Pay-off on Leyte

The battle for Leyte was ending. It had been a tough battle--as tough as any previously fought by U.S. divisions, veterans of Attu and New Guinea, Kwajalein and Guam, Makin and New Britain. It had taken longer than expected, and it had taken more U.S. casualties. But it had paid greater dividends than U.S. war planners had counted on. After getting over their first surprise, the Japanese had kept on pushing reinforcements from other Philippine islands into Leyte, where they had no time to learn the terrain or to assemble a full quota of heavy weapons.

Two Down. When the first Americans landed on Leyte Oct. 20, there was only one Japanese division, slightly reinforced, on the island. Last week, two enemy divisions, the 1st and 26th, had been all but destroyed. The proof of the strategy was in the destruction of the enemy's armed forces. General MacArthur's running score of Japanese corpses counted in the field topped the 50,000 mark; how many others had died on or around the island was not known with certainty. Men of the hard-luck 32nd (Red Arrow) Division were notoriously hard to please, after successive heartbreaks in New Guinea (TIME, Dec. 4), but a colonel said of them last week: "These paddlefeet are feeling mighty pleased with themselves."

By then the 32nd and the dismounted 1st Cavalry Division had driven south in the Ormoc corridor; the Texas cavalrymen had joined with the 7th and 77th Divisions. All the Japs east of the corridor were cut off, and although some would filter back to the northwestern peninsula, they would have little hope of survival or escape. For the 77th turned west and soon brought Palompon, the Japs' last port of exit, under its guns.

MacArthur announced that the 11th Airborne Division was in action on Leyte; in its first combat, the outfit captured a strategic mountain pass, made a junction with the 7th Division and helped mop up the enemy 26th. There was still bitter fighting to be done, and even after the island was declared secure, there would be hundreds of Japs to be dug out. But the broad strategic objective had been won.

Wet & Dry. New airfields were being built on the western, drier side of the island, and captured fields were swiftly repaired and improved for Allied use. One at Valencia, in the Ormoc corridor, was put to use the day after capture. Now it could be told that airfields built at Burauen and Dagami on the wet, eastern slope had been abandoned after a month of struggle against rain and mud. It was because of this setback that the Japs had enjoyed temporary superiority over Allied land-based air forces, and the U.S. Third Fleet had to be held off the islands to make up the deficit.

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