by Daniel Wrinn
On the right flank, Company F, the weapons platoon, surged from the undergrowth. They surprised Japanese machine gunners setting up their weapon, killing them, and turning the gun against the enemy troops. Company F’s advance caught the Japanese in mid deployment and drove them back, killing over forty of their men. The 5th Marines established a night perimeter that extended from Mount Schleuther to the trail and embraced a portion of both.
The March 7 action was a departure from the plan. Originally, the 3/5 Marines would assume responsibility for the beachhead. Landing craft that had carried assault troops would depart from Red Beach on D-Day, and pick up the 3rd Battalion at Iboki Point, bringing them to Volupai. If the reinforcements were to arrive in time for an attack on the morning of March 7, this would require a dangerous nighttime Volupai approach through uncharted waters studded with sharp coral that could tear open the hull of the landing craft.
General Shepherd decided the risks of such a move outweighed the advantages and canceled it at the last moment. No boats started the return voyage to Red Beach until after daylight on March 7, delaying Marine reinforcements until late afternoon. This left the 1st Battalion with only enough time to send Company C a short distance inland on the trail to the village of Liappo. When the trail petered out among trees and vines, Marines hacked their way forward until they ran out of daylight short of their objective.
The 1/5 Marines resumed the advance on March 8. Companies A and B moved through parallel paths leading east of Little Mount Worri.
Company A Marines peered through dense undergrowth and saw a figure in a Japanese uniform and opened fire. This man was a native wearing clothing discarded by the enemy and serving as a guide for Company B. The shots triggered an exchange of fire that killed two Marines, wounded the guide, and several others. Afterward, the advance resumed, but through formidable terrain—muddy ravines choked with brush and vines—which slowed the Marines as darkness fell with the battalion still on the trail.
The 2nd Battalion probed deeper into the enemy defenses. Patrols pushed ahead on the morning of March 8. They found Japanese troops dug in at the Bitokara Mission. The enemy fell back before the Marines could charge their position. Marines occupied Bitokara and advanced as far as Talasea taking over the abandoned airstrip. Other Marine patrols climbed the steep slopes of Mount Schleuther and collided with the enemy troops. Fire from a 90mm mortar, 75mm gun, and small arms killed eighteen Marines. Rather than press the attack in the darkness, Marines withdrew from the mountain and dug in at the Bitokara Mission. Mortars and artillery hammered the defenses through the night, leaving one company to defend the Talasea airstrip.
On the morning of March 9, Company G of the 2nd Marine Battalion advanced up Mount Schleuther while companies B and C cleared villages around the base. Company G expected to meet strong opposition during its part of the coordinated attack. But the Japanese had withdrawn from the mountaintop and left behind one artillery piece, two stragglers, and three dead. Enemy troops had festooned the abandoned 75mm gun with vines serving as tripwires for a booby-trap. When Marines hacked at the vines to examine the weapon more closely, they released the firing pins and detonated a round in the chamber. Since the Japanese gun crew had plugged the bore before they fled, the explosion ruptured the breach block and wounded several Marines.
After yielding the dominant terrain, the Japanese chose not to defend any of the villages clustered at the mountain’s base. This opened up a route for the 5th Marines across the Willaumez Peninsula to support further operations against General Matsuda’s line of retreat. Since the March 6 offensive, the Allied force had killed an estimated 150 Japanese at the cost of seventeen dead and 114 wounded, most casualties taking place on the first day. The last phase of the fighting that began on Red Beach consisted of securing Garua Island, abandoned by the Japanese.
Results of the action at the base of the Willaumez Peninsula were mixed. The grassy Talasea airstrip lacked enough length to accommodate fighter planes. Still, the division’s liaison planes made widespread use of it, landing on either side of a Japanese aircraft’s carcass until the wreckage could be hauled away. The trail net was a web of muddy paths that required long hours of hard work by Company F of the 17th Marines. Army engineers used a 10-ton wrecker to recover three Sherman tanks that had become mired during the fighting. By March 10, the trails could support a further advance. Two days later, the 3/5 Marines provided a guard of honor. The same American flag flown over Airfield No. 2 on Cape Gloucester was raised over Bitokara.
Final Combat and Relief
The Allied flotilla of Navy LCTs and Army LCMs supporting the Volupai landings continued to inflict damage on Japanese coastal traffic. On March 9, landing crafts carrying supplies around the tip of the peninsula spotted four enemy barges. They were beached and carelessly camouflaged. An LCT opened fire from its 20mm cannon and destroyed one of the Japanese barges. After that, two Army LCMs used their 37mm guns and opened fire on another barge beached on the shore.
The Japanese tried to make the best use of their shrinking number of barges, but the bulk of General Matsuda’s troops moved overland. A hundred Japanese were dug in at Garilli, but by the time Company K of the 3/5 Marines attacked on March 11, the Japanese had withdrawn to a new trail three miles away. Marines fought a series of actions lasting four days. The Japanese retreated a few hundred yards, dragging their 75mm gun that anchored each of the blocking positions. On March 16, Company K received 81mm mortars from an arriving LCM. The enemy turned their cannon seaward to deal with the threat but could not hit the landing craft. After the Marine mortars landed, they were quickly put into action. Japanese troops again withdrew, but this time they faded away since the bulk of General Matsuda’s force had escaped eastward.
The 5th Marines dispatched patrols southbound to the base of the Willaumez Peninsula, only capturing an occasional straggler, confirming the departure of General Matsuda’s primary force. The 1st Marine Division established training sites, a comfortable headquarters, and a hospital that used Japanese medicine stocks. Marines could swim in a rest area off the Garua beaches and hot springs ashore. The Navy then built a base on the Willaumez Peninsula for torpedo boats to harass surviving Japanese barges. On March 27, only the second day after the base was operating, Allied aircraft mistook two boats for enemy craft. They attacked—killing five and wounding eighteen sailors with friendly fire.
At the new training center on Garua, classes were taught to produce amphibious scouts for future operations. Headquarters decided that a reconnaissance of Cape Hoskins would be a suitable graduation exercise since aerial observers had seen no sign of enemy there. On April 13, sixteen trainees, two native guides, and a rifle platoon from the 2/5 Marines embarked on a pair of LCMs to Cape Hoskins. Two instructors stood by in one landing craft as the platoon established a trail block. Future scouts advanced toward the airfield at Cape Hoskins. The patrol encountered small arms and mortar fire en route to their objective. But the Marines had learned their lessons well, and they broke off the action and escaped with no casualties.
The Japanese had retreated. Major Komori’s troops blazed the trail for Sato’s command from Augitni to the northern coast. They encountered a dispiriting number of hungry stragglers as they marched toward Kandoka, a supply depot ten miles west of the Willaumez Peninsula. Komori’s troops came under fire from an American landing craft as they crossed the Kuhu River. The rain-swollen river was a serious obstacle and became a detour that lasted two days until reaching a point where the stream narrowed.
On March 17, Komori’s provisions ran out, forcing his troops to survive on birds, fish, and taro root, supplemented by coconuts from a nearby plantation. After losing a dozen men and additional time crossing the river, Komori’s troops struggled into Kandoka. Only to discover that the food and other supplies had already been carried off to Rabaul. Major Komori pressed on through this crushing disappointment. His men continued to live off the land as best they could. Another five Japanese troops drow
ned in the fast-moving Kuhu River, and a native hired guide defected. Major Komori came down with a severe bout of malaria, and although physically weakened, he forced himself to continue.
Japanese survivors strived onward toward Cape Hoskins and ultimately into Rabaul. On Easter Sunday, 1944, a handful of half-starved enemy troops wandered onto the San Remo Plantation, where Marines had bivouacked after pursuing Japanese troops eastward from the Willaumez Peninsula. The Marine unit was preparing to pass in review for the regimental commander when a sentry saw them and opened fire. The ensuing firefight killed three Japanese. One of the dead was Major Komori. In his pack was a rusty revolver and a diary that described the suffering of his command.
Colonel Sato took the rest of the rearguard intended for the Matsuda Force and set out from Augitni on March 7. One day after Major Komori had sent word on the nineteenth that the 5th Marines’ patrols had fanned out from the Willaumez Peninsula, where the reinforced regiment had landed two weeks earlier. When Sato reached Linga Linga he came across an abandoned Marine patrol bivouac. Sato’s force had shrunk to less than 250 men, half the number he had starting out.
The following day, he was shocked when Allied landing craft appeared as his men prepared to cross the Kapaluk River. Sato set up a perimeter to repel the expected attack. The boats carried elements of the 2/1 Marines and landed a patrol from Company F on a beach beyond Kandoka. Another platoon was dispatched westward along the coastal track. Colonel Sato was only aware of the landing’s general location and groped eastward toward the village. On March 26, they collided. The Japanese surprised the Marines crossing a small stream and pinned them down for three hours until Company F reinforcements forced the Japanese to break off, take to the jungle, and bypass Kandoka.
Colonel Sato’s column disappeared into the jungle. One of the division’s light airplanes scouting landing sites for the battalion sited the end of the column near Linga Linga. The Piper L-4 Grasshopper pilot sketched where the Japanese were and dropped the map to one of the troop-laden landing craft. The pilot then led the way to an undefended beach where the Marines waded ashore and set out to pursue Sato and his troops. On March 30, an eight-man Marine patrol spotted a pair of Japanese with their rifles slung. These enemy troops were members of a seventy-three man patrol—too many to handle.
After the enemy column moved off, the eight-man patrol hurried back to Kandoka and reported. Outfitted with more machine guns, mortars, and men. This reinforced rifle platoon returned to the trail. The Japanese encountered another Marine patrol, which took up a position on high ground commanding the trail. When the reinforced rifle platoon heard gunfire, they hurried to aid the other Marines. The resulting slaughter killed fifty-five Japanese troops, including Colonel Sato, who died, sword in hand, charging Marines. The Marines did not suffer one casualty during this encounter.
On April 9, the 3/1 Marines continued to search for enemy stragglers. The bulk of Matsuda’s force, and whatever supplies it could transport, had retreated to Cape Hoskins.
Army troops were taking over for the Marines. It had now been four months since the landing at Cape Gloucester. The time had come for the amphibious forces to move on to an operation that would make better use of their specialized equipment and training. The last Marine action took place on April 22, when an ambush, sprung by the 2/5 Marines, killed twenty Japanese and caused the campaign’s last Marine fatality. By seizing western New Britain as part of Rabaul’s isolation, the division suffered 1,083 wounded and 310 killed in action—one-fourth of the Japanese casualties.
The capture of the Cape Gloucester airfields in early February 1944 tied down the 1st Marine Division for an extended period. This alarmed the recently appointed Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Vandegrift. Referring to an extended engagement in New Britain, he wrote: “Six months there, and [the 1st Marine Division] will no longer be a well-trained amphibious division.”
Vandegrift urged US Fleet Admiral Earnest King to help him pry the division from General Douglas MacArthur’s grasp so he could again engage in amphibious operations. Admiral Nimitz, the commander-in-chief of Pacific Ocean Areas, requested the 1st Marine Division for the Palau Islands’ impending invasion. The capture would protect MacArthur’s flank on his advance to the Philippines.
Admiral Nimitz made the Army’s 140th Infantry Division available to MacArthur. He swapped a division capable of taking over the New Britain Campaign for one that could spearhead the amphibious offensive against Japan. MacArthur briefly kept control of one Marine division, Company A, 1st Tank Battalion. The unit’s medium tanks landed on April 22 at Hollandia on the northern coast of New Guinea. A swamp behind the beachhead stopped the Shermans from assisting the inland advance.
The commanding general of the Army’s 140th Infantry Division was Major General Isaac R. Brush. He arrived on April 10 and arranged for the relief. His advance echelon landed on the 23rd, with the rest of the division following five days after. The 1st Marine Division departed on April 6 and May 4. They left behind the 12th Defense Battalion, who continued to provide antiaircraft defense for the Cape Gloucester airfields until replaced by an Army unit later in May.
The 1st Marine Division had plunged into an unforgiving jungle and overwhelmed a resolute enemy. They captured the Cape Gloucester airfields and drove the Japanese from western New Britain in just over four months. Several factors helped the Marines defeat the Japanese. The Allied control of the air and sea provided mobility. It disrupted the coastal barge traffic, which the enemy depended on for the movement of large quantities of medicine and supplies desperately needed for the retreat to Rabaul. Landing craft armed with rockets, aided by tanks and rocket-equipped amphibian trucks fired from landing craft, helped support the landings. But the size of the island and the lack of fixed coastal defenses reduced the efficiency of naval gunfire.
Marines defied the swamp and undergrowth by using superior engineering skills and bringing forward tanks that crushed enemy emplacements—adding to formidable American firepower. Through photo analysis, an art that improved rapidly, the Americans misinterpreted the nature of the swamp forest. However, Marine intelligence made excellent use of captured Japanese documents throughout the campaign. But it was the courage and endurance of the average Marine who made victory possible on Cape Gloucester. A Marine braved discomfort, disease, and violent death during his time in this hellish green Inferno.
MacArthur’s Marines
General MacArthur was desperate for a trained amphibious unit to capture Rabaul. While the 1st Division Marines finished their rehabilitation in Australia, MacArthur approached the commander of the 6th Army, Lieutenant General Walter Kruger. MacArthur wanted to seize Rabaul and break the back of the Japanese resistance in the area. Worried about air cover for his amphibious operations, MacArthur planned to use the 1st Division Marines to capture the Cape Gloucester airfields. Allied aircraft based out of the captured airfields would support the 1st Division Marines assault on Rabaul.
The initial operational concept called for the conquest of western New Britain by storming Rabaul. He would split the 1st Marine Division by sending Combat Team A (5th Marines) against Gasmata on the island’s southern coast. Combat team C (7th Marines) would seize the beachhead near the principal objective at Cape Gloucester’s airfields. This would enable the Army’s 503rd Parachute Infantry to exploit the Cape Gloucester beachhead. Combat Team B (1st Marines) would be held in reserve.
But revisions came swiftly in late October 1943. The new plan now did not mention the capture of Rabaul. Major General Rupertus protested splitting Combat Team C. Lieutenant General Kruger decided to use all three battalions for the primary assault, substituting a battalion from Combat Team B for the West Coast landings. The airborne landing at Cape Gloucester would remain in the plan. But Rupertus warned that foul weather could delay the drop and jeopardize Marine battalions already fighting ashore. This altered version earmarked Army troops for the landing on the southern coast.
Kruger’s st
aff shifted the site from Gasmata to Arawe, a location closer to Allied airfields and farther from Rabaul’s troops and aircraft. Combat Team B would put one battalion ashore southwest of the airfields. Two battalions of the 1st Marines would follow up on the assault at Cape Gloucester with Combat Team C. This left the division reserve, Combat Team A, to employ elements of the 5th Marines and reinforce the Cape Gloucester landings or conduct operations against the offshore islands to the west of New Britain.
During a December 14 briefing, only one day before the landings at Arawe, General MacArthur asked how the Marines felt about the maneuver at Cape Gloucester. The division operations officer, Colonel Edwin A. Pollock, saw this opportunity to declare that the Marines objected to the plan. It depended on a speedy advance inland by a single reinforced regiment. To prevent heavy losses among the lightly armored paratroops, Pollock believed it would be better to bolster the amphibious forces than to try for an aerial envelopment that might fail or be delayed by the weather.
While he made no comment at the time, MacArthur may have heeded what Pollock said. Whatever the reason was, Kruger’s staff eliminated the airborne portion and instructed the two battalions of the 1st Marines, still with Combat Team B, to land immediately after the assault waves. This would sustain the momentum of their attack and alert the division reserve to provide further reinforcements.
General William Rupertus
Born on November 14, 1889, in Washington DC, Rupertus’s military career began in the District of Columbia National Guard. In 1910, he became a cadet in the US Revenue Cutter Service School, the Coast Guard Academy, in New London, Connecticut.