The Fight on the Tanapag Plain
27th Division
6 July 1944

Afternoon Attack at Harakiri Gulch

by US War Department

With the shift of weight in effort to the right, at noon six rifle companies of the 27th Division were poised to attack abreast in the hills, from the edge of the plain to the new division boundary. If their attack succeeded, they would drive the Japanese out of the high ground positions which could put dominating fire on the Tanapag Plain (Map 3, below).

The basic plan of movement called for the 3d Battalion, 105th Infantry and the 1st Battalion, 165th Infantry to attack across Harakiri Gulch and up onto the high, almost level plateau that covered the area between there and Paradise Valley. The companies of these two battalions would then wheel left, go down the face of the cliffs from above, and sweep out across the Tanapag Plain to the sea, each arriving on the plain at a point progressively farther east toward Makunsha.

The 2d Battalion, 165th would proceed north down Paradise Valley, cleaning out this strong point, and reaching the beach just above Makunsha. While this operation was going on in the hills, the 2d Battalion, 105th Infantry, on the division's left wing, was to make a limited attack northeast along the beach.

Of the four companies attacking in zones that crossed Harakiri Gulch, two were to bear the brunt of the afternoon's battle: Company L of the 105th, near the lower end of the draw, and Company A of the 165th, further up in the hill mass. Company 1, 105th was between L and A at the start, but was destined to be pinched out as the attack moved into the gulch. Beyond A, the gulch narrowed into the ravine curving off to the east. This upper arm of the draw, Company C's zone, can be regarded as part of the action on the higher ground, which will not be considered here.

The heaviest fighting fell to Company A, 165th, commanded by Capt. Lawrence J. O'Brien. His unit faced the upper end of the main part of the draw, just where it began to angle southeast and grow smaller. The 3d Battalion, 165th had tried this end of the draw on 5 July, to find it as heavily defended as the lower stretch. No troops had been able to get into the valley and stay there. Captain O'Brien knew where the trouble lay; he believed, nevertheless, that the new azimuth of attack would favor his effort.

It meant, instead of crossing the gulch at right angles to its axis, approaching from the higher hillslopes above the main draw, and crossing it on a long diagonal. This route had not been tried before before, and it might avoid the fields of fire of some of the Japanese positions along the cliffs in the eastern wall.

Company A's formation was in three platoons abreast on a long skirmish line. The 3d platoon on the left was near the trail in the gulch; the 1st Platoon would operate almost down the center of the draw; the 2d Platoon was near the bend of the draw, and its advance, if successful, would carry on to the high ground north of Harakiri Gulch and come on the enemy's cave positions from the rear and above.

The company faced, in its immediate front, certain unusual terrain features. The first, on the hill slope funneling down to the gulch, was a series of ditches that looked almost as though they had been dug in preparation, for piping a water supply into a house. On each side of these ditches were the little mounds of earth which had been excavated from them, now hardened from long exposure to the weather. The ditches ran from north to south, giving the gulch the appearance of a washboard. Company A, by virtue of the direction of its attack, would work all the way through them. Interspersed in these ditches were numerous spider holes of the type which the Japanese like so well to construct and which American troops had come across before on Kwajalein and Eniwetok. Round and covered by cleverly camouflaged nets, they were deep enough for one or two enemy riflemen to sit cross-legged in them.

Another distinguishing feature of the approaches to the draw was the occasional large-trunked trees, having enough foliage above to conceal riflemen. Among the trees were little straw shacks, scattered along the slopes above the gulch at intervals of 30 or 40 yards. They were not arranged in any symmetrical Pattern; had there not been so many of them, about 15, they might have been taken for the buildings of a farm.

From the south rim of the gulch, Company A proceeded cautiously down the steep slopes of the hill. Captain O'Brien had called for an intense mortar barrage with his own 60 mm tubes and with the 81 mm mortars of Company D. This lasted for ten minutes before the actual attack began. As the men moved forward there was almost a dead silence in the valley below. Moving from cover to cover and taking advantage of every little hillock and bush, the whole company reached a line almost 200 yards from the jump-off point atop the high ground. This brought them 20 or 30 yards into the valley itself.

Then, suddenly, came a strange interruption, as a series of explosions shook the little shacks. Most of A's men dove for the ditches and took cover. The explosions continued over a period of 15 minutes and then ceased. Infantrymen edged forward and peered into the first of the buildings. Inside, three Japanese soldiers had committed suicide by holding grenades to their abdomens. In the next hut there were four more and in the next, two. Altogether, later investigation showed that 60 enemy soldiers had unaccountably committed suicide in these little houses over a period of a few minutes. This was the incident that gave the valley its name of Harakiri Gulch.

The suicides became all the more mysterious in the light of events that soon followed. The men of Company A continued to move ahead cautiously for a few more yards. 2d Lt. Matthew C. Masem, commander of O'Brien's 1st Platoon, had jumped into one of the ditches and from there was looking cautiously around when he was joined by three other men from his platoon. Just as they jumped into the ditch, a rifle shot rang out ahead and a bullet thudded into the earth near Masem's head. S/Sgt. Clarence L. Anderson, one of the men who had just jumped into the hole, poked his head up over the mound of earth and spotted something moving in one of the trees a short distance ahead. It looked like a rope that might have been used by a Japanese soldier to climb up into the heavy foliage and it was still swinging as though, whatever it was, it had been used very recently.

Anderson rose up to take a shot at the tree and, as he did so, received a serious wound that felled him. One of the other men in the ditch with Masem and his group was Tech. 4 Kice, the company aid man. Kice immediately told the others to "get the hell out of the hole so I can work on him." All of the little group except Kice and Anderson immediately scrambled for cover somewhere else. Masem and S/Sgt. Joseph R. Murphy tumbled back into a ditch behind them, and two other men, including Pfc. John Sekula, jumped behind a tree a few feet away. Sekula received one shot which ripped away his canteen, and then the men suddenly realized that the whole area was literally alive with bullets. The one that hit Sekula's canteen came from somewhere behind him.

Lieutenant Masem was very worried about the situation. The fire was so intense that neither he nor any of his men could risk movement without being reasonably certain of being hit. He decided to pull back to the base of the slope at the top of the draw, where the ditches were deeper and where no one would be behind him, until he could locate the source of all this fire and do something about it.

He called over to Kice and asked him if Anderson could be removed from the hole to a safer place. Anderson answered, "Mce is dead." The aid man had been hit in the head while bending over the wounded man. Sergeant Murphy, the platoon leader, now called over to Pfc. Shires, acting platoon sergeant of the 3d Platoon on his left, and asked Shires if he could borrow his aid man to help take care of Anderson. Shires sent Pfc. Standlee Morgan over to the 1st Platoon area, and the aid man ran down one of the ditches to where Masem was.

However, just as he tried to scramble across the hump of dirt to where the wounded man lay, he was hit in the ankle and tumbled back into the ditch behind. Shires himself came crawling over to where Morgan lay and, together with Pfc. Arthur Coats, he managed to work the wounded Morgan back out of the fire to safety. When Shires attempted to get back to his own platoon, he was trapped in a hole in the 1st Platoon area and couldn't move.

New complications had now arisen in the valley. The shacks which had been occupied by the suiciding Japanese had caught fire and were burning merrily. Most of Masem's men, lying in the ditches, were so close at hand that the heat was unbearable.

It was imperative that the platoon get back, but the problem of the wounded Anderson was still to be solved. Masem, in radio contact with Captain O'Brien, was trying to control his platoon and direct their fire. Shortly after Shires had crawled back with Morgan, Masem again asked if anyone would volunteer to try to get Anderson out of the hole. Pfc. Joseph Becay and Pfc. George Brieling volunteered. When they were given permission to go ahead, Becay yelled over to Anderson and told him to take off all of his equipment. After Anderson called back that this had been done, the two men made one dive and landed in the hole squarely on top of Fice and Anderson. Without wasting time, they picked the wounded man up by the head and heels and threw him bodily into the ditch behind. They then dove over after him. After that Becay dragged Anderson back along the trenches to the edge of the gulch and carried him up the hill.

During this time, the 3d Platoon on Masem's left had become badly disorganized. They had run into the same accurate grazing fire that had caused so much trouble in the 1st Platoon. Almost in the center of the 3d there was a little stretch of open ground that offered no cover whatsoever, so that Shires had to split his platoon around it. Leaving a BAR man to cover the open space, Shires stayed with the right squad of his platoon; during the attempt to get back to them after the rescue of Morgan, he was cut off altogether. When the fire broke out among the shacks, the 3d Platoon was in the most danger and suffered the most from the intense heat. Three of the men made their way back to Captain O'Brien and explained the platoon's situation. The company commander ordered the men to pull back out of the heat to the slopes above the valley. Before they could execute this maneuver two more men received bullet wounds.

Captain O'Brien had been trying frantically to keep his company moving ahead by getting men around the flanks of the hidden Japanese. His own 2d Platoon, on his right, and Company 1, 105th Infantry, on his left, could not make much progress in spite of the company commander's pleading.

The 2d Platoon, which was advancing half in the gulch and half on the high ground beyond it, was under the command of 1st Lt. George E. Martin, O'Brien's executive officer. Martin was with the lower half of his platoon, the part in the draw, and with them had advanced out across the floor in conjunction with the units on his left. When the shooting started in the 1st Platoon area, Martin was hit almost as soon as Anderson, going down with a serious bullet wound in the shoulder. The platoon was then in command of Tech/Sgt. Medina, over on the other end of the platoon, who described the action of the afternoon as follows:

The 2d Platoon jumped off with Company C tied into our right squad, commanded by Sgt. Frank Destefano, and the 1st Platoon of Company A was on our left. We moved about 200 yards downhill and the 1st Platoon began to get some sniper fire. After 15 minutes, our whole line moved forward again and this time Charlie Company got pinned down. After waiting sever-al minutes, Charlie Company asked for help and Lieutenant Martin sent me and Tech. 4 Cantrell (our fighting cook) to see if a tank could come down the hill and give support to Charlie Company. The tank came halfway down the hill and that was all. It didn't do any good. By this time the line is ready to move forward again. So we resume the advance. (All this time there hasn't been a shot fired from the enemy, only one or two over in the lst Platoon area, plus some shacks which are blowing up with Japs inside of them.) But to our surprise the Japs are entrenched in a large trench at the bottom of the hill, and the Sons of Heaven, they let us come within 25 or 30 yards of the trench. They are looking up at us and we cannot see them. At this time, all hell broke loose.

The 2d Platoon's sector extends from a little gully, or ditch on the left, where the left squad under S/Sgt. J. R. Murphy is anchored, to a point over on the ridge (That is, the nose of high ground, north of the draw, as this curved eastward and dwindled to a ravine.) where I am with Sergeant Destafano's squad. On our right rear is another deep draw (This draw is the ravine running east.) and that is where Charlie Company ties in with us.

The Japs open up first with machine-gun fire from the ridge to our front and with a lot of rifle fire from the ditches below us. I could hear Lieutenant Martin yell, "Keep going men," but we did not go very far as the fire was tremendous. The first man I saw go down was Pfc. Harold Lees, the scout of Destafano's squad. He got hit in the leg, and I saw Sergeant Destafano reach out and pull him in and give him first aid. I ordered everybody to get in as good a position as they could, as the squad area had no cover and we were more or less at the mercy of the Japs. All this time I am only about ten yards from Lees, but I cannot move as the minute I do, a sniper puts two or three shots right in front of my eyes. I hadn't heard from Lieutenant Martin for some time, so I yell, but he does not answer. After hesitating a few minutes I decide I better take a chance and find out what has happened. I took a dive and somehow or another I got back about ten yards to a hole where the radio man was. I asked him where Martin is, but he don't know. I took the radio and contacted Captain O'Brien. He told me that Lieutenant Martin was hit and had gone back. The place where I am now is worse than the first place and is getting hotter, so I again dodge bullets and moved. The next thing I know, Sharkey is hit on the left flank, next to the lst Platoon. I called Captain O'Brien and asked for two litters. The situation is really getting bad now. Captain O'Brien tells me to withdraw my platoon. But first I got casualties to get out of the line of fire. I brought my light machine gun up and placed it and told the gunner to fire along the crest of the ridge we are on and down towards the trenches below. Overhead fire it was. Then I coordinated this fire by radio with D Company's heavies which were high up on the hill behind us, and tried to evacuate Pfc. Lees. Now I cannot get to Destafano, who is with Lees, because of the heavy fire which is coming all around, but I hear Destafano ask for a volunteer from his squad. Pfc. James Fitzpatrick volunteered and together he and Destafano get Lees out of that spot and start back towards me, about ten yards away, but just when they get to the spot where my CP is now, a bullet goes clean through Lees' arm, which is around Fitzpatrick's shoulder, and goes through Fitz' chest, killing him instantly. By this time the litter bearers (damned good men) are crawling up behind and they evacuate Lees.

Charlie Company has now drawn back on our rear. My next move is to get my platoon back. God only knows how I did it. I asked for a tank. No soap. Then, again, I placed fire all along the front to keep the Nips' heads down. First, I told my platoon guide, S/Sgt. Claude Browne, to withdraw the support squad under Sergeant Mogalski. This was accomplished. Then I signaled the Ist squad on my left to move all at once, through a ditch, to a point out of the line of fire. I also signaled Destafano's squad, on the front of me, to move, but they didn't make it. Only the left squad (That is, the part of the platoon on the lower ground, in the draw.) accomplished the move.

During the heat of the battle I had got separated from most of Destafano's squad and a gap had come to exist between the lst and 2d squads. I attempted four times to get to them, but I could not make it and I could not get to Murphy (Destafano's second in command), because the enemy fire was out in front of me. Everywhere I go they shoot. I believe Tokio designated this particular sniper just to shoot at me that day. I yelled my brains out at Murphy; no soap. Finally I got back to my little CP and called Captain O'Brien on the radio to tell him that I could not withdraw Sergeant Murphy's squad because I could not get to him. Little did I know that Murphy was having one hell of a time in the sector where he was. Captain O'Brien told me to stay put till Murphy got out. From there on it is Murphy's story.

Murphy was Sgt. James R. Murphy one of several men by that name in the company. He was called "Spanish" Murphy due to the fact that he was bom in Los Angeles of Spanish parents who, several generations before had somewhere adopted the Irish name. Murphy was a wiry, dark-skinned little man who spoke in a strongly accented tongue in moments of excitement was more than likely to lapse into fluent Spanish.

Sergeant Murphy was with Destafano's squad. As originally constituted at the time of the attack on the afternoon of 6 July, this squad was composed of nine men, of whom three, Destafano, Lees, and Fitzpatrick, were now casualties. One of the other six, the Private Sharkey mentioned by Medina, had been wounded early and was lying helpless. The five men remaining were far enough over the crest of the north wall of Harakiri gulch to be out of the line of fire of the enemy in the trenches below. As a result, Sergeant Murphy had kept pushing his men forward without realizing that the rest of the platoon on his left, and Company C on his right, had been pinned down.

After moving 40 to 50 yards forward, he stopped and ordered two of his men, Pfc. William Drew and Pvt. Raymond Johnson, to creep up to the crest of the ridge and look over into the valley to see what the situation was below. By this time the five men had moved out far enough so that they were well along the high ground, which dropped off into Harakiri Gulch on their immediate left in a system of ledges that went almost straight down. When Drew and Johnson had managed to creep up to the crest of this ridge and look over, they found themselves staring down at 30 or 40 Japanese in trenches below them.

These enemy soldiers were armed with machine guns and rifles and were very methodically firing at the rest of Company A further up the valley. Drew and Johnson pulled out grenades and rolled them down the hill, but in both cases the missiles were caught in the folds of the ground and exploded harmlessly. The two men next tried throwing them, but this did no good either. By this time the enemy had become aware of their presence and had taken the skyline under fire. Neither of the two men could lift his head.

Farther back, near Murphy, was Pvt. John Shuart, rifle grenadier of the platoon. Shuart had evidently been watching the two men up forward with their grenades because, when they were pinned down by the fire, he moved forward. He talked briefly with Drew and Johnson, found out the situation below, and then moved out into the fire to the rim of the gorge where he could see what was going on below. Shuart moved very deliberately, crawling along the edge of the hill until he came to a tree. He turned to Drew and Johnson and yelled that he'd found a place from which his grenade discharger would be effective. He loaded his piece and got to his knee, taking aim. At that moment an enemy bullet hit him squarely in the heart and he dropped over dead.

It was during this time that Sergeant Medina attempted to tell Murphy to withdraw his squad, but without success. When Medina reported his failure to the company commander, Captain O'Brien had finished talking with members of the lst and 3d Platoons who were withdrawing under his orders. One of these men, Sergeant St. John, had seen where Sergeant Murphy and his men were and thought that perhaps he could reach them by using a route along the ditches and thence up over the ridge through some bushes that grew there. Captain O'Brien gave him permission to try it, and St. John took two men, Pvt. Peter Bolger and Pfc. Harold Brewer, and started out. Using the route that St. John had previously marked out, these men finally reached Murphy almost a half hour later.

In the meantime, however, Murphy had discovered the situation he was in. He realized that he and his five men, one wounded (Sharkey), were isolated and that two of the five, Drew and Johnson, were trapped well out in front of him. He turned his attention first to getting Drew and Johnson in. He sent his one remaining unwounded man out with a BAR to lay down fire on the Jap positions so that they would have to keep their heads down long enough for the two trapped men to get out. The plan worked, and now Murphy asked for volunteers to go back to Captain O'Brien with word on his situation. Private Drew volunteered immediately. Neither Drew nor Murphy knew exactly where the company commander was and neither knew of any safe route to the rear, having been out of sight of the rest of the company when they pulled back.

After a careful consultation between the two, they both decided that Drew should go back into the ravine where Company C was supposed to be, work through it, and out the other side. This meant that Drew would come out into open ground for about 100 yards, but both men thought he could make it by running hard.

Figure 6. US .50 cal heavy machine gun

Drew did get through the ravine all right, but he had no sooner emerged into the open ground, running up the slope towards Hill 721, than he was felled by a shot in the side and mortally wounded. Only one man saw him go down and this was Sgt- Lonnie McIntyre of Company D who had a section of machine guns sitting back up under Hill 721. McIntyre got to his feet and ran down the slope to Drew's aid, but when he got to the wounded man's side, he, too, was seriously hit. Murphy did not know of the loss of his messenger, but kept waiting for someone to come back from Captain O'Brien.

When St. John and his party arrived some time later, Murphy assumed that they were the result of his message and asked no questions. With the help of St. John's three men, Sharkey was dragged down the hill to the trench system and Murphy's little party was withdrawn. By the time that Company A was all reassembled at the entrance to the gulch it was well after 1500, and not until an hour later did Murphy realize that Drew had been hit. At almost the same time, Company D reported that Sergeant McIntyre had not returned after his dash down the hill. By that time the situation in front of the battalion was well known, and Captain O'Brien would not risk losing more men in a search for the two wounded men.

He did authorize a night patrol of volunteers, and shortly after dark eight men under Lieutenant Masem and 2d Lt. Robert W. Chester of Company D moved some 600 yards back down into Harakiri Gulch. They found Drew and McIntyre still alive and huddled in the bushes. Both men had given up hope of being rescued and were in bad condition. Drew died just after he reached the aid station, but McIntyre lived.

One factor contributing to the troubles of Company A was its lack of support on either flank. To its right, C (165th) had to approach the narrow ravine (running east from the main draw) over down- hill ground without any cover from enemy fire on the plateau. Only one of C's platoons was in position to help Company A, and this platoon was delayed in starting until after A had been repulsed. As a result, the platoon made what amounted to a lone effort and was shot to pieces on the open hillside. Further northeast, the 2d Battalion of the 165th found it impossible to get into Paradise Valley in their own zone, received permission to use the Ist Battalion's zone, and (since the lst had made no progress) was stalled the rest of the day.

Lower down Harakiri Gulch, the 3d Battalion of the 105th failed to get into the draw, or even to get enough pressure on the enemy to help A's attack at the head of the draw. Company I, next to O'Brien, moved off at 1200 when the whole line made its attack, but after moving 75 yards down into the gulch began receiving sniper fire that pinned most of the company down on the hillside unable to move. Capt. Ashley W. Brown, in command of the company, tried to work small patrols forward to locate the source of this fire, but before the patrols got back Company A, 165th Infantry on Brown's immediate right, had become involved in the full-scale battle already described. Brown held his men on the hillside with no further attempts to descend further into the gulch. At 1600, he withdrew his company to the top of the hill and dug in for the night, tied in with Company A on the right and Company L, 105th Infantry on the left.

Company L had not moved a yard all afternoon. All of his efforts to penetrate Harakiri Gulch during the morning having failed, Captain Spaulding decided that it would be a useless waste of men to attempt again to push through the gulch until he had accur-ately located and eliminated the source of fire that caught his men coming down over the nose. Furthermore, his tanks had left him just before the attack was scheduled to move off, and without their mobile fire support he could do little. He did, however, order several small patrols to creep up to the edge of the gulch and take points of observation from which they were to see if they could locate some of the enemy positions.

One of these patrols was just starting out when the gigantic explosion occurred in front of Company K, and, although they were almost 300 yards away and behind a hill, two Company L men were wounded seriously by falling debris. A little later, at approximately the time Company A, 165th Infantry was running into their trouble below, Sergeant Heidelberger, who was manning one of the observation posts, was killed by the intense rifle fire that still continued to pour over the south wall of the canyon. Only a few minutes later Pfc. Herman C. Kutch was killed in the same fashion. At the close of the afternoon, Company L was still waiting for a chance to move.

Shifting the Division's effort to the hills the aftemoon attack had thus failed to accomplish any gains. Two battalions of the 106th (1st and 3d) had moved up behind the 165th, and spent the day near Hill 767 waiting for possible employment. There was no chance for their use until too late in the day to be worthwhile.

More Fight on the Tanapag Plain 6 July 1944 27th Division

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