_PFC Henry Gurke was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor._]
The 1st Battalion was close to the enemy, close enough to exchange
shouts. The Japanese yelled “Moline you die” ... and the Marines made
earthy references to Premier Tojo’s diet. Marine Captain Gordon Warner
was fluent in Japanese, so he could quickly reply to the Japanese, even
yell believable orders for a bayonet charge. He received the Navy Cross
for destroying machine gun nests with a helmet full of hand grenades.
He lost a leg in the battle.
Sergeant Herbert J. Thomas gave his life near the Koromokina. His
platoon was forced prone by machine gunfire, and Thomas threw a grenade
to silence the weapon. The grenade rebounded from jungle vines and the
young West Virginian smothered it with his body. He posthumously was
awarded the Medal of Honor.
General Turnage saw that reinforcements were needed. The day before
(6 November) the first echelon of the 21st Marines had come ashore.
Now the battle command was transferred to Lieutenant Colonel Ernest
W. Fry, Jr., of the 1st Battalion. With two companies, he was set for
a counterattack, but not until after two intense saturations of the
Japanese positions by mortars and five batteries of artillery. They
slammed into a concentrated area, 300 yards wide and 600 deep, early on
8 November. Light tanks then moved in to support the attack.
When Colonel Fry’s advancing companies reached the area where the
Japanese had been, there was stillness, desolation, ploughed earth, and
uprooted trees. Combat correspondent Alvin Josephy wrote of men hanging
in trees, “Some lay crumpled and twisted beside their shattered
weapons, some covered by chunks of jagged logs and jungle earth, [by]
a blasted bunker....” In that no-man’s land, Colonel Fry and his men
walked over and around the bodies of over 250 enemy soldiers. To
complete the annihilation of the Japanese landing force, Marine dive
bombers from Munda bombed and strafed the survivors on 9 November.
By now, the veteran 148th Infantry, the first unit of the Army’s 37th
Infantry Division, was coming ashore, seasoned in the Munda campaign
on New Georgia. Later, to take over the left flank of the beachhead,
would come its other infantry regiments, the 129th on 13 November and
the 145th on 19 November. The Army’s 135th, 136th, and 140th Field
Artillery came ashore, too, and would be invaluable in supporting later
advances on the right flank. Major General Robert S. Beightler, USA,
was division commander.
[Sidebar (page 13):] 37th Infantry Division
[Illustration: _Major General Robert S. Beightler, USA_]
Called the “Buckeye” Division, the 37th was among the very first
American troops sent to the Pacific at the beginning of the war.
The 37th was an outfit with a long history and many battle streamers,
dating from August 1917, when it was formed at Camp Sheridan, Alabama.
It left for overseas in 1918, and took part in five major operations in
France before returning in 1919, and facing demobilization that same
year.
As an Ohio National Guard unit, the “Buckeye” Division was inducted
into federal service in 1940, and by June of 1942, it was heading into
the Pacific war, sent to garrison the Fiji Islands. First combat was
on New Georgia, which included taking the critical Munda airfield. The
37th joined the 3d Marine Division on Bougainville, and then trained on
the island for the campaign on Luzon Island in the Philippines.
Landing with the Sixth Army at Lingayen Gulf, 9 January 1945, the 37th
raced inland to Clark Field and Fort Stotsenburg. It entered Manila,
and its commander, Major General Robert S. Beightler, accepted the
surrender of General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Next came the capture of
Baguio and liberation there of 1,300 internees at the Bilibid Prison.
The division came home for demobilization in November 1945.
Its commander, Major General Beightler, was born 21 March 1892, and
enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private in 1911. Promoted quickly to
corporal, sergeant, and then first sergeant of his company, he was then
commissioned as a second lieutenant in March 1914. After service on the
Mexican border, he took part in five major campaigns in World War I
with the famous 42d (Rainbow) Division.
[Illustration]
A graduate of Ohio State University, Beightler finished first in his
class in the Reserve Officers’ Course of the Command and General Staff
School, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1926. After that he served as a
member of the War Plans Division of the War Department General Staff
(1932-36).
After World War II, he assumed command of the Fifth Service Command at
Fort Hayes, Ohio, and then was assigned (1947) to the Personnel Board
of the Secretary of War. In 1949, he was sent to the Far East and took
over the Marianas-Bonins Command on Guam. In 1950 he was named Deputy
Governor of the Ryukyus Command on Okinawa.
Major General Beightler received the Distinguished Service Cross, the
nation’s second highest honor, for his leadership in the Philippine
campaign, as well as a Distinguished Service Medal for the New
Georgia operation, with an Oak Leaf Cluster as a second award for his
outstanding service on Bougainville and then on Luzon in the Philippine
Islands. He also wore the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, the
Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Silver Star Medal, and the
Purple Heart.
He died 12 February 1978.
_The Battle for Piva Trail_
[Illustration: BATTLE FOR PIVA TRAIL