Little happiness greeted the news that Morotai, a small island of the Moluccas group 1,500 miles northwest of Finschhafen, represented the next stop in the 33d Division's travels. Doughboy, redleg, engineer and medic experienced similar thoughts in regard to the alert notice: Morotai was not a whit better than New Guinea. General MacArthur's road to Tokyo had passed through the jungle covered rock on 15 September 1944 when the 31st Division moved in without opposition. Morotai was a vital jump-off point, true, but wasn't the tactical end confined wholly to guarding Thirteenth Air Force installations?

Mournfully, members of the Division prepared for the long voyage. A fleet of LSTs was to carry both troops and impedimenta to the Moluccas. One could sense the attitude of the men as they boarded the squat vessels: what will it be this time, training or dock details? After seventeen months away from the United States their baptism of fire seemed no closer than it was in the California desert.

But GI prognosticators badly missed the boat with their predictions of "dock detail," "perimeter," "training" and "dry run." Could they have been with their division commander at the time of embarkation they would have started the voyage with mingled feelings of excitement and apprehension instead of disdain.

General Clarkson, with a small party of staff members, had flown to Morotai as soon as he received the movement orders. His purpose was to confer with XI Corps and 31st Division representatives to coordinate reinforcement plans. Maj. Gen. Charles P. Hall, Corps commander, greeted the Golden Cross leader with information that the 33d's mission had been radically altered. Reinforcement of the perimeter was out. Japs had been streaming onto the island from Halmahera. The 33d was to clean them out.

Captured enemy documents interpreted by Corps G-2 indicated that the Japanese planned to sweep out of the jungle and wrest the Gila Peninsula from American possession. Navy torpedo boats, maintaining around-the-clock patrols, had smashed numerous infiltration attempts from Halmahera, but nevertheless enough landing barges had broken through so that the entire Japanese 211th Infantry Regiment was grouped on the island. G-2 pinpointed this force on Hill 40, an overgrown terrain feature hidden in the tropical morass of vegetation that was Morotai. Hill 40 was to be the Division's objective.

It is not difficult to understand Jap strategy in planning the recapture of Morotai. At this time it was MacArthur's principal Pacific airbase.

Fighters and bombers based here had been able to support the Philippine operation and at the same time engage installations in the neighboring East Indies islands. Should Japanese daring and fanaticism pay off with the seizure of the Gila Peninsula, the results would have a far-reaching effect upon the Pacific war effort.

On 21 December Division troops streamed ashore on the humid peninsula. Everyone noticed a difference in temperature immediately. If Finschhafen was hot, Morotai manufactured the rods that stoked the fires of hell. A brilliant sun, bounding off the landing beaches, blinded the men with its intensity. Unloading progressed smoothly and the Division quickly evacuated the beaches for inland assembly areas. There, personnel attacked the same type of stump-dotted wilderness that had greeted them when they arrived at Finschhafen seven months before.

Camp construction had barely begun when Division sprung the news of its combat mission. Briefing and reconnaissance began at once. Troop orientation was carried on in small groups, never larger than one platoon. Word of the operation was accepted calmly by the infantry elements. There had been no big build-up to preface the attack; no weeks of dry runs or admonitions that "this is it." Preparations for action progressed in a matter-of-fact manner.

Before moving out in the attack the Golden Cross was subjected to something foreign to it in the realm of warfare-air raids. Jap bombers based at Halmahera and Borneo made frequent forays over the small isle. Christmas Eve particularly was a big night for the Nips. Their bombers, sneaking in over American radar, dropped several sticks of bombs directly on the bomber strip, destroying many Thirteenth Air Force Liberators. Night fighters flying patrol over the peninsula engaged two of the Japanese planes and sent both down in flames. A few 33d Division men in bivouac near the bomber strip were wounded by American antiaircraft shell fragments, thereby becoming the Division's first Morotai casualties.

Christmas dinner could have been served in more pretentious surroundings but nevertheless Lt. Colonel Kuhns and the 108th Quartermaster Company got the Yuletide victuals up to the combat units. Some men, scheduled to enter the line on Christmas morning had their holiday meal on the night of the 24th while others ate turkey for breakfast on the 25th.

A rifleman from Able Company, 136th Infantry, unwittingly made an unforgettable picture of the doughboy on the eve of combat. As soon as he had mounted the truck which was to carry him to the line of departure this man clasped his M-1 between his knees, unbuttoned the pocket of his fatigue blouse and extracted a huge turkey drumstick. As the truck clashed gears and started down the rude road the infantryman serenely settled back into his seat and began to munch on the turkey leg. Eddies of dust gradually obscured him from sight as he left to fight.

The Infantry journal recounted in graphic detail a story of the Second Battle for Morotai. Appearing in the July 1945 issue, under the title "Hill 40," the article was written by Lieutenant Colonel Sackton, Division G-2. It was the first detailed account of the operation to find its way into public print. It follows:

After securing New Guinea, the Southwest Pacific forces turned to the Philippines. But first it was necessary to secure the west flank and seize bases that would permit staging our aircraft forward. Maps indicated that if we held an airstrip on the Moluccas Islands in the Netherlands East Indies both problems would be solved. Therefore, on September 15, 1944, U. S. forces streamed ashore on Morotai on the northern tip of the Moluccas and only four hundred miles from the Philippines. The enemy was surprised; his strength-a thousand men-was quickly dispersed. Immediately airstrips were built to accommodate the air force that began smashing at the Philippines early in October. A strong perimeter defense of the new base was adequate protection against the small disorganized groups remaining on Morotai. But the enemy, impatient with his state of affairs, reacted. On October 12 he put an infantry colonel ashore on Morotai for the purpose of organizing the remaining Jap strength there. Also, by a series of nightly shore-to-shore movements from Halmahera, he reinforced Morotai in preparation for the Jap counterattack. Running the gantlet of Navy PT boats cost him heavily, but he took his losses and by December 1944 had placed on Morotai the bulk of his 211th Infantry Regiment.

The Jap colonel assembled his strength in the area of Hill 40 where it constituted a serious threat to our air and naval installations. He began with reconnaissance and harassing activity against our perimeter, and kept up these tactics until December 14 when it became apparent that he was capable of an attack in force, and was actually planning such a move against our airstrips. To remove this threat it was necessary to seek out the enemy in his lair and destroy him. Our garrison forces were tied down to perimeter defense and so elements of the 33d Infantry Division were brought in from New Guinea. The 136th Infantry was selected to do the job.

There were serious obstacles from the start. The regiment would have to cut itself off from the coastal bases, and operate independently. Every ounce of supply would have to be hand-carried over tortuous jungle trails under heavy guard, or dropped from the air. Few native carriers were available. Finally, the enemy had to be fixed and engaged in his mountain fastness. A more arduous task could not have been assigned an infantry regiment.

The regimental commander ordered the march on the enemy in two columns. The regiment less the 3d Battalion moved to Pilowo, while the 3d Battalion staged at Radja. Supporting artillery moved to Ngelengele Island. The inland movement started on December 26.

The jungle trails were more difficult than we had expected. Heavy equipment carried by pack-board exhausted the carriers and required the transfer of loads every fifteen minutes. The loads of heavy mortars, machine guns, and ammunition were moved with agonizing difficulty and slowness. A mile inland the radio (SCR-284) blanked out, cutting communications between the columns. An artillery liaison plane with an SCR-300 took up the job of inter-column communications by flying from one column to another, talking to the troops while overhead. The artillery forward observers with their SCR-610s fared no better and relied on a liaison plane for contact with the fire direction center on Ngelengele.

The Pilowo column did not meet the enemy until December 30, when a reconnaissance patrol operating to the left (north) flank encountered a small group of Japs in the vicinity of the Pilowo River, south of Hill 40. Reconnaissance was then emphasized on the left flank where it was pushed north of the Pilowo River on January 1. Entrenched Japs were discovered, and a search for flanks revealed the all-around defense of the nose southwest of Hill 40. (The Jap defenses east of the nose were not immediately discovered.) The 1st Battalion, Major Lewis L. Hawk commanding, had already swung to the north, and was ordered to attack the enemy. Early on January 2 the 1st Battalion reconnoitered the position prior to the attack and discovered that the position reached far to the east of the nose.

The regimental commander, with the 1st Battalion, realizing that a strongly fortified enemy confronted him, decided on a coordinated attack for the morning of January 3. For this purpose he moved the 2d Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Arthur T. Sauser, to the west of the enemy position for the enveloping movement while the 1st Battalion was ordered to attack from the south. A preparatory artillery concentration from Ngelengele provided accurate support prior to the attack. At H-hour (1000) the battalions attacked simultaneously. Two hundred yards from the enemy positions, where the day before the reconnaissance patrols had roamed at will, the attackers came under fire of tree snipers. To add to the problem, some Japs withheld fire from their camouflaged roots until our troops were nearly under them. Then they would drop short-fuzed demolition charges (TNT).

Although the attack gained ground our forces did suffer casualties and were delayed. Squads inched their way forward, spraying the trees as they advanced. When sniper fire became intense we tried to by-pass it. This meant moving off the trails through the stifling jungle where visibility was twenty feet at best, every foot of it hard going and control almost impossible. But the doughboy held his own and advanced.

The 1st Battalion, attacking upward to high ground under murderous small-arms fire, was stopped eighty yards short of the enemy positions. At this distance the enemy entrenchments could not be seen, but the broad front of enemy fire and the sound of his automatic weapons gave some idea of his position. As the ist Battalion evacuated its wounded, the 2d Battalion to the west was in a desperate fire fight. Its attack had started eastward toward the enemy flank but the impassability of the jungle and the force of enemy sniper fire had veered the attack southward. Thus it overran the two enemy positions on the nose and wiped these out. Late afternoon found the battalion on the west flank of the 1st Battalion. It turned to face the north, and then dug in for the night.

The regimental commander thought over the many problems that confronted him. There was supply, especially. His regiment had used up ammunition beyond the capacity of re-supply by hand-carry. K rations were short. The native and soldier carriers could not keep up. Besides, a hundred native carriers attached to the regiment could carry only a small part of the supplies needed. Air supply appeared to be the only solution. He ordered an area five hundred yards to the rear to be cleared to receive supplies by air-drop.

Evacuation problems seemed insurmountable. The call for "stretcher" promptly brought an aid man with a litter, but it took three more men to carry the wounded to the aid station. Evacuation to the coast from the aid station was a two-day trip (one way) and took eight men for each casualty.

Thus the supply and evacuation situation was cutting into combat strength. The regiment had been instructed to evacuate its dead to the coastal areas but now the regimental commander discarded this plan and directed that the dead be buried near-by. The bodies would be disinterred and removed to the coast later. This turned out to be a sound and workable solution.

For two days the closeness of terrain had prevented use of heavy MGs and mortars. (The Cannon and AT Companies had been held in the coastal areas.) Every attempt to use mortars had resulted in tree bursts so near that they imperiled friendly troops. Lack of fields of fire-at most there was only twenty feet of visibility in the jungle made the heavy MGs useless. The heavy-weapons companies were withdrawn from combat, and became responsible for receiving air-drops, re-supply of front line troops, and evacuation.

A study of the day's fighting indicated that the Jap resistance was about two infantry battalions. The enemy employed not more than two small mortars, and at least two machine guns. He had no artillery. The regimental commander decided to attack the enemy on the morning of January 4 with both battalions from present positions. He decided, however, to maintain a closer artillery support by direct wire communication and ordered the artillery on Ngelengele to move to Pilowo. This was done without stopping the harassing fires that fell on the enemy positions intermittently through the night. Telephone communication with the artillery proved invaluable the following day. An artillery battalion concentration burst upon the enemy positions as dawn came. The infantry battalions moved on northward, but before they had advanced forty yards, the sharp crackle of fire from tree snipers and entrenched Japs began plucking at the underbrush all around. The inaccuracy of the Jap fire, even at close range, was the most astounding impression of the battle.

The fight quickly broke down to squad level. The infighting precluded use of artillery. The doughboy's personal weapons had to decide the issue. Tree snipers were searched out and shot. The ground ahead was raked with fire. Individual Japs in hasty outpost entrenchments were flanked and then destroyed by hand grenade. But the going was slow. The regiment fought all day before the troops began knocking at the main enemy position.

With night coming on the regimental commander had a big decision to make. Should he break contact and pull his troops back to a safer night perimeter defense? Or should he hold on through the sporadic Jap night fighting that was inevitable? The deciding factor was the type of Jap defenses. The enemy was using single standing holes with log fronts but no overhead cover-an inviting artillery target. If artillery was used it would be necessary to withdraw, and so that was the decision. Our troops had barely completed their shallow, two-man foxholes a hundred yards to the south of the enemy when our artillery began to shell his positions. Fragments flew over our forces during the night, but the doughboys only grinned at the thought of what was happening up there in the impact area. The enemy wasn't idle either. During lulls in artillery fire he returned to his positions in the trees near our perimeter and poured in small-arms fire.

With a light under his blacked-out poncho, the colonel studied his map and messages. Fortunately, the supply situation was looking up. The air-drop had worked fine with ninety-five per cent recovery, and the heavy-weapons men had done a tremendous job in carrying the stuff forward.

There was some trouble, however. Only medical supplies had been parachute-dropped; the rest had just been pushed out of the hatches of the C-47s as they flew over at two hundred feet. All communication wire spools were damaged beyond use in the drop. Two men were killed and several injured because they didn't stand clear of the dropping ground. These were lessons learned the hard way at a crucial time.

Ingenuity had improved the evacuation problem. Bamboo rafts were devised to carry the wounded down the Pilowo River to the coastal area. Bamboo poles, eight feet long and three inches through were lashed together in a single layer to make a raft five feet wide. Flotation was just right for a wounded man, yet the raft was light enough to permit the four carriers to lift it and its load over barriers and shallow spots. The carriers guided the raft by wading or swimming alongside as it floated downstream. The trip by raft took one day instead of two, and only four men instead of eight.

The troops were tired-had been tired for days now. But the Japs were tired too. The Colonel knew that not more than two enemy battalions of reduced strength opposed him. The 3d Battalion of the enemy regiment had been identified in the path of his own 3d Battalion's column which was now only two thousand yards to the north, approaching the battle area on Hill 40. He figured that with reasonable progress his 3d Battalion could join the fight during the afternoon of January 5. But he didn't want to wait for this battalion to join in a coordinated attack. He decided to attack the morning of January 5 with the 1st and 2d Battalions from their present positions. The 3d would join the fight from the north at the earliest possible moment.

Two thousand yards to the north, the 3d Battalion was settling down for the night. Its march from Radja had started badly. From the beginning the battalion had been harried by the enemy. On the nights of December 26-27 and 27-28, its perimeter had been attacked viciously by an estimated enemy battalion. (The 3d Battalion of the Jap 211th Infantry. It had been detached from the 211th for a special mission to Radja to await and guide reinforcements from Halmahera. The five reinforcing barges were ambushed after slipping through the Navy PT screen, and were destroyed along with fifty tons of food and supplies.) The battalion had experienced the hardest march of its history. The jungle was more difficult than that encountered by the Pilowo column. Moreover, to join the Hill 40 battle it had to abandon trails for cross-country movements. Time and again, it had been uncertain of its exact position, if not actually lost in the maze of jungle growth. The helpful liaison plane had come to the rescue at such times. The plane would first locate the column (which, of course, was not visible from the air) by permitting itself to be guided in on the radio. "Fly north a little," the radio would instruct the plane. "Now bank right about forty-five degrees ... you are overhead now!" With the column thus located, the plane would identify terrain features and report the position of the column in reference to them.

Although the battalion had marched and fought its way forward for ten days it was still in fighting trim. The number of Japs killed and found buried along the trail indicated terrible losses for the Japs. The battalion commander, Major Ralph Pate, attributed the lack of enemy resistance during the past two days to the withdrawal of the enemy. Actually, as he learned later, the 3d Battalion, Jap 211th Infantry Regiment, had been destroyed as a military force.

As Company B, commanded by Capt. Cyril C. Kissel, on the right of the 1st Battalion, bestirred itself on the morning of the 5th, the guards shouted the alert and the automatic weapons took up the beat almost immediately. A Banzai attack was bearing down on the extreme right flank. The Japs were cut down in their tracks. The sword-waving officer in command charged to within ten yards of the position, but finally a BAR burst found its mark in his chest and he stopped as if he had hit a brick wall. Still upright, his last act was to throw his Samurai sword into the position.

The officer and eight other Japs were found dead. Why had the enemy abandoned his fortifications for a fight in the open? Did this mean he was abandoning the position? Or was it characteristic Jap mentality to do the unexpected? The answers are lost in the mazes of the Oriental mind.

The main attack started on schedule at 0700 after a final burst of artillery fire. The jungle had become uncommonly quiet with no fire from the Jap positions. The advancing Doughboys became apprehensive. Company B on the right had easy going along a trail, and it advanced rapidly over a slight rise. There just to the front was the enemy position, but without realizing it a squad was moving directly into the path of a cleverly concealed Jap machine gun. Scarcely ten feet from the squad, the muzzle of the gun spat flame, and within five seconds eight members of the squad lay dead or wounded. The next squad hit the ground barely fifty feet from the machine gun. Four men on the right of the squad moved to the east and flanked the gun emplacement. Two grenades finished it off before it could do any more damage.

Far to the west on the left flank, Company G, commanded by Lt. John Weatherwax, was affected by this action. When the machine gun opened fire on Company B, a Jap machine gun opposite Company G also started to fire. Apparently the two guns were tied into a final protective fire plan, and the fire of one was the signal to fire the second. Fortunately, Company G had not arrived on the position when this fire was laid down. It was a small task for them to take out this gun which had prematurely disclosed its position. The two machine guns proved to be the last of the organized defense. The 1st and 2d Battalions rushed the remaining Jap riflemen and proceeded to mop up the position.

The devastation in the Jap perimeter was terrific. The aid station and CP had been blown to pieces by artillery fire. Tree-bursts were much in evidence and flying fragments had taken a terrible toll. During the course of the three-day battle the enemy had buried his dead in shallow graves. The continuity of battle on the Jap side was recorded by the scenes around the strong points. The bodies of the Japs killed in the early stages of the fight had been buried completely. Those killed later were in shallow graves with the arms and legs protruding. The unburied bodies were those killed in the final assault.

They were short of food, but had adequate supply of medical, signal and engineer supplies. The radio sets and fire-control instruments were of excellent quality and workmanship. There were 150 gas masks in a central dump, but no other chemical store. The prize capture was a sign that read "Morita (211) CP."

The 1st and 2d Battalions continued to the north to pursue any Jap remnants, and to join with the 3d Battalion. The forces met at 1400 without encountering any more enemy units. It was verified that the 211th Infantry Regiment, less the 3d Battalion, had constituted the resistance on Hill 40; that they had been ordered to hold the position at all costs; and that no more than forty Japs, some of whom were wounded, had made good their escape.

The campaigning ended on January 14, 1945, twenty days after it began. During that time 870 Japs had been killed and 10 captured. Our casualties were 46 killed in action, 104 wounded and 23 injured in action. Not since Buna had the doughboy fought over terrain so rugged, dank and dismal.

Morotai ended up as strictly a 136th Infantry show. Within the regiment it was Lt. Colonel Sauser's 2d Battalion that bore the brunt of the offensive. It was on Morotai that the trend began that later typified all 136th actions. No matter where the regiment was committed the 2d Battalion unfailingly caught the roughest piece of the fight. It was that way in the Morotai wilderness and followed an identical pattern on the Kennon Road and Skyline Ridge when the battalion fought on Luzon.

Troops underwent a cruel indoctrination into the agonies of combat but on Morotai a latent hatred of the Japanese first awakened. Here they learned that the enemy was tricky, merciless and unpredictable. Here they vowed vengeance for the all-night harassments, the cleverly executed ambushes and the Division's dead. Veterans now, they realized that the road ahead would be full of the same sort of action until Japan capitulated.

Field artillery performed magnificently on Morotai. When the 136th Infantry and the enemy were locked in costly stalemate on Hill 40, it was the howitzers of the 123d and 210th Field Artillery Battalions that shifted the balance of power to the Golden Cross. Their thunderous volleys broke the back of a stubborn Jap defense which would not yield to rifle and grenade. Capt. Ben Conrad, S-3 of the 2d Battalion, paid the redlegs a fine tribute with his description of subdued Hill 40. One of the first to reach the crest, Conrad called the sight greeting him "truly a carnage with mangled bodies and wrecked weapons littering the hilltop for yards around." From the Second Battle for Morotai came the complete infantry confidence in artillery which endured and was furthered in each succeeding operation.

Gallantry was an oft-displayed trait throughout the abbreviated campaign. Singled out for special commendation was the Medical Detachment of the 2d Battalion, 136th Infantry, commanded by Capt. Harold Tannenbaum. General Clarkson cited this team of medics in Division general orders. Their devotion to duty and spirit of selfsacrifice was stirring. Time and time again aid men of this detachment voluntarily went out alone into the twenty-yard strip of jungle separating opposing forces in search of casualties. Medics with the battalion aid station had it no easier. Snipers, raiding parties, and all the harassing devices that made the Jap respected as a jungle campaigner were thrown at the aid station.

Private Marion Urban's heroism typified the work of the detachment. A Fox Company aid man, Private Urban repeatedly made the trip out into "no man's land" to drag a casualty back to safety. The proximity of enemy weapons had no discernible effect on him. Bullets shredding the bush around him did not deter him from ministering to the wounded. Urban was killed at the fag end of the fight while trying to rescue a Fox Company squad leader caught on exposed ground in a murderous cross-fire. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star, first 136th man to be decorated for gallantry in action in World War II.

Colonel Cavenee, a line infantryman throughout all of his twenty-eight years of Army service, set the example for his troops in courage and leadership. Disdaining to direct the action from a rear-area CP, the gruff Missourian personally led the final attack forward. Encouraging or driving the assault units as the situation dictated, the sharp-featured regimental commander went up the slopes of Hill 40 with his rifle companies. He too received the Silver Star.

Others cited for heroism included Lt. Henry L. Lowrance, Staff Sgt. Adolph Stebe and Sgt. Joseph J. Wujcik. Lieutenant Lowrance, leading a squad-size patrol, earned a Silver Star for making a one-man raid on a Japanese pillbox. A few seconds after lobbing the grenade through the embrasure Lowrance was instantly killed by a sniper's bullet. Sergeants Stebe and Wujcik, 2d Battalion squad leaders, gave their lives so that their units might be relieved from brutal enemy pressure.

Sergeant Stebe rushed a Nip Nambu that had his squad pinned down on a straight stretch of jungle trail. As he grenaded the gun and motioned his men forward a rifleman brought him down from almost point-blank range. Wujcik's squad was in a similar situation. Intent on getting his force past the enemy, the squad leader rose to his feet, drawing Jap fire away from the remainder of his group. Taking advantage of this diversion, riflemen swarmed in on the machine gun but not before Sergeant Wujcik had been killed.

No public announcement of the 33d's entry into combat was made by General MacArthur. Japanese intelligence had as yet failed to identify the Golden Cross as being operational in the Southwest Pacific. GHQ therefore decided to postpone publication of the Second Battle for Morotai until the Division was engaged in a major campaign.

While the regiments were reassembling on the Gila Peninsula word was received via Armed Forces Radio Service that Luzon had been invaded on 9 January. Two corps of Sixth Army had firmly established a wide beachhead and were striking for Manila. Combat-lost and damaged equipment was replaced as soon as the Division reached its bivouac area. Troops did not need a field order to describe the next move on the 33d's combat agenda. Everyone knew that the Philippines were dead ahead.

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