The 37th Division The dawn of D Day, 25 July, found the 43d Division committed to a general attack, but the 37th Division was forced to postpone its advance. General Beightler had issued a field order on 23 July calling for a general attack by his three regiments, to start at 0700, 25 July. The 145th, 161st, and 148th Infantry Regiments were to attack due west, toward Bibilo Hill, on the division's left, center, and right, with the 145th maintaining contact with the 172d Infantry on its left and the 148th Infantry covering the corps' right flank and rear. But the discovery of the strong Japanese position east of the 161st Infantry's line of departure altered the plans. On 24 July Beightler ordered Colonel Holland not to advance his 145th Infantry, but to stay in place. He told Colonel Baxter to move the 148th Infantry only up to the line of departure. The two regiments would hold while part of the 161st contained the Japanese position and the rest of the regiment bypassed it and came up on a line with the 145th and 148th. After Baxter received the commanding general's orders, he suggested that his regiment could perhaps help the 161st reduce the pocket by making a limited advance. Baxter hoped to establish an observation post on high ground from which both Munda airfield and the pocket in front of the 161st could be seen. Beightler assented to this request at 0910, 25 July. Patrols went out, and on their return the direct support artillery battalion laid a ten-minute preparation 400 yards in front of the line of departure while mortars covered the 400-yard gap. The 2d Battalion, 148th, commanded by Lt. Col. Herbert Radcliffe, started forward, met no Japanese, and gained 500-600 yards. (Because of the inaccurate maps and densely jungled, rough ground, all units had difficulty in determining distances and exact locations. Nearly all reports warn that distances and locations are only estimates, and all give widely varying figures.) The 1st Battalion, Lt. Col. Vernor E. Hydaker commanding, moved tip to the 2d Battalion's old positions. Bartley Ridge and Horseshoe Hill When I Company, 161st Infantry, had been unable to reduce the Japanese strongpoint on Bartley Ridge on 24 July, Colonel Dalton issued orders for its seizure on D Day. (Bartley Ridge was named in memory of 2d Lt. Martin E. Bartley, an I Company platoon leader killed on 25 July.) I Company was to contain the Japanese pocket by attacking to its front while the 1st Battalion and the rest of the 3d Battalion executed a double envelopment. (The 2d Battalion was in division reserve along with the 37th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop.) The 1st Battalion was to move around the Japanese left (north) flank while the 3d Battalion went around the right, after which the two battalions would drive southward and northward for two hundred yards. Fifteen minutes of mortar fire would precede these moves. Beightler arranged for the 145th and 148th Regiments to support the 161st with heavy weapons fire. He also asked corps headquarters for tanks to help the 161st, but the 43d Division had been given the tanks for the D-Day attack. From positions near the Laiana Trail eight 81-mm. mortars opened fire at 0745, 25 July, in support of Dalton's attack. Heavy weapons of the adjoining regiments attempted to deliver their supporting fires, but the denseness of the jungle prevented forward observers' controlling the fire. The unobserved fire began obstructing rather than helping the 161st, and that part of the plan was abandoned. The 3d Battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. David H. Buchanan, was unable to gain. Shortly after 0800, when the attack began, I Company reported that its attack against the ridge strongpoint had stalled. A knob projecting east from Bartley Ridge and the heavy undergrowth provided enough cover and concealment to let the infantrymen reach the base of the ridge, but uphill from the knob, where the growth was thinner, all movement was halted by fire from the crest. The 161st Infantry had made plans to use flame throwers, and an operator carrying his sixty-five pounds of equipment made two laborious climbs and silenced an enemy machine gun, but many other Japanese positions remained in action. The main body of the 3d Battalion, attempting to get around the south end of Bartley Ridge, was also halted. The 1st Battalion was more successful. At 1035 its commander, Lt. Col. Slaftcho Katsarsky, radioed Dalton that he had found the north flank of the Japanese position on Bartley Ridge, and that he was moving his battalion around it. Shortly afterward Beightler, Dalton, and staff officers conferred and decided that the 3d Battalion should contain the strono-point while the 1st Battalion pushed westward with orders to develop enemy positions but not to engage in full-scale combat. The 37th Division could not advance westward in force until Bartley Ridge had been cleared. The 3d Battalion established itself in containing positions north, east, and south of Bartley Ridge. E Company was released from reserve and sent into line on high ground just north of Bartley to secure the right flank in the 161st's zone. The 1st Battalion advanced to a point about four hundred yards west of Bartley and halted on a small rise northeast of Horseshoe Hill. Tanks of the newly arrived 10th Marine Defense Battalion were to be committed to support the 37th Division the next day, and in the afternoon the tank commander made a personal reconnaissance of Colonel Buchanan's zone in preparation for the attack. Six light Marine tanks were to lead out in the attack at 0900, 26 July, after preparatory fire by machine guns and 81-mm. mortars. L and K Companies, in column, would move behind the tanks, which were supported by infantrymen armed with .30-caliber M1 rifles, .30 caliber Browning Automatic Rifles (BAR's), and two flame throwers. Tank infantry communication was indirect. The tank radios formed a net within the Tank Platoon, and a 161st radio car maintained radio contact between the Tank Platoon commander and Colonel Buchanan. When the tanks, with their hatches closed, got off the approach trail that had been bulldozed by members of the 65th Engineer Battalion, Colonel Buchanan directed the infantrymen to lead them forward. It was 0925 before the attack got started. In two lines of three vehicles each, the tanks lumbered over the littered undergrowth, steep slopes, and felled logs toward the southeast slope of Bartley Ridge. The Japanese quickly responded with fire from antitank and 70-mm. battalion guns, machine guns, and mortars. Attack The attack went well at first. About a dozen pillboxes were reported knocked out by 1110, and Buchanan ordered his men to occupy them to keep the Japanese from moving in again at night. Unfortunately, the tanks had encountered exactly the sort of difficulties that might be expected in tangled terrain with communications uncertain. In their lurches and frequent changes of direction they injured some of the accompanying foot troops. Poor visibility caused them to get into untenable positions from which they had to be extricated with consequent delays to the attack. During the morning a Japanese soldier stole out of the tangled brush and planted a magnetic mine that disabled one tank. A second tank was halted by a ruptured fuel line. The remaining four withdrew at 1110 to reorganize. The flame thrower operators, carrying their bulky, heavy fuel tanks on their backs, were not properly protected by the riflemen and were soon killed. In the course of the day's fighting some fourteen pillboxes and a number of machine gun positions were knocked out and the 3d Battalion advanced about two hundred yards up Bartley Ridge. (In the course of the day's action Capt. Paul K. Mellichamp, battalion executive officer, picked up a radio from a wounded operator and directed mortar fire. He was wounded, but continued to direct the fire until he collapsed. He died shortly afterward, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.) But it met such heavy fire from Bartley and Horseshoe Hill that its position clearly could not be held. Attempts to pull out the disabled tanks were unsuccessful. The battalion withdrew to its previous positions. The attack had disclosed the existence of so many more positions that Dalton received Beightler's permission to make a thorough reconnaissance before attacking again. While the 161st was attacking Bartley Ridge on 25 and 26 July, Colonel Holland's 145th Infantry stayed in its forward positions on Reincke Ridge and Kelley Hill. During this period it sent out patrols to the north and west to try to find the source of the 90-mm. mortar fire that had been hitting the regiment since 22 July. It received no artillery support at this time because its front line was considered too close to enemy targets for the artillery to fire without hitting American infantry. By the end of 26 July the 1st Battalion, 161st, had fought its way forward to come up on line north of the 145th, but near the regimental boundary the line sagged eastward in the shape of a great U. Colonel Parker's 2d Battalion, 145th, was occupying positions in rear of the 1st Battalion, 145th, commanded by Lt. Col. Richard D. Crooks. General Beightler ordered Holland to commit his 2d Battalion, in order to reduce the Japanese positions on Horseshoe Hill that had fired on the 3d Battalion, 161st, during Its 26 July attack against Bartley Ridge. Doubtless because troops of the 161st had not been able to get past the south end of Bartley, Colonel Parker's battalion was to march northward right around the 3d Battalion, 161st, push west around the north of the enemy positions on Bartley Ridge, then attack to the southwest. This maneuver would entail a march of about one and one-half miles to the assembly area. Parker's battalion moved out in the early morning of 27 July. It reached its assembly area on the north flank of Bartley Ridge without incident. After a preparation of one hundred rounds by the division artillery, which cleared some of the foliage, the battalion advanced to the attack in column of companies. "Having, to fight every foot of the way", it gained about three hundred yards before 1300, when E Company in the lead moved south off slopes of a ridge and started up a small knob projecting from Horseshoe Hill. (37th Div G-3 Jnl, 27 Jul 43.) As the company ascended the hill it was struck by fire from pillboxes. Among the first men killed was Capt. Gardner B. Wing, E Company's commander, in whose honor the 145th christened the knob. On the same day, while American mortars fired intermittently at Bartley Ridge, patrols from the 3d Battalion, 161st Infantry, examined the Japanese lines to procure data for a preparation by the corps artillery. In the course of the reconnaissance Colonels Dalton and Buchanan observed enemy pillboxes on the right flank of the 1st Battalion, 145th Infantry, and recommended that the attack be delayed until 29 July. (It is not clear whether these pillboxes were on Horseshoe Hill or were on the saddle connecting Bartley Ridge with Horseshoe Hill.) General Beightler gave his assent. Dalton and Buchanan also decided to attack from the northwest instead of the southeast. Reconnaissance and pressure were to continue on the 28th. On the morning of the 28th a tenman patrol from I Company, led by Lt. Walter Tymniak, set out in a southerly direction toward the top of Bartley Ridge. To their surprise and satisfaction, the Americans met no fire, got safely to the top, and found several abandoned pillboxes. They occupied them, and I Company followed to the crest and began infiltrating the pillboxes. Not all were vacant, but the task of the attackers was eased as each pillbox was taken, for its fire could then no longer be used with that of its neighbors to make crossfire or interlocking bands of fire. Evacuating Because the Japanese appeared to be evacuating and the American front was intermingled with the enemy front, the artillery preparation was called off. The 3d Battalion continued its infiltration on 29 July. At the end of the day it was relieved by Maj. Francis P. Carberry's 2d Battalion and went into division reserve. The 145th Infantry's zone was shifted farther north on 30 July as part of a general shift in boundaries that General Griswold was making in order to widen the 43d Division's front. This move placed the southern half of Bartley Ridge within the 145th's zone. Colonel Parker'S 2d Battalion, 145th, had just completed its move around the 161st's north flank, thence southwest against Horseshoe Hill. On 30 July it was attached to the 161st for the completion of the reduction of Bartley Ridge and Horseshoe Hill. Carberry's and Parker's battalions pushed their attacks on 30 July. In contrast with Carberry's battalion, which met little resistance, Parker's men engaged in sharp fighting in the west. The Japanese who had evacuated the position facing Carberry had apparently moved into positions facing Parker. With grenade, rifle, machine gun, mortar, and flame thrower the two battalions fought all day and part of the next, until by midafternoon of 31 July the Japanese rear guards on Bartley Ridge were either dead or in flight, and the 2d Battalion, 161st, had advanced west and was on a line with the ist. Bartley Ridge had contained forty-six log and coral pillboxes and thirty-two other lighter positions. First attacked by a company, it fell only after seven days' fighting by two battalions. On Horseshoe Hill the Japanese resisted from their pillboxes and foxholes with equal skill and enthusiasm. The Americans used small arms, grenades, automatic weapons, mortars, flame throwers, and field artillery as they systematically reduced the enemy positions, almost pillbox by pillbox. (During these operations Pfc. Frank J. Petrarca, a medical aid I man, so distinguished himself by gallant, selfless devotion to duty that he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. WD GO 86, 23 Dec 43.) On 1 August Parker's battalion received orders to attack in late afternoon, obeyed, and took Horseshoe Hill without firing a shot or losing a man. The Japanese had gone. More XIV Corps Offensive Plans Ilangana and Shimizu Hill Attack Against the Ridges Advance and Withdrawal Jungle Techniques and Problems Back to Table of Contents -- Operation Cartwheel Back to World War Two: US Army List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Coalition Web, Inc. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com