by Daniel Wrinn
The next objective was Hill 660. It was to the left of General Shepherd’s zone of action and inland of the coastal track. The 3/7 Marines got orders to seize the hill. Captain Joseph W. Buckley, commander of the 7th Marines Weapons Company, created a task force to bypass Hill 660 and block the coastal trail beyond the objective.
Buckley used two platoons of infantry, a platoon of 37mm guns, two half-tracks, and two light tanks. He assigned a platoon of pioneers from the 17th Marines with the bulldozer to trail the task force. They pushed through the mud and set up a roadblock to block the line of retreat from Hill 660. The Japanese attacked with long-range, plunging fire against Captain Buckley’s task force as it advanced one mile along the trail. Because of the flat trajectory, the 37mm and 75mm guns could not destroy the enemy’s automatic weapons. But the Marines succeeded in forcing enemy gunners to keep their heads down. As they advanced, Buckley’s task force unreeled telephone wire to keep in contact with headquarters. Once the roadblock was in place and camouflaged, Buckley requested a truck bring in hot meals for his men. When the truck got bogged down—he sent the bulldozer to pull it free.
Buckley called in an aerial bombardment and artillery fire at 0930 on January 13. His tanks could not negotiate the ravines on the hillside. The climb became so steep that the riflemen had to sling their arms and seize handholds along the vines to pull themselves up. This is when the Japanese suddenly opened fire from trenches at the crest and pinned down the Marines climbing toward them. The Marines responded with mortar fire to silence the enemy lacking an overhead cover. Captain Buckley’s riflemen followed closely behind the mortar barrage and scattered the defenders. Many trying to escape along the coastal trail were shot down by the task force waiting for them.
Because of the torrential rain, the Japanese did not counterattack until January 16. Two companies of Katayama’s troops charged up the southwestern slope and were slaughtered by small arms and mortar fire. Of the enemy lucky enough to survive and try to break through the roadblock, forty-eight perished.
After the capture of Hill 660, the nature of the campaign changed. The Allies had captured their objective and eliminated any possibility of a Japanese counterattack against the airfield. Now the Marines would repel the Japanese, who harassed the secondary beachhead at Cape Merkus. Marines would also secure the jungle-covered mountainous interior of Cape Gloucester—south of the airfields between the Yellow and Green beaches.
Mopping up in the West
The fighting at Cape Merkus on the south coast of western New Britain paled compared to Cape Gloucester’s savage struggle. Japanese in the south were content to take advantage of the dense jungle and contain the 112th Cavalry on Cape Merkus. The Japanese commander, Major Komori, believed that the Allied landing force’s plan was to capture an abandoned airfield at Cape Merkus. Komori built Japanese defenses to protect the airfield. He created a series of concealed bunkers with integrated fields of fire to hold the lightly armed cavalrymen in check while his troops directed harassing fire toward the beach.
The 112th Cavalry unit lacked heavy weapons. They called for 1st Marine Division tanks left behind on Finschhafen, New Guinea, because the other tanks were already turning up the mud at Cape Gloucester. Eighteen M5A1 light tanks from Company B of the 1st Marine Tank Battalion answered the call. They arrived at Cape Merkus and moved into position on January 15. The tanks attacked the next day after a squadron of Army B-24s dropped one-thousand-pound bombs on enemy jungle-covered defenses. The Marines followed up with artillery and mortars, joining in on the bombardment after two platoons of tanks and two infantry companies charged ahead.
Some tanks bogged down in the rain-soaked soil, and tank retrievers were needed to pull them free. Despite the nearly impenetrable thickets and deep mud, the tank infantry teams destroyed most of the Japanese bunkers. After eliminating the source of the harassing fire, the Allied troops pulled back. They destroyed a tank immobilized by a thrown track so the enemy could not create a pillbox. Another tank trapped in a crater was nearly destroyed—but Army engineers were able to free it and bring it back to service.
The January 16 attack broke the back of remaining Japanese resistance. Major Komori ordered a retreat to the vicinity of the airstrip, but the 112th Cavalry launched an attack that caught and shot them to pieces. By the time the Japanese dug in to defend the airfield—which the Americans had no intention of seizing—Komori’s men lost 116 dead and 117 wounded with another 94 too sick to fight. Through starvation and sickness, the Japanese hung on until February 24, when Major Komori received orders to join the Matsuda Force in a general retreat.
On the other side of the island, after the victories at Hill 660 and Walt’s Ridge, the 5th Marines focused on seizing control of the Borgen Bay shore’s to the east of Yellow Beach 2. The 1/5 Marines followed the coastal trail until January 20, when the column smashed into a Japanese stronghold at Natamo Point. Documents captured earlier in the fighting described one enemy platoon supported by automatic weapons as dug in. Allied airstrikes and artillery could not suppress the enemy fire. The seized documents proved to be out of date when at least one company armed with 20mm, 37mm, and 75mm weapons stalled the Allied advance.
Marine reinforcements called in Sherman tanks that arrived in LSTs on January 23. That afternoon, supported by rocket firing DUKWs and artillery, the Marines overran Natamo Point. The battalion commander dispatched patrols along the west bank of the Natamo River. They outflanked strong enemy positions on the east bank near the stream’s mouth. While the Marines executed this maneuver, the Japanese abandoned their defenses and retreated to the east.
The success at Borgen Bay and Cape Gloucester enabled the 5th Marines to probe the trails leading inward toward the village of Magairapua, where Katayama once had his headquarters. The 5th Marines led the way to trap enemy troops still bottled up on western New Britain.
Company L of the 1st Marines pursued the retreating Japanese from Cape Gloucester toward Mount Talawe. Marines crossed the mountain’s eastern slope and weaved their way through a cluster of lesser outcroppings, through Mount Langila and into the saddle between Mounts Tangi and Talawe. They discovered four unoccupied bunkers situated to defend the track they’d followed, with another trail running east to west. Company L found the main route on the coast to the village of Agulupella from Sag Sag and ultimately onto Natamo Point on the northern coast.
Taking full advantage of this discovery, the 1st Marine patrol advanced south along the trail. At the same time, a composite company from the 7th Marines landed at Sag Sag on the West Coast and moved along an east-west track. Australian reserve officer, William Weidman, a former Episcopal missionary at Sag Sag, served as guide and contact for the natives. When enemy resistance stopped the 1st Marine patrol short of the trail junction near Mount Talawe, Company K of the 1st Marines attacked.
For three hours, the Marines of Company K tried to break through a line of bunkers concealed by jungle growth. The Marines took fifteen casualties and withdrew beyond the reach of the Japanese mortars. The Japanese broke from cover and pursued a brave but foolish move that exposed the enemy troops to a deadly fire. This vigorous pursuit along the coast and the inland trails failed to trap the Japanese. The Marines captured General Matsuda’s abandoned headquarters in the shadow of Mount Talawe. Inside they found documents buried instead of burned—possibly because the smoke would bring down artillery fire or airstrikes. The Japanese general and his troops escaped.
General Shepherd believed that Matsuda was headed to the vicinity of Mount Talawe to the south. He organized a battalion of six rifle companies—nearly four thousand men—entrusted to Chesty Puller. This patrol would advance from Agulupella on the east-west track down to Government Trail. Then all the way to Gilnit, a village on the Itni River, inland of Cape Bushing on the southern New Britain coast. Before Colonel Puller could advance, the intelligence section discovered that the enemy was retreating to the northeast toward Rabaul. General Shepherd detached the newly arrive
d 1/5 Marines. He reduced Colonel Puller’s force from almost 4,000 to 350 Marines for the jungle march to Gilnit.
During this trek, Puller’s Marines depended on supplies dropped from Allied planes. Puller was also assigned 150 native bearers to carry rations and supplies. Air Force B-17s dropped tons of cargo. The patrol was only possible because of the supplies dropped from the sky. But this did little to ease the Marine discomfort of plodding through the mud.
Despite the air assistance, the march to Gilnit taxed Marine ingenuity and hardened them for future action. Colonel Puller, who had led many patrols during the American intervention in Nicaragua, seemed in good spirits during this action. Division supply clerks, aware of Pullers’ disdain for any creature comforts, were startled when they read his requisitions for hundreds of insect repellent bottles. Puller later wrote: “We were always soaked and everything we owned was likewise, and that lotion made the best damn stuff to start a fire with that you ever saw.”
Colonel Puller’s Marines slogged toward Gilnit on the Itni River, killing seventy-five Japanese, capturing one straggler, and weapons and equipment odds and ends. One abandoned enemy pack contained an American flag, probably captured by a 141st Infantry soldier during Japan’s Philippine conquest. When the patrol reached Gilnit, they met no opposition. Puller’s Marines made contact with an rmy patrol from Cape Merkus and then headed toward the northern coast on February 16.
On February 12, to the west, Company B of the 1st Marines boarded landing craft to cross the Dampier Strait to occupy Rooke Island, fifteen miles off the coast of New Britain. Division intelligence believed that the enemy garrison had departed. They were correct. The enemy withdrawal began on December 6, three weeks before the Cape Gloucester landings.
Colonel Sato and half of his 51st Reconnaissance Regiment of 500 men sailed to Cape Bushing, where Sato led his command up the 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 and harass the 1st and 5th Marines who converged on the inland trail net. Colonel Sato succeeded in stalling the Marine patrols. He bought time for Matsuda’s forces to retreat to the northern coasts with the 51st Reconnaissance Regiment serving as the rearguard.
Once the Marines realized what Matsuda was up to, cutting their line of retreat became the highest priority. They withdrew the 1/5 Marines from the Puller patrol on the eve of the march toward Gilnit. On February 3, General Shepherd realized the Japanese did not have the strength to mount a counterattack on the airfields and devoted all his resources to destroy retreating enemy troops. Shepherd chose the 5th Marines, now restored to three-battalion strength, to pursue the fleeing Japanese troops. While light aircraft scouted the coastal track, landing craft stood fast and waited to debark the regiment to cut off and destroy General Matsuda’s force. Bad weather stalled the 5th Marines. Clouds concealed the enemy from aerial observation while the boiling surf ruled out landings on several beaches. With over 5,000 Marines and Army troops, the Allies rotated their battalions and sent out fresh troops each day. They also used ten LCMs (Landing Craft, Mechanical) to leapfrog the retreating Japanese.
Marines were not called upon to make marches for more than two days in a row, with few exceptions. After a one day hike, they either remained at camp for three days or made the next jump by LCM. The 5th Marines expected a battle for the Japanese supply point at Iboki Point, but enemy troops dwindled. Instead of encountering resistance by a resolute and clever rearguard, the 5th Marines only found stragglers, most wounded or too sick to fight. Marines kept up pressure on retreating Japanese troops. On February 24, they took Iboki Point without loss or even one man wounded.
During this action, American amphibious forces seized Eniwetok and Kwajalein Atolls in the Marshall Islands. The Central Pacific offensive now gathered momentum. Allied carrier strikes proved Truk was too vulnerable to continue serving as a significant enemy naval base. Now conscious of the threat to their inner perimeter developing to the north, the Japanese pulled back the fleet units from Truk and aircraft from Rabaul. On February 19, two days after the Allies invaded Eniwetok, enemy fighters at Rabaul took off to challenge an American air raid. When the Japanese bombers returned the next day, not a single operational Japanese fighter remained at the airfields.
The defense of Rabaul now depended on ground forces. Lieutenant General Sakai, commander of the 17th Division, received orders to not dig in near Cape Hoskins and instead move to Rabaul. Sakai assumed the supplies he’d positioned along the trail would enable at least the most spirited of Matsuda’s troops to stay ahead of the Marines and reach the fortress.
What was left of the self-propelled barges could carry the remaining troops and heavy equipment needed to defend Rabaul. This retreat would be an ordeal for the Japanese. The 5th Marines had already showed how swiftly they could move by taking advantage of Allied controlled skies and coastal waters. A full two-week march separated the nearest of Matsuda soldiers from their destination. While attrition was heavy, those who could contribute the least to Rabaul’s defenses fell by the wayside.
Landings at Volupai
March 6 was D-Day for the 5th Marines to land on the west coast of the Willaumez Peninsula—halfway between the base and the tip. Division intelligence believed that the Japanese strength between Talasea, site of the crude airstrip, and Cape Hoskins, across Kimbe Bay were equal to the 5th Marines. Still, most of the enemy troops were defending Cape Hoskins. If the intelligence estimates were correct, Sakai prepared the last defense of Cape Hoskins before ordered to retreat to Rabaul.
A torpedo boat landed a recon team at Bagum. Their orders were to discover the intent of Japanese preparations near Volupai, nine miles from Red Beach, chosen for the assault. They learned Red Beach was lightly defended from native sources who’d worked at a plantation operated in the area before the war. The natives confirmed the Marine estimates of an enemy force of 600 men, two-thirds of them near Talasea, armed with artillery and mortars.
The Royal Australian Air Force, based out of Kiriwina Island to the south, bombed the Volupai region for three days. A force of 5th Marines, designated as Landing Team A, loaded into a small flotilla of landing craft set out from Iboki Point with an escort of torpedo boats.
On March 6, at 0835, the first amphibian tractors carrying assault troops clawed their way onto Red Beach. Sherman tanks in Army LCMs opened fire with machine guns. They waited to direct their 75mm weapons against any enemy gunner opposing the Allied landing force. Aside from difficult-to-pinpoint small arms fire, enemy opposition consisted mainly of mortar barrages, screened by the terrain. As Japanese mortar shells burst among the approaching landing craft, Captain Theodore A. Petras, flying a Piper L-4 Grasshopper, dove low over mortar positions and dropped hand grenades from the cockpit. Natives warned the Allied assault forces of a machine gun nest dominating the beach from the slopes on Little Mount Worri. The 1/5 Marines leading the way found it abandoned and encountered no serious opposition as they dug into protect the beachhead.
Four Sherman’s supported the 5th Marines as they pushed farther inland, pressing their attack. One of the medium tanks got bogged down on Red Beach’s soft sand, but the other three continued in a line. The lead tank lost momentum on a muddy rise, and two Japanese soldiers carrying landmines surged from cover to attack. Company E rifleman cut one down, but the other detonated his mine against the tank, killing himself and a Marine trying to stop him. The explosion jammed the tank’s turret and stunned the crewmen inside, shaken but not wounded. The damaged Sherman moved aside to allow the other two tanks to pass, returning to the trail only to hit another mine.
After losing two tanks, one temporarily immobilized, and the other permanently out of action, the 5th Marines continued their advance. During the fighting at a Volupai coconut plantation, a dead Japanese soldier’s body had a map showing the enemy positions around Talasea. By early afternoon, regimental intelligence distributed the information, whic
h proved valuable for future operations.
Company E of the 5th Marines followed the trail to the plantation. At the same time, Company G kept pace, crossing the western shoulder of Little Mount Worri. Five P-39s from Airfield No. 2 at Cape Gloucester supported the attack. The pilots could not pinpoint the troops below and instead bombed Cape Hoskins, where there was no danger of hitting any Marines. Even without the aerial attack, the 2/5 Marines overran the plantation by nightfall and dug in for the night. Marines counted thirty-five Japanese killed.
Throughout the fighting, Combat Team A took eighty-four casualties. The artillery batteries suffered a more significant number of casualties than rifle companies.
The 2/11 Marines set up their 75mm howitzers on the open beach—exposed to fire from the 90mm mortars, which Captain Petras showered with hand grenades. Some of the Navy Corpsmen on Red Beach, who helped the wounded artillerymen, ended up as casualties themselves. Thirty-four of the Marines killed and wounded on March 6 were members of the artillery unit. The gunners succeeded in registering their fires that afternoon and harassing the enemy through the night.
While the Marines prepared to renew their attack on the next day, the Japanese opposed them in order to keep a line of retreat open for the Matsuda Force. By doing so, the Japanese fell back from their prepared positions on the fringes of the Volupai plantation. This included the mortar pits that had caused such havoc with the 2/11 Marines. They dug in on the northern slopes of Mount Schleuther, overlooking the trail leading from the plantation to Bitokara village on the coast. Company F was sent uphill to disrupt the Japanese plan, while Company E remained on the trail to build up a base of fire.