Shredded Coconut Grove

When it sloshed ashore fortnight ago on the west coast of Leyte, Major General Andrew Bruce's 77th Division caught the Japs so far off balance that, before they recovered their poise, the 77th had penetrated Ormoc. But there the Japs stood, and stood fast. Most of last week the 77th used its artillery to blast a group of coconut log and concrete blockhouses 600 yards north of Ormoc on the road to Valencia. The Japs still had artillery and mortars, still had enough infantrymen to make three desperate counterattacks.

The position, which G.I.s dubbed Coconut Grove, was reduced to ruins, and the ruins were sticky with Japanese dead. The measure of the enemy's desperation was in his tactics: one sortie was made by advancing so close to U.S. lines that the artillery range could not be shortened for fear of hitting U.S. troops. That enemy drive was stopped by machine guns, and the enemy dead that day were estimated at 500. But no position constructed like Coconut Grove could withstand the artillery pounding indefinitely, and at week's end it was mopped up. The 77th swiftly pushed west and north, closing on Valencia.

Farther north, the 32nd Division and the 1st Cavalry Division (dismounted) were engaged in equally bitter, hand-to-hand combat, but drawing steadily closer to Valencia and a junction with the 77th. Japanese lines were beginning to crumble. But it had taken the bloodiest fighting of the second Philippine campaign to make them crumble. Leyte was not the pushover it had seemed when Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines nine weeks ago.

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