During the afternoon of 3 January atrio of Sherman tanks reached thecreek only to discover that the bankdropped off too sharply for them .tonegotiate. The engineers sent for abulldozer, which arrived, loweredits blade, and began gouging at the

lip of the embankment. Realizingthe danger if tanks succeeded incrossing the creek, the Japaneseopened fire on the bulldozer,wounding the driver. A volunteerclimbed onto the exposed driver'sseat and took over until he, too, was

wounded. Another Marine steppedforward, but instead of climbingonto the machine, he walked along-side, using its bulk for cover as hemanipulated the controls with ashovel and an axe handle. By dark,he had finished the job of convert-ing the impassable bank into a read-ily negotiated ramp.

On the morning of 4 January, the,first tank clanked down the rampand across the stream. As the Sher-man emerged on the other side,Marine riflemen cut down twoJapanese soldiers trying to detonatemagnetic mines against its sides.Other medium tanks followed, alsoaccompanied by infantry, and brokeopen the bunkers that barred theway. The 3d Battalion, 7th Marines,and the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines,surged onward past the creek,squeezing out the 2d Battalion, 7thMarines, which crossed in the wakeof those two units to come abreastof them on the far right of the linethat closed in on the jungle conceal-ing Aogiri Ridge. The 1st Battalion,7th Marines, thereupon joined thesouthward advance, tying in withthe 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, topresent a four-battalion front thatincluded the 2d Battalion and 3dBattalions, 7th Marines.

Once across Suicide Creek, theMarines groped for Aogiri Ridge,which for a time simply seemed tobe another name for Hill 150, a ter-rain feature that appeared on Amer-ican maps. The advance rapidlyoverran the hill, but Japanese resis-tance in the vicinity did not dimin-ish. On 7 January, enemy firewounded Lieutenant Colonel DavidS. MacDougal, commanding officerof the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines. Hisexecutive officer, Major JosephSkoczylas, took over until he, too,was wounded. Lieutenant ColonelLewis B. Puller, temporarily in com-mand of the 3d Battalion, 7thMarines, assumed responsibility forboth battalions until the arrival on

Department of Defense (LJSMC) photo 72292

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

15

the morning of 8 January of Lieu-tenant Colonel Lewis W. Walt, re-cently assigned as executive officerof the 5th Marines, who took overthe regiment's 3d Battalion.

Upon assuming command of thebattalion, Walt continued th.e previ-ous day's attack. As his Marinesbraved savage fire and thick jungle,they began moving up a rapidlysteepening slope. As night ap-proached, the battalion formed aperimeter and dug in. RandomJapanese fire and sudden skirm.ishespunctuated the darkness. The na-ture of the terrain and the deter-mined resistance convinced Walt

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72283 that he had found Aogiri Ridge.From Hell's Point, athwart the route to the airfields, to Suicide Creek near the Yellow Walt's battalion needed the shockBeaches, medium tanks and infantry team up to shatter the enemy's log and earthen action and firepower of tanks, butbunkers.

drenching rain, mud, and rampag-iijg streams stopped the armoredvehicles. The heaviest weapon thatthe Marines managed to bring for-ward was a single 37mm gun, man-handled into position on the after-noon of 9 January, While the 11thMarines hammered the crest of Ao-gin Ridge, the 1st and 3d Battalions,7th Marines, probed the flanks ofthe position and Walt's 3d Battalion,5th Marines, pushed ahead in thecenter, seizing a narrow segment ofthe slope, its apex just short of thecrest. By dusk, said the 1st MarineDivision's special action report,Walt's men had "reached the limitof their physical endurance andmorale was low. It was a question ofwhether or not they could hold theirhard-earned gains." The crew of the37mm gun opened fire in support ofthe afternoon's final attack, but afterjust three rounds, four of the ninemen handling the weapon werekilled or wounded. Walt called forvolunteers; when no one responded,he and his runner crawled to thegun and began pushing the weaponup the incline. Twice more the gunbarked, cutting a swath through theundergrowth, and a third round ofcanister destroyed a machine gun.

16

Other Marines then took over fromWalt and the runner, with new vol-unteers replacing those cut down bythe enemy. The improvised crewkept firing canister rounds everyfew yards until they had wrestledthe weapon to the crest. There theMarines dug in, as close as ten yardsto the bunkers the Japanese hadbuilt on the crest and reverse slope.

At 0115 on the morning of 10 Jan-uary, the Japanese emerged fromtheir positions and charged througha curtain of rain, shouting and fir-ing as they came. The Marinesclinging to Aogiri Ridge broke upthis attack and three others that fol-lowed, firing off almost all their am-

Walt's Ridge in his honor.

munition in doing so. A carryingparty scaled the muddy slope withbelts and clips for the machine gunsand rifles, but there barely was timeto distribute the ammunition beforethe Japanese launched the fifth at-tack of the morning. Marine ar-tillery tore into the enemy, as for-ward observers, their visionobstructed by rain and jungle, ad-justed fire by sound more than bysight, moving 105mm concentra-tions to within 50 yards of the Ma-rine infantrymen. A Japanese officeremerged from the darkness and ranalmost to Walt's foxhole before frag-ments from a shell bursting in thetrees overhead cut him down. This

proved to be the high-water markof the counterattack against AogiriRidge, for the Japanese tide recededas the daylight grew brighter. At0800, when the Marines moved for-ward, they did not encounter evenone living Japanese on the terrainfeature they renamed Walt's Ridgein honor of their commander, whoreceived the Navy Cross for his in-spirational leadership.

One Japanese stronghold in thevicinity of Aogiri Ridge still sur-vived, a supply dump located alonga trail linking the ridge to Hill 150.On 11 January, Lieutenant ColonelWeber's 1st Battalion, 7th Marines,supported by a pair of half-tracksand a platoon of light tanks, elimi-nated this pocket in four hours offighting. Fifteen days of combatsince the landings on 26 December,had cost the division 180 killed and636 wounded in action.

The next objective, Hill 660, layat the left of General Shepherd'szone of action, just inland of thecoastal track. The 3d Battalion, 7thMarines, commanded since 9 Janu-ary by Lieutenant Colonel HenryW. Buse, Jr., got the assignment ofseizing the hill. In preparation forBuse's attack, Captain Joseph W.Buckley, commander of theWeapons Company, 7th Marines,set up a task force to bypass Hill660 and block the coastal trail be-yond that objective. Buckley'sgroup—two platoons of infantry, aplatoon of 37mm guns, two lighttanks, two half-tracks mounting75mm guns, a platoon of pioneersfrom the 17th Marines with a bull-dozer, and one of the Army'srocket-firing DUKWs—pushedthrough the mud and set up a road.-block athwart the line of retreatfrom Hill 660. The Japanese di-rected long-range plunging fireagainst Buckley's command as itadvanced roughly one mile alongthe trail. Because of their flat trajec-tory, his 75mm and 37mm guns

LtCol Lewis W Walt earned the Navy Cross leading an attack up Aogiri Ridge, renamed

Department of Defense (U5Mc photo 977113

17

could not destroy the enemy's auto-matic weapons, but the Marinessucceeded in forcing the hostilegunners to keep their heads down.As they advanced, Buckley's menunreeled telephone wire to main-tain contact with higher headquar-ters. Once the roadblock was inplace and camouflaged, the captainrequested that a truck bring hotmeals for his men. When the vehiclebogged down, he sent the bulldozerto push it free.

After aerial bombardment andpreparatory artillery fire, Buse'sbattalion started up the hill at about0930 on 13 January. His supportingtanks could not negotiate theravines that scarred the hillside. In-deed, the going became so steepthat riflemen sometimes had tosling arms, seize handholds amongthe vines, and pull themselves up-

Advancing past I-Jill 660, a task force under Capt Joseph W Buckleycuts the line of retreat for the Japanese defenders. The 37mm gun in

Department of Defense (LJSMc) photo 71520

the emplacement on the right and the half-track mounted 75mm gunon the left drove the attacking enemy back with heavy casualties.

Gaunt, weary, hollow-eyed, machine gunner PFC George C. Miller carries hisweapon to the rear after 19 days of heavy fighting while beating back the Japan-ese counterattack at i-Jill 660. This moving photograph was taken by MarineCorps combat photographer Sgt Robert R. Brenner.

Department of Defense (LJsMc) photo 72273

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opened fire from hurriedly dugtrenches at the crest, pinning downthe Marines climbing toward themuntil mortar fire silenced the enemyweapons, which lacked overheadcover. Buse's riflemen followedclosely behind the mortar barrage,scattering the defenders, some ofwhom tried to escape along thecoastal trail, where Buckley's taskforce waited to cut them down.

Apparently delayed by torrentialrain, the Japanese did not counter-attack Hill 660 until 16 January.Roughly two companies ofKatayama's troops stormed up thesouthwestern slope only to beslaughtered by mortar, artillery. andsmall-arms fire. Many of thoselucky enough to survive tried tobreak through Buckley's roadblock,where 48 of the enemy perished.

With the capture of Hill 660, thenature of the campaign changed.The assault phase had captured itsobjective and eliminated the possi-bility of a Japanese counterattackagainst the airfield complex. Next,the Marines would repulse theJapanese who harassed the sec-ondary beachhead at Cape Merkusand secure the mountainous, jungle-covered interior of Cape Gloucesteisouth of the airfields and betweenthe Green and Yellow Beaches.

figure in American plans. A seriesof concealed bunkers, boasting inte-grated fields of fire, held the lightlyarmed cavalrymen in check, as thedefenders directed harassing fire atthe beachhead.

Because the cavalry unit lackedheavy weapons, a call went out forthose of the 1st Marine Division'stanks that had remained behind atFinschhafen, New Guinea, becausearmor enough was already churn-ing up the mud of Cape Gloucester.Company B, 1st Marine Tank Battal-ion, with 18 M5A1 light tanksmounting 37mm guns, and the 2dBattalion, 158th Infantry arrived atCape Merkus, moved into positionby 15 January and attacked on thefollowing day. A squadron of ArmyAir Forces B-24s dropped 1,000-pound bombs on the jungle-covereddefenses, B-25s followed up, andmortars and artillery joined in thebombardment, after which two pla-toons of tanks, ten vehicles in all,and two companies of infantrysurged forward. Some of the tanksbogged down in the rain-soakedsoil, and tank retrievers had to pullthem free. Despite mud and nearlyimpenetrable thickets, the tank-in-

fantry teams found and destroyedmost of the bunkers. Having elimi-nated the source of harassing fire,the troops pulled back after de-stroying a tank immobilized by athrown track so that the enemycould not use it as a pillbox. An-other tank, trapped in a crater, alsowas earmarked for destruction, butArmy engineers managed to free itand bring it back.

The attack on 16 January brokethe back of Japanese resistance. Ko-mon ordered a retreat to the vicin-ity of the airstrip, but the 112thCavalry launched an attack thatcaught the slowly moving defend-ers and inflicted further casualties.By the time the enemy dug in todefend the airfield, which theAmericans had no intention of seiz-ing, Komori's men had suffered 116killed, 117 wounded, 14 dead ofdisease, and another 80 too ill tofight. The Japanese hung on despitesickness and starvation, until 24February, when Komori receivedorders to join in a general retreat byMatsucla Force.

Across the island, after the victo-ries at Walt's Ridge and Hill 660,the 5th Marines concentrated onseizing control of the shores of Bor-

At Cape Merkus on the southcoast of western New Britain, thefighting proved desultory in com-parison to the violent struggle inthe vicinity of Cape Gloucester. TheJapanese in the south remained con-tent to take advantage of the densejungle and contain the 112th Cav-alry on the Cape Merkus peninsula.Major Shinjiro Komori, the Japanesecommander there, believed that thelanding force intended to capturean abandoned airfield at Cape

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ward. The Japanese suddenly Merkus, an installation that did not

gen Bay, immediately to the east.Major Barba's 1st Battalion fol-lowed the coastal trail until 20 Janu-ary, when the column collided witha Japanese stronghold at NatamoPoint. Translations of documatscaptured earlier in the fighting re-vealed that at least one platoon,supported by automatic weaponshad dug in there. Artillery and airstrikes failed to suppress the Japan-ese fire, demonstrating that the cap-tured papers were sadly out of date,since at least a company—armedwith 20mm, 37mm, and 75mmweapons—checked the advance.Marine reinforcements, includingmedium tanks, arrived in landing

Department of Defense (USMc) photo 75970craft on 23 January, and that after-Ma] William H. Barba's 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, prepares to outflank the Japanese de-noon, supported by artillery and afenses along the Natamo River.

rocket-firing DUKW, Companies Cand D overran Natamo Point. The

An officer of Ma] Gordon D. Gayle's 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, displays a captured Japanesebattalion commander then dis- flag from a window of the structure that served as the headquartersof MaJGen Jwao Matsuda.patched patrols inland along the Department of Defense (USA) photo sc 188246west bank of the Natamo River tooutflank the strong positions on theeast bank near the mouth of thestream. While the Marines were ex-ecuting this maneuver, the Japaneseabandoned their prepared defensesand retreated eastward.

Success at Cape Gloucester andBorgen Bay enabled the 5th Marinesto probe the trails leading inland to-ward the village of Magairapua,where Katayama once had hisheadquarters, and beyond. Ele-ments of the regiment's 1st and 2dBattalions and of the 2d Battalion,1st Marines—temporarily attachedto the 5th Marines—led the wayinto the interior as one element inan effort to trap the enemy troopsstill in western New Britain.

In another part of this effort,Company L, 1st Marines, led byCaptain Ronald 1. Slay, pursued theJapanese retreating from CapeGloucester toward Mount Talawe.Slay and his Marines crossed themountain's eastern slope, threadedtheir away through a cluster oflesser outcroppings like Mount

20

Department of Defense (IJSMC) photo 77642

The capture of Matsuda's headquarters provides Marine intelli- than burned, presumably to avoid smoke that might attract ar-gence with a harvest of documents, which the enemy buried rather tillery fire or air strikes.

Langila, and in the saddle betweenMounts Talawe and Tangi encoun-tered four unoccupied. bunkers situ-ated to defend the junction of thetrack they had been following withanother trail running east and west.The company had found the maineast-west route from Sag Sag on thecoast to the village of Agulupellaand ultimately to Natamo Point onthe northern coast.

To exploit the discovery, a com-posite patrol from the 1st Marines,under the command of CaptainNickolai Stevenson, pushed southalong that trail Slay had followed,while a composite company from the7th Marines, under Captain PrestonS. Parish, landed at Sag Sag on the

west coast and advanced along theeast-west track. An Australian re-serve officer, William C. Wiedeman,who had been an Episcopal mission-ary at Sag Sag, served as Parish'sguide and contact with the nativepopulace. When determined opposi-tion stopped Stevenson short of thetrail junction near Mount Talawe,Captain George ITS. Hunt's CompanyK, 1st Marines, renewed the attack.

On 28 January, Hunt concludedhe had brought the Japanese to bayand attacked. For three hours thatafternoon, his Marines tried unsuc-cessfully to break though a line ofbunkers concealed by jungle growth,losing 15 killed or wqunded. WhenHunt withdrew beyond reach of

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the Japanese mortars that hadscourged his company during theaction, the enemy emerged fromcover and attempted to pursue, abold but foolish move that exposedthe troops to deadly fire thatcleared the way for an advance tothe trail junction. Hunt and Parishjoined forces and probed farther,only to be stopped by a Japaneseambush. At this point, MajorWilliam J. Piper, Jr., the executiveofficer of the 3d Battalion, 7thMarines, assumed command, re-newed the pursuit on 30 January,and discovered the enemy had fled.Shortly afterward Piper's combinedpatrol made contact with those dis-patched inland by the 5th Marines.

Thus far, a vigorous pursuit alongthe coast and on the inland trails hadfailed to ensnare the Japanese. TheMarines captured Matsuda's aban-doned headquarters in the shadowof Mount Talawe and a cache of doc-uments that the enemy buried rather

than burned, perhaps because smokewould almost certainly bring airstrikes or artillery fire, but the Japan-ese general and his troops escaped.Where had Matsuda Force gone?

Since a trail net led from thevicinity of Mount Talawe to the

south, General Shepherd concludedthat Matsuda was headed in thatdirection. The assistant divisioncommander therefore organized acomposite battalion of six rein-forced rifle companies, some 3,900officers and men in all, which Gen-eral Rupertus entrusted to Lieu-tenant Colonel Puller. This patrol.was to advance from Agulupella onthe east-west track, down the so-called Government Trail all the wayto Gilnit, a village on the Itni River,inland of Cape Bushing on NewBritain's southern coast. BeforePuller could set out, informationdiscovered at Matsuda's formerheadquarters and translated re-vealed that the enemy actually wasretreating to the northeast. As a re-sult, Rupertus detached the re-cently arrived 1st Battalion, 5thMarines, and reduced Puller'sforce from almost 4,000 to fewerthan 400, still too many to be sup-plied by the 150 native bearers as-signed to the column for the marchthrough the jungle to Gilnit.

During the trek, Puller's Marinesdepended heavily on suppliesdropped from airplanes. Piper Cubscapable at best of carrying two casesof rations in addition to the pilot. andobserver, deposited their loads at vil-lages along the way, and Fifth AirForce B-17s dropped cargo by the ton.Supplies delivered from the skymade the patrol possible but did littleto ameliorate the discomfort of theMarines slogging through the mud..

Despite this assistance from theair, the march to Gilnit taxed the in-genuity of the Marines involved andhardened them for future action.This toughening-up seemed espe-cially desirable to Puller, who hadled many a patrol during the Ameri-can intervention in Nicaragua, 1927-1933. The division's supply clerks,aware of the officer's disdain forcreature comforts, were startled byrequisitions from the patrol for hun-dreds of bottles of insect repellent.

Department of Defense (UsMc) photo 77436

LtCo! Lewis H. Puller, left, and Ma] William J. Piper discuss the route of a patrol from thevillage of Agulupella to Gilnit on the Itni River, a two-week operation.

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

Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72836.

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Puller had his reasons, however. Ac-cording to one veteran of the Gilnitoperation, "We were always soakedand everything we owned was like-wise, and that lotion made the bestdamned sI:uff to start a fire with thatyour ever saw."

As Puller's Marines pushed to-ward Gilnit on the Itni River, theykilled perhaps 75 Japanese and cap-tured one straggler, along withsome weapons and odds and endsof equipment. An abandoned packcontained an American flag, proba-bly captured by a soldier of the141st Infantry during Japan's con-quest of the Philippines. Afterreaching Gilnit, the patrol fannedout but encountered no opposition.Puller's Marines made contact withan Army patrol from the Cape

Merkus beachhead and thenheaded toward the north coast, be-ginning on 16 February.

To the west, Company B, 1stMarines, boarded landing craft on12 February and crossed theDampier Strait to occupy Rooke Is-land, some fifteen miles from thecoast of New Britain. The division'sintelligence specialists concludedcorrectly that the garrison had de-parted. Indeed, the transfer beganon 6 December 1943, roughly threeweeks before the landings at CapeGloucester, when Colonel Jiro Satoand half of his 500-man 51st Recon-naissance Regiment, sailed off toCape Bushing. Sato then led hiscommand up the Itni River andjoined the main body of the MatsudaForce east of Mount Talawe. Instead

Rooke Island, westhave withdrawn.

of committing Sato's troops to thedefense of Hill 660, Matsuda di-rected him to delay the elements ofthe 5th Marines and 1st Marinesthat were converging over the in-land trail net. Sato succeeded inchecking the Hunt patrol on 28 Jan-uary and buying time for Matsuda'sretreat, not to the south, but, as thedocuments captured at the general'sabandoned headquarters confirmed,along the northern coast, with the51st Reconnaissance Regiment initiallyserving as the rear guard.

Once the Marines, realized whatMatsuda had in mind, cutting theline of retreat assumed the highestpriority, as demonstrated by thewithdrawal of the 1st Battalion, 5thMarines, from the Puller patrol onthe very eve of the march toward

of New Britain, but find that the Japanese

24

Department of Defense (usMc) photo 79151

On 12 February 1944, infantrymen of Company B, from LtColWalker A. Reavess 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, advance inland on

Gilnit. As early as 3 February, Ru-pertus concluded that the Japanesecould no longer mount a counterat-tack on the airfields and began de-voting all his energy and resourcesto destroying the retreating Japan-

.ese. The division commander choseSelden's 5th Marines, now restoredto three-battalion strength, to con-duct the pursuit. While Petras andhis light aircraft scouted the coastaltrack, landing craft stood ready toembark elements of the regimentand position them to cut off and de-stroy the Matsuda Force. Bad weatherhampered Selden's Marines; cloudsconcealed the enemy from aerialobservation, and a boiling surfruled out landings over certainbeaches. With about 5,000 Marines,and some Army dog handlers andtheir animals, the colonel rotatedhis battalions, sending out freshtroops each day and using 10 LCMsin attempts to leapfrog the retreat-ing Japanese. "With few exceptions,men were not called upon to makemarches on two successive days,"Selden recalled. "After a one-dayhike, they either remained at thatcamp for three or four days ormade the next jump by LCMs." Atany point along the coastal track,the enemy might have concealedhimself in the dense jungle andsprung a deadly ambush, but hedid not. Selden, for instance, ex-pected a battle for the Japanese sup-ply point at Iboki Point, but theenemy faded away. Instead of en-countering resistance by a deter-mined and skillful rear guard, the5th Marines found only stragglers,some of them sick or wounded.Nevertheless, the regimental com-mander could take pride in main-taining unremitting pressure onthe retreating enemy "without lossor even having a man wounded"and occupying Iboki Point on 24February.

Meanwhile, American amphibi-ous forces had seized Kwa.jalein and

Eniwetok Atolls in the Marshall Is-lands, as the Central Pacific offen-sive gathered momentum. Furtherto complicate Japanese strategy, car-rier strikes proved that Truk had be-come too vulnerable to continueserving as a major naval base. Theenemy, conscious of the threat to hisinner perimeter that was developingto the north, decided to pull backhis fleet units from Truk and his air-craft from Rabaul. On 19 February—just two days after the Americansinvaded Eniwetok—Japanese fight-ers at Rabaul took off for the lasttime to challenge an American airraid. When the bombers returned onthe following day, not a single oper-ahonal Japanese fighter remained atthe airfields there.

The defense of Rabaul now de-pended exclusively on groundforces. Lieutenant General YusashiSakai, in command of the 77th Divi-sion, received orders to scrap hisplan to dig in near Cape Hoskinsand instead proceed to Rabaul. Thegeneral believed that suppliesenough had been positioned alongthe trail net to enable at least themost vigorous of Matsuda's troopsto stay ahead of the Marines andreach the fortress. The remainingself-propelled barges could carryheavy equipment and. those troopsmost needed to defend Rabaul, aswell as the sick and wounded. Theretreat, however, promised to be anordeal for the Japanese. Selden hadalread.y demonstrated how swiftlythe Marines could move, taking ad-vantage of American control of theskies and the coastal waters, and atwo-week march separated thenearest of Matsuda's soldiers fromtheir destination. Attrition wouldbe heavy, but those who could con-tribute the least to the defense ofRabaul seemed the likeliest to fallby the wayside.

The Japanese forces retreating toRabaul included the defenders ofCape Merkus, where a stalemate

25

had prevailed after the limitedAmerican attack on 16 January hadsent Komori's troops reeling backbeyond the airstrip. At Augitni, avillage east of the Aria River south-west of Iboki Point, Komori re-ported to Colonel Sato of the 51stReconnaissance Regiment, which hadconcluded the rear-guard actionthat enabled the Matsuda Force tocross the stream and take the trailthrough Augitni to Linga Linga andeastward along the coast. When thetwo commands met, Sato broke outa supply of sake he had been carry-ing, and the officers exchangedtoasts well into the night.

Meanwhile, Captain KiyomatsuTerunuma organized a task forcebuilt around the 1st Battalion, 54thInfantry, and prepared to defend. theTalasea area near the base of theWillaumez Peninsula against a pos-sible landing by the pursuingMarines. The Terunuma Force hadthe mission of holding out longenough for Matsuda Force to slippast on the way to Rabaul. On 6March, the leading elements of Mat-suda's column reached the base ofthe Willaumez Peninsula, and Ko-mori, leading the way for Sato'srear guard, started from Augitni to-ward Linga Linga.

By coincidence, 6 March was theday chosen for the reinforced 5thMarines, now commanded byColonel Oliver P. Smith, to land onthe west coast of the WillaumezPeninsula midway between baseand tip. The intelligence section ofdivision headquarters believed thatJapanese strength between Talasea,the site of a crude airstrip, andCape Hoskins, across Kimbe Bayfrom Wiliaumez Peninsula, equaledthat of the Smith's command, butthat most of the enemy troops de-fended Cape Hoskins. The intelli-gence estimate proved correct, forSakai had been preparing a last-

ditch defense of Cape Hoskins,when word arrived to retreat all theway to Rabaul.

To discover the extent of Japan-ese preparations in the immediatevicinity of Volupai, a reconnais-sance team landed from a torpedoboat at Bagum, a village about ninemiles from Red Beach, the site cho-sen for the assault landing. FlightLieutenant C. I-I. Rodney Marslandof the Royal Australian Air Force,First Lieutenant John D. Bradbeer—the division's chief scout, whohad participated in three similar re-connaissance patrols of the CapeGloucester area before the 26 De-cember invasion—and two nativebearers remained ashore for 24hours and learned that Red Beachwas lightly defended. Their sources,

principally natives who hadworked at a plantation that Mars-land had operated in the area beforethe war, confirmed Marine esti-

•mates of Terunuma's aggregateforce—some 600 men, two thirds ofthem located near Talasea, armedwith mortars and artillery.

Bristol Beauforts of the RoyalAustralian Air Force based at Kin-wina Island bombed the Volupai-Talasea region for three days andthen conducted a last-minute striketo compensate for the absence ofnaval gunfire. Smith's force, desig-nated Landing Team A, loaded intoa small flotilla of landing craft, es-corted by torpedo boats, and set outfrom Iboki Point. LieutenantColonel Robert Amory, JE, an Armyofficer in command of an engineer

26

boat unit, took command of the col.-lection of small craft, some of themmanned by his soldiers and the oth-ers by sailors. A storm buffeted theformation, and after the seas grewcalm, the boat carrying the Armyair liaison party broke down. MajorGordon D. Gayle, the new comman-der of the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines,who already was behind schedule,risked further delay by taking thedisabled craft in tow. Gayle felt thatCombat Team A's need for the liai-son party's radio equipment justi-fied his action.

At 0835 on 6 March, the first ofthe amphibian tractors carrying theassault troops clawed their wayonto Red Beach. During the move-ment shoreward, Sherman tanks inArmy LCMs opened fire with ma-

chine guns and stood ready to directtheir 75mm weapons against anyJapanese gunner who might opposethe landing. Aside from hard-to-pinpoint small-arms fire, the oppo-sition consisted mainly of barragesfrom mortars, screened by the ter-rain from the flat-trajectory cannonof the tanks. When Japanese mortarshells began bursting among the ap-proaching landing craft, CaptainTheodore A. Petras, at the controlsof one of the division's Piper Cubs,dived low over the mortar positionsand dropped hand grenades fromthe supply he carried on all hisflights. Natives had warned Mars-land and Bradbeer of a machine-gunnest dominating the beach from theslopes of Little Mount Worn, but themen of the 1st Battalion, 5thMarines, leading the way, found itabandoned and encountered no se-rious opposition as they dug in toprotect the beachhead.

Meanwhile, Gayle's Marinespressed their attack, with fourmedium tanks supporting Com-pany E as it tried to pu.sh farther in-land. One of the Shermans boggeddown almost immediately in thesoft sand of Red Beach, but the

other three continued in column.The tank in the lead lost momen-tum on a muddy rise, and twoJapanese soldiers carrying landmines burst from cover to attack it.Riflemen of Company E cut downone of them, but the other deto-nated his mine against the vehicle,killing himself and a Marine whotried to stop him. The explosionjammed the turret and stunned thecrewmen, who were furthershaken, but not wounded, when anantitank grenade exploded againstthe armor. The damaged Shermangot out of the way; when the othertwo tanks had passed, it returnedto the trail only to hit a mine thatdisabled it.

Despite the loss of two tanks, onetemporarily immobilized on thebeach and the other out of action per-manently, Gayle's battalion contin-ued its advance. During the fightingon the approaches to the Volupai co-conut plantation, the body of a Japan-ese soldier yielded a map showingenemy dispositions around Talasea.By mid-afternoon, Smith's regimentalintelligence section was disseminat-ing the information, which provedvaluable in future operations.

While Company B of Gayle's bat-talion followed the trail toward theplantation, Company G kept pace,crossing the western shoulder ofLittle Mount Worn. Five Army AirForces P-39s from Airfield No. 2 atCape Gloucester arrived overheadto support Gayle's attack, but thepilots could not locate the troopsbelow and instead bombed CapeHoskins, where there was no dan-ger of hitting the Marines. Evenwithout the aerial attack, the 2dBattalion, 5th Marines, overran theplantation by dusk and dug in forthe night; the unit counted the bod-ies of 35 Japanese killed during theday's fighting.

On D-Day, Combat Team A lost13 killed and 71 wounded, with ar-tillery batteries rather than riflecompanies suffering the greaternumber of casualties. The 2d Battal-ion, 11th Marines, set up its 75mmpack howitzers on the open beach,exposed to fire from the 90mm mor-tars upon which Petras had ineffec-tually showered his hand grenades.Some of the corpsmen at Red Beach,who went to the assistance ofwounded artillerymen, became ca-sualties themselves. Nine of theMarines killed on 6 March weremembers of the artillery unit, alongwith 29 of the wounded. Neverthe-less, the gunners succeeded in reg-istering their fires in the afternoonand harassing the enemy through-out the night.

While the Marines prepared torenew the attack on the second day,Terunuma deployed his troops tooppose them and keep open the lineof retreat of the Matsuda Force. Indoing so, the Japanese commanderfell back from his prepared posi-tions on the fringes of Volupai Plan-tation—including the mortar pitsthat had raised such havoc with the2d Battalion, 11th Marines—anddugin on the northwest slopes ofMount Schleuther, overlooking thetrail leading from the plantation to

At Volupai, as on Cape Gloucester, sand, triad, and land mines—sometimes carried byJapanese soldiers who detonated them against the sides of the vehicle—could immobilizeeven the Sherman M4 medium tank.

Department of Defenac (USMc) photo 79868

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Bitokara village on the coast. Assoon as he realized what the enemyhad in mind, Gayle sent Company Fuphill to thwart the Japanese plan,while Company E remained on thetrail and built up a base of fire. Onthe right flank of the maneuver ele-ment, Company F, the weapons pla-toon burst from the undergrowthand surprised Japanese machinegunners setting up their weapon,killing them and turning the gunagainst the enemy. The advance ofCompany F caught the Japanese inmid-deployment and drove themback after killing some 40 of them.Gayle's battalion established anighttime perimeter that extendedfrom Mount Schleuther to the trailand embraced a portion of both.

The action on 7 March repre-sented a departure from plan. Smithhad intended that both Barba andGayle attack, with the 3d Battalion,5th Marines, commanded since 12January by Lieutenant ColonelHarold 0. Deakin, assuming re-sponsibility for the defense of thebeachhead. The landing craft thathad carried the assault troops de-parted from Red Beach during D-Day, some of them carrying the seri-ously wounded, in order to pick upthe 3d Battalion at Iboki Point andbring it to Volupai. The day waswaning by the time enough landingcraft were on hand for Deakin's bat-talion. For the reinforcements to ar-rive in time for an attack on themorning of 7 March would requirea dangerous nighttime approach toVolupai, through uncharted watersstudded with sharp outcroppings ofcoral that could lay open the hull ofa landing craft. Rupertus decidedthat the risks of such a move out-weighed the advantages and can-celed it at the last moment. No boatstarted the return voyage to RedBeach until after dawn on 7 March,delaying the arrival of Deakin's bat-talion until late afternoon. On thatday, therefore, Barba's 1st Battalion

had only enough time to send Com-pany C a short distance inland on atrail that passed to the right of LittleMount Worn, en route to the villageof Liappo. When the trail peteredout among the trees and vines, theMarines hacked their way forwarduntil they ran out of daylight shortof their objective.

On 8 March, the 1st Battalion, 5thMarines, resumed the advance,Companies A and B moving on par-allel paths leading east of LittleMount Worn. Members of Com-pany A, peering through dense un-dergrowth, saw a figure in a Japan-ese uniform and opened fire. Theperson was not a Japanese, how-ever, but a native wearing clothingdiscarded by the enemy and serv-ing as a guide for Company B. Thefirst shots triggered an exchange offire that wounded the guide, killedone Marine, and wounded a num-ber of others. Afterward, the ad-vance resumed, but once again theformidable terrain—muddy ravines

choked with brush and vines—slowed the Marines, and the sun setwith the battalion still on the trail.

Meanwhile, Gayle's 2d Battalionprobed deeper into Terunuma's de-fenses. Patrols ranged. ahead on themorning of 8 March and found theJapanese dug in at Bitokara Mission,but the enemy fell back before theMarines could storm the position.Gayle's troops occupied Bitokaraand pushed as far as Talasea, takingover the abandoned airstrip. Otherpatrols from this battalion started upthe steep slopes of Mount Schleutherand collided with Terunuma's mainstrength. Fire from small arms, a90mm mortar, and a 75mm field gunkilled or wounded 18 Marines.Rather than press his attack in thegathering darkness, Gayle pulledback from the mountain and dug inat Bitokara Mission so artillery andmortars could hammer the defensesthroughout the night, but he left onecompany to defend the Talaseaairstrip.

Cpl Robert J. Hallahan, a member of the 1st Marine Division band, examines the shatteredremains of a lapanese 75mn gun used in the defense of Mount Schleuther and rigged as abooby trap when the enemy withdrew.

Department of Defense (USA) photo SC 260915

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Marines, and Army engineers, whoused a 10-ton wrecker to recoverthree Sherman tanks that had be-come mired during the fighting. By10 March, the trails could support afurther advance. Two days later, el-ements of Deakin's 3d Battalion, 5thMarines, having moved inlandfrom the beachhead, provided aguard of honor as Colonel Smithand his executive officer, LieutenantColonel Henry W. Buse, raised overBitokara the same flag that hadflown over Airfield No. 2 at CapeGloucester.

des as those on Cape Gloucester

On the morning of 9 March, Com-pany C of Cayle's battalion ad-vanced up Mount Schleuther whileCompanies B and C from Barba'scommand cleared the villagesaround the base. Company G ex-pected to encounter intense opposi-tion during its part of the coordi-nated attack, but Terunuma haddecamped from the mountain top,leaving behind one dead, two strag-glers, and an artillery piece. Theenemy, however, had festooned theabandoned 75mm gun with vinesthat served as trip wires for a boobytrap. When the Marines hacked atthe vines to examine the weaponmore closely, they released the firingpin and detonated a round in thechamber. Since the Japanese guncrew had plugged the bore beforefleeing, the resulting explosion rup-tured the breech block and woundedone of Gayle's men.

Besides yielding the dominantterrain, Terunuma chose not to de-fend any of the villages clustered at

the base of the mountain. The 5thMarines thus opened a route acrossthe Willaumez Peninsula to supportfurther operations against Mat-suda's line of retreat. Since 6 March,Colonel Smith's force had killed anestimated 150 Japanese at the costof 17 Marines killed and 114wounded, most of the casualtiessuffered on the first day. The finalphase of the fighting that began onRed Beach consisted of securingCarua Island, abandoned by theJapanese, for American use, a taskfinished on 9 March.

The results of the action at thebase of the Willaumez Peninsulaproved mixed. The grass airstrip atTalasea lacked the length to accom-modate fighters, but the division'sliaison planes made extensive useof it, landing on either side of thecarcass of a Japanese aircraft untilthe wreckage could be hauled away.The trail net, essentially a web ofmuddy paths, required long hoursof hard work by Company F, 17th

The flotilla of Army LCMs andNavy LCTs that supported the Volu-pai landings inflicted further dam-age on Japanese coastal traffic, al-ready hard hit by air strikes. On 9March, a convoy of landing craft car-rying supplies around the tip of thepeninsula for delivery to the advanc-ing Marines at Talasea spotted fourenemy barges, beached and sloppilycamouflaged. An LCT took thebarges under fire from its 20mm can-non and machine guns, destroyingone of the Japanese craft. Later thatday, two LCMs used the 37mm gunof the Marine light tank that eachwas carrying, to fire upon anotherbarge beached on the peninsula.

The enemy tried to make the bestpossible use of the dwindling num-ber of barges, but the bulk of Mat-suda's troops moved overland,screened by Terunuma's men dur-ing the transit of the base of theWillaumez Peninsula. About a hun-dred Japanese dug in at Garilli, butby the time Company K of Deakin's3d Battalion, 5th Marines, attackedon 11 March, the enemy had fallenback to a new trail block aboutthree miles distant. For four days,the Marines fought a succession ofsharp actions, as the Japanese re-treated a few hundred yards at atime, dragging with them a 75mmgun that anchored each of the

Department of Defense (U5MO photo 69985

Marines struggle to winch a tractor, and the 105mm howitzer it is towing, out of the mudof New Britain. The trails linking Volupai and Talasea proved as impassable for heavy vehi-

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blocking positions. On 16 March,Deakin himself joined Company K,arriving in an LCM that also carrieda section of 81mm mortars. TheJapanese turned their cannon sea-ward to deal with this threat butfailed to hit the landing craft.Shortly after the Marine mortarslanded and went into action,Terunuma's men again withdrew,but this time they simply fadedaway, since the bulk of MatsudaForce had escaped to the east.

Having secured the Red Beach-Garua Bay-Talasea area, the 5thMarines dispatched patrols south-ward to the base of the WilaumezPeninsula, capturing only the occa-sional straggler and confirming thedeparture of the main body of Mat-suda's command. The st MarineDivision established a comfortableheadquarters, training sites, a hos-pital that utilized captured stocks ofJapanese medicine, and a rest areathat featured swimming off theGarua beaches and bathing in hotsprings ashore. The Navy built abase on the Willaumez Peninsula

for torpedo boats that harried thesurviving Japanese barges. Unfortu-nately, on 27 March, the second daythe base was operating, Allied air-craft mistook two of the boats forJapanese craft and attacked, killingfive sailors and wounding 18.

One of the courses taught at thenew Garua training center soughtto produce amphibious scouts forthe division's future operations.The school's headquarters decidedthat a reconnaissance of CapeHoskins would serve as a suitablegraduation exercise, since aerial ob-servers had seen no sign of enemyactivity there. On 13 April, SecondLieutenant Richard R. Breen, ac-companied by Lieutenant Marslandof the Royal Australian Air Force,embarked with l6 trainees, two na-tive guides, and a rifle platoon fromthe 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, in apair of LCMs. While two instructorsstood by in one of the landing craft,the platoon established a trail block,and the future scouts advanced to-ward the Cape Hoskins airfield, nolonger used by the Japanese. En

route to the objective, however, thepatrol encountered fire from smallarms and mortars, but the Marineshad apparently learned theirlessons well, for they succeeded inbreaking off the action and escapedwithout suffering casualties.

Meanwhile, the Japanese retreatcontinued. Komori's troops, blazingthe trail for Sato's command fromAugitni to the northern coast, en-countered a disheartening numberof hungry stragglers as theymarched toward a supply depot atKandoka, roughly 10 miles west ofthe Willaumez Peninsula. Crossingthe Kuhu River, Komori's soldierscame under ineffectual fire from anAmerican landing craft. The rain-swollen Via River, broader than theKuhu, proved a more serious obsta-cle, requiring a detour lasting twodays to reach a point where thestream narrowed. Komori's provi-sions ran out on 17 March, forcingthe soldiers to subsist on taro, birdsand fish, and vegetables from vil-lage garden plots, supplemented bysome welcome coconuts gatheredfrom a plantation at Linga Linga.After losing additional time and adozen lives crossing yet anotherriver, the Kapaluk, Komori's troopsstraggled into Kandoka on the 24th,only to discover that the food andother supplies had been carried offtoward Rabaul. Despite this crush-ing disappointment, Komoripressed on, his men continuing tolive 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 de-fected. Already weakened physi-cally, Komori came down with anattack of malaria, but he forcedhimself to continue.

The survivors struggled onwardtoward Cape Hoskins and ulti-mately Rabaul. On 9 April, EasterSunday, four half-starved Japanesewandered onto the San RemoPlantation, where Gayle's battal-

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

Department of Defense (usMc photo 78381

30

ion had bivouacked after pursuingthe enemy eastward from theWillaumez Peninsula. The Marineunit was preparing to pass in re-view for the regimental comman-der later that day, when a sentrysaw the intruders and opened fire.The ensuing skirmish killed threeof the enemy. One of the deadproved to be Major Komori; hispack contained a rusty revolverand a diary describing the suffer-ings of his command.

Colonel Sato, with the rest of therear guard for the Matsuda Force, setout from Augitni on 7 March, oneday after Komori, who sent backword on the 19th that patrols fromthe 5th Marines had fanned out fromthe Willaumez Peninsula, where thereinforced regiment had landed al-most two weeks earlier. When Satoreached Linga Linga and cameacross a bivouac abandoned by aMarine patrol, his force had dwin-dled to just 250 men, less than halfthe number that started out. He re-ceived a shock the following daywhen American landing craft ap-peared as his men prepared to crossthe Kapaluk River. He immediatelyset up a perimeter to beat back theexpected attack, but the boats werecarrying elements of the 2d Battal-ion, 1st Marines, under MajorCharles H. Brush, Jr. A patrol fromBrush's Company F landed on abeach beyond Kandoka, the formersite of a Japanese supply cache, anddispatched one platoon, led by FirstLieutenant William C. Schleip, west-ward along the coastal track, even asSato, aware only of the general loca-tion of the landing, groped eastwardtoward the village. On 26 March, thetwo collided, the Japanese surpris-ing the Marines in the act of crossinga small stream and pinning themdown for some three hours until theapproach of reinforcements fromCompany F forced the enemy tobreak off the action, take to the jun-gle, and bypass Kandoka.

As the head of Sato's column dis-appeared in the jungle, one of thedivision's light airplanes, scoutinglanding sites for Brush's battalion,sighted the tail near Linga Linga.The pilot, Captain Petras, turnedover the controls to Brigadier Gen-eral Earl C. Long, also a pilot,sketched the location of the Japan-ese, and dropped the map to one ofthe troop-laden landing craft. Petrasthen led the way to an undefendedbeach, where Brush's Marineswaded ashore and set out in pursuitof Sato. On 30 March, Second Lieu-tenant Richard B. Watkins, at thehead of an eight-man patrol, spot-ted a pair of Japanese, their riflesslung, who turned out to be mem-bers of a 73-man patrol, far toomany for Watkins to handle.

Once the enemy column hadmoved off, Watkins and his menhurried to Kandoka, where he re-ported to Major Brush and obtainedmortars and machine guns beforeagain taking to the trail. Brush fol-lowed, bringing a reinforced rifleplatoon to increase the Marine fire-power. Meanwhile, the Japanese en-countered yet another Marine pa-trol, this one led by Sergeant FrankChEek, which took up a position onhigh ground that commanded thetrail. When they heard Chliek'sgroup open fire, Watkins and Brushhurried to its aid; the resultingslaughter killed 55 Japanese, includ-ing Colonel Sato, who died swordin hand, but the Marines did notsuffer even one casualty.

On 9 April, the 3d Battalion, 1stMarines, under Lieutenant ColonelHankins, replaced Brush's 1st Bat-talion and continued the search forenemy stragglers. The bulk of theMats uda Force, and whatever sup-plies it could transport, had by thistime retreated to Cape Hoskins andbeyond, and Army troops were tak-ing over from the Marines. Almostfour months had elapsed since thelanding at Cape Gloucester; clearly

31

the time had come for the amphibi-ous troops to move on to an opera-tion that would make better use oftheir specialized training andequipment. The final action foughtby the Leathernecks took place on22 April, when an ambush sprungby the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines,killed 20 Japanese and resulted inthe last Marine fatality of the cam-paign. In seizing western NewBritain as part of the isolation ofRabaul, the division suffered 310killed in action and 1,083 wounded,roughly one-fourth the estimatedJapanese casualties.

Early in February 1944, after thecapture of the Cape Gloucester air-fields but before the landing atVolupai, General Rupertus, warnedthat his 1st Marine Division mightremain on New Britain indefinitely.Having the unit tied down for anextended period alarmed the re-cently appointed Commandant ofthe Marine Corps, General Vande-grift. "Six months there," he re-marked, referring to an extendedcommitment in New Britain, "and itwill no longer be a well-trained am-phibious division." Vandegrifturged Admiral Ernest J. King, theChief of Naval Operations, to helppry the division from MacArthur'sgrasp so it could again undertakeamphibious operations. AdmiralChester W. Nimitz, Commander inChief, Pacific Ocean Areas, wantedthe division for the impending in-vasion of the Palau Islands, the cap-ture of which would protect theflank of MacArthur's advance tothe Philippines. In order to obtainthe Marines, Nimitz made theArmy's 40th Infantry Divisionavailable to MacArthur, in effectswapping a d.ivision capable of tak-ing over the New Britain campaignfor one that could spearhead theamphibious offensive against Japan.MacArthur, however, briefly re-tained control of one component ofthe Marine division—Company A,

1st Tank Battalion. That unit'smedium tanks landed on 22 Aprilat Hollandia on the northern coastof New Guinea, but a swamp justbeyond the beachhead preventedthe Shermans from supporting theadvance inland.

The commanding general of theArmy's 40th Infantry Division, MajorGeneral Rapp Brush, arrived at NewBritain on 10 April to arrange for therelief. His advance echelon arrivedon the 23d and the remainder of thedivision five days later. The 1st Ma-rine Division departed in two eche-lons on 6 April and 4 May. Left be-hind was the 12th Defense Battalion,which continued to provide antiair-craft defense for the Cape Gloucesterairfields until relieved by an Armyunit late in May.

In a campaign lasting fourmonths, the 1st Marine Division hadplunged into the unforgiving jungleand overwhelmed a determined andresolute enemy, capturing the CapeGloucester airfields and driving theJapanese from western New Britain.A number of factors helped theMarines defeat nature and theJapanese. Allied control of the airand the sea provided mobility anddisrupted the coastal barge trafficupon which the enemy had to de-pend for the movement of largequantities of supplies, especiallybadly needed medicines, during theretreat to Rabaul. Warships andlanding craft armed with rockets—supplemented by such improvisa-tions as tanks or rocket-equippedamphibian trucks firing from land-

32

ing craft—supported the landings,but the size of the island and thelack of fixed coastal defenses limited.the effectiveness of the variousforms of naval gunfire. Using supe-rior engineering skills, the Marinesdefied swamp and undergrowth tobring forward tanks that crushedenemy emplacements and added tothe already formidable Americanfirepower. Although photo analysis,an art that improved rapidly, misin-terpreted the nature of the dampflat, Marine intelligence made excel-lent use of captured Japanese docu.-ments throughout the campaign. Inthe last analysis, the courage and en-durance of the average Marine madevictory possible, as he braved dis-comfort, disease, and violent deathduring his time in the green inferno.

Three books have proved essential tothis account of the fighting on NewBritain. Lieutenant Colonel Frank 0.,Hough, USMCR, dealt at length with thecampaign in The Island War: The UnitedStates Marine Cotps in the Pacific (Philadel-phia: 1. 8. Lippincott, 1947). With MajorJohn Crown, USMCR, he wrote the officialMarine Corps historical monograph: TheNew Britain Campaign (Washington: His-torical Branch, G-3 Division, HQMC,1952). The third of these essential volumesis Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T.Kane, USMC, Isolation of Raba ui—Historyof U. S. Marine Corps Operations in WorldWar II.. vol 2 (Washington: HistoricalBranch, G-3 Division, HQMC, 1963.)

Other valuable sources include: Wes-ley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate,eds., The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan,August 1942-July 1944—The Army AirForces in World War II, vol 4 (Washing-ton: Office of Air Force History, reprint1983); George McMillan, The Old Breed:A History of the First Marine Division inWorld War II (Washington: Infantry Jour-nal Press, 1949); John Miller, Jr., TheUnited States Army in World War II; TheWar in the Pacific: CARTWHEEL, The Re-duction of Rabaul (Washington: Office ofChief of Military History, 1959); SamuelEliot Morison, Breaking the Bisrnarcks Bar-rier, 22 July 1942-2 May 1944—A Historyof United States Naval Operations in WorldWar II, vol 6 (Boston: Little, Brown, andCompany, 1950).

The Marine Corps Gazette printed fourarticles analyzing aspects of the NewBritain campaign: Lieutenant ColonelRobert B. Luckey, USMC, "Cannon, Mud,and Japs," vol 28, no 10 (October 1944);George McMillan, "Scouting at CapeGloucester," vol 30, no 5 (May 1946); andFletcher Pratt, "Marines Under MacArthur:Cape Gloucester," vol 31, no 12 (December1947); and "Marines Under MacArthur:Wfflaumez," vol 32, no 1 (January 1947).

Of the Marine Corps oral history inter-views of participants in the New Britainfighting, the most valuable were withGenerals Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., andEdwin A. Pollock and Lieutenant Gener-als Henry W. Buse, Lewis J. Fields, RobertB. Luckey, and John N. McLaughlin.

Almost three dozen collections of per-sonal papers deal in one way or anotherwith the campaign, some of them provid-ing narratives of varying length and oth-ers photographs or maps. The most en-lightening commentary came from thepapers of Major Sherwood Moran,USMCR, before the war a missionary inJapan and during the fighting an intelli-gence specialist with the 1st Marine Divi-sion, who discussed everything from cop-ing with the weather to understandingthe motivation of the Japanese soldier.

GENERAL EDITOR,WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

Benis M. Frank

CARTOGRAPHIC CONSULTANTGeorge C. MacGillivray

B ernard C. Nalty served as a civilian mem-ber of the Historical Branch, G-3 Division,

HQMC, from October 1956 to September1961. In collaboration with Henry I. Shaw, Jr.,and Edwin T. Turnbladh, he wrote Central Pa-cific Drive, volume 3 of the History of U.S. Ma-rine Corps Operations in World War II, and healso completed a number of short historicalstudies, some of which appeared as articles in

Corps Gazette. He joined the history office of the1961, transferring in 1964 to the Air Force history

Leatherneck or MarineJoint Chiefs of Staff inprogram, from which he retired in January 1994.

WORLD WAR II

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

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

WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

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

EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, 1-USTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISIONRobert E. Struder, Senior Editor; W. Slephen Hill, Visual Information

Specialist; Catherine A. Kems, Composition Services Technician

Marine Corps Historical CenterBuilding 58, Washington Navy Yard

Washington, D.C. 20374-5040

1994PCN 190 003128 00