_Fleet Marine Force, Pacific commander LtGen Holland M. Smith, right,
stands with the leaders of the successful retaking of Orote Peninsula.
From left to right, LtCol Alan Shapley; BGen Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr.;
and Col Merlin F. Schneider._]
The 3d Division reached Ordot in the center of its zone where Obata
had directed some of his survivors. The 3d Battalion, 21st Marines,
ran into them and one of their pillboxes, which the Marines thoroughly
gutted. The Americans also accounted for 15 infantrymen and two light
tanks which were the targets of M-1s and bazookas.
The honor of liberating Agana fell to the 3d Battalion, 3d Marines. The
riflemen entered the town’s ruins treading carefully, sizing up the
stark, dusty building walls for snipers. A few enemy riflemen emerged
from behind concrete outcroppings then dropped back into eternity. The
Japanese guards were stragglers, the wounded, or a few foolish enough
to stay. In one house, a Marine opened a closet to reveal a Japanese
officer, sword in hand. The Marine slammed the door, riddled it with an
automatic rifle, and didn’t bother to look again. The once-beautiful
old Plaza de Espana was in American hands 15 minutes after the town was
entered. By noon it was secured.
The 1st and 2d Battalions, 3d Marines, moved along to the critical
Agana-Pago Road. At 1350 the 21st Marines was right up there with them
after the few engagements with pillboxes, snipers, and tanks. By 1510,
Colonel Craig’s 9th Marines on the division’s right was partially
across the road and seized the remaining portion of that highway in
its sector on the next day. Hard-surfaced, with two lanes across the
midriff of the island, the Agana-Pago Road would prove critical in
winning the battle of Guam.
Leaving Agana and its historic rescue of the capital, the 3d Battalion,
3d Marines, under Major Royal R. Bastian, Jr., who had taken command
when Lieutenant Colonel Houser was wounded on 22 July, moved on with
relative ease. Before dusk the battalion had seized 1,400 yards of
other critical roads and trails which led to strategic and defended
strongpoints of Finegayan and Barrigada.
General Turnage got well within striking distance of the Tiyan airfield
and the little town of San Antonio, on the 31st, but the next day, 1
August, his advance was seriously slowed by mines. It took the cool
skill and slow and steady hands of the bomb disposal specialists of the
25th Naval Construction Battalion and the 19th Marines’ engineers to
reduce those obstacles.
[Illustration: _As the regimental field music sounds “To the Colors”
Col Schneider and his 22d Marines staff and command salute as the
American flag is raised over Guam for the first time since it was taken
down by the Japanese invaders in December 1941._]
Students of the battle and those who were there consider the taking of
the cross-island Agana-Pago Road as a major factor in guaranteeing the
success of the drive northward. Its capture solved a host of logistic
problems, for the 77th particularly. The Army division, for example,
had no roads heading north initially in its zone of advance and needed
such a road over which it could supply its troops as they came down out
of the hills and cut their way through the jungle. Frontline troops
in the Army zone were soon running low on supplies, especially water.
General Bruce promised his people a hot breakfast as soon as they and
the Marines could give him the road. Trucks were soon thick on the road
even while SeaBees and engineers were enlarging and repairing it.
[Illustration: