When the Japanese invaded the Philippine Islands on December 22, 1941, the untrained Philippine Army troops assigned to beach defense collapsed. After U.S. General Douglas MacArthur had withdrawn his army down the island of Luzon’s central plain into the Bataan Peninsula, one last line existed before the Japanese invaders reached the main line of resistance. The Americans would slow the Japanese entry into Bataan by fighting a delaying action at Layac, thus gaining time and deceiving the enemy as to the location of the main defensive positions. For the first time in World War II, American troops faced Japanese soldiers on the ground.

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Brigadier General Clyde A. Selleck commanded the Philippine Army’s 71st Division and was responsible for establishing the Layac line. Born in 1888, ‘Pappy’ Selleck was an artilleryman, a West Pointer and a graduate of the Command and General Staff School and the War College. Although the plan for defending Layac was seemingly known to all senior officers in the Philippines, it was not known to Selleck. His short time in the islands–he had arrived on October 23–the few briefings made on war plans, and a lack of information about the position itself resulted in one of the least knowledgeable officers on Luzon commanding the Layac line.

Selleck had four regiments–the American 31st Infantry, the Philippine Scout 26th Cavalry and two Philippine Army infantry regiments. The backbone of Selleck’s force was Colonel Charles L. Steel’s 1,600-man 31st Infantry. It occupied the center of the covering force’s position and commanded the enemy’s most likely avenue of approach. Although morale was high and this action would be the regiment’s first fight, its strength was already low. Many of the most experienced men had been pulled from their units in late 1941 and sent to instruct or command the new Philippine formations.

Selleck’s divisional artillery, the understrength 71st Artillery Regiment, consisted of two four-gun 75mm batteries and one four-gun 2.95-inch pack howitzer battery. The Philippine Scout 1st Battalion, 23rd Artillery, supported Steel’s infantrymen with two batteries of 75s. Two 75mm batteries from the Scout 1st Battalion, 88th Artillery, were in general support of Selleck’s line.

For some reason, possibly an oversight, no one gave Selleck any long-range 155mm support. The fault seems to lie with the II Philippine Corps. Some of the corps’ 155s could have been positioned to cope with either enemy artillery or infantry. With a range of more than 14 kilometers, the 155s were the only guns capable of firing far enough to reach Japanese 150mm guns. A major concern about attaching 155s to Selleck’s force must have been the severe mobility restrictions facing the towed pieces. The guns were hauled by big prime movers, 10-ton caterpillar tractors, that had been in service since World War I and were now in poor mechanical shape. Whatever the reason, the absence of the big guns would prove a major error.

The U.S. Provisional Tank Group was also in support with 80 light tanks, 42 halftracks and 15 Bren gun carriers. But in a serious failure, no one had made arrangements to allow Selleck to give the tankers orders. Nor did the tank group receive orders to support the Layac position or to cover a withdrawal. Further, Selleck never asked the tank group for armored support. The tanks were there, but they were responsible solely to their own commanders. Two battalions of 75mm self-propelled artillery covered avenues of approach for Japanese tanks. They could, in a pinch, act as anti-tank artillery as well as normal field artillery, but their usefulness to Selleck, like the tanks, was limited by their instructions.

MacArthur’s headquarters believed that the Layac position was a strong line held by a fair-sized force. The II Corps commander was also comfortable with the area’s terrain and fields of fire. From Selleck’s much more intimate position, however, and especially from his firsthand knowledge of the weaknesses of his division, the Layac position did not look strong. The low, rolling hills were hardly more than bumps in the generally flat ground. The tiny Culis River did not provide much of an obstacle, and even the larger Culo River was fordable by dismounted troops. The best Selleck could organize was a series of mutually supporting strongpoints entrenched and wired as much as time and materiel would permit.

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