
nature of the campaign changed.
The assault phase had captured its
objective and eliminated the possibility
of a Japanese counterattack
against the airfield complex. Next,
the Marines would repulse the
Japanese who harassed the secondary
beachhead at Cape Merkus
and secure the mountainous, jungle-covered
interior of Cape Gloucester,
south of the airfields and between
the Green and Yellow Beaches.

The Mopping-up
Begins in the West

At Cape Merkus on the south
coast of western New Britain, the
fighting proved desultory in comparison
to the violent struggle in
the vicinity of Cape Gloucester. The
Japanese in the south remained content
to take advantage of the dense
jungle and contain the 112th Cavalry
on the Cape Merkus peninsula.
Major Shinjiro Komori, the Japanese
commander there, believed that the
landing force intended to capture
an abandoned airfield at Cape
Merkus, an installation that did not
figure in American plans. A series
of concealed bunkers, boasting integrated
fields of fire, held the lightly
armed cavalrymen in check, as the
defenders directed harassing fire at
the beachhead.

Because the cavalry unit lacked
heavy weapons, a call went out for
those of the 1st Marine Division’s
tanks that had remained behind at
Finschhafen, New Guinea, because
armor enough was already churning
up the mud of Cape Gloucester.
Company B, 1st Marine Tank Battalion,
with 18 M5A1 light tanks
mounting 37mm guns, and the 2d
Battalion, 158th Infantry, arrived at
Cape Merkus, moved into position
by 15 January and attacked on the
following day. A squadron of Army
Air Forces B-24s dropped 1,000-pound
bombs on the jungle-covered
defenses, B-25s followed up, and
mortars and artillery joined in the
bombardment, after which two platoons
of tanks, ten vehicles in all,
and two companies of infantry
surged forward. Some of the tanks
bogged down in the rain-soaked
soil, and tank retrievers had to pull
them free. Despite mud and nearly
impenetrable thickets, the tank-infantry
teams found and destroyed
most of the bunkers. Having eliminated
the source of harassing fire,
the troops pulled back after destroying
a tank immobilized by a
thrown track so that the enemy
could not use it as a pillbox. Another
tank, trapped in a crater, also
was earmarked for destruction, but
Army engineers managed to free it
and bring it back.

The attack on 16 January broke
the back of Japanese resistance. Komori
ordered a retreat to the vicinity
of the airstrip, but the 112th
Cavalry launched an attack that
caught the slowly moving defenders
and inflicted further casualties.
By the time the enemy dug in to
defend the airfield, which the
Americans had no intention of seizing,
Komori’s men had suffered 116
killed, 117 wounded, 14 dead of
disease, and another 80 too ill to
fight. The Japanese hung on despite
sickness and starvation, until 24
February, when Komori received
orders to join in a general retreat by
Matsuda Force.

Across the island, after the victories
at Walt’s Ridge and Hill 660,
the 5th Marines concentrated on
seizing control of the shores of Borgen
[pg 20]
Bay, immediately to the east.
Major Barba’s 1st Battalion followed
the coastal trail until 20 January,
when the column collided with
a Japanese stronghold at Natamo
Point. Translations of documents
captured earlier in the fighting revealed
that at least one platoon,
supported by automatic weapons
had dug in there. Artillery and air
strikes failed to suppress the Japanese
fire, demonstrating that the captured
papers were sadly out of date,
since at least a company—armed
with 20mm, 37mm, and 75mm
weapons—checked the advance.
Marine reinforcements, including
medium tanks, arrived in landing
craft on 23 January, and that afternoon,
supported by artillery and a
rocket-firing DUKW, Companies C
and D overran Natamo Point. The
battalion commander then dispatched
patrols inland along the
west bank of the Natamo River to
outflank the strong positions on the
east bank near the mouth of the
stream. While the Marines were executing
this maneuver, the Japanese
abandoned their prepared defenses
and retreated eastward.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 75970

Maj William H. Barba’s 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, prepares to outflank the Japanese defenses
along the Natamo River.

Success at Cape Gloucester and
Borgen Bay enabled the 5th Marines
to probe the trails leading inland toward
the village of Magairapua,
where Katayama once had his
headquarters, and beyond. Elements
of the regiment’s 1st and 2d
Battalions and of the 2d Battalion,
1st Marines—temporarily attached
to the 5th Marines—led the way
into the interior as one element in
an effort to trap the enemy troops
still in western New Britain.

An officer of Maj Gordon D. Gayle’s 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, displays a captured Japanese
flag from a window of the structure that served as the headquarters of MajGen Iwao Matsuda.

Department of Defense (USA) photo SC 188246

In another part of this effort,
Company L, 1st Marines, led by
Captain Ronald J. Slay, pursued the
Japanese retreating from Cape
Gloucester toward Mount Talawe.
Slay and his Marines crossed the
mountain’s eastern slope, threaded
their way through a cluster of
lesser outcroppings like Mount
[pg 21]
Langila, and in the saddle between
Mounts Talawe and Tangi encountered
four unoccupied bunkers situated
to defend the junction of the
track they had been following with
another trail running east and west.
The company had found the main
east-west route from Sag Sag on the
coast to the village of Agulupella
and ultimately to Natamo Point on
the northern coast.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 77642

The capture of Matsuda’s headquarters provides Marine intelligence
with a harvest of documents, which the enemy buried rather
than burned, presumably to avoid smoke that might attract artillery
fire or air strikes.

To exploit the discovery, a composite
patrol from the 1st Marines,
under the command of Captain
Nickolai Stevenson, pushed south
along that trail Slay had followed,
while a composite company from the
7th Marines, under Captain Preston
S. Parish, landed at Sag Sag on the
west coast and advanced along the
east-west track. An Australian reserve
officer, William G. Wiedeman,
who had been an Episcopal missionary
at Sag Sag, served as Parish’s
guide and contact with the native
populace. When determined opposition
stopped Stevenson short of the
trail junction near Mount Talawe,
Captain George P. Hunt’s Company
K, 1st Marines, renewed the attack.

On 28 January, Hunt concluded
he had brought the Japanese to bay
and attacked. For three hours that
afternoon, his Marines tried unsuccessfully
to break though a line of
bunkers concealed by jungle growth,
losing 15 killed or wounded. When
Hunt withdrew beyond reach of
the Japanese mortars that had
scourged his company during the
action, the enemy emerged from
cover and attempted to pursue, a
bold but foolish move that exposed
the troops to deadly fire that
cleared the way for an advance to
the trail junction. Hunt and Parish
joined forces and probed farther,
only to be stopped by a Japanese
ambush. At this point, Major
William J. Piper, Jr., the executive
officer of the 3d Battalion, 7th
Marines, assumed command, renewed
the pursuit on 30 January,
and discovered the enemy had fled.
Shortly afterward Piper’s combined
patrol made contact with those dispatched
inland by the 5th Marines.

[pg 22]

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 77436

LtCol Lewis H. Puller, left, and Maj William J. Piper discuss the route of a patrol from the
village of Agulupella to Gilnit on the Itni River, a two-week operation.

Thus far, a vigorous pursuit along
the coast and on the inland trails had
failed to ensnare the Japanese. The
Marines captured Matsuda’s abandoned
headquarters in the shadow
of Mount Talawe and a cache of documents
that the enemy buried rather
than burned, perhaps because smoke
would almost certainly bring air
strikes or artillery fire, but the Japanese
general and his troops escaped.
Where had Matsuda Force gone?

Since a trail net led from the
vicinity of Mount Talawe to the
south, General Shepherd concluded
that Matsuda was headed in that
direction. The assistant division
commander therefore organized a
composite battalion of six reinforced
rifle companies, some 3,900
officers and men in all, which General
Rupertus entrusted to Lieutenant
Colonel Puller. This patrol
was to advance from Agulupella on
the east-west track, down the so-called
Government Trail all the way
to Gilnit, a village on the Itni River,
inland of Cape Bushing on New
Britain’s southern coast. Before
Puller could set out, information
discovered at Matsuda’s former
headquarters and translated revealed
that the enemy actually was
retreating to the northeast. As a result,
Rupertus detached the recently
arrived 1st Battalion, 5th
Marines, and reduced Puller’s
force from almost 4,000 to fewer
than 400, still too many to be supplied
by the 150 native bearers assigned
to the column for the march
through the jungle to Gilnit.

During the trek, Puller’s Marines
depended heavily on supplies
dropped from airplanes. Piper Cubs
capable at best of carrying two cases
of rations in addition to the pilot and
observer, deposited their loads at villages
along the way, and Fifth Air
Force B-17s dropped cargo by the ton.
Supplies delivered from the sky
made the patrol possible but did little
to ameliorate the discomfort of the
Marines slogging through the mud.

Marine patrols, such as Puller’s trek to Gilnit, depended on bearers recruited from the
villages of western New Britain who were thoroughly familiar with the local trail net.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72836

Despite this assistance from the
air, the march to Gilnit taxed the ingenuity
of the Marines involved and
hardened them for future action.
This toughening-up seemed especially
desirable to Puller, who had
led many a patrol during the American
intervention in Nicaragua, 1927-1933.
The division’s supply clerks,
aware of the officer’s disdain for
creature comforts, were startled by
requisitions from the patrol for hundreds
of bottles of insect repellent.
[pg 24]
Puller had his reasons, however. According
to one veteran of the Gilnit
operation, “We were always soaked
and everything we owned was likewise,
and that lotion made the best
damned stuff to start a fire with that
you ever saw.”

As Puller’s Marines pushed toward
Gilnit on the Itni River, they
killed perhaps 75 Japanese and captured
one straggler, along with
some weapons and odds and ends
of equipment. An abandoned pack
contained an American flag, probably
captured by a soldier of the
141st Infantry during Japan’s conquest
of the Philippines. After
reaching Gilnit, the patrol fanned
out but encountered no opposition.
Puller’s Marines made contact with
an Army patrol from the Cape
Merkus beachhead and then
headed toward the north coast, beginning
on 16 February.

To the west, Company B, 1st
Marines, boarded landing craft on
12 February and crossed the
Dampier Strait to occupy Rooke Island,
some fifteen miles from the
coast of New Britain. The division’s
intelligence specialists concluded
correctly that the garrison had departed.
Indeed, the transfer began
on 6 December 1943, roughly three
weeks before the landings at Cape
Gloucester, when Colonel Jiro Sato
and half of his 500-man 51st Reconnaissance
Regiment, sailed off to
Cape Bushing. Sato then led his
command up the Itni River and
joined the main body of the Matsuda
Force east of Mount Talawe. Instead
of committing Sato’s troops to the
defense of Hill 660, Matsuda directed
him to delay the elements of
the 5th Marines and 1st Marines
that were converging over the inland
trail net. Sato succeeded in
checking the Hunt patrol on 28 January
and buying time for Matsuda’s
retreat, not to the south, but, as the
documents captured at the general’s
abandoned headquarters confirmed,
along the northern coast, with the
51st Reconnaissance Regiment initially
serving as the rear guard.

On 12 February 1944, infantrymen of Company B, from LtCol
Walker A. Reaves’s 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, advance inland on
Rooke Island, west of New Britain, but find that the Japanese
have withdrawn.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 79181

Once the Marines realized what
Matsuda had in mind, cutting the
line of retreat assumed the highest
priority, as demonstrated by the
withdrawal of the 1st Battalion, 5th
Marines, from the Puller patrol on
the very eve of the march toward
[pg 25]
Gilnit. As early as 3 February, Rupertus
concluded that the Japanese
could no longer mount a counterattack
on the airfields and began devoting
all his energy and resources
to destroying the retreating Japanese.
The division commander chose
Selden’s 5th Marines, now restored
to three-battalion strength, to conduct
the pursuit. While Petras and
his light aircraft scouted the coastal
track, landing craft stood ready to
embark elements of the regiment
and position them to cut off and destroy
the Matsuda Force. Bad weather
hampered Selden’s Marines; clouds
concealed the enemy from aerial
observation, and a boiling surf
ruled out landings over certain
beaches. With about 5,000 Marines,
and some Army dog handlers and
their animals, the colonel rotated
his battalions, sending out fresh
troops each day and using 10 LCMs
in attempts to leapfrog the retreating
Japanese. “With few exceptions,
men were not called upon to make
marches on two successive days,”
Selden recalled. “After a one-day
hike, they either remained at that
camp for three or four days or
made the next jump by LCMs.” At
any point along the coastal track,
the enemy might have concealed
himself in the dense jungle and
sprung a deadly ambush, but he
did not. Selden, for instance, expected
a battle for the Japanese supply
point at Iboki Point, but the
enemy faded away. Instead of encountering
resistance by a determined
and skillful rear guard, the
5th Marines found only stragglers,
some of them sick or wounded.
Nevertheless, the regimental commander
could take pride in maintaining
unremitting pressure on
the retreating enemy “without loss
or even having a man wounded”
and occupying Iboki Point on 24
February.

Meanwhile, American amphibious
forces had seized Kwajalein and
Eniwetok Atolls in the Marshall Islands,
as the Central Pacific offensive
gathered momentum. Further
to complicate Japanese strategy, carrier
strikes proved that Truk had become
too vulnerable to continue
serving as a major naval base. The
enemy, conscious of the threat to his
inner perimeter that was developing
to the north, decided to pull back
his fleet units from Truk and his aircraft
from Rabaul. On 19 February—just
two days after the Americans
invaded Eniwetok—Japanese fighters
at Rabaul took off for the last
time to challenge an American air
raid. When the bombers returned on
the following day, not a single operational
Japanese fighter remained at
the airfields there.

The defense of Rabaul now depended
exclusively on ground
forces. Lieutenant General Yusashi
Sakai, in command of the 17th Division,
received orders to scrap his
plan to dig in near Cape Hoskins
and instead proceed to Rabaul. The
general believed that supplies
enough had been positioned along
the trail net to enable at least the
most vigorous of Matsuda’s troops
to stay ahead of the Marines and
reach the fortress. The remaining
self-propelled barges could carry
heavy equipment and those troops
most needed to defend Rabaul, as
well as the sick and wounded. The
retreat, however, promised to be an
ordeal for the Japanese. Selden had
already demonstrated how swiftly
the Marines could move, taking advantage
of American control of the
skies and the coastal waters, and a
two-week march separated the
nearest of Matsuda’s soldiers from
their destination. Attrition would
be heavy, but those who could contribute
the least to the defense of
Rabaul seemed the likeliest to fall
by the wayside.

The Japanese forces retreating to
Rabaul included the defenders of
Cape Merkus, where a stalemate
had prevailed after the limited
American attack on 16 January had
sent Komori’s troops reeling back
beyond the airstrip. At Augitni, a
village east of the Aria River southwest
of Iboki Point, Komori reported
to Colonel Sato of the 51st
Reconnaissance Regiment, which had
concluded the rear-guard action
that enabled the Matsuda Force to
cross the stream and take the trail
through Augitni to Linga Linga and
eastward along the coast. When the
two commands met, Sato broke out
a supply of sake he had been carrying,
and the officers exchanged
toasts well into the night.

Meanwhile, Captain Kiyomatsu
Terunuma organized a task force
built around the 1st Battalion, 54th
Infantry, and prepared to defend the
Talasea area near the base of the
Willaumez Peninsula against a possible
landing by the pursuing
Marines. The Terunuma Force had
the mission of holding out long
enough for Matsuda Force to slip
past on the way to Rabaul. On 6
March, the leading elements of Matsuda’s
column reached the base of
the Willaumez Peninsula, and Komori,
leading the way for Sato’s
rear guard, started from Augitni toward
Linga Linga.

Sidenote: (page 23)

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 86249

A Piper Cub of the 1st Marine Division’s improvised air force snags a message from a patrol on New Britain’s north coast.

An Improvised Air Force

At Cape Gloucester, the 1st Marine Division
had an air force of its own consisting of
Piper L-4 Cubs and Stinson L-5s provided
by the Army. The improvised air force traced its origins
to the summer of 1943, before the division
plunged into the green inferno of New Britain. Lieutenant
Colonel Kenneth H. Weir, the division’s air officer,
and Captain Theodore A. Petras, the personal
pilot of Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, then
the division commander, concocted a plan for acquiring
light aircraft mainly for artillery spotting. The
assistant division commander at that time, Brigadier
General Rupertus, had seen Army troops making use
of Piper Cubs on maneuvers, and he promptly presented
the plan to General MacArthur, the theater
commander, who promised to give the division twelve
light airplanes in time for the next operation.

When the 1st Marine Division arrived at Goodenough
Island, off the southwestern tip of New
Guinea, to begin preparing for further combat, Rupertus,
now a major general and Vandegrift’s successor
as division commander, directed Petras and another
pilot, First Lieutenant R. F. Murphy, to organize an
aviation unit from among the Marines of the division.
A call went out for volunteers with aviation experience;
some sixty candidates stepped forward, and 12
qualified as pilots in the new Air Liaison Unit. The
dozen Piper Cubs arrived as promised; six proved to
be in excellent condition, three needed repair, and another
three were fit only for cannibalization to provide
parts to keep the others flying. The nine flyable planes
practiced a variety of tasks during two months of
training at Goodenough Island. The airmen acquired
experience in artillery spotting, radio communications,
and snagging messages, hung in a container
trailing a pennant to help the pilot see it, from a line
strung between two poles.

The division’s air force landed at Cape Gloucester
from LSTs on D-Day, reassembled their aircraft, and
commenced operating. The radios installed in the L-4s
proved too balky for artillery spotting, so the group
concentrated on courier flights, visual and photographic
reconnaissance, and delivering small amounts
of cargo. As a light transport, a Piper Cub could drop
a case of dry rations, for example, with pinpoint accuracy
from an altitude of 200 feet. Occasionally, the
light planes became attack aircraft when pilots or observers
tossed hand grenades into Japanese positions.

Before the Marines pulled out of New Britain,
two Army pilots, flying Stinson L-5s, faster and
more powerful than the L-4s, joined the division’s
air arm. One airplane of each type was damaged beyond
repair in crashes, but the pilots and passengers
survived. All the Marine volunteers received the Air
Medal for their contribution, but a specially trained
squadron arrived from the United States and replaced
them prior to the next operation, the assault
on Peleliu.

The Landings at Volupai

By coincidence, 6 March was the
day chosen for the reinforced 5th
Marines, now commanded by
Colonel Oliver P. Smith, to land on
the west coast of the Willaumez
Peninsula midway between base
and tip. The intelligence section of
division headquarters believed that
Japanese strength between Talasea,
the site of a crude airstrip, and
Cape Hoskins, across Kimbe Bay
from Willaumez Peninsula, equaled
that of the Smith’s command, but
that most of the enemy troops defended
Cape Hoskins. The intelligence
estimate proved correct, for
Sakai had been preparing a last-ditch
[pg 26]
defense of Cape Hoskins,
when word arrived to retreat all the
way to Rabaul.

To discover the extent of Japanese
preparations in the immediate
vicinity of Volupai, a reconnaissance
team landed from a torpedo
boat at Bagum, a village about nine
miles from Red Beach, the site chosen
for the assault landing. Flight
Lieutenant G. H. Rodney Marsland
of the Royal Australian Air Force,
First Lieutenant John D. Bradbeer—the
division’s chief scout, who
had participated in three similar reconnaissance
patrols of the Cape
Gloucester area before the 26 December
invasion—and two native
bearers remained ashore for 24
hours and learned that Red Beach
was lightly defended. Their sources,
principally natives who had
worked at a plantation that Marsland
had operated in the area before
the war, confirmed Marine estimates
of Terunuma’s aggregate
force—some 600 men, two thirds of
them located near Talasea, armed
with mortars and artillery.

Bristol Beauforts of the Royal
Australian Air Force based at Kiriwina
Island bombed the Volupai-Talasea
region for three days and
then conducted a last-minute strike
to compensate for the absence of
naval gunfire. Smith’s force, designated
Landing Team A, loaded into
a small flotilla of landing craft, escorted
by torpedo boats, and set out
from Iboki Point. Lieutenant
Colonel Robert Amory, Jr., an Army
officer in command of an engineer
boat unit, took command of the collection
of small craft, some of them
manned by his soldiers and the others
by sailors. A storm buffeted the
formation, and after the seas grew
calm, the boat carrying the Army
air liaison party broke down. Major
Gordon D. Gayle, the new commander
of the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines,
who already was behind schedule,
risked further delay by taking the
disabled craft in tow. Gayle felt that
Combat Team A’s need for the liaison
party’s radio equipment justified
his action.

At 0835 on 6 March, the first of
the amphibian tractors carrying the
assault troops clawed their way
onto Red Beach. During the movement
shoreward, Sherman tanks in
Army LCMs opened fire with machine
[pg 27]
guns and stood ready to direct
their 75mm weapons against any
Japanese gunner who might oppose
the landing. Aside from hard-to-pinpoint
small-arms fire, the opposition
consisted mainly of barrages
from mortars, screened by the terrain
from the flat-trajectory cannon
of the tanks. When Japanese mortar
shells began bursting among the approaching
landing craft, Captain
Theodore A. Petras, at the controls
of one of the division’s Piper Cubs,
dived low over the mortar positions
and dropped hand grenades from
the supply he carried on all his
flights. Natives had warned Marsland
and Bradbeer of a machine-gun
nest dominating the beach from the
slopes of Little Mount Worri, but the
men of the 1st Battalion, 5th
Marines, leading the way, found it
abandoned and encountered no serious
opposition as they dug in to
protect the beachhead.

Meanwhile, Gayle’s Marines
pressed their attack, with four
medium tanks supporting Company
E as it tried to push farther inland.
One of the Shermans bogged
down almost immediately in the
soft sand of Red Beach, but the
other three continued in column.
The tank in the lead lost momentum
on a muddy rise, and two
Japanese soldiers carrying land
mines burst from cover to attack it.
Riflemen of Company E cut down
one of them, but the other detonated
his mine against the vehicle,
killing himself and a Marine who
tried to stop him. The explosion
jammed the turret and stunned the
crewmen, who were further
shaken, but not wounded, when an
antitank grenade exploded against
the armor. The damaged Sherman
got out of the way; when the other
two tanks had passed, it returned
to the trail only to hit a mine that
disabled it.

Despite the loss of two tanks, one
temporarily immobilized on the
beach and the other out of action permanently,
Gayle’s battalion continued
its advance. During the fighting
on the approaches to the Volupai coconut
plantation, the body of a Japanese
soldier yielded a map showing
enemy dispositions around Talasea.
By mid-afternoon, Smith’s regimental
intelligence section was disseminating
the information, which proved
valuable in future operations.

While Company E of Gayle’s battalion
followed the trail toward the
plantation, Company G kept pace,
crossing the western shoulder of
Little Mount Worri. Five Army Air
Forces P-39s from Airfield No. 2 at
Cape Gloucester arrived overhead
to support Gayle’s attack, but the
pilots could not locate the troops
below and instead bombed Cape
Hoskins, where there was no danger
of hitting the Marines. Even
without the aerial attack, the 2d
Battalion, 5th Marines, overran the
plantation by dusk and dug in for
the night; the unit counted the bodies
of 35 Japanese killed during the
day’s fighting.

On D-Day, Combat Team A lost
13 killed and 71 wounded, with artillery
batteries rather than rifle
companies suffering the greater
number of casualties. The 2d Battalion,
11th Marines, set up its 75mm
pack howitzers on the open beach,
exposed to fire from the 90mm mortars
upon which Petras had ineffectually
showered his hand grenades.
Some of the corpsmen at Red Beach,
who went to the assistance of
wounded artillerymen, became casualties
themselves. Nine of the
Marines killed on 6 March were
members of the artillery unit, along
with 29 of the wounded. Nevertheless,
the gunners succeeded in registering
their fires in the afternoon
and harassing the enemy throughout
the night.

At Volupai, as on Cape Gloucester, sand, mud, and land mines—sometimes carried by
Japanese soldiers who detonated them against the sides of the vehicle—could immobilize
even the Sherman M4 medium tank.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 79868

While the Marines prepared to
renew the attack on the second day,
Terunuma deployed his troops to
oppose them and keep open the line
of retreat of the Matsuda Force. In
doing so, the Japanese commander
fell back from his prepared positions
on the fringes of Volupai Plantation—including
the mortar pits
that had raised such havoc with the
2d Battalion, 11th Marines—and
dug in on the northwest slopes of
Mount Schleuther, overlooking the
trail leading from the plantation to
[pg 28]
Bitokara village on the coast. As
soon as he realized what the enemy
had in mind, Gayle sent Company F
uphill to thwart the Japanese plan,
while Company E remained on the
trail and built up a base of fire. On
the right flank of the maneuver element,
Company F, the weapons platoon
burst from the undergrowth
and surprised Japanese machine
gunners setting up their weapon,
killing them and turning the gun
against the enemy. The advance of
Company F caught the Japanese in
mid-deployment and drove them
back after killing some 40 of them.
Gayle’s battalion established a
nighttime perimeter that extended
from Mount Schleuther to the trail
and embraced a portion of both.

The action on 7 March represented
a departure from plan. Smith
had intended that both Barba and
Gayle attack, with the 3d Battalion,
5th Marines, commanded since 12
January by Lieutenant Colonel
Harold O. Deakin, assuming responsibility
for the defense of the
beachhead. The landing craft that
had carried the assault troops departed
from Red Beach during D-Day,
some of them carrying the seriously
wounded, in order to pick up
the 3d Battalion at Iboki Point and
bring it to Volupai. The day was
waning by the time enough landing
craft were on hand for Deakin’s battalion.
For the reinforcements to arrive
in time for an attack on the
morning of 7 March would require
a dangerous nighttime approach to
Volupai, through uncharted waters
studded with sharp outcroppings of
coral that could lay open the hull of
a landing craft. Rupertus decided
that the risks of such a move outweighed
the advantages and canceled
it at the last moment. No boat
started the return voyage to Red
Beach until after dawn on 7 March,
delaying the arrival of Deakin’s battalion
until late afternoon. On that
day, therefore, Barba’s 1st Battalion
had only enough time to send Company
C a short distance inland on a
trail that passed to the right of Little
Mount Worri, en route to the village
of Liappo. When the trail petered
out among the trees and vines, the
Marines hacked their way forward
until they ran out of daylight short
of their objective.

On 8 March, the 1st Battalion, 5th
Marines, resumed the advance,
Companies A and B moving on parallel
paths leading east of Little
Mount Worri. Members of Company
A, peering through dense undergrowth,
saw a figure in a Japanese
uniform and opened fire. The
person was not a Japanese, however,
but a native wearing clothing
discarded by the enemy and serving
as a guide for Company B. The
first shots triggered an exchange of
fire that wounded the guide, killed
one Marine, and wounded a number
of others. Afterward, the advance
resumed, but once again the
formidable terrain—muddy ravines
choked with brush and vines—slowed
the Marines, and the sun set
with the battalion still on the trail.

Meanwhile, Gayle’s 2d Battalion
probed deeper into Terunuma’s defenses.
Patrols ranged ahead on the
morning of 8 March and found the
Japanese dug in at Bitokara Mission,
but the enemy fell back before the
Marines could storm the position.
Gayle’s troops occupied Bitokara
and pushed as far as Talasea, taking
over the abandoned airstrip. Other
patrols from this battalion started up
the steep slopes of Mount Schleuther
and collided with Terunuma’s main
strength. Fire from small arms, a
90mm mortar, and a 75mm field gun
killed or wounded 18 Marines.
Rather than press his attack in the
gathering darkness, Gayle pulled
back from the mountain and dug in
at Bitokara Mission so artillery and
mortars could hammer the defenses
throughout the night, but he left one
company to defend the Talasea
airstrip.

Cpl Robert J. Hallahan, a member of the 1st Marine Division band, examines the shattered
remains of a Japanese 75mm gun used in the defense of Mount Schleuther and rigged as a
booby trap when the enemy withdrew.

Department of Defense (USA) photo SC 260915

[pg 29]

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 69985

Marines struggle to winch a tractor, and the 105mm howitzer it is towing, out of the mud
of New Britain. The trails linking Volupai and Talasea proved as impassable for heavy vehicles
as those on Cape Gloucester.

On the morning of 9 March, Company
G of Gayle’s battalion advanced
up Mount Schleuther while
Companies B and C from Barba’s
command cleared the villages
around the base. Company G expected
to encounter intense opposition
during its part of the coordinated
attack, but Terunuma had
decamped from the mountain top,
leaving behind one dead, two stragglers,
and an artillery piece. The
enemy, however, had festooned the
abandoned 75mm gun with vines
that served as trip wires for a booby
trap. When the Marines hacked at
the vines to examine the weapon
more closely, they released the firing
pin and detonated a round in the
chamber. Since the Japanese gun
crew had plugged the bore before
fleeing, the resulting explosion ruptured
the breech block and wounded
one of Gayle’s men.

Besides yielding the dominant
terrain, Terunuma chose not to defend
any of the villages clustered at
the base of the mountain. The 5th
Marines thus opened a route across
the Willaumez Peninsula to support
further operations against Matsuda’s
line of retreat. Since 6 March,
Colonel Smith’s force had killed an
estimated 150 Japanese at the cost
of 17 Marines killed and 114
wounded, most of the casualties
suffered on the first day. The final
phase of the fighting that began on
Red Beach consisted of securing
Garua Island, abandoned by the
Japanese, for American use, a task
finished on 9 March.

The results of the action at the
base of the Willaumez Peninsula
proved mixed. The grass airstrip at
Talasea lacked the length to accommodate
fighters, but the division’s
liaison planes made extensive use
of it, landing on either side of the
carcass of a Japanese aircraft until
the wreckage could be hauled away.
The trail net, essentially a web of
muddy paths, required long hours
of hard work by Company F, 17th
Marines, and Army engineers, who
used a 10-ton wrecker to recover
three Sherman tanks that had become
mired during the fighting. By
10 March, the trails could support a
further advance. Two days later, elements
of Deakin’s 3d Battalion, 5th
Marines, having moved inland
from the beachhead, provided a
guard of honor as Colonel Smith
and his executive officer, Lieutenant
Colonel Henry W. Buse, raised over
Bitokara the same flag that had
flown over Airfield No. 2 at Cape
Gloucester.

Final Combat and Relief

The flotilla of Army LCMs and
Navy LCTs that supported the Volupai
landings inflicted further damage
on Japanese coastal traffic, already
hard hit by air strikes. On 9
March, a convoy of landing craft carrying
supplies around the tip of the
peninsula for delivery to the advancing
Marines at Talasea spotted four
enemy barges, beached and sloppily
camouflaged. An LCT took the
barges under fire from its 20mm cannon
and machine guns, destroying
one of the Japanese craft. Later that
day, two LCMs used the 37mm gun
of the Marine light tank that each
was carrying, to fire upon another
barge beached on the peninsula.

The enemy tried to make the best
possible use of the dwindling number
of barges, but the bulk of Matsuda’s
troops moved overland,
screened by Terunuma’s men during
the transit of the base of the
Willaumez Peninsula. About a hundred
Japanese dug in at Garilli, but
by the time Company K of Deakin’s
3d Battalion, 5th Marines, attacked
on 11 March, the enemy had fallen
back to a new trail block about
three miles distant. For four days,
the Marines fought a succession of
sharp actions, as the Japanese retreated
a few hundred yards at a
time, dragging with them a 75mm
gun that anchored each of the
[pg 30]
blocking positions. On 16 March,
Deakin himself joined Company K,
arriving in an LCM that also carried
a section of 81mm mortars. The
Japanese turned their cannon seaward
to deal with this threat but
failed to hit the landing craft.
Shortly after the Marine mortars
landed and went into action,
Terunuma’s men again withdrew,
but this time they simply faded
away, since the bulk of Matsuda
Force had escaped to the east.

Having secured the Red Beach-Garua
Bay-Talasea area, the 5th
Marines dispatched patrols southward
to the base of the Willaumez
Peninsula, capturing only the occasional
straggler and confirming the
departure of the main body of Matsuda’s
command. The 1st Marine
Division established a comfortable
headquarters, training sites, a hospital
that utilized captured stocks of
Japanese medicine, and a rest area
that featured swimming off the
Garua beaches and bathing in hot
springs ashore. The Navy built a
base on the Willaumez Peninsula
for torpedo boats that harried the
surviving Japanese barges. Unfortunately,
on 27 March, the second day
the base was operating, Allied aircraft
mistook two of the boats for
Japanese craft and attacked, killing
five sailors and wounding 18.

One of the courses taught at the
new Garua training center sought
to produce amphibious scouts for
the division’s future operations.
The school’s headquarters decided
that a reconnaissance of Cape
Hoskins would serve as a suitable
graduation exercise, since aerial observers
had seen no sign of enemy
activity there. On 13 April, Second
Lieutenant Richard R. Breen, accompanied
by Lieutenant Marsland
of the Royal Australian Air Force,
embarked with 16 trainees, two native
guides, and a rifle platoon from
the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, in a
pair of LCMs. While two instructors
stood by in one of the landing craft,
the platoon established a trail block,
and the future scouts advanced toward
the Cape Hoskins airfield, no
longer used by the Japanese. En
route to the objective, however, the
patrol encountered fire from small
arms and mortars, but the Marines
had apparently learned their
lessons well, for they succeeded in
breaking off the action and escaped
without suffering casualties.

Meanwhile, the Japanese retreat
continued. Komori’s troops, blazing
the trail for Sato’s command from
Augitni to the northern coast, encountered
a disheartening number
of hungry stragglers as they
marched toward a supply depot at
Kandoka, roughly 10 miles west of
the Willaumez Peninsula. Crossing
the Kuhu River, Komori’s soldiers
came under ineffectual fire from an
American landing craft. The rain-swollen
Via River, broader than the
Kuhu, proved a more serious obstacle,
requiring a detour lasting two
days to reach a point where the
stream narrowed. Komori’s provisions
ran out on 17 March, forcing
the soldiers to subsist on taro, birds
and fish, and vegetables from village
garden plots, supplemented by
some welcome coconuts gathered
from a plantation at Linga Linga.
After losing additional time and a
dozen lives crossing yet another
river, the Kapaluk, Komori’s troops
straggled into Kandoka on the 24th,
only to discover that the food and
other supplies had been carried off
toward Rabaul. Despite this crushing
disappointment, Komori
pressed on, his men continuing to
live off the land as best they could.
Five more men drowned in the fast-moving
waters of the Kulu River,
and a native hired as a guide defected.
Already weakened physically,
Komori came down with an
attack of malaria, but he forced
himself to continue.

Before the building of a rest area at Garua Bay, with its hot springs and bathing
beaches, these Marines relax in one of the crystal clear streams running into the sea
from New Britain’s mountainous interior.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 78381

The survivors struggled onward
toward Cape Hoskins and ultimately
Rabaul. On 9 April, Easter
Sunday, four half-starved Japanese
wandered onto the San Remo
Plantation, where Gayle’s battalion
[pg 31]
had bivouacked after pursuing
the enemy eastward from the
Willaumez Peninsula. The Marine
unit was preparing to pass in review
for the regimental commander
later that day, when a sentry
saw the intruders and opened fire.
The ensuing skirmish killed three
of the enemy. One of the dead
proved to be Major Komori; his
pack contained a rusty revolver
and a diary describing the sufferings
of his command.

Colonel Sato, with the rest of the
rear guard for the Matsuda Force, set
out from Augitni on 7 March, one
day after Komori, who sent back
word on the 19th that patrols from
the 5th Marines had fanned out from
the Willaumez Peninsula, where the
reinforced regiment had landed almost
two weeks earlier. When Sato
reached Linga Linga and came
across a bivouac abandoned by a
Marine patrol, his force had dwindled
to just 250 men, less than half
the number that started out. He received
a shock the following day
when American landing craft appeared
as his men prepared to cross
the Kapaluk River. He immediately
set up a perimeter to beat back the
expected attack, but the boats were
carrying elements of the 2d Battalion,
1st Marines, under Major
Charles H. Brush, Jr. A patrol from
Brush’s Company F landed on a
beach beyond Kandoka, the former
site of a Japanese supply cache, and
dispatched one platoon, led by First
Lieutenant William C. Schleip, westward
along the coastal track, even as
Sato, aware only of the general location
of the landing, groped eastward
toward the village. On 26 March, the
two collided, the Japanese surprising
the Marines in the act of crossing
a small stream and pinning them
down for some three hours until the
approach of reinforcements from
Company F forced the enemy to
break off the action, take to the jungle,
and bypass Kandoka.

As the head of Sato’s column disappeared
in the jungle, one of the
division’s light airplanes, scouting
landing sites for Brush’s battalion,
sighted the tail near Linga Linga.
The pilot, Captain Petras, turned
over the controls to Brigadier General
Earl C. Long, also a pilot,
sketched the location of the Japanese,
and dropped the map to one of
the troop-laden landing craft. Petras
then led the way to an undefended
beach, where Brush’s Marines
waded ashore and set out in pursuit
of Sato. On 30 March, Second Lieutenant
Richard B. Watkins, at the
head of an eight-man patrol, spotted
a pair of Japanese, their rifles
slung, who turned out to be members
of a 73-man patrol, far too
many for Watkins to handle.

Once the enemy column had
moved off, Watkins and his men
hurried to Kandoka, where he reported
to Major Brush and obtained
mortars and machine guns before
again taking to the trail. Brush followed,
bringing a reinforced rifle
platoon to increase the Marine firepower.
Meanwhile, the Japanese encountered
yet another Marine patrol,
this one led by Sergeant Frank
Chliek, which took up a position on
high ground that commanded the
trail. When they heard Chliek’s
group open fire, Watkins and Brush
hurried to its aid; the resulting
slaughter killed 55 Japanese, including
Colonel Sato, who died sword
in hand, but the Marines did not
suffer even one casualty.

On 9 April, the 3d Battalion, 1st
Marines, under Lieutenant Colonel
Hankins, replaced Brush’s 1st Battalion
and continued the search for
enemy stragglers. The bulk of the
Matsuda Force, and whatever supplies
it could transport, had by this
time retreated to Cape Hoskins and
beyond, and Army troops were taking
over from the Marines. Almost
four months had elapsed since the
landing at Cape Gloucester; clearly
the time had come for the amphibious
troops to move on to an operation
that would make better use of
their specialized training and
equipment. The final action fought
by the Leathernecks took place on
22 April, when an ambush sprung
by the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines,
killed 20 Japanese and resulted in
the last Marine fatality of the campaign.
In seizing western New
Britain as part of the isolation of
Rabaul, the division suffered 310
killed in action and 1,083 wounded,
roughly one-fourth the estimated
Japanese casualties.

Early in February 1944, after the
capture of the Cape Gloucester airfields
but before the landing at
Volupai, General Rupertus warned
that his 1st Marine Division might
remain on New Britain indefinitely.
Having the unit tied down for an
extended period alarmed the recently
appointed Commandant of
the Marine Corps, General Vandegrift.
“Six months there,” he remarked,
referring to an extended
commitment in New Britain, “and it
will no longer be a well-trained amphibious
division.” Vandegrift
urged Admiral Ernest J. King, the
Chief of Naval Operations, to help
pry the division from MacArthur’s
grasp so it could again undertake
amphibious operations. Admiral
Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in
Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, wanted
the division for the impending invasion
of the Palau Islands, the capture
of which would protect the
flank of MacArthur’s advance to
the Philippines. In order to obtain
the Marines, Nimitz made the
Army’s 40th Infantry Division
available to MacArthur, in effect
swapping a division capable of taking
over the New Britain campaign
for one that could spearhead the
amphibious offensive against Japan.
MacArthur, however, briefly retained
control of one component of
the Marine division—Company A,
[pg 32]
1st Tank Battalion. That unit’s
medium tanks landed on 22 April
at Hollandia on the northern coast
of New Guinea, but a swamp just
beyond the beachhead prevented
the Shermans from supporting the
advance inland.

The commanding general of the
Army’s 40th Infantry Division, Major
General Rapp Brush, arrived at New
Britain on 10 April to arrange for the
relief. His advance echelon arrived
on the 23d and the remainder of the
division five days later. The 1st Marine
Division departed in two echelons
on 6 April and 4 May. Left behind
was the 12th Defense Battalion,
which continued to provide antiaircraft
defense for the Cape Gloucester
airfields until relieved by an Army
unit late in May.

In a campaign lasting four
months, the 1st Marine Division had
plunged into the unforgiving jungle
and overwhelmed a determined and
resolute enemy, capturing the Cape
Gloucester airfields and driving the
Japanese from western New Britain.
A number of factors helped the
Marines defeat nature and the
Japanese. Allied control of the air
and the sea provided mobility and
disrupted the coastal barge traffic
upon which the enemy had to depend
for the movement of large
quantities of supplies, especially
badly needed medicines, during the
retreat to Rabaul. Warships and
landing craft armed with rockets—supplemented
by such improvisations
as tanks or rocket-equipped
amphibian trucks firing from landing
craft—supported the landings,
but the size of the island and the
lack of fixed coastal defenses limited
the effectiveness of the various
forms of naval gunfire. Using superior
engineering skills, the Marines
defied swamp and undergrowth to
bring forward tanks that crushed
enemy emplacements and added to
the already formidable American
firepower. Although photo analysis,
an art that improved rapidly, misinterpreted
the nature of the damp
flat, Marine intelligence made excellent
use of captured Japanese documents
throughout the campaign. In
the last analysis, the courage and endurance
of the average Marine made
victory possible, as he braved discomfort,
disease, and violent death
during his time in the green inferno.

Sidenote: (page 32)

New Weapons in the Division’s Arsenal

During the period of rehabilitation following
the Guadalcanal campaign, the 1st Marine
Division received two new weapons—the
M4 medium tank, nicknamed the Sherman in honor
of William Tecumseh Sherman whose Union troops
marched from Atlanta to the sea, and the M-1 rifle.
The new rifle, designed by John C. Garand, a civilian
employee of the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts,
was a semi-automatic, gas-operated
weapon, weighing 9.5 pounds and using an eight-round
clip. Although less accurate at longer range
than the former standard rifle, the M-1903, which
snipers continued to use, the M-1 could lay down a
deadly volume of fire at the comparatively short
ranges typical of jungle warfare.

In addition, the division received the M4A1, an
early version of the Sherman tank, which
MacArthur valued so highly that he borrowed a
company of them from the 1st Marine Division for
the Hollandia operation. The model used by the
Marines weighed 34 tons, mounted a 75mm gun,
and had frontal armor some three inches thick. Although
a more formidable weapon than the 16-ton
light tank, with a 37mm gun, the medium tank had
certain shortcomings. A high silhouette made it a
comparatively easy target for Japanese gunners,
who fortunately did not have a truly deadly antitank
weapon, and narrow treads provided poor
traction in the mud of New Britain.

Marine infantrymen, some of them using the M1 rifle for the
first time in combat, and a Sherman tank form a deadly team
in the comparatively open country near the Cape Gloucester
airfields.

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 69146

Sources

Three books have proved essential to
this account of the fighting on New
Britain. Lieutenant Colonel Frank O.
Hough, USMCR, dealt at length with the
campaign in The Island War: The United
States Marine Corps in the Pacific (Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott, 1947). With Major
John Crown, USMCR, he wrote the official
Marine Corps historical monograph: The
New Britain Campaign (Washington: Historical
Branch, G-3 Division, HQMC,
1952). The third of these essential volumes
is Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T.
Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul—History
of U. S. Marine Corps Operations in World
War II, vol 2 (Washington: Historical
Branch, G-3 Division, HQMC, 1963.)

Other valuable sources include: Wesley
Frank Craven and James Lea Cate,
eds., The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan,
August 1942-July 1944—The Army Air
Forces in World War II, vol 4 (Washington:
Office of Air Force History, reprint
1983); George McMillan, The Old Breed:
A History of the First Marine Division in
World War II (Washington: Infantry Journal
Press, 1949); John Miller, Jr., The
United States Army in World War II; The
War in the Pacific: CARTWHEEL, The Reduction
of Rabaul (Washington: Office of
Chief of Military History, 1959); Samuel
Eliot Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier,
22 July 1942-1 May 1944—A History
of United States Naval Operations in World
War II, vol 6 (Boston: Little, Brown, and
Company, 1950).

The Marine Corps Gazette printed four
articles analyzing aspects of the New
Britain campaign: Lieutenant Colonel
Robert B. Luckey, USMC, “Cannon, Mud,
and Japs,” vol 28, no 10 (October 1944);
George McMillan, “Scouting at Cape
Gloucester,” vol 30, no 5 (May 1946); and
Fletcher Pratt, “Marines Under MacArthur:
Cape Gloucester,” vol 31, no 12 (December
1947); and “Marines Under MacArthur:
Willaumez,” vol 32, no 1 (January 1947).

Of the Marine Corps oral history interviews
of participants in the New Britain
fighting, the most valuable were with
Generals Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., and
Edwin A. Pollock and Lieutenant Generals
Henry W. Buse, Lewis J. Fields, Robert
B. Luckey, and John N. McLaughlin.

Almost three dozen collections of personal
papers deal in one way or another
with the campaign, some of them providing
narratives of varying length and others
photographs or maps. The most enlightening
commentary came from the
papers of Major Sherwood Moran,
USMCR, before the war a missionary in
Japan and during the fighting an intelligence
specialist with the 1st Marine Division,
who discussed everything from coping
with the weather to understanding
the motivation of the Japanese soldier.

About the Author

Bernard C. Nalty served as a civilian member
of the Historical Branch, G-3 Division,
HQMC, from October 1956 to September
1961. In collaboration with Henry I. Shaw, Jr.,
and Edwin T. Turnbladh, he wrote Central Pacific
Drive, volume 3 of the History of U.S. Marine
Corps Operations in World War II, and he
also completed a number of short historical
studies, some of which appeared as articles in
Leatherneck or Marine Corps Gazette. He joined the history office of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1961, transferring in 1964 to the Air Force history
program, from which he retired in January 1994.

THIS PAMPHLET HISTORY, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines in the
World War II era, is published for the education and training of Marines by
the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps,
Washington, D.C., as a part of the U.S. Department of Defense observance
of the 50th anniversary of victory in that war.

Editorial costs of preparing this pamphlet have been defrayed in part by
a bequest from the estate of Emilie H. Watts, in memory of her late husband,
Thomas M. Watts, who served as a Marine and was the recipient of a Purple
Heart.

WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret)

GENERAL EDITOR.
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
Benis M. Frank

CARTOGRAPHIC CONSULTANT
George C. MacGillivray

EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION
Robert E. Struder, Senior Editor; W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information
Specialist; Catherine A. Kerns, Composition Services Technician

Marine Corps Historical Center
Building 58, Washington Navy Yard
Washington, D.C. 20374-5040

1994
PCN 190 003128 00