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

Afternoon: Plans for a New Attack
(105th Infantry)

by US War Department

After Company K was relieved at the coconut grove and went into reserve for the 3d Battalion's effort at the gulch, the 2d Battalion of the 105th held the Tanapag Plain, all three companies in line. Company G was at the grove, F was on the open ground to the left, and E was just south of the railroad track. The zone from the rail line to the beach had been left unoccupied as Major McCarthy shifted his forces to the right. Two BAR teams covered this flank, and there was little danger that enemy forces could infiltrate through the narrow gap. Companies E and F still faced the ditch that ran across their front and was now known to be strongly held. Company G had completed its relief of K by 1340, and was confronted by the same problem K had faced: passing the little rise, some 200 yards to the front and dominated by Japanese positions on the cliffs.

While waiting for G to get in line, Major McCarthy had bent every effort to getting the minefield cleared up so that tanks could reach the ditch; at the same time E and F were inching their way forward on their stomachs in an effort to come close enough for a direct assault. They had been able to make about 25 yards by 1400.

After another hour brought no change on the plain, Division Headquarters intervened. At 1520 General Griner issued an order by telephone to Colonel Bishop, commanding the 105th. He was directed to commit his reserve battalion, the 1st, on the right of the 2d. It was to attack toward an objective on the beach 1,200 yards beyond Road Junction 2 (Map 4, below).

Lt. Col. Wm. J. O'Brien, commanding the 1st Battalion, received orders to report to the regimental CP at 1530; he alerted his battalion for movement, and the executive officer was ordered to get the men under way toward the front. They had 2,000 yards to cover before they could reach their position in line. At Regiment, Colonel O'Brien was told to move into line with all three companies abreast, but with the right company (C) echeloned to the rear.

The 2d Battalion would shift its units north to make room on the right of the plain. This was to be accomplished by moving Company F back around E to the beach strip, while Company G, at the coconut grove, would be attached to the 3d Battalion to carry out a most important mission. Captain Olander was to swing this company across the mouth of Harakiri Gulch, pivoting on his right wing, to contain the enemy in the gulch and protect the rear of the 1st Battalion's advance. Next day, the isolated Japanese in the gulch were to be mopped up by the 3d Battalion.

The 2d Battalion, in its narrowed zone, was reorganizing to take part in the new attack on the plain. Before it was ready to go, a small tank action took place that was to have a considerable effect on the afternoon's battle.

At 1530, Lieutenant Dorey returned to the 2d Battalion front with three vehicles; he had spent the early afternoon back at the maintenance dump, refueling and resupplying. Reporting at the coconut grove, Dorey found that Company G would not be ready to use the vehicles for some time. On his own initiative, Lieutenant Dorey moved down toward Road Junction 2 in search of a mission. When he arrived at Company E, the minefield had at last been cleared up on that sector and the way was open to the ditch line which had stopped the morning attack.

Dorey decided to wander out and see what he could find in the lower end of the ditch facing the 2d Battalion. He discovered on approaching it that the ditch was literally full of Japanese, and returned at once to report to Captain Smith of Company E. Smith wasn't ready yet to start his attack, so Dorey went back with his three tanks.

For over half an hour, Dorey's vehicles moved up and down the ditch, as far east as the cliffs, driving the enemy into comers and then slaughtering them with canister and machine-gun fire.

Figure 7. Japanese magnetic antitank mine

Enemy opposition was ineffective after one attempt to knock out the tanks by magnetic mines. During the first turn up the ditch, some Japanese infantry managed to get a mine against a light tank, commanded by Sergeant Alloco, and blew off its track. Dorey tried to combine the job of evacuating Alloco's crew with the attack on the trench. Leaving his third tank to cover Alloco, Dorey went on alone with the offensive along the ditch. In the end, despite Dorey's effort, Alloco and his assistant driver were killed, and the light tank had to be destroyed.

But the enemy positions in the northern and deeper end of the ditch had been, to all intents and purposes, wiped out. When Companies E and F were finally ready to go, at 1700, they were able to stand up and walk forward for the first time since they had started past Road Junction 2. They found the trench littered with dead Japanese, and credited Dorey with wiping out 100 to 150 enemy. Those left were disorganized and demoralized by the time the infantry attack was launched.

Advance of the First Battalion (105th Infantry)

Colonel O'Brien, commander of the 1st Battalion, was a notably aggressive officer and had twice led his battalion in rapid and important advances during the Saipan battle. On 6 July, characteristically, he had his battalion under way before he knew its mission, so that by the time his orders were defined the men were well up toward the front. O'Brien had then picked up his company commanders and driven them forward to the coconut grove for a briefing on the ground. As he outlined to them his plans for the attack, O'Brien stressed the necessity of "keeping going. The Old Man wants us on the beach for the night, and we will be there."

The 1st Battalion was in line before 1645, and, with the 2d on its left, spent 30 minutes in resupplying and reorganizing. At 1715 the two battalions moved off in a coordinated attack, with the main effort in the 1st Battalion's zone. The 1st Battalion's left boundary angled on a long diagonal toward the beach, pinching out the 2d Battalion and leaving it a relatively small zone to advance through. The going, for the units on line, was to be progressively tougher from left to right.

Company A was O'Brien's left wing and moved out rapidly with two platoons abreast from the road in front of the coconut gr-ove. Mortar fire had preceded the attack, but artillery was used only lightly, on points some distance up the plain. Lieutenant Dorey's two tanks were still tied up in the attempt to rescue Alloco's vehicle. No other tanks were present, although shortly after the jump-off a platoon of self-propelled guns came up from the Cannon Company to the coconut grove, and later gave direct fire support to Company C.

Company A's attack progressed rapidly for the first 150-200 yards, against the lightest kind of opposition. An occasional shot rang out from the hills on the extreme right and one or two came from directly forward. The men were practically running across the open ground, although Capt. Louis F. Ackerman had ordered them to move by bounds. The first halt in the company's advance came at the ditch which had caused so much trouble all day. Here, the right platoon encountered a nest of 15 to 20 Japanese. Some of these were wounded and some were trying to hide from Dorey's tank fire by hugging the walls of the trench on the near side.

These enemy were surprised by the sudden appearance of the infantry. Ackennan's men waded into the ditch with bayonets and knives. For 20 minutes a sharp hand-to-hand fight ensued, and then the pocket had been cleaned out. The men of Company A moved on forward, across the ditch, and on a diagonal toward the beach. Japanese fire from the hills on the right was becoming more senous, machine guns having taken up the fire, but the company commander urged his men ahead.

Spectators in the 165th Infantry OP on Hill 721 could look down on the plain and see a rapidly advancing wave of men in one long skirmish line pushing across the level ground. Lt. Col. Leslie R. Rock of the 4th Marine Division, who was attached to the 165th Infantry as liaison officer, was moved to remark to his superiors at the time, "The 105th has broken through. They're going a mile a minute up the island and if they go as fast as they are now, they'll be in Makunsha in about twenty minutes. They're all over the place. This looks like the end."

Figure 8. US Browning Automatic Rifle

The headlong rush of Company A continued for 500 yards beyond the ditch. Then fire again began coming from the front. Captain Ackerman halted his men and waited to see where the fire was coming from. Directly ahead there was a small house and a little stone building that might have been a cistern or a stable. There were snipers in the house. Two men, Pfc. Joseph S. Jarosewicz and Pfc. Frank N. Saetes, moved on to try to rout out the enemy riflemen, while the rest of the company waited. Saetes turned his BAR on the under part of the house while Jarosewicz crept forward and slipped a grenade under the floor. The grenade came flying back out and landed at Saetes' feet where it exploded, wounding Saetes severely in the legs. While Jarosewicz had been looking for the place to throw the grenade, Saetes had cautiously approached the house and was holding his BAR in one hand while he tried to light the straw of the roof with a match he held in the other.

Captain Ackerman now ordered two more men forward, and Sgt. Cleo B. Dickey moved up and walked boldly in the front door. A moment later he had killed at least one of the snipers and wounded another. While he was doing this, Tech. 4 Hermans, the company cook, stepped up and set the house on fire. This time it burned. The one live Japanese in the house got off a last shot, wounding Saetes again while he was being carried back out of the way. Throughout this whole episode the fire from the side of the hill had been getting heavier. It was now almost 1800, less than an hour to darkness.

While Ackerman and Company A were busy trying to bum down the house, Company B came abreast on the right and took cover on the ground to wait, trying to find some protection from the machine guns in the cliff. This company had advanced almost as napidly as Company A, but being closer to the cliffs had suf. fered more from the harassing fire which landed in their zone of action in some volume. Capt. Richard F. Ryan had finally been forced to move his men by short bounds, but by constant encouragement and urging he had managed to keep the company well abreast of Ackerman. Only one man had been wounded during the advance.

When Company A had been held up the second time, Ryan ordered his men to dig in as well as they could and then ordered his Ist Platoon, accompanied by two light machine guns, out to his extreme right flank. Here they built up a defensive line facing the cliffs, and the machine guns began laying down fire all along the hillside. This seemed to stimulate the Japanese, for within a few minutes the enemy fire had doubled in intensity. Two of Ryan's machine gunners were wounded in the new and heavier fire.

In view of this increased enemy activity, which was becoming serious, Captain Ryan went over to Company A and talked with Captain Ackerman. Both company commanders decided to send out a strong patrol, composed of members of both companies, in an effort to knock out at least the nearest machine gun. Just after this decision was made, however, Colonel O'Brien came running up from the coconut grove to find out what was holding up the advance. He sympathized with the two men, but insisted that the battalion should move forward.

He had no sooner given this order than a shot killed Captain Ryan at his side. 1st Lt. Hugh P. King now assumed command of Company B and, acting in accordance with O'Brien's orders, canceled the patrol and made ready to move forward. Colonel O'Brien had brought an SPM forward with him and this was used to demolish the concrete building. An advance of another 100 yards was then made before the battalion commander called a halt for the day.

While Companies A and B had pushed home their assault with rapidity, Company C, following along behind Company B's right rear, had run into considerable trouble. Their route of approach led this unit directly along beneath the cliffs where the enemy were holed up. Almost from the time he pushed off from the road, lst Lt. Bernard A- Tougaw's unit was under direct, heavy, small-arms fire, but mindful of Colonel O'Brien's instructions he ordered his men to keep moving. The company commander was using a peculiar formation to execute his mission. Each rifle squad was deployed as skirmishers, but each platoon was formed into a triangle.

The company itself formed a huge diamond, with the lst platoon at the leading point of the diamond, the 2d on the right side, the 3d on the left, and the Weapons bringing up the rear. Just as the company moved out from the road one man was wounded by the heavy fire which came from the northeast nose of the entrance to Harakiri Gulch. They also received fire from the machine guns atop the little knoll to their direct front. These were the same guns that Dorey's tank fire had driven the Japanese from earlier in the day, and the same guns Lieutenant Peyre had worked so diligently to keep the enemy from using before K was relieved at noon.

The men of Company C could plainly see the Japanese soldiers manning the positions. The American fire was fairly heavy on the area, but the Japanese had evidently formed relays to serve the guns, out of a group of about 30 men. These enemy soldiers were hiding in a cave in the cliff, connected with the ditch running down toward the beach and passing just behind the knoll. The men of Company C would see one of the Japanese run pell-mell out of the cave, and do a beautiful baseball slide that ended up under the gun. Then he would squeeze off: one or two short bursts at the leading platoon and roll down the knoll in back, out of sight.

Here they may have picked themselves up and crawled back into the cave to await their turn again. This system was so arranged that they did not use the two guns in any regular order; it was impossible to tell just which of the two weapons they would run for. Tech/Sgt. Ralph N. Gannaway, in command of the lst Platoon, ordered his men to lie prone on the ground, and assigned half the platoon to watching each gun. In this manner, every time a Japanese popped over the horizon, one of Gannaway's men picked him off. Gannaway said later the Japanese "just couldn't seem to realize what was happening.

They kept right on coming at the guns until they were all dead." Colonel O'Brien, who at the time was in the coconut grove not far away, watched the whole spectacle, and about halfway through it he sent over one of his SPM's that had just come up and ordered them to fire into the cave. However, the SPM fired only one round, which scored a direct hit on one of the Japanese coming at the guns. This evidently satisfied the vehicle crew and they moved off up the same plain toward which Companies A and B had gone. Lieutenant Dorey and his tank also took a hand in the proceedings, from farther down the ditch, but with little effectiveness.

When the Japanese stopped coming toward the gun, Gannaway decided that it would be safe to assault the position. Three men, Pfc. Irvin A- George, Pvt. Harold L. Peterson, and Pfc. Robert L. Jones, volunteered to rush the guns. All three got up and ran full speed up the little knoll to a point where they could look directly down into the ditch, almost at the point where it connected with the cave. They found several Japanese trying to hide in the ditch. For the next two or three minutes these three men engaged in a fire fight at point-blank range. But they were heavily outnumbered, and when Jones received a face wound Gannaway ordered them to get back to the platoon. Shortly after this move was accomplished, the Japanese from the caves loosed a shower of grenades into the midst of the platoon. Gannaway ordered the men to withdraw out of range. Leaving S/Sgt. Raymond G. Norden in charge, he told Norden to hold while he went back to the battalion CP and tried to get an SPM to come up and help.

While Gannaway and the 1st Platoon had been engaged with the Japanese in the ditch, Lieutenant Tougaw with the 3d Platoon, the Weapons, and Company Headquarters had been moving on forward. Tougaw had been following O'Brien's orders to keep moving no matter what happened; when Gannaway had stopped to take care of the knoll, the company commander had taken the left platoon and the trailing elements, sideslipped to the left ' and bypassed the knoll to follow the battalion assault. The 2d Platoon, which was echeloned to Gannaway's right rear, was even closer to the cliffs than the 1st Platoon, but took no part in the action at the knoll. When the 1st Platoon stopped, they also halted. This left Gannaway with two platoons at the rear, while Tougaw with the rest of the company had pushed on forward.

Gannaway had no sooner given Sergeant Norden charge of the platoon than Norden received a radio call from Tougaw, who wanted to know where the other platoons were and why they weren't moving. Lieutenant Tougaw was extremely put out about the failure of Gannaway to move forward. It was now 1830 and the rest of the battalion was already digging in for the night, with darkness only half an hour away. Norden tried to explain the situation to the company commander, but, when Tougaw asked what the 2d Platoon was doing, Norden didn't know. Tougaw thereupon ordered Norden to bring the 2d Platoon and come forward at once. The lst Platoon could move up as soon as they cleaned up the pocket they were facing at the knoll. Norden did as he was ordered, moving the 2d Platoon back and around the 1st.

This left the 1st Platoon by itself to face a strong enemy group. The Japanese were very obviously getting added strength, but no one knew from where. For the next 45 minutes all Gannaway's men, lying on the ground, engaged in a vicious fire fight with the enemy in the trench not 30 yards away. Darkness came and the fight continued, with both sides using every possible weapon, grenades, rifles, and machine guns. Three of the Americans were hit, two by grenade fragments. One of them was an acting staff sergeant, the other a squad leader who was knocked unconscious and caused a good deal of trouble in the efforts to evacuate him.

A few minutes after dark, Gannaway's efforts to get an SPM bore fruit; one of the vehicles reported to the platoon and from 40 yards away proceeded to pour howitzer shells into the Japanese positions. While the SPM was at work, Gannaway had taken a small patrol forward to look for Lieutenant Tougaw, explain what was happening, and calm the company commander's ire, but in the darkness the platoon sergeant was unable to find anyone. While he was gone, S/Sgt. Frederick A. Westlake, whom he had left in charge of the platoon, received another irate call on the radio from Tougaw who told him in no uncertain terms to get forward. Westlake assured him he would just as soon as he could get his wounded men evacuated. Tougaw called the Battalion CP and asked that aid men be sent over to help in this evacuation.

(It may be well at this point to call attention to a feature of this action which is characteristic of fighting in the Pacific: as this day's story shows at several points, evacuation of the wounded often caused serious delays during attacks. Unit commanders were aware of, and disturbed by, the tendency of men to halt an advance to see that wounded were safely taken back. Measures to prevent this were difficult to enforce. Two features of Pacific fighting differentiated it from that in Europe: the Japanese fought on in suicidal fashion if bypassed, even very small groups or individuals; and they killed wounded men without mercy. U.S. soldiers were aware of this and felt strongly about leaving wounded comrades in the wake of the advance, to fall victims to any bypassed enemy snipers.)

At the time the battalion aid station received this call, they were in the process of moving forward from the coconut grove to the new battalion perimeter, and the carrying party that went out looking for Westlake could not find him. After waiting some time for this party to come, Westlake finally gave up. He talked with the driver of the SPM and finally got a ride for Jones back as far as he Regimental CP. Pvt. Paul A. Flessenkemper, who had suffered multiple wounds in the legs from grenade fragments during the fire fight, voluntarily walked all the way back through the coconut grove in the darkness to the 3d Battalion aid station, where he managed to hitch a ride on a medical jeep to the regimental aid station.

Westlake and one of his men carried French back to the coconut grove, where they hailed a passing medical jeep and got French aboard and out of the way. Westlake, then, after all his delay, ordered his platoon to move up in the darkness and join the rest of the company. By moving all the way over to the railroad tracks and following them north, the platoon managed to find Tougaw and the rest of -the company by 2100. Before they left the pocket which had caused them so much trouble, it had been virtually wiped out by the action of the SPM.

It will be remembered that Company G, attached to the 3d Battalion, had the mission of guarding the flank facing Harakiri Gulch during the attack. Captain Olandees task was to swing his unit across the mouth of the gulch, and so bottle up the Japanese in that corridor.

Olander's men were in the coconut grove at the opening of the attack; he moved them out in single file to the cross-island high way, in the shelter of the ridge on which Company L was still immobilized. Around the corner of this ridge was the entrance to the gulch. Olander assembled the company near the sharp hairpin turn in the highway, established contact with L, above, and set out alone to make a personal reconnaissance of the mouth of the draw.

Ahead of him, the nearer leg of the hairpin curve skirted the nose of sloping ground that marked the end of the west wall of the gulch; from this leg, the trail branched off the road and led up into the draw. Just short of the junction was the tank lost by Lieutenant Ganio earlier in the day, tipped over in the ditch. Within the U of the hairpin turn was a small pocket of extremely rough terrain, covered with brush and bushes, and somewhat lower, perhaps by five feet, than the little shelf which supported the highway.

When Olander started out on his reconnaissance he sneaked along the ditch edging the highway, and got as far as the tank. Following him at a short interval were his radioman and one rifleman. Olander saw nothing to indicate the presence of the enemy and told his radioman to move up the lst Platoon. This platoon moved out immediately, coming down the edge of the road where they could jump into the ditch, if necessary. The leaders had not reached a point more than halfway to the crippled tank when the Japanese opened up on them with rifle and machine gun fire from the bushes in the pocket of the U and from the nose of ground on the right front. Two men were hit almost at once and the whole platoon was pinned to the ground.

Captain Olander appeared to be forward of the fire that was coming from the left, behind the fire on the right, and in the midst of the enemy. He very calmly called back on his radio and told his 2d Platoon to move up on the high ground and his 3d platoon to move into the area below the hairpin. From there they were to be prepared to support the advance of the Ist Platoon by fire on the suspected areas.

The execution of this order consumed approximately 20 minutes; it was now after 1800 and darkness was rapidly approaching. The enemy fire had died down completely as soon as the 1st Platoon gave evidence that they were not trying to move. Captain Olanler had used the time to poke around in the bushes below the road, trying to find out where the enemy were. (The men in his company thought this was very foolish, a sure invitation to suicide.)

S/Sgt. Edward J. Wojcicki, platoon sergeant of the 3d Platoon, below the road, had been working his men forward along the lower ditch and had gotten about halfway to where Captain Olander was visible in the dusk, beating the bushes. At that point, the company commander ordered Wojcicki to halt the platoon and come forward with a six-man patrol through the brush to where he was. Wojcicki knew that there were Japanese in the area and he said later that he was sure Olander was crazy, but he followed orders.

The men had no sooner stepped out of the ditch than they found themselves squarely in the middle of a large Japanese patrol or outpost which had been lying quietly in the bushes. Wojcicki later said that the first thing he knew he had stepped squarely n one of the enemy soldiers; then the ground seemed to erupt. Machine guns opened up, grenades began going off, men started running in all directions. Captain Olander, a short distance away, fired his carbine, then used it as a club until he broke it, and finally picked up a saber which he wielded to good effect. Nearly every one of Wojcicki's men were engaged in wrestling or kicking their opponents as well as shooting and bayoneting them.

The rest of Company G, who could barely see what was going on in the darkness, did not dare to shoot for fear of hitting their own men. In the furious melee that raged for the next few minutes, two of Wojcicki's men, Pfc. James Messer and Pfc. Vernon Bug, were killed. Another, Sgt. Benjamin J. Drenzek, was wounded four different times. On three occasions Wojcicki's men killed Japanese who were trying to carry Drenzek away, up into the gulch. After the last attempt to kidnap the wounded man, Olander told Wojcicki to get back out of the area. A few minutes later, after he rejoined the company himself, he ordered all the platoons to pull back to the starting point near the bend in the road.

Once here, the company commander called Colonel Bradt on the radio and told him that he didn't think it was possible for him to build the line across the mouth of the gulch, but that he thought he could control it from the nose of ground overlooking Road Junction 64. He was given permission to dig in up on this nose, and moved his company across the road and up onto the higher ground. During the establishment of the perimeter, the company was constantly harassed by machine gun fire from across he gulch. During this time, Captain Olander made another personal reconnaissance and spotted an enemy gun in a cave in the opposite wall. He called up a volunteer, Pvt. Joseph F. Kinyone, to fire a bazooka at this position, but as Kinyone moved up to position he was hit by a bullet and killed.

This ended the day's activity for Company G. Once again, no impression had been made on the enemy stronghold in the gulch, and, although the mouth of the canyon was covered by the fire of Company G, there was no solid stopgap to keep the enemy from emerging there in force.

The remainder of the 2d Battalion, Companies E and F, together with most of H and Headquarters Companies, had moved forward in the assault at 1715 with the lst Battalion. Major McCarthy had placed his Company F on the battalion left, between the beach and the road. Company E had extended from there to the left flank of Company A, across the railroad tracks. The work of Lieutenant Dorey's tanks had had its greatest effect in front of the 2d Battalion. The ditch position which had been the enemy's main strong point all across the 2d Battalion front, and which had held up Major McCarthy's advance since he arrived at Road Junction 2, had been very effectively reduced not 30 minutes previous to the time set for the attack. When Company E moved off in the attack it was, therefore, with surprising ease. The men simply got up and walked forward. Within minutes they were at the ditch, and hardly a shot had been fired. At the ditch the men could see without much trouble that Dorey had done effective work In the words of Sergeant Nicolette, "We had to walk across that ditch on dead Japs."

About 20 minutes were spent in mopping up remaining enemy in the ditch, and then the company pushed rapidly on to the north. By 1800 they had advanced several hundred yards, and there held up to tie in with the 1st Battalion on the right and Company F on the left. Company F had almost as easy an advance, although they were delayed by passing a series of pillboxes and dugouts that dotted the beach. No Japanese were encountered in most of these, but each one had to be carefully investigated. Just before reaching the objective, the 3d Platoon, next to the road, did find a shelter occupied by three Japanese. The platoon sergeant and another man were wounded by a grenade which they threw into the shelter and the Japanese threw back out.

The 2d Battalion (less Company G) dug in for the night between the railroad track and the beach. The 1st Battalion was south across the rail line, with a considerable gap on its right flank separating it from Company G at the gulch.

The day had ended in a success for the 27th Division, but the night was to bring disaster. Gathering the bulk of their remaining troops, the Japanese launched their greatest suicidal attack of the war. The banzai charge hit with particular force on the two battalions of the 105th, left by their very advance in an exposed advance position.

The enemy's main assault struck along the coastal plain, and it also used Harakiri Gulch as a corridor to hit the gap between Companies C and G. In a matter of a few hours the 1st and 2d Battalions of the 105th, suffering 900 casualties out of 1100-1200 effectives, had virtually ceased to exist as combat units.

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

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