End Run, Touchdown

For miserable weeks, while U.S. ground forces on Leyte were half submerged in a sea of mud, the Sixth Army's leathery 63-year-old commander, Lieut. General Walter Krueger, had been planning to break the Philippine stalemate. As part of his plan he had insisted that U.S. patrols must keep the initiative: mud or no mud, they must keep the enemy off balance. Said Krueger: "I asked my troops to do the impossible and they did it." The next phase of Krueger's plan required the 7th and 32nd Divisions to step up their pres sure on the enemy and thus suck in his reserves. They did that, too, while the rainy season deluged them.

It was Dec. 7 on that side of the International Date Line when the last phase of Walter Krueger's plan was sprung: a new amphibious attack. It was sprung just in time. General Tomoyuki Yamashita had a plan too : to break the U.S hold on Leyte by aerial landings on U.S. airfields and to run in a convoy of reinforcements to Ormoc. Yamashita's convoy did not make it! Krueger's did.

Advice to Corporals. Husky, long-chinned Major General Andrew Bruce had pulled his 77th (Statue of Liberty) Division back from the lines to the beaches of Leyte Gulf. On the grey sands, Krueger reviewed the force--including his son-in-law. Colonel Aubrey D. Smith, commanding the 306th Regiment. Said Father-in-Law Krueger: "I want every corporal to realize that he commands an army just as I do, except that mine is a bigger army." Then the men marched up the ramps of waiting LCIs.

Before dawn of the 7th, the 225-mile end run from Leyte Gulf through Surigao Strait and up into the Camotes Sea, had been completed. Almost a hundred craft under Rear Admiral Arthur Dewey Struble, a Normandy veteran, lay off shore. At 6:30 the destroyers opened up on the beaches with 5-inch guns; after 20 minutes, LCIs carrying rocket launchers belched their loads onto a 1,200-yd. beachhead. At 7:07 (because General Bruce likes sevens for his 77th), the first troops sloshed up the beaches, without a casualty. Most of the Japs had been sucked into the interior; the rest had been dazed by the barrage, although this strip of beach which might decide the entire campaign for Leyte was but three miles south of their main port and base at Ormoc.

A Lot, but Too Late. Within three hours, the ships were unloaded and beginning to pull out. Then the Jap air force struck, with substantial numbers but in small groups. Overhead now were Army Lightnings, and they had fighting to do. Only after nine hours were the Japs finally driven off. But they had done some damage. One flaming Jap plane flew five miles before it crashed into a U.S. destroyer. Another destroyer was torpedoed and sunk; an APD (World War I destroyer converted to serve as a fast transport) also was sunk. The crews were rescued.

Meanwhile, the Japs' convoy of four troop transports, two freighters, four destroyers and three destroyer escorts was lurking in San Isidro Bay, 30 miles short of its destination at Ormoc. U.S. Army and Navy planes spent all day attacking them. By 5:30 p.m. every one had been sunk. The water was covered with oil, dotted with the bobbing heads of enemy soldiers.

In the day's air action the Japs had lost 62 planes. The U.S. had lost five planes, saved all five pilots.

Line Drive. Once ashore, the 77th made rapid progress. It overran Camp Downes, and from that plateau rolled downhill with momentum unchecked, entering Ormoc at week's end. The end run had produced a touchdown. The 77th now held the vital position on the west coast of Leyte; the position could serve as an anvil while other U.S. divisions, like hammers, pounded the Japs caught between. To the northeast were the hammers of the ist Cavalry Division (dismounted) and the 32nd Division; to the southeast was the hammer of the 7th.

The battle for Leyte was not yet over, but it was decided. The Japs realized its significance. This battle, said Radio Tokyo, would not only decide "whether we lose one corner of the Philippines," but would decide "whether we lose our sea routes to our southern regions. . . . We cannot withdraw even a single step, for we have burned our bridges behind us." The defeat which now confronted them would cost the enemy half an empire.

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