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  Go to the 503d PRCT "Heritage Bn. " Website

Go to "Corregidor: Then & Now" Website  

  the 503d prct association & the  CORREGIDOR historic society presents 

 

The Attack on Battery Monja
 

21 Feb 1945

 

by John L. Lindgren

 

 Post Script by William T. Calhoun 

  

 

For those of us who are still counting the hours and the days since our arrival from the skies over Corregidor,  this is day six.   Wednesday morning,   Wednesday two days after the bloody night battle at Wheeler Point.  D Company, now little more than eighty strong,  [1] assemble near the western side of the parade ground close to the badly damaged duplex apartments that, in another era, once housed NCO's and their pre-war families. 

Each man knows he is going down into Cheney Ravine this morning, but little is said about it. The men, in their dirty sweat- stained fatigues sit quietly or stretch out on the ground waiting for the order to move out. They are used to waiting.  They are used to each other's company too. When not on combat operations, which is most of the time, the squad live in the same tent, work together, train together, talk together; and  know each other quite well.

The early morning sun is still low in the east but already it is uncomfortably hot. The riflemen, up since dawn, have already eaten their breakfast from the 10- in-1 ration boxes. [2] Some of them puff unconcernedly on their cigarettes, sitting wherever they can find a little shade near the ruins.  According to age old custom, company headquarters has taken the best quarters available in the company area, in this case a roofless two story concrete building. The southern end of Cheney Trail, where they will begin their march, is a few feet west of the bomb-shattered homes.

Henry "Buck" Buchanan, the former company executive officer now commanding Company D,  is with his executive officer, Jim Gifford. The radioman who will carry the company's SCR 300 battery powered radio on his back,  is with them.  Buck has replaced Al Turinsky who was killed by a single shot almost at the outset of the battle for Wheeler Point.  It hardly seems just two nights before. Today, for the first time,  Buck will lead the company on a combat patrol down into Cheney Ravine, using the same trail Lieutenant Endo and his Japanese marines had come up two days earlier to attack D Company at Wheeler Point. The company has suffered several other casualties among its leaders during the first five days,  but how this will affect the company, one way or another, is hard to judge. However, the company resumed operations as the casualties were replaced by others.  [3]  

Late Tuesday afternoon Buchanan and Gifford had gone across the parade field to attend the 2d battalion commander's meeting at the command post on the ground floor in one of 59th Coast Artillery's old squad rooms. They went there to get orders for today. The battalion is to clear the northwest end of Corregidor right down to the sea. Company D will advance through Cheney Ravine and then go north on the beach to contact E Company moving south on the beach from James Ravine. F Company will patrol in the same area between D and E Companies on the high ground up to the cliffs, over looking the beach. The companies are to "clean out the caves" and otherwise clear their areas of the enemy. This done, all companies shall return to their perimeter positions on topside.

If you look at all the arrows and circles drawn on a map showing today's operation, it would seem that not a stone is to be left unturned and the area shall be swept clean of enemy troops. The people in the company who would do this work on the ground take a far less optimistic view of it.   While they might enter any part of it at any time they wished, they are never sure they have uncovered every single enemy soldier, because they could never hope to search every square foot of it, for that is what it would require The company might travel into it during the daytime, but at night,  as they withdraw to the perimeter ringing the parade ground, the enemy will be free to reassemble, and to move anywhere they wish to go. And so it will go. The outcome of the recapture of Corregidor is never in doubt, from the first day.  If the patrols do nothing else, the rifle companies are slowly but surely killing the enemy by going through it again and again.  Because the fighting is being done on an island whose surrounding waters are heavily protected by our warships, there isn't  even the slightest chance any additional enemy troops might be reinforced to alter fate's equation and it will be simply a matter of time until there is no one left to fight.

But there will be a cost, and the price paid on each of the previous days and nights weighs upon all of the men now waiting patiently for the day's patrol to begin.

The companies are supported by aircraft circling the island and destroyers cruising in the North Channel off Corregidor's western escarpment. The company commander can request air or naval fire through liaison parties [592d JASCO and 6th SAP] who are with Larry Browne, the 2d Battalion plans officer on Topside near the edge of the cliff overlooking the battalion's area of operation. A regimental demolition section will go with the company for this first expedition into Cheney Ravine. The battalion commander has, on call, two LCM's berthed at bottomside. If the company needs them, they can ask for them. [4]

The waiting men watch, without too much interest, the stir of activity on the parade round above them. The 75mm howitzers and 81 and 6Omm mortars have been pouring fire into Cheney ravine since 0800. Each time the guns open up on the broad dusty parade ground above D Company's position they stir up clouds of dust in front of them. The flat field, surrounded by broken roofless buildings, is pocked with countless bomb craters, and near each of the gun positions are disordered heaps of brass artillery casings, wooden ammunition crates, cardboard ration boxes and hundreds of black cardboard tubes used to pack each artillery and mortar round. Everything is covered with a fine white dust; the trash, the men, their guns and ammunition. The disordered scene is a far cry from the carefully kept grass field where once, not too long ago, Coast Artillerymen in their spotless heavily starched khaki uniforms and campaign hats, marched smartly in review past the handsome buildings surrounded by precisely clipped shrubbery and flower beds. This morning the tired, sweating artillery and mortar crewmen lift round after round of ammunition from neatly stacked piles and feed the shells into the guns pointed northwest. Company D's men, waiting below the western edge of the parade field for the order to move, hear the shells exploding in Cheney ravine go "ca rump, ca rump, ca rump" over and over again. The rumbling explosions seem to be a long way off. 

Joe Gouvin and his nine mortarmen will remain on the parade ground with their mortars ready should the company call for fire. The mortar platoon's observer is stationed at the edge of the escarpment where he can see the company's operation area below and adjust mortar fire. Headquarters Company's 2d light machine platoon, usually attached to Company D,  too will remain on Topside and not accompany the column. [5]

 The company commander raises his arm and points toward Cheney Trail. The men, who had been ready and waiting nearly 3 hours, see the signal to move, and rose slowly to their feet and, with the 2d platoon in the lead, begin walking slowly in a long single file down Cheney trail. The column quickly passes Battery Cheney and descends into the ravine, whose nearly vertical slopes are heavily forested and covered with underbrush. The vegetation in the ravine is nearly untouched by the heavy bombing and the artillery and mortar rounds from Topside have done little damage, as far as anyone can see. The only evidence of this morning's shelling is a faint smell of burnt explosives that lingers from the hundreds of rounds bursting among the trees. By contrast, nearly all of Topside has been stripped bare of foliage. Here visibility is limited to a few feet, but most of the paratroopers have fought in heavy jungles before. The men, with their weapons ready, move silently and cautiously along a well kept trail,  wide enough for vehicles to travel on. Trees growing closely together on the slopes above and below them, block their view. The men move warily,  trying somehow to see through the trees and brush along both sides of the trail.  There are any number of suspicious hiding places, depressions in the ground, ditches and stout tree trunks along the road. The riflemen look on these places not only as ambush sites where the enemy might lurk but as a refuge for themselves if they need to find a hiding place in a hurry.

The 2d platoon, at the head of the column, approach the first of three sharply angled curves. The lead squad automatically goes into action. The road that had descended west for almost 300 yards now abruptly turns east for another 300 yards. The third turn is the final leg of the descent, when the road runs west again, to end at the sea. Had the slopes not been covered with trees and brush the trail below would have been easily seen.  As the two lead scouts near the turn the first scout moves forward, while the other remains just off the trail behind him. The rest of the rifle squad are behind the second scout, ready to fire at anyone in his vicinity. The second rifleman carefully surveys the trail and the slopes on the right and left of it, his rifle ready, while his partner moves ahead. 

The first scout drops down at the sharp turn, where he can look down the down the road running due east. The second scout carefully works his way to a position near him, at the curve. The second scout now moves ahead of his partner. The leapfrogging is done silently, controlled only by a few simple gestures. The scouts take advantage of every depression, every thicket or tree, and every hummock,  to avoid being seen.  At each step of the way, they thoroughly scan the ground as they advance.  No matter how experienced and well trained the lead men are , it is slow work.  Until the column leaves the wooded slopes and enters a more open area, movement is slow. The whole column behind the two moves slowly, stopping, starting and stopping,  over and over again. Each time the line of men halts, they get off the trail and find what cover they can. No reasons are given for the disruptions and even when shots are heard at the head of the column no one can be quite sure what was happening. There is little talking done by anyone in the column as the company moved along a trail in the forest or jungle.

The head of the column finally reaches the  bottom of the ravine. Battery Cheney is now 300 feet above them. Part of the leading 2d platoon has passed over a concrete culvert at the last switchback turn on the trail's final leg, as it heads west towards the sea. As the company descends on Cheney Trail, the scouts have examined three culverts, but found nothing. The 2d platoon scouts have checked the culvert at the bottom of the ravine, moved over it and signaled their squad to move on.  

"...Our lead platoon walked directly over some Japs without knowing it... [The culvert's] lower end was blocked by a boulder which had avalanched across it but the upper end was open. A clear-sighted sergeant of the 2d platoon had fixed his eyes on this opening. For an instant he had seen a Jap stick his head out, then draw back like a scared groundhog. Covering the hole with his gun, the sergeant immediately jumped into a ditch beside the culvert's entrance and peeked in." [6] 

 The sergeant throws three grenades into the culvert entrance.  Four enemy soldiers hiding in the culvert are now four enemy bodies. The Japanese have not fired a shot in anger and it is difficult to imagine why they were in the culvert. They simply might have been trying to escape the morning's shelling and have stayed too long in their hiding place.

The column continues moving along the relatively level trail on the south bank of the stream bed. The company is coming out of the forest now and, looking ahead,  the men can see they are nearing the beach. About 100 yards west of the culvert at the switchback's turn they can see another large, massively constructed 8' x8' x 15' culvert, more nearly a small bridge than a culvert -  wide enough for the main stream at flood to pass through.  In February, the middle of the dry season, the stream has no water, except for a few pools standing here and there. The scouts, in view of their lapse a short time ago, are extremely wary as they advanced towards it, but find it unoccupied.

If culverts could but speak, it would have told how, two nights ago, Lieutenant Endo's men had come out of their shelters at Battery Point, James Ravine, and the nearby Battery Sunset (among other places,) marched south down the North Shore Road and crossed it to reach Cheney Trail on the other side of the stream bed. From here they began their climb towards Company D in the early morning of February 18th, and towards eternity. 

A few yards beyond the culvert the trees begin to thin along the south bank and soon completely disappear as the riflemen emerge on a great field of cogon. The company begins to ascend on the trail as it crosses a sheer stream bank rising to 30 feet above the stream bed. The bank is of reddish sandstone, which the Filipinos call bloodstone. Water seeps out from a hundred places on the face of the sandstone bluff and trickles down into a small pool in the smooth sandstone stream bed. Had this sweetwater spring been found six days ago it would have seemed a minor miracle for D Company's thirsty paratroopers who had little or no water available to them. By now the supply of drinking water for the company had improved and the problem is not nearly so urgent. Nevertheless men from the company, from time to time, come down from Topside to the spring to fetch water. [7]

High up on a treeless ridge that rises forty or fifty feet to their left,  the riflemen can see an imposing concrete entrance had been dug just below the crest. The construction date, "1914", stands out proudly, in bold bas relief, its numbers molded on an imposing and carefully constructed concrete arch curving above the entrance. [8] On the right of the trail across the dry stream bed is a much higher ridge heavily covered with trees and bamboo. Nearly hidden by the trees, a barely visible road branches off from the North Shore Road and runs diagonally down the side of the canyon wall into Cheney Ravine, crossing over the large culvert to Cheney Trail on the opposite bank of the stream bed.

The company commander orders a fifteen minute rest at the spring. Some of the soldiers come down to the pool for a drink of the spring water, and to fill canteens, The rest of the infantrymen are spread out along the trail, their weapons at the ready and they are carefully surveying the ground above them. The concrete entranceway can be plainly seen by all, high up on the grass covered ridge above them.

The company has never been in Cheney Ravine before and the men are on their guard and a little tense. Taking no chances, Buchanan places one platoon to watch the rear of the column in the event they had missed someone during the move down Cheney trail.  If you were to casually look at the men, many of them are resting as best they can, laying on their backs having a smoke or drawing water from the spring, you might think how relaxed and inattentive they seemed. This behavior is entirely misleading. [9]

"Someone ran in the cave!" is the sharp shout that shatters the pensive quiet, and attention focuses for an instant upon the sharp-eyed  lookout on the ridge,  his arm pointing out the concrete doorway at the entrance where he's just seen the movement.  

Almost immediately a squad from the 2d platoon starts to the top of the ridge fifty yards or so east of the tunnel opening through the coarse, nearly knee high, cogon. Reaching the top, they fan out across the steep bluff, and advance slowly toward the concrete opening ahead. The squad is nearly at a right angle to the entrance and slightly above it. There is little chance anyone in the cave can fire on the D Company riflemen from the doorway unless they leave the tunnel and come out into the opening. The real danger, at this point, is not the Japanese trapped in the tunnel but rather enemy riflemen placed outside the tunnel. The platoon's other two squads to the rear can see every move the attacking squad is making, for their task is to watch for signs of enemy ahead of the advancing troops or on the wooded slopes of the parallel ridge across the gully.

The men in the lead squad, sweating under the searing sun, keep inching ahead,  drawing closer to the doorway, finally getting within a few feet of the entrance, but still keeping well to its side.  The men nearest the doorway drop down and, partially hidden by the grass, crawl to positions where they can fire into the openings. Not a round had been fired from the cave at the attackers. The rifleman nearest the entrance pulls a grenade from his belt and removes the safety pin, raises up on his knees and throws the grenade deep into the tunnel.  Someone inside promptly tossed the grenade back, and it falls in the grass,  exploding harmlessly. The men in the ravine can see what every man in the squad on the grassy treeless slope is doing.  The men in the rear, watching their comrades working at this dangerous game, have the confidence that distance brings, and consider the attack to be taking a long time -  as if it all were happening in slow motion. All the while round after round was fired through the storehouse door­way. The men near  the opening throw a second,  and then a third grenade into the opening. They each explode with dull thumps.  Each report loudly echoes through the ravine but the tempo of the fire never seems to slow.

"Toss some WP in there! Let it buzz!' the platoon sergeant cries out to his squad leader. The sergeant, laying prone in the grass, rolls over on his side and pulls the ring from a small gray cannister with a yellow stripe. He lets the handle fly off and holds it while it "buzzes" for perhaps two seconds,  a short time, except if you're the one counting as you hold the grenade and listen to its fuse train hiss.  He reached back and accurately lobs it through the entrance. The phosphorus grenade goes off with a barely audible pop and soon a thick white cloud rolls through the concrete doorway, as proof of its lethal package. Thin white streamers formed by hundreds of small, furiously burning phosphorus particles are propelled upward through the white cloud, and float slowly in graceful arches down towards the earth. [10] The men in the squad, stare intently at the rectangular opening, their rifles, submachine guns and BAR's [11] pointing at the entrance.  

"Here they come!" rings out suddenly, and the first of the defenders comes out in a single bound and is immediately hit, landing lifelessly. The second and third seem to be blown out together. Their bodies are charred, but as one stumbles and hops limply three or four yards down the trail, the other jumps up and cries 'Banzai!' in a voice that shrills across the ravine.  'Banzai! Banzai!' he repeats twice, very distinctly, as he reels blindly toward the riflemen who have been pouring a volley of fire into him. As he dropped dead his comrade, a few yards down the trail, is still kicking and smoking in both his limbs and his belly. The intense heat of the phosphorus has roasted his feet off and is rapidly charring the flesh of his legs 'like blackened bacon.' [12]

The squad on the ridge does not go into the storehouse but continues walking slowly along the ridge toward the beach. [13] The troops come upon an unmanned antiaircraft gun position,  its six guns pointing skywards on the bluff above the beach. A rusty barbed wire barrier lays across the stream bed where it empties on the rock covered beach. The dry stream bed runs in a narrow channel between two ridges that begin to meander and widen at its mouth until it finally empties into the north channel. A minefield, no more than 25 or 30 yards deep, has been laid across the delta behind the barbed wire. The mines had been buried in the stream but the covering of gravel and stones had long since been washed away by the stream at flood, exposing their thin glass detonator tubes. The location of the mines is no secret now, and everyone can see clearly that the tubes protruding 3 to 4 inches out of the ground reveal a pattern of orderly rows, more or less,  showing the boundaries of the field. Since they are laid only in the stream bed and not on the foot trails or the ridge forming the south bank of the dry stream bed, the obstacles pose little danger to the foot soldiers, who easily skirt them. [14]

A small group of platoon leaders and NCO's move ahead to a small knob at the end of the ridge for a look at the beach.  It looks very peaceful and quiet. A thousand yards to the south they can see massive Wheeler Point, the most dominant feature on the western end of the island. The beach to the north is masked by a high ridge, a little more than fifty yards from the mouth of Cheney Ravine. The beach is only a few feet wide at the point where the bluff ends. The company had been ordered to patrol north along the beach and to contact "E" Company moving south from James Ravine, two thousand yards north of Chaney Ravine. The beach is bordered by massive, nearly vertical cliffs, that are scalable only with greatest difficulty. An enemy concealed on the slopes could easily fire on the narrow beach where the company is forced to travel.  Worse yet, where the enemy troops are dug in high on the bluffs, they are virtually invulnerable from attack, or even fire, from the beaches below them.

The coastline's surface is covered with slate gray rocks ground smooth by the ocean.  Walking over the loose stones piled haphazardly over the shore is slow and difficult. Once on the beach, Company D's soldiers are dangerously exposed and have few places to hide, and running across the rocks is almost impossible Should the enemy fire on the beaches there are simply no places where the riflemen can go to ground and find some protection. Merely looking at the hard narrow beach, much less walking over it, makes the infantrymen uneasy. There are large rocks, here and there, and some few  in the shallow water near the shoreline,  that might offer protection. The cliff bottom where it borders the beach, is irregular with dips, folds and clefts formed by the sea,  and by rains eroding the face of the bluff. Aside from these havens, the trooper on the beach has little shelter from the enemy in position above. They are, in a word, frightened, and rightly so for, as one of the riflemen will remark later, they are sitting ducks. [15]

After Preston, the platoon leader and Drews view what little of the route can be seen from the mouth of the ravine, they confer with their squad leaders, though there is little they can tell them other than that the platoon is to advance north on the beach. The 2d platoon, now down from the ridge and out on the beach, turn right, keeping well away from the mines. They can see nothing to their front beyond the great ridge forming the north wall of the ravine. The lead squad start to go around the end of the ridge on the narrow beach when the scouts report a tunnel entrance at the base of the huge cliff,  close to the water's edge.  Almost at the same time, the two lead scouts catch sight of something moving inside the cave, and drop quickly on the stones, and immediately as they do they begin firing into the opening. At the sound of gunfire the rest of the squad scatters on the beach,  as best they can, dropping flat on the rocky ground warmed by the morning sun. The squad had spread out on the narrow beach and those who can see the tunnel begin firing into it. Private William Brady, looking for a better firing position, runs into the sea, dropping behind an unexploded 500 pound bomb standing upright in the shallow water near the shore.  He has moved almost directly in front of the tunnel, although some distance from it. While firing behind this shield, during the first moments of the engagement, he is struck in the chest and falls dead in the warm shallow water. [16]

After the firing brakes out, a 2d platoon squad, still in the ravine, is ordered to go up the north wall of Cheney Ravine to attack the enemy from the bluff and seek out any Japanese who might fire on the troops on the beach. The south wall, unlike the ravine's grass covered south ridge, is covered with trees. [17]

As the squad moves closer to the tunnel entrance they advance at an angle to, and never in front of tunnel entrance, keeping out of direct line of fire from the tunnel but still in a position to fire into the entrance as they move.

Harry Drews, the 2d platoon sergeant, and Buchanan, the company commander are near the entrance, behind the cover of some large rocks.  

"The enemy were only 3 or 4 feet from us when Buchanan pulled the pin from a hand grenade and I hollered at him to let it buzz for 3 seconds. He didn't and just threw it over the large boulders we were behind, and the next thing I see the grenade coming back at us. I put my head down and shrapnel hit my helmet and me but Buchanan looked up and caught a piece in the forehead." [18] 

Jack Bowers, the senior Company D medical man is close by and is wounded at the same time by the same grenade. Though wounded, Bowers coolly proceeds to treat Buchanan's wounds while both are crouched behind their rock shield. [19]

The squad keep up the fire into the tunnel. They had all seen Buchanan's grenade thrown out of the tunnel. Another grenade is thrown, but it falls wide of the opening, bounces on the rocks and explodes. Two more grenades are thrown in the opening, but only after their fuse trains burn for a second or so. Buchanan's was the only one that the enemy, now trapped in the cave, will get an opportunity to throw back. A rifleman close to the entrance pulls out the safety pin and lets the metal handle fly off a phosphorus cylinder. Holding it as he counts "one thousand, two thousand" under his breath while the fuze train burns, and he pitches it deep into the tunnel. The phosphorus grenade explodes almost without a sound inside and soon a great cloud of snow white smoke pours out on the beach. The riflemen kept firing into the white cloud. Every eye is on the tunnel entrance, and what is to happen next,  when suddenly someone shouts "They're coming out!'

Two Japs run through the cloud of smoke, and every gun in the squad opens up.  In an instant their crumpled bodies fall on the rocks near the opening. There is dead silence in the cave and shortly several explosions boom deep inside it. Some faint cries are heard and then it becomes almost perfectly quiet once again. The smoke is clearing and the lead rifleman, firing as he advances toward the opening, reports four corpses inside, very near the entrance. He motions his partner to join him.  Firing again, the scout enters the tunnel while the other rifleman, just inside the doorway ready to fire, protects him.  All ears are straining, but the silence continues. 

 They return and report that no one inside the tunnel has survived, there are only nineteen burning corpses. [20]

The two wounded men, Bowers and Buchanan, are brought out of harm's way in Cheney Ravine, where their wounds are bandaged. Brady's body is taken from the water and is covered with a poncho.  James Gifford now commands the company,  replacing Buchanan.  D company has two LCM's on call,  operated by the Army's 592d Engineer Boat and Shore regiment, at the North Dock about 20 minutes away.  Gifford radios the 2d Battalion operations officer to send one to the ravine to pick up the casualties. 

The company continues the march north on the beach to make contact with E Company. The head of the column has barely gone around the protruding headland when they discover nearly sixty Japanese bodies that have apparently been killed by artillery fire in the vicinity of Searchlight Number 3. [21]

The men are nervous and on edge as they continue on ahead along the open beach. Every dip and hollow in the cliffs is a source of danger and they eye the terrain anxiously as they slip and stumble over the loose stones covering the beach. The company had been ordered to link up with E Company at Rock Point, a cape 800 yards north of the mouth of Cheney Ravine. The company advance with great caution, taking nearly two hours to advance the half mile to reach the headland after the skirmish at the cave. They arrived at Rock Point without further incident. The two companies made contact at 1150AM. They formed a hasty perimeter and remain on the beach for an hour or so. [22]

F company was also engaged in the operation.  

Calhoun describes his platoon's part in the sweep. "That morning, probably about 0800, my platoon left the light house and moved by Battery Smith and on down Sunset Ridge. We moved as far west as we could go where the incline was almost a vertical drop. . . About the time we reached the farthest point we heard American voices coming from below. It was E Company . . ." They did not run into any enemy troops but "we knew there were Japs deep in Grubbs Ravine because the patrol from our 2d platoon had been fired on the day before . . .' [23]

Back at Cheney Ravine the LCM has arrived. The landing craft has passed the company strung out on the beach on their way to Rock Point. The engineer boatmen are unable to get close to the beach,  for the bottom is too rocky and treacherous for that.  As the small group with the casualties looks on, the craft drops its ramp ten yards from shore, and the group must wade and stumble towards it, firstly with the body [24] and then just as carefully carrying the two wounded, hauling them into the craft. 

 With everyone aboard the LCM backs off and heads north toward the Bottomside dock. [25]

The company heads south, retracing their steps on the beach. The return is uneventful, but that is not to say the men are any less cautious. It still is a dangerous area and the troopers take their time as they carefully make their way back to Cheney Ravine, where they take a short rest at the spring near the strategic materials store.  They then load up and make their tired way up Cheney Trail on Topside, where they take up their positions on the perimeter, and their sixth day is almost ended. 

 John L. Lindgren

 

  - CALHOUN'S  POSTSCRIPT - 

 

The other two companies of the 2d Battalion both had missions on the 21st to clear the western part of Corregidor of Japs,  so we go back to them now.  Click here to continue.

   

  - CALHOUN'S  POSTSCRIPT - 

 

 

 

 

  -  AUTHOR'S  FOOTNOTES  -

 

 

      On 21 February, F Company operated in the same area as D and E Companies, on the northwest corner of the island from Rock Point to Cheney Ravine. F contacted E Company according to Calhoun and D Company contacted E as well, and set up a hasty perimeter with them. F Company War Diary has no entry for 21 February, nor does E Company's War Diary  mention meeting either Company. Gifford was running things now for D Company and the content of the diary was unquestionably correct. We can conclude that this day was a 2nd Battalion sweep, and the combat patrols were at company strength. The RCT Commanders, with their eyes always towards the east, never realized that the greatest resistance was in the west, where the major enemy troop concentrations had been compressed in the ravines.     

      Whilst it is the privilege of historians to have never partaken of these actions, and yet be omnipresent, it is impossible for a participant in the Corregidor campaign to have been everywhere,  seeing everything.  That is why, in addition to sharing our own personal experiences,  we are so fortunate to be able to refer to the memoirs of Dr. Charles Bradford, who not only accompanied this D Company patrol, he made it his business to record what he saw, and to gather together the experiences of the wounded entrusted into his care.  His manuscript "Combat Over Corregidor"  is a legend amongst us,  for it is a truly great descriptive account of the action, written only about five months after the operation took place,  whilst the events were still fresh on Bradford's  mind.  For many years, "Doc" kept his authorship of the manuscript private, and we express our deep appreciation to " Doc" for allowing us to place his manuscript with our works, and to his estate for allowing him the credit he deserves.  The manuscript provides many of the word pictures which are contained in this article. Other sources are credited by the Author, in the following notes: 

[1]     Not available on the website version

[2]     10-in-1's fed 10 men for one day.  Among the entrees were beef stew, hash, eggs and ham, pork and beans.  During an-operation, meals and mealtimes often were hap hazard. More often than not in the rifle company,  the food was eaten cold. How meals were prepared or when they were eaten depended on the time available and what was happening. There were never any field kitchens with the company on Corregidor but the informal squad messes in the rifle company filled in this void. In some cases the platoon organized a sort of consolidated mess. As might be imagined, the quality of these messes varied widely. The 2d Battalion Headquarters Company war diary describes one of the better messes in action on the first evening after the jump:  "18:39 Feb 16 Some of us ate some K rations. The boys in the 3d LMG [light machine gun] platoon barbecued a chicken."

The 10 in 1 ration had individual packets of instant coffee but the men in the rifle companies could not always heat water or, as it happened during the first three or four days on Corregidor, have water to heat. After February 19, the company stayed in place at night on a perimeter and were issued 10 in 1 rations, rather than K rations, improving the cuisine immeasurably. While in the perimeter they could heat their food and water.

The principal cooking utensil for the squad mess was the "Billy" can, an Australian term which described almost any can with a cover in which they were capable of brewing tea, though in our camp described nothing more than a discarded #10 can with a baling wire handle across the top.  In a sense, D Company's billy­cans were misnamed; they had no covers. Each squad had one or two men who were designated to carry a "Billy" attached somewhere to their webbing. 

Almost everyone that wanted one, probably had a cup of hot coffee for breakfast before they started down Cheney Trail for the first time. 

[3]     Appendix A not available on website version.

[4]    Hill; No record has been found describing the organizations supporting D Company for 21, 22, or 24 February 1945.  In his monograph, Hill has shown, in some detail, the supporting elements that were with E Company on 22 February. He further tells us which units were actually with the company or were on topside, as the case may be, to provide supporting fire etc. on call. It is assumed the same plan applied to D company's patrols in Cheney Ravine and the beaches.

[5]     Interview with Gordon W. Bates November 11, 1988; Bates was one of the ten men on duty with the mortar platoon February 21. The mortar platoon remained on Topside ready to fire on request and never went into Cheney Ravine.

[6]    Combat Over Corregidor by Charles H. Bradford, MD, 1945, pp. 75-76. an unpublished manuscript written in July and August 1945 at the US Army's Valley Forge Hospital by the 2d Battalion Surgeon. Bradford went with Company D on the 21 February patrol to the sea.

[7]    Letters Tony Sierra [undated] and Harry Drews [January 12, 1990] to the author; both Sierra and Drews remember the spring very well. Drews recalled "'D' Company used that spring as its water supply as long as I lasted [February 24]." I visited the spring for the first time in 1989 and took a drink from a pool at the bottom of the sandstone cliff where the water had collected. It was sweet and cool and I thought how welcome a drink of water must have been for the thirsty riflemen in 1945 when there was, at least at the outset, a serious shortage of drinking water."

The regimental S4 (supply officer) "Cracker" Atkins writes that 1250 gallons of water were dropped on Topside on the 18th [D+2] but only 60% [750 gallons] of the water was recovered.  It was enough to fill 3000 canteens. The water problem had not really improved until the road from the Bottomside beaches to Topside was fully opened February 19.  [see Atkins, Robert N. Operations of the 503d Regimental Combat Team with Emphasis on Supply Activity - an unpublished monograph written when the author was a student at the Advanced Infantry Officers Course at Fort Benning, GA.]

[8]    Scattered around Corregidor were a number of Strategic Materials Store Houses, of which this was SMSH #8. It was not a "pillbox".  The reinforced concrete storehouse had but a single room, about 25' x25' 10' dug into the ridge. The entrance was the only part of the building that could be seen from the outside.

Neither this, nor any other of the SMSH structures showed on the maps issued to the company, which were of very poor utility.   Everyone, from the combat team commander on down, had to rely on a special 1:25000 map prepared "under direction of Chief Engineer Sixth US Army", the only map made generally available. It was a very simple and rather crude depiction of Corregidor,  lacking even the barest detail. 

The list of structures not shown on the maps supplied to the troopers was extensive. They failed to show names of buildings, batteries, minor roads, most notable geographical features etc. These omissions forced the men in the company to invent some awkward descriptions of important features that can be seen in the company war diary. Battery Cheney was the "big gun position", Cheney Ravine "below the big gun position", Battery Wheeler was "a pillbox" [some pillbox!] and so on. It is difficult to know why more information was not shown since it was certainly available to the mapmakers. 

Given that the Japanese had been in uncontested possession of the island for almost three years,  the claimed justification for the absence of adequate maps ("they were classified "Top Secret") is surely one of the most incredibly dubious examples of military intelligence at a high level as could be found in the Pacific War.

[9]    Bradford, p. 76 

[10]    Letter Harry Drews to the author, December 20, 1987.

[11]    BAR; Browning Automatic Rifle - a .30 caliber, magazine fed automatic rifle fitted with a biped. Each rifle squad had one BAR.  The gunner was also armed with a .45 caliber pistol. His assistant carried additional BAR magazines.

[12]    Bradford, p. 77. "Of all the murderous weapons we carry, phosphorus is, in some respects1 the most pitiless and deadly. Its dense, white fumes fill a tunnel with suffocating smoke, while at the same time its tiny fragments cut into the victim's body like shrapnel from a grenade. They have a fearful, burning penetration, and each fragment continues to fume in the flesh or bone with an inextinguishable fire."

[13]    Bradford, p. 77 ". . . we felt sure the place was cleaned out, we didn't stop to look."  Had they done so they would have learned a tunnel had been cut through the south wall of the room that led to an opening in the face of the cliff looking out on the beach. The WP grenade would have hit anyone in the small storehouse room but the tunnel to the cliff turned at a right angle from the west wall and any men in the tunnel would have been sheltered from its effect.  The tunnel to the cliff face had undoubtedly been dug by men from the 3d Battalion 4th Marines charged with the defense of the ravine during the 1942 siege.  The same defenders had constructed the "U" shaped tunnel in the sheer sandstone cliff near the culvert where the company discovered and killed 4 Japanese defenders earlier in the day.

[14 ]    Harry Drews, Company D diary 21 February 21, 1945 entry and Bradford p. 77.  The mines and the barbed wire obstacles were probably installed by the 4th Marines and possibly modified by the Japanese during their occupation. Troops responsible for protecting the minefield were stationed in the tunnel dug from SMSH #8 to the opening above the beach that overlooked the minefield. Company D's war diary mentions six antiaircraft guns were discovered but no further information of caliber, type etc. was given.

[15]    Letter Sierra.  The 2d platoon's Tony Sierra described it best , writing ". . . of course it was very slow going and everyone was tensed up and scared to death. . . . we were sitting ducks." Refer to Tony Sierra's article on the death of Bob Holt .

[16]    There also was a 500lb. unexploded bomb out in the bay about 15 ft.  Gatewood Brady sat on that bomb protecting the entrance to that cave where 24 enemy were killed and he himself was killed in that skirmish."

[17]    Company D War Diary, February 21 1945 entry:- "one squad approached the cave from one side, while another encircled it and came in from the other side." The encircling squad may have used the service road that started in Cheney Ravine and ended at Searchlight Number 3.

[18]    Drews;  Bradford says that a trooper near the tunnel entrance squad threw the grenade that was tossed back and hit Buchanan.

[19]    Bradford,  p.78 Bradford describes the scene behind the rocks.  "A third fragment cut through a medical aid man's arm, but as the wound merely penetrated the flesh, he disregarded it and helped B  who had fallen down on the rocks." ["B" must be Buchanan].

[20]    Bradford, p. 79 and Company D War Diary, February 21, 1945 entry.

[21]    Regimental S3 Journal, Message Number 93 on page headed 21 February 45. The 503d S3 Journal noted the casualties were caused by the artillery preparation fired that morning from Topside. The Company D War Diary makes no mention of this discovery.

[22]    Ibid. and Company D War Diary, February 21, 1945 entry.

[23]   Letter William Calhoun to the author, December 5, 1990.

[24]    Brady's body was taken to the Ciné building, the movie theater at the eastern end of Topside's parade ground, which was used by the 503d as a morgue. The dead were wrapped in a parachute shroud and taken across the North Channel to Mariveles for temporary internment.  All 503d men who died anywhere in the Pacific theater, unless other internment instructions were given by the next of kin, rest in the American Cemetery and Memorial, Fort Bonifacio, Metro Manila, Philippines.

[25]    Bradford p.79-80.

Bradford describes the scene as the small group with the casualties watched the landing craft drop its ramp "...ten yards from shore. We waded, and stumbled, and almost swam out to it with the body, [24] and then our two wounded men."

               

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