[Illustration: _A Marine patrol crosses a flooded stream and probes for
the enemy in the forests of New Britain._ Department of Defense (USMC)
photo 72290]
[Illustration: _On 26 December 1943, Marines wade ashore from beached
LSTs passing through a heavy surf to a narrow beach of black sand.
Inland, beyond a curtain of undergrowth, lie the swamp forest and the
Japanese defenders._ Department of Defense (USMC) photo 68998]
Cape Gloucester:
The Green Inferno
_by Bernard C. Nalty_
On the early morning of 26 December 1943, Marines poised off the coast
of Japanese-held New Britain could barely make out the mile-high bulk of
Mount Talawe against a sky growing light with the approach of dawn.
Flame billowed from the guns of American and Australian cruisers and
destroyers, shattering the early morning calm. The men of the 1st Marine
Division, commanded by Major General William H. Rupertus, a veteran of
expeditionary duty in Haiti and China and of the recently concluded
Guadalcanal campaign, steeled themselves as they waited for daylight and
the signal to assault the Yellow Beaches near Cape Gloucester in the
northwestern part of the island. For 90 minutes, the fire support ships
blazed away, trying to neutralize whole areas rather than destroy
pinpoint targets, since dense jungle concealed most of the individual
fortifications and supply dumps. After the day dawned and H-Hour drew
near, Army airmen joined the preliminary bombardment. Four-engine
Consolidated Liberator B-24 bombers, flying so high that the Marines
offshore could barely see them, dropped 500-pound bombs inland of the
beaches, scoring a hit on a fuel dump at the Cape Gloucester airfield
complex and igniting a fiery geyser that leapt hundreds of feet into the
air. Twin-engine North American Mitchell B-25 medium bombers and Douglas
Havoc A-20 light bombers, attacking from lower altitude, pounced on the
only Japanese antiaircraft gun rash enough to open fire.
The warships then shifted their attention to the assault beaches, and
the landing craft carrying the two battalions of Colonel Julian N.
Frisbie's 7th Marines started shoreward. An LCI [Landing Craft,
Infantry] mounting multiple rocket launchers took position on the flank
of the first wave bound for each of the two beaches and unleashed a
barrage intended to keep the enemy pinned down after the cruisers and
destroyers shifted their fire to avoid endangering the assault troops.
At 0746, the LCVPs [Landing Craft, Vehicles and Personnel] of the first
wave bound for Yellow Beach 1 grounded on a narrow strip of black sand
that measured perhaps 500 yards from one flank to the other, and the
leading elements of the 3d Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel
William K. Williams, started inland. Two minutes later, Lieutenant
Colonel John E. Weber's 1st Battalion, on the left of the other unit,
emerged on Yellow Beach 2, separated from Yellow 1 by a thousand yards
of jungle and embracing 700 yards of shoreline. Neither battalion
encountered organized resistance. A smoke screen, which later drifted
across the beaches and hampered the approach of later waves of landing
craft, blinded the Japanese observers on Target Hill overlooking the
beachhead, and no defenders manned the trenches and log-and-earth
bunkers that might have raked the assault force with fire.
[Illustration: POSITIONS OF THE FIRST MARINE DIVISION]
The Yellow Beaches, on the east coast of the broad peninsula that
culminated at Cape Gloucester, provided access to the main objective,
the two airfields at the northern tip of the cape. By capturing this
airfield complex, the reinforced 1st Marine Division, designated the
Backhander Task Force, would enable Allied airmen to intensify their
attack on the Japanese fortress of Rabaul, roughly 300 miles away at the
northeastern extremity of New Britain. Although the capture of the
Yellow Beaches held the key to the New Britain campaign, two subsidiary
landings also took place: the first on 15 December at Cape Merkus on
Arawe Bay along the south coast; and the second on D-Day, 26 December,
at Green Beach on the northwest coast opposite the main landing sites.
[Illustration: SEIZURE AND DEFENSE OF THE AIRDROME]
[Sidenote: Major General William H. Rupertus
Major General William H. Rupertus, who commanded the 1st Marine Division
on New Britain, was born at Washington, D.C., on 14 November 1889 and in
June 1913 graduated from the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service School of
Instruction. Instead of pursuing a career in this precursor of the U.S.
Coast Guard, he accepted appointment as a second lieutenant in the
Marine Corps. A vigorous advocate of rifle marksmanship throughout his
career, he became a member of the Marine Corps Rifle Team in 1915, two
years after entering the service, and won two major matches. During
World War I, he commanded the Marine detachment on the USS _Florida_,
assigned to the British Grand Fleet.
Between the World Wars, he served in a variety of assignments. In 1919,
he joined the Provisional Marine Brigade at Port-au-Prince, Haiti,
subsequently becoming inspector of constabulary with the Marine-trained
gendarmerie and finally chief of the Port-au-Prince police force.
Rupertus graduated in June 1926 from the Army Command and General Staff
College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and in January of the following
year became Inspector of Target Practice for the Marine Corps. He had
two tours of duty in China and commanded a battalion of the 4th Marines
in Shanghai when the Japanese attacked the city's Chinese defenders in
1937.
During the Guadalcanal campaign, as a brigadier general, he was
assistant division commander, 1st Marine Division, personally selected
for the post by Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, the division
commander, whom he succeeded when Vandegrift left the division in July
1943. Major General Rupertus led the division on New Britain and at
Peleliu. He died of a heart attack at Washington, D.C., on 25 March
1945, and did not see the surrender of Japan, which he had done so much
to bring about.
[Illustration: Department of Defense (USMC) photo 69010
_MajGen William H. Rupertus, Commanding General, 1st Marine Division,
reads a message of congratulation after the capture of Airfield No. 2 at
Cape Gloucester, New Britain._]]
_Two Secondary Landings_
The first subsidiary landing took place on 15 December 1943 at distant
Cape Merkus, across the Arawe channel from the islet of Arawe. Although
it had a limited purpose--disrupting the movement of motorized barges
and other small craft that moved men and supplies along the southern
coast of New Britain and diverting attention from Cape Gloucester--it
nevertheless encountered stiff resistance. Marine amphibian tractor
crews used both the new, armored Buffalo and the older, slower, and more
vulnerable Alligator to carry soldiers of the 112th Cavalry, who made
the main landings on Orange Beach at the western edge of Cape Merkus.
Fire from the destroyer USS _Conyngham_, supplemented by rocket-equipped
DUKWs and a submarine chaser that doubled as a control craft, and a
last-minute bombing by B-25s silenced the beach defenses and enabled the
Buffaloes to crush the surviving Japanese machine guns that survived the
naval and aerial bombardment. Less successful were two diversionary
landings by soldiers paddling ashore in rubber boats. Savage fire forced
one group to turn back short of its objective east of Orange Beach, but
the other gained a lodgment on Pilelo Island and killed the handful of
Japanese found there. An enemy airman had reported that the assault
force was approaching Cape Merkus, and fighters and bombers from Rabaul
attacked within two hours of the landing. Sporadic air strikes continued
throughout December, although with diminishing ferocity, and the
Japanese shifted troops to meet the threat in the south.
The other secondary landing took place on the morning of 26 December.
The 1,500-man Stoneface Group--designated Battalion Landing Team 21 and
built around the 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, under Lieutenant Colonel
James M. Masters, Sr.--started toward Green Beach, supported by 5-inch
gunfire from the American destroyers _Reid_ and _Smith_. LCMs [Landing
Craft, Medium] carried DUKW amphibian trucks, driven by soldiers and
fitted with rocket launchers. The DUKWs opened fire from the landing
craft as the assault force approached the beach, performing the same
function as the rocket-firing LCIs at the Yellow Beaches on the opposite
side of the peninsula. The first wave landed at 0748, with two others
following it ashore. The Marines encountered no opposition as they
carved out a beachhead 1,200 yards wide and extending 500 yards inland.
The Stoneface Group had the mission of severing the coastal trail that
passed just west of Mount Talawe, thus preventing the passage of
reinforcements to the Cape Gloucester airfields.
The trail net proved difficult to find and follow. Villagers cleared
garden plots, tilled them until the jungle reclaimed them, and then
abandoned the land and moved on, leaving a maze of trails, some faint
and others fresh, that led nowhere. The Japanese were slow, however, to
take advantage of the confusion caused by the tangle of paths. Not until
the early hours of 30 December, did the enemy attack the Green Beach
force. Taking advantage of heavy rain that muffled sounds and reduced
visibility, the Japanese closed with the Marines, who called down mortar
fire within 15 yards of their defensive wire. A battery of the 11th
Marines, reorganized as an infantry unit because the cannoneers could
not find suitable positions for their 75mm howitzers, shored up the
defenses. One Marine in particular, Gunnery Sergeant Guiseppe Guilano,
Jr., seemed to materialize at critical moments, firing a light machine
gun from the hip; his heroism earned him the Navy Cross. Some of the
Japanese succeeded in penetrating the position, but a counterattack led
by First Lieutenant Jim G. Paulos of Company G killed them or drove them
off. The savage fighting cost Combat Team 21 six Marines killed and 17
wounded; at least 89 Japanese perished, and five surrendered. On 11
January 1944, the reinforced battalion set out to rejoin the division,
the troops moving overland, the heavy equipment and the wounded
traveling in landing craft.
[Sidenote: The Fortress of Rabaul
Located on Simpson Harbor at the northeastern tip of New Britain, Rabaul
served as an air and naval base and troop staging area for Japanese
conquests in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. As the advancing
Japanese approached New Britain, Australian authorities, who
administered the former German colony under terms of a mandate from the
League of Nations, evacuated the Australian women and children living
there. These dependents had already departed when the enemy landed on 23
January 1942, capturing Rabaul by routing the defenders, some of whom
escaped into the jungle to become coastwatchers providing intelligence
for the Allies. The Australian coastwatchers, many of them former
planters or prewar administrators, reported by radio on Japanese
strength and movements before the invasion and afterward attached
themselves to the Marines, sometimes recruiting guides and bearers from
among the native populace.
Once the enemy had seized Rabaul, he set to work converting it into a
major installation, improving harbor facilities, building airfields and
barracks, and bringing in hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors,
and airmen, who either passed through the base en route to operations
elsewhere or stayed there to defend it. Rabaul thus became the dominant
objective of General Douglas MacArthur, who escaped from the Philippines
in March 1942 and assumed command of the Southwest Pacific Area.
MacArthur proposed a two-pronged advance on the fortress, bombing it
from the air while amphibious forces closed in by way of eastern New
Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
Even as the Allies began closing the pincers on Rabaul, the basic
strategy changed. Despite MacArthur's opposition, the American Joint
Chiefs of Staff decided to bypass the stronghold, a strategy confirmed
by the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff during the Quadrant
Conference at Quebec in August 1943. As a result, Rabaul itself would
remain in Japanese hands for the remainder of the war, though the Allies
controlled the rest of New Britain.]
_MacArthur's Marines_
After the fierce battles at Guadalcanal in the South Pacific Area, the
1st Marine Division underwent rehabilitation in Australia, which lay
within General MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area. Once the division had
recovered from the ordeal of the Solomon Islands fighting, it gave
MacArthur a trained amphibious unit that he desperately needed to
fulfill his ambitions for the capture of Rabaul. Theoretically, the 1st
Marine Division was subordinate to General Sir Thomas Blamey, the
Australian officer in command of the Allied Land Forces, and Blamey's
nominal subordinate, Lieutenant General Walter Kreuger, commanding the
Sixth U.S. Army. But in actual practice, MacArthur bypassed Blamey and
dealt directly with Kreuger.
[Illustration: Department of Defense (USMC) photo 75882
_During the planning of the New Britain operation, Gen Douglas
MacArthur, right, in command of the Southwest Pacific Area, confers with
LtGen Walter Kreuger, left, Commanding General, Sixth U.S. Army, and
MajGen Rupertus, whose Marines will assault the island. At such a
meeting, Col Edwin A. Pollock, operations officer of the 1st Marine
Division, advised MacArthur of the opposition of the Marine leaders to a
complex scheme of maneuver involving Army airborne troops._]
When the 1st Marine Division became available to MacArthur, he still
intended to seize Rabaul and break the back of Japanese resistance in
the region. Always concerned about air cover for his amphibious
operations, MacArthur planned to use the Marines to capture the
airfields at Cape Gloucester. Aircraft based there would then support
the division when, after a brief period of recuperation, it attacked
Rabaul. The decision to bypass Rabaul eliminated the landings there, but
the Marines would nevertheless seize the Cape Gloucester airfields,
which seemed essential for neutralizing the base.
The initial concept of operations, which called for the conquest of
western New Britain preliminary to storming Rabaul, split the 1st Marine
Division, sending Combat Team A (the 5th Marines, reinforced, less one
battalion in reserve) against Gasmata on the southern coast of the
island, while Combat Team C (the 7th Marines, reinforced) seized a
beachhead near the principal objective, the airfields on Cape
Gloucester. The Army's 503d Parachute Infantry would exploit the Cape
Gloucester beachhead, while Combat Team B (the reinforced 1st Marines)
provided a reserve for the operation.
Revisions came swiftly, and by late October 1943 the plan no longer
mentioned capturing Rabaul, tacit acceptance of the modified Allied
strategy, and also satisfied an objection raised by General Rupertus.
The division commander had protested splitting Combat Team C, and
Kreuger agreed to employ all three battalions for the main assault,
substituting a battalion from Combat Team B, the 1st Marines, for the
landing on the west coast. The airborne landing at Cape Gloucester
remained in the plan, however, even though Rupertus had warned that bad
weather could delay the drop and jeopardize the Marine battalions
already fighting ashore. The altered version earmarked Army troops for
the landing on the southern coast, which Kreuger's staff shifted from
Gasmata to Arawe, a site closer to Allied airfields and farther from
Rabaul with its troops and aircraft. Although Combat Team B would put
one battalion ashore southwest of the airfields, the remaining two
battalions of the 1st Marines were to follow up the assault on Cape
Gloucester by Combat Team C. The division reserve, Combat Team A, might
employ elements of the 5th Marines to reinforce the Cape Gloucester
landings or conduct operations against the offshore islands west of New
Britain.
During a routine briefing on 14 December, just one day before the
landings at Arawe, MacArthur off-handedly asked how the Marines felt
about the scheme of maneuver at Cape Gloucester. Colonel Edwin A.
Pollock, the division's operations officer, seized the opportunity and
declared that the Marines objected to the plan because it depended on a
rapid advance inland by a single reinforced regiment to prevent heavy
losses among the lightly armed paratroops. Better, he believed, to
strengthen the amphibious forces than to try for an aerial envelopment
that might fail or be delayed by the weather. Although he made no
comment at the time, MacArthur may well have heeded what Pollock said;
whatever the reason, Kreuger's staff eliminated the airborne portion,
directed the two battalions of the 1st Marines still with Combat Team B
to land immediately after the assault waves, sustaining the momentum of
their attack, and alerted the division reserve to provide further
reinforcement.
_The Japanese in Western New Britain_
A mixture of combat and service troops operated in western New Britain.
The _1st_ and _8th Shipping Regiments_ used motorized barges to shuttle
troops and cargo along the coast from Rabaul to Cape Merkus, Cape
Gloucester, and across Dampier Strait to Rooke Island. For longer
movements, for example to New Guinea, the _5th Sea Transport Battalion_
manned a fleet of trawlers and schooners, supplemented by destroyers of
the Imperial Japanese Navy when speed seemed essential. The troops
actually defending western New Britain included the _Matsuda Force_,
established in September 1943 under the command of Major General Iwao
Matsuda, a specialist in military transportation, who nevertheless had
commanded an infantry regiment in Manchuria. When he arrived on New
Britain in February of that year, Matsuda took over the _4th Shipping
Command_, an administrative headquarters that provided staff officers
for the _Matsuda Force_. His principal combat units were the
understrength _65th Infantry Brigade_--consisting of the _141st
Infantry_, battle-tested in the conquest of the Philippines, plus
artillery and antiaircraft units--and those components of the _51st
Division_ not committed to the unsuccessful defense of New Guinea.
Matsuda established the headquarters for his jury-rigged force near
Kalingi, along the coastal trail northwest of Mount Talawe, within five
miles of the Cape Gloucester airfields, but the location would change to
reflect the tactical situation.
As the year 1943 wore on, the Allied threat to New Britain increased.
Consequently, General Hitoshi Imamura, who commanded the _Eighth Area
Army_ from a headquarters at Rabaul, assigned the _Matsuda Force_ to the
_17th Division_, under Lieutenant General Yasushi Sakai, recently
arrived from Shanghai. Four convoys were to have carried Sakai's
division, but the second and third lost one ship to submarine torpedoes
and another to a mine, while air attack damaged a third. Because of
these losses, which claimed some 1,200 lives, the last convoy did not
sail, depriving the division of more than 3,000 replacements and service
troops. Sakai deployed the best of his forces to western New Britain,
entrusting them to Matsuda's tactical command.
_Establishing the Beachhead_
The landings at Cape Merkus in mid-December caused Matsuda to shift his
troops to meet the threat, but this redeployment did not account for the
lack of resistance at the Yellow Beaches. The Japanese general, familiar
with the terrain of western New Britain, did not believe that the
Americans would storm these strips of sand extending only a few yards
inland and backed by swamp. Matsuda might have thought differently had
he seen the American maps, which labeled the area beyond the beaches as
"damp flat," even though aerial photographs taken after preliminary air
strikes had revealed no shadow within the bomb craters, evidence of a
water level high enough to fill these depressions to the brim. Since the
airfields were the obvious prize, Matsuda did not believe that the
Marines would plunge into the muck and risk becoming bogged down short
of their goal.
[Illustration: Department of Defense (USMC) photo 72833
_Marines, almost invisible amid the undergrowth, advance through the
swamp forest of New Britain, optimistically called damp flat on the maps
they used._]
Besides forfeiting the immediate advantage of opposing the assault force
at the water's edge, Matsuda's troops suffered the long-term, indirect
effects of the erosion of Japanese fortunes that began at Guadalcanal
and on New Guinea and continued at New Georgia and Bougainville. The
Allies, in addition, dominated the skies over New Britain, blunting the
air attacks on the Cape Merkus beachhead and bombing almost at will
throughout the island. Although air strikes caused little measurable
damage, save at Rabaul, they demoralized the defenders, who already
suffered shortages of supplies and medicine because of air and submarine
attacks on seagoing convoys and coastal shipping. An inadequate network
of primitive trails, which tended to hug the coastline, increased
Matsuda's dependence on barges, but this traffic, hampered by the
American capture of Cape Merkus, proved vulnerable to aircraft and later
to torpedo craft and improvised gunboats.
The two battalions that landed on the Yellow Beaches--Weber's on the
left and Williams's on the right--crossed the sands in a few strides,
and plunged through a wall of undergrowth into the damp flat, where a
Marine might be slogging through knee-deep mud, step into a hole, and
end up, as one on them said, "damp up to your neck." A counterattack
delivered as the assault waves wallowed through the damp flat might have
inflicted severe casualties, but Matsuda lacked the vehicles or roads to
shift his troops in time to exploit the terrain. Although immobile on
the ground, the Japanese retaliated by air. American radar detected a
flight of enemy aircraft approaching from Rabaul; Army Air Forces P-38s
intercepted, but a few Japanese bombers evaded the fighters, sank the
destroyer _Brownson_ with two direct hits, and damaged another.
The first enemy bombers arrived as a squadron of Army B-25s flew over
the LSTs [Landing Ships, Tank] en route to attack targets at Borgen Bay
south of the Yellow Beaches. Gunners on board the ships opened fire at
the aircraft milling overhead, mistaking friend for foe, downing two
American bombers, and damaging two others. The survivors, shaken by the
experience, dropped their bombs too soon, hitting the artillery
positions of the 11th Marines at the left flank of Yellow Beach 1,
killing one and wounding 14 others. A battalion commander in the
artillery regiment recalled "trying to dig a hole with my nose," as the
bombs exploded, "trying to get down into the ground just a little bit
further."
By the time of the air action on the afternoon of D-Day, the 1st Marine
Division had already established a beachhead. The assault battalions of
the 7th Marines initially pushed ahead, capturing Target Hill on the
left flank, and then paused to await reinforcements. During the day, two
more battalions arrived. The 3d Battalion, 1st Marines--designated
Landing Team 31 and led by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph F. Hankins, a
Reserve officer who also was a crack shooter--came ashore at 0815 on
Yellow Beach 1, passed through the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, and veered
to the northwest to lead the way toward the airfields. By 0845, the 2d
Battalion, 7th Marines, under Lieutenant Colonel Odell M. Conoley,
landed and began wading through the damp flat to take its place between
the regiment's 1st and 3d Battalions as the beachhead expanded. The next
infantry unit, the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, reached Yellow Beach 1 at
1300 to join that regiment's 3d Battalion, commanded by Hankins, in
advancing on the airfields. The 11th Marines, despite the accidental
bombing, set up its artillery, an operation in which the amphibian
tractor played a vital part. Some of the tractors brought lightweight
75mm howitzers from the LSTs directly to the battery firing positions;
others broke trail through the undergrowth for tractors pulling the
heavier 105mm weapons.
Meanwhile, Army trucks loaded with supplies rolled ashore from the LSTs.
Logistics plans called for these vehicles to move forward and function
as mobile supply dumps, but the damp flat proved impassable by wheeled
vehicles, and the drivers tended to abandon the trucks to avoid being
left behind when the shipping moved out, hurried along by the threat
from Japanese bombers. Ultimately, Marines had to build roads,
corduroying them with logs when necessary, or shift the cargo to
amphibian tractors. Despite careful planning and hard work on D-Day, the
convoy sailed with about 100 tons of supplies still on board.
[Illustration: Department of Defense (USMC) photo
_As the predicament of this truck and its Marine driver demonstrates,
wheeled vehicles, like those supplied by the Army for mobile supply
dumps, bog down in the mud of Cape Gloucester._]
While reinforcements and cargo crossed the beach, the Marines advancing
inland encountered the first serious Japanese resistance. Shortly after
1000 on 26 December, Hankins's 3d Battalion, 1st Marines, pushed ahead,
advancing in a column of companies because a swamp on the left narrowed
the frontage. Fire from camouflaged bunkers killed Captain Joseph A.
Terzi, commander of Company K, posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for
heroism while leading the attack, and his executive officer, Captain
Philip A. Wilheit. The sturdy bunkers proved impervious to bazooka
rockets, which failed to detonate in the soft earth covering the
structures, and to fire from 37mm guns, which could not penetrate the
logs protecting the occupants. An Alligator that had delivered supplies
for Company K tried to crush one of the bunkers but became wedged
between two trees. Japanese riflemen burst from cover and killed the
tractor's two machine gunners, neither of them protected by armor,
before the driver could break free. Again lunging ahead, the tractor
caved in one bunker, silencing its fire and enabling Marine riflemen to
isolate three others and destroy them in succession, killing 25
Japanese. A platoon of M4 Sherman tanks joined the company in time to
lead the advance beyond this first strongpoint.
Japanese service troops--especially the men of the _1st Shipping
Engineers_ and the _1st Debarkation Unit_--provided most of the initial
opposition, but Matsuda had alerted his nearby infantry units to
converge on the beachhead. One enemy battalion, under Major Shinichi
Takabe, moved into position late on the afternoon of D-Day, opposite
Conoley's 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, which clung to a crescent-shaped
position, both of its flanks sharply refused and resting on the
marshland to the rear. After sunset, the darkness beneath the forest
canopy became absolute, pierced only by muzzle flashes as the intensity
of the firing increased.
[Illustration: _On D-Day, among the shadows on the jungle floor, Navy
corpsmen administer emergency treatment to a wounded Marine._