The overarching Allied operation in the Solomon’s Campaign was Operation Cartwheel, the isolation and eventual capture of Rabaul on the island of New Britain, Imperial Japan’s main base in the South Pacific. The previous capture of New Georgia and other northern Solomon Islands placed Rabaul within heavy and medium bomber range, but shorter ranged fighters and naval bombers needed airfields closer. The island of Buka, just north of Bougainville was the obvious choice, but Adm Halsey decided that the flat areas of the much larger Bougainville were enough to provide the airfields necessary for the eventual isolation of the islands, while doing the same to Rabaul.

On 1 November 1943, Halsey launched Operation Cherry Blossom, the invasion of Bougainville. The initial landings at Torokina on the west coast of the island were virtually unopposed: only a single Japanese platoon was in the area. Gen Hyukutake of the Japanese 17th Army gambled that Halsey would invade Buka off the northern tip of Bougainville and bypass Bougainville entirely. He chose wrong. Nonetheless, he and the naval commander at Rabaul, Adm Kusaka, rushed men and ships to the area to seal the beachhead and eventually reduce it with naval gunfire and ground attack. They knew from their experience at Guadalcanal that if the Allies got a secure beachhead with a functioning airfield, the Americans were almost impossible to dislodge, especially as American naval surface warfare proficiency had come leaps and bounds since the precious year. The Americans knew it also.

In the shadow of Mt Baranga, an active and smoking volcano, Allied transports rushed to unload. 30% of the initial 3rd Marine Division landing force, including three SeaBee battalions, assisted with unloading the transports in order to get them safely away before the inevitable Japanese naval sortie arrived. The Japanese attempted to imitate their success at Savo Island the year before, but Adm Aaron Merrill’s Task Force 39 was waiting for them and savaged the Japanese at the entrance to Empress Augusta Bay off the west coast of Bougainville. Nevertheless, Halsey was concerned.

Though a brilliant operational commander and leader of men, he still thought in year old archaic terms for naval superiority, i.e. CV>BB>CA>CL>DD. He, and to be fair the rest of the US Navy, still hadn’t grasped that the Japanese’ most damaging weapon was the Long Lance torpedo on their small destroyers, and that the quick firing radar controlled 6” guns on the American light cruisers were far superior to the big manual 8” heavy cruiser guns. He saw the reports that the Japanese had heavy cruisers and that he didn’t so he ordered Task Force 38, his only carriers, to strike Rabaul and sink any shipping that could interfere with the invasion of Bougainville. He specifically tasked them to drive away the heavy cruisers to protect his transports and their escorts and to prevent another “Hell Night” as had happened on Guadalcanal. He was successful in his gamble, but only because he was ignorant of the Japanese lack of carrier-borne pilots. Halsey thought he might be sailing into a “reverse Midway”, but Kusaka had no way to strike Halsey’s carriers and the land based planes were committed over Bougainville. Kusaka withdrew his ships back to Truk, the main Japanese anchorage in the South Central Pacific and out of the fight. No further Japanese attempts to interfere with any Solomon Island were to occur for the rest of the war. The Naval Battles of the Solomon Island, which began so ignobly off Savo Island 17 months before, ended in a decisive American victory.

After the failed Japanese attempts to destroy the beachhead by sea, the US 3rd Marine and US Army 37th Infantry Division expanded the beachhead over the next few weeks. Navy SeaBees started construction of an airfield literally just off the beach, and quickly began building roads inland. They built them so fast that Marines told them to slow down as their roads were pushing farther forward than the Marine pickets. By the end of November 1943, the Japanese increased their counterattacks, and had occupied the hills around the beachhead with artillery, despite several serious losses against counter-counter attacking Marines in the perimeter. First, the entire initial naval landing force sent by Kusaka at the onset of the invasion was wiped out at Koromokina Lagoon on 7-8 November, and an entire Japanese regiment was destroyed at Piva Forks later in the month.

In December 1943, the 3rd Marine Division was replaced by the veteran US Army Americal Division, and they and the 37th expanded the perimeter to prevent artillery fire from molesting Empress Augusta Bay and the three airfields under construction. The first aircraft to land of the newly operational beach airfield was a corsair from the famed VMF 214, the “Black Sheep” squadron, on 11 December. Within hours, Maj. “Pappy” Boyington and his fighters did a sweep over Rabaul, just because they could, and taunted the surprised Japanese to come up after them. The Japanese knew the Allies were building airfields on Bougainville but completely misjudged the speed at which the SeaBees could construct one under fire. Though until all three airfields were completed, the fighters more often than not flew ground attack missions in support of marines and soldiers fighting a few hundred yards from the flight line. The operational airfields finally convinced Gen Imamura at Rabaul, Hyukutake’s boss, that Halsey’s main effort wasn’t coming at Buka.

Imamura was convinced all throughout November and December that Halsey would attempt to seize Buka, and he wasn’t wrong, he just had the timing incorrect. (Buka was Halsey’s next target after the airfields on Bougainville were completed.) Imamura assumed Halsey knew about the severe Japanese shortage of carrier qualified pilots, and would use his own carriers to support a bold landing on Buka, bypassing and isolating Bougainville and getting that much closer to Rabaul if successful. However, Halsey was unaware of the pilot shortage and assumed the carriers were still out there lurking, waiting to pounce. To Halsey, Buka was too exposed and not worth the risk; a risk which Imamura assumed the legendarily aggressive Halsey would take. Once the Black Sheep and other fighter squadrons did their sweeps over Rabaul, Imamura could no longer ignore the danger the airfields posed. He released troops from Buka and northern Bougainville to reduce the growing Allied perimeter at Torokina. But Imamura’s assault was now substantially more difficult, Halsey’s two US Army divisions had time dig in and stockpile necessary supplies.

Nevertheless, the Japanese troops encountered so far in the battle were relatively few compared to what Imamura had on hand. It took Hyukutake nearly two months to stage Imamura’s reinforcements in their assault positions around Torokina. In March, Halsey’s perimeter on Bougainville would feel the entire weight of Hyukutake’s 17th Army.

To be continued…

 In the Battle for San Pietro Infine, A Company, 143rd Infantry Regiment, commanded by Captain Rufus Cleghorn was responsible for one of the few Allied successes so far in the battle. They had seized the crest of Monte Sammucro, but for their efforts they endured fierce German counterattacks. The Germans threw so many grenades that the Texans used their rifles as baseball bats to hit them back before they exploded.

After four days, Able Company was reinforced by Baker Company, commanded by Cleghorne’s friend, 25 year old Captain Henry T. Waskow from Belton, Texas. On the night of 12 December 1943, B Company, down to about 50 men, moved into assault positions to exploit A Company’s success and clear the ridge above San Pietro Infine between Monte Sammucro and Hill 730.

While the company was in position, Captain Waskow quietly made his rounds among the men, chatting and offering words of encouragement. In a dark, shallow ravine, he spoke to Pvt Riley Tidwell about how when he got “Back to the States, I’m going to get one of those smart-aleck toasters where you put the bread in and it pops up.” Those were his last words. A German machine gunner heard him and opened fire. A fragment from the resulting mortar barrage killed him instantly. A mule train, run by Italian volunteers, took his body down off the mountain two days later.

At the bottom of Monte Sammucro was Ernie Pyle, a war correspondent whose dispatches from the front appeared in over 200 newspapers. He didn’t write about generals or huge battles but wrote about the common soldier in an intimate style that resembled letters home. This greatly endeared him to the soldiers, NCOs and junior officers who wanted their stories to be heard. Ernie saw the beloved company commander’s body come down the trail strapped to a mule, and the experience became the subject of his most famous dispatch, “The Death of Captain Waskow”. It is arguably the finest and most heartfelt expository passage of World War II.

“The Death of Capt. Waskow

By Ernie Pyle

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, Jan 10 (1944) (by Wireless) – In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Tex.

Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had been in this company since long before he left the States. He was very young, only is his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

“After my own father, he comes next,” a sergeant told me.

“He always looked after us,” a solder said. “He’d go to bat for us every time.”

* * *

I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow down. The moon was nearly full and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley. Soldiers made shadows as they walked.

Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came belly down across the wooden backsaddle, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.

The Italian mule skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies, when they got to the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself and ask others to help.

The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule, and stood him on his feet for a moment. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there leaning on the other. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the stone wall alongside the road.

I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and you don’t ask silly questions ….

We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on watercans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.

Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about him. We talked for an hour or more; the dead man lay all alone, outside in the shadow of the wall.

Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there in the moonlight in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting.

“This one is Capt. Waskow,” one of them said quickly.

Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally, there were five lying end to end in a long row. You don’t cover up dead men in combat zones. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them.

The uncertain mules moved off to their olive groves. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually I could sense them moving, one by one, close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud:

“God damn it!”

Another one came, and he said, “God damn it to hell anyway!” He looked down for a few last moments and then turned and left.

Another man came. I think it was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the dim light, for everybody was grimy and dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain’s face and then spoke directly to him, as tho he were alive:

“I’m sorry, old man.”

Then a solder came and stood beside the officer and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tender, and he said:

“I sure am sorry, sir.”

Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the Captain’s hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face. And he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

Finally he put the hand down. He reached up and gently straightened the points of the Captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound, and then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

The rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.”

In early November 1943, the British Eighth Army reached the Gustav Line and the American Fifth Army reached the Bernhardt Line in Italy. The Bernhardt Line was essentially the Gustav Line’s gatehouse in the west that protected the Mignano Gap, the entrance to the Rapido and Gargliano river valleys which formed the Gustav Line’s main line of resistance on the western slopes of the Apennines Mountains. These valleys were dominated by Monte Cairo with its amazing fields of observation and Monte Cassino at the entrance to the Liri Valley. The Gustav and Bernhardt Lines were part of a larger series of extensive German defensive fortifications across Italy called the Winter Line that were intended to prevent the Allies from reaching Rome, 80 miles to the northwest.

Through these extensive fortifications were only three routes up the Italian boot: Route 5, the old Roman Via Valeria, which ran along the Adriatic coast and up which the British steadily pounded until they reached the Gustav Line. Across the Apennine Mtns was Route 7, the old Appian Way along the west coast of Italy but this route was blocked by Germans’ extensive flooding of the Pontine Marshes. And finally Route 6 which was further inland and traveled through the Mignano Gap, into the Liri Valley, and then to Rome. Route 6 was the only realistic route to Rome, and the Germans would make the Allies pay dearly for every meter.

After a two week pause, the US Fifth Army in Italy began, on 1 December 1943, Operation Raincoat – the assault against the Bernhardt Line, which was defended by the tough and experienced 15th Panzergrenadier Division, heavily fortified and determined to hold the Mignano Gap. The Camino hill masses which formed the pillars of the Mignano Gap were the last stop before Monte Cassino, the Liri Valley and the road to Rome.

The US Fifth Army during operation Raincoat was the epitome of the multinational and varied nature of the Allied armies in Italy. Gen Mark Clark’s command consisted of four US Divisions: the active duty soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division, and three National Guard divisions, the 34th from the Midwest, the 45th from Oklahoma, and the 36th from Texas. The Fifth Army also had the British Territorials of the 46th and 56th Divisions from London and the Midlands, the French Expeditionary Corps of French Foreign Legionnaires and French colonials from Morocco, North Africa and West Africa (including the ill-disciplined but very effective Goumiers), the lumberjacks, mountain men, commandos and ranchers from the elite and highly trained American-Canadian 1st Special Service Brigade aka “the Devil’s Brigade”, and even units of the resurgent Royal Italian Army, made up of Italians who actively resisted the Germans upon Italy’s surrender two months before.

The fighting was in the bitterly cold, windy, and rainy Italian winter. Mud covered everything. Allied soldiers struggled and fought up jagged cliffs, and slopes and trails so steep that they were impassable even to pack mules. Supplies were hauled up by rope or on the backs of men crawling through the mud, and the wounded were brought down the mountains the same way. German observation posts saw every movement of the Allied troops below and fire swept every conceivable approach. The fight was as much an engineers’ battle as an infantryman’s. One young engineer wrote,

“These things . . . constitute war and battle: rain and mud, cold and discomfort . . . of digging and of sleepless nights and tiring days, of being afraid and of being hungry, of repairing roads and of building bridges, of being lonely . . . of an endless number of little things…”

Mostly forgotten today, the fighting among the mountains and towns forming the Mignano Gap: Monte Camino, Monte Maggiore, Monte La Difensa, Monte Lungo, and Monte Sammucro and the hellscapes that were the towns of Mignano and San Pietro Infine was the largest land operation by Western Allies so far in the Second World War. Operation Raincoat lasted until mid-January 1944 when the Germans withdrew across the Rapido River. The 46 days the Fifth Army took to advance the 16 miles through the Bernhardt Line to the Liri and Rapido Valleys and the Gustav Line cost the Allies tens of thousands of casualties.

The worst was yet to come.

Nearing the end of the second year of the Pacific War, through hard fighting, tough decisions, and no small amount of luck, the Allies had survived Japan’s initial onslaught with just their pre-Pearl Harbor militaries, and began rolling back Japanese gains. But by November 1943, the losses at Pearl Harbor were replaced and the American economy was in full wartime production. Ships of all sizes, from the mighty Essex class aircraft carriers to the humble patrol torpedo (PT) boats were rolling off of America’s dry docks. In the Solomon Islands, Adm Halsey’s campaign to isolate Japan’s main base in the South Pacific, Rabaul, was about to come to fruition. On New Guinea, Gen MacArthur’s South West Pacific Area was battling across the island, aimed for his eventual return to the Philippines. Adm Chester Nimitz, who did not have a great working relationship with MacArthur, wanted to use America’s new found material superiority to open up a new front, with the objective of Japan itself. He would cut across the axis and beat MacArthur to Japan. The first target of the new Central Pacific Area was the Tarawa atoll, in the British Gilbert Islands, specifically the island of Betio.

The island of Betio was a small pork chop shaped mass of coral and sand about three miles long and a half mile wide. It was surrounded by a coral reef about 400 meters off shore. On it were 5000 elite Japanese marines of their Special Naval Landing Force, fourteen Type 95 tanks and dozens of coastal artillery pieces and machine guns. Up to this point in the war the Japanese generally would allow the Allies to land and then attack with a furious banzai charge as the Americans were organizing on the beach. Tarawa would be different.

The Japanese knew of Betio’s importance in the central Pacific and spent over a year fortifying the island. Eschewing the wasteful immediate banzai charge against the initial landing, they fought in bunkers and pillboxes while the Marines struggled exposed on the beach and in the heavy surf. Their heavy coastal artillery would sink the support ships while the Japanese marines swept the beaches clear with interlocking fields of fire and pre-sighted artillery and mortars. The tanks would counter attack any breakthrough. The Japanese aim was to transfer to the defense the qualities of surprise, tenacity, focus, and ferocity that made their attacks so formidable. It nearly worked.

The US Second Marine Division would lead Operation Galvanic, the assault on Betio. Over the last year the division recovered, and then were reinforced, refitted, and retrained after its eight month fight on Guadalcanal. At 0610, 20 November 1943, 200 ships of the US Navy shelled and bombed the tiny island to little effect. The Japanese were simply dug Into the coral too deep. At 0900, the initial landing force started toward the beaches and the Japanese finally responded with their coastal artillery which sank or severely damaged several ships. The casualties among the sailors were almost as large as the Marines’ over the next several days. The Marines’ assault unfortunately began 30 minutes late, which allowed the Japanese to get to their fighting positions after the bombardment. Even worse, the assault began during an abnormally low tide.

The “Alligator” amphibious tractors managed to make it over the reef and onto the beach, but the subsequent waves in Higgins boats could not. With the initial wave pinned down behind a sea wall, the follow on waves of Marines were forced to wade in waist deep water 400 meters through intense Japanese fire. The casualties were enormous. The seawall was scant cover and to climb over was to court instant death. Throughout the morning Marines were steadily massacred by the dug in Japanese. But nevertheless, they persisted. Fortunately, the Marines were the product of free men in an open society and had spent the last year living, working, training and fighting together. They didn’t lie there, blame others, and wait for their superiors to do something. The junior leaders would win this fight. Individually and in small groups, they hammered then cracked the Japanese defenses. Corporals, sergeants, and lieutenants chose, in defiance of all logic and safety, to rally what Marines they could, and painstakingly maneuvered to engage the Japanese with flamethrowers, satchel charges, grenades, bayonets, rifle butts, helmets and fists. An observant beachmaster used the abnormally low tide to move supplies and men to the beach underneath the long pier which stretched over the coral reef to the beach. Many contemporary accounts attribute the final breakout to the efforts of a single tank “Colorado” from Red Beach 3, which finally allowed the Marines to move inland.

Over the next 77 hours, 4760 Japanese and 1700 Marines and Sailors were killed, with 2000 more Americans wounded.

The initial outcry in America due to the losses was enormous. However, like the Colorado spewing fire and lead at bunkers overlooking the beach, Nimitz cracked the Japanese outer ring of defenses in the Central Pacific. His subsequent offensives over the next 21 months were like a lance aimed straight at the belly of Japan. Finally, the lessons learned from the landing on Tarawa would be invaluable and used to great effect in subsequent amphibious operations, particularly the landings in the Marshall and Palau Islands, and even Italy and France.