Surprise on Los Negros

U.S. destroyers swung broadside to the low-lying coast and sounded a compelling reveille with the barking of their 5-in. guns. Boats crowded with green-clad men crawled like bugs toward the shore. This was no landing on an enemy beach saturated by bombardment; success this time depended on surprise.

The Japs were surprised. Shells fell around the boats as they pushed their way into a 50-yd.-wide channel through coral reefs. But the Japs were too late, their resistance disorganized. The green-clad troop tumbled out onto a strip of beach and drove the defenders back into the jungles with gunfire.

This sudden attack last week in General Douglas MacArthur's Southwest Pacific theater put U.S. forces athwart another enemy communication line, further isolated some 72,000 Japs--22,000 in the Solomons, 50,000 in New Britain--by Douglas MacArthur's accounting.

Chief objective of the landing was Momote airfield, a base from which to strike at: 1) Rabaul (see p. 19); 2) Manus, the largest of the Admiralty group; 3) Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea, which the Japs are believed to be hopefully developing into a base that might be strong enough to guard their East Indies lifeline.

"Hold On." Eight hours after the landing, MacArthur himself went ashore from a destroyer. He stood erect in a Higgins boat, wearing a trench coat and his gold-braided cap. Disdaining snipers, he traversed the beach, congratulating his troops.

"Hold on to what you take," he said. His troops, commanded by Brigadier General William C. Chase, prepared to hold.

They were men of the 1st Cavalry Division, which numbers among its famed units the 7th Regiment, once wiped out with Custer on the Little Big Horn. The troops who fought their way onto Los Negros were the 5th Regiment, trained in cavalry maneuvers on the Mexican border but now operating as infantry. It had been nostalgic months since they had seen a horse.

By the Light of the Moon. They fought off frenzied Jap counterattacks through the daylight hours. By night they grimly fought off the animal-like enemy's infiltrating tactics. Wrote Corporal Bill Alcine, Army correspondent:

"By the faint light of the moon the Americans watched the Japanese creep toward them from the edge of the airstrip. Sometimes Japs crawled to the very edge of the cavalrymen's foxholes before they were killed. One major told me he was going to sleep in his hammock that night and suggested that I do the same thing. During the night, however, troops near by heard a commotion and the major called out: 'Don't shoot, boys, it's Major -- !' Nothing more was heard. The next morning they found the major dead, his head nearly severed from his body and with several bayonet wounds."

It was the same kind of warfare which unnerved U.S. troops on New Georgia last July. More Japs arrived from nearby Manus Island. Still the cavalrymen held.

"Resume the Advance." Two days after the landing, MacArthur announced from his headquarters that the initial operation had been a "reconnaissance in force" but that because of its unexpected success it was now "being developed into complete occupation." Reinforcements were rushed to Momote airfield--just in time to stop the Jap's heaviest onslaught. At week's end another communique indicated that Momote airfield might be in the bag. Enemy "dead & wounded are estimated at 3.000. . . . We lost 61 killed and 244 wounded." Said General MacArthur: "Our troops are preparing to resume the advance."

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