World War II Pacific: Battles and Campaigns from Guadalcanal to Okinawa 1942-1945 (WW2 Pacific Military History Series)

by Daniel Wrinn

  “Six enemy tanks lumbered down Harmon Road. They were met by bazooka men. Private First Class Bruno Oribiletti knocked out the first two enemy tanks before Marine Shermans from the 4th Tank Company finished off the rest. Oribiletti was killed but was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his bravery.

  “Enemy troops from the 38th also stumbled into the perimeter of the newly arrived 305th Infantry and paid for it with their lives.”

  After a night and a day of furious battle, the 38th ceased to exist. Colonel Suenaga, wounded in the first night’s counterattack, continued to flail at the Marines until he also was cut down. Takashina ordered the shattered remnants of the regiment north to join the reserves he’d need to defend the high ground around Fonte Ridge above the beachhead. Here, the general would leave his troops to fend for themselves.

  Battle of Fonte Ridge

  After two days of fierce fighting on the left flank of the 3rd Division Marines’ beachhead, in an area now known as Bundschu Ridge, the Marines suffered 613 casualties.

  The 21st Marines, in the center, delayed their advance on July 22 until the 3rd could catch up. Marines in exposed ridge positions were getting hammered by Japanese mortar fire. The barrage was so intense that Colonel Arthur H. Butler, in charge of the regiment, called up the division reserve to replace the 1st Battalion with the 2nd.

  The 9th Marines encountered little resistance while overrunning several abandoned Japanese positions in its drive to the shores of Apra Harbor. The 3rd Battalion, with the support of naval gunfire and bombs, assaulted Cabras Island. Marines landing in LVTs found hundreds of mines hidden in dense brambles.

  General Turnage assessed the situation on July 22 and wrote: “Japanese resistance increased considerably today on the division’s left and center. All of 3rd Battalion’s combat team were committed to a continuous attack since landing. The 21st CT [combat team] has been relieved by division reserve. Former is forty percent depleted. Any further advance will continue to thin our lines. It is now apparent that an additional combat team is needed. The 9th is fully committed to the capture of Cabras and Piti. Urgently recommend an additional combat team be attached to this division at the earliest possible time.”

  Turnage was refused the additional combat team he sought. The night of W +1 was fairly quiet in the 3rd Division’s sector. Except for the 1/21 Marines, who repulsed a Japanese counterattack complete with a mortar barrage and followed by a bayonet charge.

  The III Amphibious Corps commander, General Geiger, was aware that most Japanese troops had not yet been encountered. He told the 3rd Division: “close contact between adjacent units needed to become established by late afternoon and maintained throughout the night.”

  Despite orders to close gaps and keep contact, the 3rd Division was spread too thin to hold. When they halted for the night, they realized the distance between the units had widened. As night fell, front-line troops held strong points with gaps between them covered by interlocking bands of fire.

  The 3rd Marines reached the high ground of Bundschu Ridge on the 23rd. They hunted the remaining enemy stragglers. The enemy had withdrawn from the immediate area but hadn’t gone far. When the 21st Marines’ patrols tried to link up with the 3rd Marines, they were pushed back by fire from cleverly hidden machine guns. Nearly impossible to spot in the underground and rock-strewn ravines. All along the ridges that the Marines held were stretches of deadly open ground that completely blanketed enemy fire from higher positions.

  On the night of the 23rd, the 9th Marines advanced through open territory dotted by hills, each of which a potential enemy bastion. Patrols sent south along the shoreline to contact the 1st Brigade took fire from the hills on its left flank. They also ran into a concentration of American artillery and naval gunfire directed at the enemy defenders on Orote. The patrol was permitted to turn back.

  On the 24th, the 3rd and 21st Marine Regiments finally made contact on the heights. But the linkup was an illusion. There were no solid front lines, only strong points. No one could be certain that the Japanese had all been accounted for. But the areas that had been probed and attacked now seemed secure.

  Every rifleman knew that much of the same lay ahead. They saw their next objective on the horizon to the front on the Mount Tenjo Road that crossed the high ground, framing the beachhead.

  The division had already suffered over 2,000 casualties—the majority in the infantry units. The Japanese, who’d lost just as many if not more men in the north alone, showed no signs of abandoning their ferocious defense. General Takashina gathered his forces to prepare an all-out counterattack as Marines were advancing to their first objective on the FBHL (Force Beachhead Line), securing the high ground and linking up the two beachheads.

  Takashina had been bringing his reserve troops into the rugged hills along Mount Tenjo Road since the American landings. He called in his reserves from scattered positions all over the island. By July 25, W-DayCaptain4, he had over 5,000 men, mostly made up of the 10th Independent Mixed Regiment, in position and ready to attack.

  The fighting on the 25th was as intense as any since the Marines invaded. The 2/9 Marines were attached to the 3rd Marines to bring a relatively intact unit into the fight and give the battered 1/3 Marines a chance to recover. By nightfall, the 2/9 Marines had driven a wedge into the Japanese lines and took Mount Tenjo Road. They were only four hundred yards short of reaching their objective at Fonte.

  Throughout the relentless firefights, the 3rd Marines blasted and burned their way through barriers of enemy cave defenses. They finally linked up with the 9th Marines on the left. At 1900, Company G of 9th Marines pulled back one hundred yards to position themselves forward of the road, giving them a better observation and field of fire. Company F reached an occupied rocky prominence some one hundred fifty yards ahead of Company G in the center while they also pulled back for a better defense. The scene was set for a pitched battle on Fonte Ridge. Captain Louis Wilson (who became the 26th Commandant of the Marine Corps in 1976) led Company F in the intense fight for Fonte Ridge in which casualties were caused on both sides from small arms fire at point-blank range.

  Captain Wilson was awarded the Medal of Honor for his leadership, doggedness, and organizational skill under fire. Wilson was wounded three times while he led attacks into the core of the Fonte action. Part of his citation reads: “In fierce fighting and hand-to-hand encounters, he led his men in a furiously waged battle for ten hours and tenaciously held his line and repelled fanatic counterattacks from the Japanese until he crushed the last efforts of the hard-pressed enemy.”

  Captain Wilson led and organized the seventeen-man patrol that climbed the slope in the face of the continuous enemy fire, seizing Fonte’s critical high ground.

  Colonel Frazier West recalled the battle for Fonte Ridge as brisk, bitter, and close. A young officer, West commanded Company G and reinforced Wilson’s unit. He joined Company F’s flank and then reconnoitered to spot enemy positions and shared the night in a joint command post with Captain Wilson.

  In late afternoon on the 25th, a platoon of four tanks from Company C made their way up Mount Tenjo Road and got into position facing the Japanese strongpoints. At the climax of the battle, Wilson and West’s companies were still holding their positions. First Lieutenant Wilcie O’Bannon, the XO of Company F, got downslope from his exposed position and brought up two tanks. By using telephones mounted in the rear of these tanks to communicate with the Marines inside, O’Bannon described targets for the tanks as he positioned them to support West’s and Wilson’s Marines.

  The tanks came up with the precious cargo of ammunition. Volunteers stuffed grenades in their pockets and hung bandoleers over shoulders, pocketed clips, and carried grenade boxes on their shoulders to deliver like birthday presents all along the line to Companies F and G—and what was left of Company E.

  Colonel West used a tank radio circuit to call in naval gunfire. This guaranteed that all the terrain before him would be lit all night by star shells
and high explosive naval gunfire.

  At dawn on July 26, over 600 dead Japanese laid in front of the 2/9 Marine positions. But the battle was not over. General Turnage ordered the crest of the reverse slope taken. More Japanese counterattacks would come, and again fighting would be hand-to-hand. But by July 28, the capture of Fonte Ridge was no longer in question. Companies E, F, and G took their objectives on the crest, costing the battalion 242 casualties in four murderous days.

  The 21st Marines did not have it any easier on the 25th. After a hard morning of fighting, they were able to clear the front in the center of the line. The 2/21 Marines dealt with similar pockets of diehard enemy soldiers like those that held up the 2/9 Marines on Fonte. Hidden in cave positions on the eastern draw of the Asan River, inland from the beachhead.

  The Japanese were destroyed only after repeated Marine assaults and close-in fighting. According to the official Marine Corps history of the campaign: “every foot of ground that fell to the Marines were paid in heavy casualties, and every man available was needed in the assault.”

  The 9th Marines made good progress on the 25th and reached their objective of the Sasa River by 0915. The 9th Marines had even taken more ground than was planned. From there, General Turnage repositioned the 9th Marines to support the fighting on the struggling left flank. The 2nd Battalion pulled out of position to reinforce the 3rd Marines, and the remaining two battalions spread out a little further in their position.

  A determined enemy counterattack hit the 3rd Division Marines on the night of July 25. The intensity of the Japanese counterattack was matched across the 3rd Division’s front. It wasn’t long before Japanese troops roaming the rear slipped into Marine perimeters and snuck downstream into valleys and ravines leading to the beaches.

  Major Henry Aplington II commanded the 1/3 Marines, the only infantry reserve. His Marines held positions on the hills of what had been a quiet sector. He wrote: “Heavy rain came when it got dark. On the line, Marines huddled under ponchos in their wet foxholes, trying to figure out the meaning of the obvious activity by the Japanese.

  “Near midnight the Japs were probing the 21st Marines’ lines and slopping over into those of the 9th Marines. All was quiet in our circle of hills, and we received no notifications when the probing increased its intensity or at 0400 when the enemy opened their attack. My first inkling came at about 0430 when my three companies on the hills erupted into fire and called for mortar support. I talked to the company commanders and asked them what was going on, only to be told that the Japs were all around them. The enemy was close. Three of my dead had been killed by bayonet attacks.”

  Private Dale Fetzer was a dog handler assigned to the 1/9 Marines with his black Labrador Retriever. His dog Skipper was asleep in front of his handler’s foxhole. Suddenly Skipper bolted upright. His nose pointed up and toward Mount Tenjo. Private Fetzer shouted, “get the lieutenant. The Japs are coming.”

  Japanese troops poured down the slopes at 0400 in a furious banzai attack. The enemy had been sighted drinking during the afternoon in the higher hills and now some appeared drunk.

  The 21st Marines were along a low ridge close to Mount Tenjo Road. The banzai charge smashed against the 3rd Battalion, and the enemy seized a machine gun position—quickly recaptured by Marines. The 3rd Division held a thin front on the right flank of the 21st Marines and to the left of the 9th Marines.

  Some of the Japanese raiders got through the sparsely manned gap between the battalions. The Japanese charged fearlessly at the artillery, tanks, and ammunition supply dumps. Their attack was scattered and unorganized. But fighting was brutal and shattered the hastily erected Marine roadblock between the battalions.

  Some attackers got through the lines along the front. Fifty enemy troops reached the division hospital. Doctors evacuated the gravely wounded, but the walking wounded joined stretcher-bearers, cooks, bakers, and corpsmen to form a line fighting off the attackers. One of the walking wounded, Private Michael Ryan, ran with a wounded foot through crossfire to join the line and help fight off the enemy assault.

  Colonel George Van Orden assembled two companies of the 3rd Pioneer Battalion to eliminate this threat. Marine pioneers killed thirty-three enemy troops in less than three hours and only lost three of their men. The 3rd Medical Battalion took twenty casualties, but only one patient was killed in the fighting.

  For many men in this furious and confused melee breaking out over Marine positions, Corporal Charles Moore’s experiences weren’t unique. His outfit held a position along a quarter mile from Fonte plateau. He later wrote: “We set up on the road that made a sharp turn overlooking a draw. It was Second Platoon’s last stand. Three attacks that night, and by the third, no one was left to fight—so they broke through. They came in droves, throwing hand grenades and hacked up some of our platoon. In the morning, I only had ten rounds of ammo left and half the clip for my BAR. I was holding those rounds back in case I needed them to make a break for it. Everyone was quiet, either wounded or dead. The Japs came in to take out their dead and wounded steps from the edge of my foxhole. I held my breath. I watched them as they milled around until dawn, and then they left.”

  With the seizure of Fonte Ridge, the capture of the beachhead was now complete. The 3rd Division fought bravely throughout the bloody night until they finished off the determined Japanese enemy on Guam. What made the fighting for Fonte important was the fact that the advance to the north end of the island could not take place until Fonte Ridge was seized and held.

  The enemy attack also failed in the south, although it was touch and go at times. However, Japanese sailors on Orote were just as committed as the soldiers on Fonte to drive the Allies from Guam.

  Capture of Orote Peninsula

  The 22nd Marines advanced up the coast from Agat and fought a series of brutal battles against stubborn enemy defenders. The 4th Marines swept up the slopes of Mount Alifan and secured the high ground overlooking the beachhead. By the 25th, the brigade lined up across from the mouth of the Orote Peninsula. They faced formidable Japanese defenses. Enemy defenders were anchored in swamps and low hillocks concealed by heavy undergrowth—bristling with automatic weapons.

  The 77th Infantry Division took over the rest of the southern beachhead, relieving the 4th Marines of their patrolling duties in the hills to the west. Artillery and naval guns pounded the Japanese on Orote without letup. In case of an enemy air attack, beach defenses from Bangi Point to Agat were manned by the 9th Defense Battalion. Few Japanese planes were still in the sky, so antiaircraft gunners concentrated their firing across the water into the southern flank of enemy positions on Orote.

  The 14th Defense Battalion on Cabras Island moved into position to provide direct flanking fire on the Peninsula’s northern coast. They stood ready to elevate their guns and fire at enemy planes in the skies.

  At dawn on July 26, over 5,000 Japanese troops on Orote took part in General Takashina’s desperate counterattack. Enemy soldiers stormed out of the mangrove swamp and charged with swords, grenades, and small arms fire. Like in the north, many of the Japanese attackers had fortified themselves with sake. Japanese officers led senseless soldiers who attacked Marine tanks armed only with samurai swords. There were also skilled and deadly attacks. Marines were stabbed and sliced in their foxholes.

  In charge of Company L of the 22nd Marines, Captain Robert Frank was on the front relaying enemy positions to brigade artillery. He later wrote: “The artillery response was effective and intense. The fire was drawn in closer to our front lines. We threw over 25,000 shells into the pockets of the Japanese between midnight and 3 AM. Screaming banzai attacks came at 1230 and then again at 0145 and 0315. At daylight, muddy ground in front of Marine positions was slick with blood. Over 400 Japanese bodies were sprawled out in the driving rain.”

  General Shepherd knew his front-line troops, the 4th Marines on the left and 22nd Marines on the right, could withstand the night’s banzai attacks. He ordered a counterattack launched at
0730. But first, there would be another artillery barrage. At dawn, the bombardment opened with the 77th Infantry Division’s 105s and 155s, and whatever other guns the 12th Marines could spare. This became one of the most intense barrages of the campaign.

  Major Charles Davis of the 77th Division Artillery later wrote about General Shepherd’s request to turn the heavy guns to face Orote in order to soften Japanese positions. The 105s and 155s hammered the enemy defenders’ well-prepared positions and shredded the protection, covering, and camouflage from bunkers and trenches. Pieces of Japanese troops hung in trees. Marines saw that this fire was effective and made it a point to return and congratulate the section leaders from the 77th Artillery.

  When the advance came, it only moved one hundred yards before it was attacked by a blistering front of machine gun and small arms fire. Enemy artillery fell furiously, leaving Marines wondering if the fire was from their own guns—a favorite Japanese tactic. The Japanese return fire stalled the 22nd Marine’s advance. It wasn’t until 0830 before the attack was in full force again, spearheaded by Army tanks.

  In front of the 22nd Marines was that mangrove swamp where the banzai attack was mounted the night before. Still heavily occupied by the Japanese, the only way to penetrate it was through a 200-yard-long corridor along the regimental boundary covered by Japanese fire. It could only be navigated under cover of tanks. Armor gunners and commanders directed their fire just over the head of prone Marines into the gun ports of enemy pillboxes.