THE ROAD BACK

hi world war two in the Pacific was fought under the most trying conditions difficult terrain and extremes of climate there were few more miserable battlegrounds anywhere in the world than the steaming jungles of disease-ridden New Guinea the men who fought across the 1500 mile long island experienced war at its worst there was always a good chance that a sniper might be concealed only a few yards away in New Guinea the Allied fighting men could never be certain that the enemy was in any one place in Australia during 1942 and 43 the attention of everyone on that island continent was concentrated on the road back a series of campaigns to be made by us under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur nothing is more strict than the ultimate Greek conquest and liberation from the enemy and adjacent land by late 1943 the road back against the enemy lay principally along the northern coast of New Guinea up the tail of the bird shaped Island by December US Marines and soldiers had moved virtually all the way up the Solomon Islands chain to westward US and Australian forces attacked the enemy in the Bismarck Archipelago area on December 15th the strategically situated island of New Britain was invaded the assault was made by the Army's 112th Cavalry Regiment 1,700 strong the invasion crafts were attacked by more than 30 Japanese plane the invasion was carried out successfully despite intense air activity over the landing beaches the soldiers and the assault waves hadn't expected to be hit before reaching the beach and Aurora for the first time in a combat operation rockets were used to soften up the beaches the landings were successfully achieved in spite of the heavy enemy air attack and a beachhead was established attached to the 158 infantry regiment a Tarawa was a group of American Indians who were used chiefly as Scouts stealthily seeking out enemy troop concentrations was a specialty of the Indians throughout the war in many Pacific battles ground forces officers came to appreciate how valuable the Indians were in their reconnaissance assignments silent and sure-footed the Indian Scouts went out on mission after mission behind the enemy lines in a war which called for the employment of stealth and deception the Indians were beating the enemy at his own game in addition to serving as Scouts and snipers the Indians often functioned as couriers they were most adept at carrying important messages safely through territory not yet completely won in the south and southwest Pacific another small group of men called coast Watchers played a major part and many alight victories in that area coast Watchers were men who were thoroughly familiar with the territory held by the enemy top priority information on weather conditions and on the enemy's latest activities was gathered by these volunteers who worked with the help of friendly natives behind enemy lines discovery of course would mean instant death the coast watchers most of whom were Australian transmitted this vital information to the alliance by radio after each transmission the CW would usually be forced to change his location to circumvent discovery by the enemy if the message got through successfully to allied units in the area an invasion force or air or naval strike group could move in on enemy targets more quickly and also cut down on their own casualties in late December 1943 after the Arama diversion a US invasion was planned at another point on western New Britain at Cape Gloucester in a pre invasion strike US v air force planes strafed enemy positions and ruff 400 tons of bombs on the beaches the invasion was begun on the day after Christmas 1943 the assault troops were First Division Marines most of the men in the assault waves were veterans of the long bloody campaign fought by the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal commanded by Marine General William repeaters the troops went quickly about the business of launching the invasion the scheduled plan for the assault on Cape Gloucester was executed successfully by the invasion force of marine resistance was not expected to be heavy but then no-one could be entirely certain the main landing was made on the east coast of Cape Gloucester the beaches had been thoroughly softened up by pre-invasion bombardments and enemy opposition was like an unusual situation for marine assault waves in the Pacific in 1943 with the beachhead quickly seized tanks came ashore and the drive was on for the capture of the all-important airfield though the enemy wasn't particularly troublesome for the first few days the great morass of mud slowed the marine advance down but the rifleman working closely with the tanks kept pushing inland without pause the marine tank crews handled their vehicles are thoughtfully in the matted jungle drawing praise from the army every effective weapon was used against the dog in enemy after 22 days the enemy was largely put to rout the Marines carved up two disorganized clusters of enemy troops who hadn't fled toward Rabaul the US had succeeded to complete control of Western New Britain the enemy was fast losing his South Seas empire the attack on rebel on the far eastern tip of New Britain was stepped up in early 1944 thousands of tons of bombs were dropped on the enemy's one-time stronghold in a six-month campaign US planes knocked out Japan's most powerful base in the southwest Pacific Rafal was rendered completely useless to the enemy for the ground forces there was one more important area in the Bismarck Archipelago the Admiralty Islands the u.s. command decided that they must be taken before the actual invasion of the islands a reconnaissance party went ashore on Los Negros to determine the enemy's strength for 24 hours they took stock and discovered that the island seemingly deserted though it looked was actually heavily garrison it had been decided to assault close Negros first and then invade manouse the larger island the GIS who were experiencing their baptism of fire headed towards Shore on the morning of February 29th 1944 less than two dozen u.s. planes appeared owing to poor weather the assault soldiers were expecting heavy resistance on the beaches a good percentage of the GIS landed successfully but once ashore they found themselves in a furious battle against the determined enemy it was a rough fight in the campaign on the Admiralty's us ground forces suffered some 1200 casualties thanks to blood plasma and newly developed drugs many of the men who had been badly wounded were saved with the capture of the two principal islands and the Admiralty's the entire Bismarck area was sealed off the US forces now controlled the strategic air strips which had been used with great effectiveness by the enemy the quickening offensive in New Guinea required the use of all available army divisions general Frederick Irving's spent the 24th on its way into combat you're about to embark on your great adventure probably the greatest adventure there's occurred to you during your lifetime it is the operation we've been looking forward to for a long time we're all ready now the few miscellaneous things that I want to mention tonight first is I want to prepare you mentally for the confusion of combat if you keep quiet the [ __ ] does not know anything about you but as soon as you fire your rifle is the same as saying Here I am at the same time you have little chance of hitting anybody in the dark you have a big chance of hitting your own men so keep that in mind firing at night as medically and so forth is a mark of it you'll discipline an untrained troops I don't expect any of that in this division in conclusion I want to wish you the best of luck in this operation these organizations have a grand reputation I know that when the story of this war is written did you have more than your share of decorations and honors and that there'll be no units no combat team that will equip themselves any better and they will this combat team here the next jump in the Leapfrog operation up the back of the New Guinea bird was to I to pay some 400 miles westward the offensive force was a powerful one the largest fleet to support any landing in the southwest Pacific Theater up to this point accompanied an assault force of some twenty two thousand five hundred true a large proportion of the soldiers who were to make the invasion that I to pay were battle wise veterans of earlier New Guinea engagements like the men of the 163rd Infantry Regiment we'd been in a few scraps with the enemy on New Guinea but nothing this big this time it looked as though we were really going to throw a punch it was quite a show the bombardment cheered us all up the more those big guns pounded the beaches the fewer gaps there would be to meet us when we went ashore we started for the beach soon after dawn we were all a little nervous and that choppy sea didn't help that feeling in the pit of the stomach funny thing but no matter how many combat landings you made you never completely got over that case of nerves just before the battle once the shooting started on shore the spell was usually broken and you'd be so busy keeping on the alert that you wouldn't have time to be nervous the initial resistance to the landing at height of pay was relatively light but as the battle progressed US forces were subsequently to cut off and chop up the enemy's entire 18th army at the same time a larger US force was landing some 125 miles farther west at Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea invasions were made at two points along the coast opposition on both beaches was like the first phase of the attack was carried out according to plan the men of the Army's 41st and 24th division's executed the operation without a hitch the plan called for the troops to drive quickly inland toward the three airfields which were the principal objectives in the use of the northern New Guinea coastal area the troops were faced with a serious transportation problem now and then the GIS encountered the enemy but they offered no serious problem with the two invasion forces linked up the sought-after airfields in the Santini area fell to the US after only five days but it soon became apparent that because of the swampy terrain the strip's could not be built in two major phases a month later US forces moved 145 miles farther west along the birds back by seizing an area on the New Guinea coast that tomb artillery could be employed to shell the real objective the island of water two miles offshore from the beachhead near to assault troops launched the shore to shore invasion of what the island spearhead of the was the 163rd Infantry Regiment the same men who had landed a tie to pay three weeks earlier for some reason somebody decided that we had to have walked the island probably because the airfield was a little better than the last ones we took it was a short but tough battle the enemy troops on Wachter were well dug in and we had to use our most efficient weapons for getting at them and knocking them out of the battle we killed almost 800 in the two-day fight on walk death 8 days later US soldiers made still another landing at biak 180 miles westward in Kiel Vinc Bay just before the landing the rocket ships went to work Rockets were proving more effective than naval gunfire in last-minute bombardments of the invasion beaches the gi's of the 41st division who made the assault on biack were expecting a rough time once they arrived on shore 12,000 men went ashore on piarc on that first day 12 medium tanks were landed during the first 10 hours the battle that Biak didn't get started in earnest until the US force was well established ashore u.s. Sherman's were to play a responsible part in the alight victory in the pitched battle beot turned into one of the most hotly contested engagements in the southwest Pacific Theater the enemy refused to surrender the island two and a half weeks after the battle and Biak began General Robert L Eichelberger was placed in command of the ground forces with orders to bring the bloody fight to a successful conclusion for the second time in New Guinea general Eichelberger cleaned up a messy operation in early July another hop to noon for Island carried the US drive 80 miles still farther west the small island in gil Vinc bay was invaded by some 7,000 g eyes of the 158 regimental combat team the assault force expected to encounter heavy opposition on the only beach where a landing was feasible but the initial beachhead was established quickly and with comparative ease the u.s. invasion force outnumbered the enemy on noon for by three or four to one once more the GIS were prepared for a grueling campaign but the US Command had overestimated the enemy strength on the island against light resistance the GIS moved quickly across the island but the command still expected trouble and called for reinforcements to be dropped by parachute over the recently seized airfield the paratroopers making the jump were the men of the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment most of them veterans of the drop on nutzy earlier in the New Guinea campaign but this time the operation was poorly executed the troopers had been scheduled to drop a distance of at least 400 feet but some were discoursed from the planes at Heights as low as 175 feet in addition the plane should have flown in single file rather than two abreast and the landing area chosen was so narrow that only a part of the group managed to land on the field many of the men missed the drop zone some by a wide margin of the 739 men who made the initial jump at noon for almost 10 percent were casualties and not related in any way to enemy action nevertheless by the fifth day all three airfields on noon four were in US possession and all that was left was mopping up Nome four was by no means the final objective in the New Guinea campaign in late July the next hop to sansa for took the US forces to the head of the New Guinea bird the landing was not opposed but the 20,000 G eyes of the sixth division were taking no chances the assault was made against an enemy which was discovered to be in the process of evacuating the area US forces had succeeded in driving across the length of New Guinea to the very tip of the 1500 mile long island in mid-september US soldiers invaded Morotai an island in the Moluccas lying between New Guinea and the Philippines with this engagement the New Guinea campaign was successfully concluded a never-to-be-forgotten experience in the lives of the men who fought there from the greenest private to general Eichelberger historians will state that the two-year fight for New Guinea was one of the toughest in modern warfare I agree with that the men who served under my command in New Guinea from 1942 until late 44 what day and night under conditions which would have broken the spirit of less stout-hearted troops fighting on that terrain and that abominable climate and against an enemy as resourceful as the Japanese was tough enough but the tropical diseases malaria dengue fever scrub typhus jungle rot provided the finishing touches the fact that we won that most vital island after some 20 odd months of dogged battling as a tribute to the fighting qualities of the American soldier while my gratitude goes out to our brothers of the Navy and air as an infantry commander I must say that New Guinea was a war of in the United States and Australian and by virtue of our victory on New Guinea the invasion of the Philippines was made possible while the leap frogging hops were made in the southwest Pacific us amphibious forces in the Central Pacific were engaged in their own campaign of island hopping the Marianas were a most strategically important invasion target in June 1944 and of garbage in the fire