Junction at Alcala

Dignified General Walter Krueger briefed the troops himself, and was on hand for the dawn take-off to wish the men "good luck, now." As Sixth Army commander he had worked out the plan to end the Cagayan Valley campaign in northern Luzon. He had a special interest in the 11th Airborne Division's jump be hind Japanese lines.

From the weird, camouflaged concrete of a Jap-built field the troop carriers took off. With them went Colonel Felix ("Snatch") Dupont's supply gliders (being used for the first time in the Philippines), loaded with pack howitzers, jeeps, radios and supplies. Over the flatlands at Luzon's tip the parachutists blossomed from their transports. Gliders slid into the high grass unopposed. Said wit nesses : like maneuvers on the village green.

Major General Joseph M. Saving's airborne troops marched quickly down from Aparri. North to meet them pounded in fantrymen of the 37th Division, making ten to 14 miles a day. Commented the 37th's Major General Robert S. Beightler, who was later nicked lightly on the brow by a Jap shell splinter: "The Japs can't stand up to an American division on the flat. They cannot take that tremendous fire power." Two days after the jump the Cagayan Valley was U.S. territory -- the 11th and 37th had met near the burning nipa huts of Alcala without a Jap soldier in sight.

End on Top. For General Douglas MacArthur this was the payoff. "The entire island of Luzon ... is now liberated [after] one of the most savage and bitterly fought [battles] in American history." Enemy losses were 113,593; U.S. casualties, 15,178.

In the echelons of higher strategy it was the end of Luzon. But down on the trudge-shoot-and-burn level it was far from over. Anywhere from 14,000 to 20,000 Japanese remained on Luzon, in four pockets besieged by some seven U.S. divisions. To the south, on Mindanao Island, another batch of Japs occupied the fighting time of two more divisions.

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