When the sun rose, the 361st Artillery unit stood ready. At straight-up six o’clock, I gave the order and the men began firing. Even under heavy military boots, your toes could feel the ground shake. My unit pounded the target area, and I knew other howitzers were firing from different angles. I thought the Japanese were going to be in for a long, long day.
No one had to tell me that the assault on Cactus Hill would prove costly for us as well. By now, we were aware that the Japanese had every play in the book down pat. While no one liked it, you just had to respect their self-sacrifice. Infiltrating at night and rushing headfirst at our soldiers certainly had to be acknowledged as an act of courage. We didn’t like them any better, but we did recognize their dedication.
While we were firing, Major Prosser Clark’s men began to move toward Cactus Hill. Their earlier attacks had proved futile and cost us good men. This morning Clark’s F Company started around the hill to flank the target from the west.
Clark knew the enemy would pepper us with everything they got in the shaker and that would be a hell of a bad one.
The men kept crawling forward. Abruptly, the roar of airplanes signaled that dive-bombers were about to strike.
Clark yelled that the airplanes were our boys.
Soldiers rolled under logs or jumped under the edge of boulders sticking out of the ground. The dive-bombers began to hit hard and fast. We could feel the impact clear back to our howitzers. The Japanese had to be running for cover. For thirty-five minutes, the strikes continued. Black rings of smoke erupted straight up into the sky, followed by bellows and puffs of gray and sometimes white flames. Smoke slowly covered the countryside. The battle line turned into a forest fire squeezed into a killing field. Unfortunately, when the American planes left, the Japanese continued firing with the same intensity they had before.
Clark bellowed that they were still at it. He called for the men to charge forward.
F Company started inching their way up the hill again.
As the morning progressed, fighting only intensified. Each side of the front line returned the exchange with the same ferocity. Nevertheless, Clark wouldn’t back off and kept pressing the men forward.
The men could see a pillbox ahead. The enemy had a damn good perch to shoot at us with accuracy. We couldn’t see them, but they were able to spot us. Our soldiers knew they couldn’t get out in the open.
Clark called for them to take the west side, recognizing that we had to get on their back side.
The men spread out. One guy worked his way around to the back of the cement bunker and started climbing. The enemy machine gunners kept blazing away without any idea that a soldier was above them. The infantryman worked his way to the front edge. He pulled the pin on a hand grenade, waited a second, and then hurled the pint-sized bomb over the side into the gunners’ nest. Before the Japanese could move, the building shook with the explosion.
The soldier rose to his knees and signaled with his thumb sticking straight up. One less problem on the trail!
Not far ahead, the squad ran into another concrete barrier. The bunker encased another machine-gun nest, firing away like it was shooting July Fourth fireworks. PFC Lloyd Smith crept up the side and began shooting. The gun battle didn’t last long. The enemy couldn’t get their machine gun turned around before Smith killed three of them. A fourth soldier came out the side opening and started throwing grenades at him. The surprise package exploded, showering the area with shrapnel, but nothing hit Smith. Recovering, he shot the Japanese guy, who fell backward.
Someone shouted like a proud hunter that he got four and knocked off their grenade man.
When he bent down to look at one of the bodies, he shuddered. The dead person was a woman! The squad walked by and took a look. Sure enough. No question. “He” was a woman. They looked the other way and kept moving.
Not far ahead another bunker appeared. The Japanese had covered the island with these cement fortresses. The moment F Company came out of the bushes, the bad boys started hemstitching like they’d never run out of bullets. Clark’s men hit the ground and rolled for cover.
They knew they couldn’t move without getting killed: they were pinned down.
The Japanese blasted away for another twenty minutes, which seemed like twenty hours to F Company. Nobody moved. Finally, the ack-ack stopped. Near the front, the soldiers could hear the Japanese chattering. The sudden quiet suggested they might have concluded they’d killed the Americans.
During the lull, Sergeant Bernard Baar leaped up and charged the bunker, catching the Japanese by surprise. One of them grabbed a pistol and fired, hitting Baar. Baar barely slowed his dash and killed both Japanese.
The sergeant finally slumped to the ground in front of the pillbox. The rest of the unit gathered around him. The sergeant knew he’d gotten hit in his side but didn’t think it was that bad or had struck anything vital. The men wanted to move him, but he resisted. Someone called for a medic even though Baar insisted he was okay.
Major Clark ordered him out of the line of fire. He knew Bernie was tough, but he didn’t take chances with a gunshot wound.
Baar protested.
Clark firmly demanded they haul him away.
The unit kept working through the trees and shooting at anything that moved. F Company hadn’t gone far when knee-mortar fire opened up.
In exasperation, Clark cursed and demanded that the men “push the enemy back to Tokyo!” They rushed forward.
The enemy’s grease guns didn’t slow down any, but their constant fire made it possible to identify where they were staked out. Clark’s snipers took careful aim through the bushes. After several tries, the machine-gun nest went silent, but the mortars kept coming.
PFC Ralph Phillips started crawling forward with his BAR. The gas-operated M1918 BAR (Browning automatic rifle) was a magazine-fed, air-cooled automatic rifle. The BAR gave all the power of a machine gun to one soldier, and Phillips knew how to use it. He suddenly jumped up and charged forward, firing like a fullback going for a touchdown! Japanese fell right and left.
Clark’s men finally made it to the top of the hill. The dive-bombers, artillery, and F Company had finally broken the back of the intense and ferocious arsenal that the Japanese had unloaded. The rumor was that many Japanese committed suicide rather than stand up against the onrushing Americans.
* * *
When the report of success came in to my 361st Artillery unit, we stopped firing.
“Our cannons got blazing hot, Major,” Swinging Bill said to me. “Almost melted the barrels.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s a heap of shells we fired.”
McQuiston came trotting over. “Headquarters just phoned and said to continue holding our fire. They need more information about exactly where our troops are located. Sounds like we’re really moving.”
“Ought to make General Bradley happy,” I said. “Take a break!” I called out to the entire unit.
The unit sat down, and the men began to smoke. They talked, joked, just chewed the fat.
But I knew we were far from through.