World War II: The U.S. 32nd Infantry Division Battle to Control the Villa Verde Trail

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General Konuma launched a counterattack on the night of March 31. The Japanese target was Hill 504, held by L Company. The American soldiers were caught in a desperate struggle. Under the relentless onslaught, Pfc William Shockley urged his squad to escape while he provided covering fire. He told his fellow GIs that he would “remain to the end.” He stopped the charge to his immediate front but was flanked by the enemy. As Shockley’s last avenue of escape was being cut off by a banzai attack, he remained at his post to buy the time his squad needed to escape. The 27-year-old GI continued firing until overwhelmed by his enemies. For his sacrifice, Shockley was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Despite the heroism of men like Shockley, L Company was pushed off the hill. The loss of that position meant the American foothold on the Salacsac passes was threatened. An entire U.S. battalion was committed to a dawn counterattack. Though it stemmed the westward flow of Japanese and prevented the loss of all ground east of Hill 502, portions of Hill 504 remained in enemy hands at the end of April 1.

The I Corps released the 126th Infantry Regiment at that point, bringing it up on the 128th’s left. Colonel Oliver Dixon, the commander of the 126th, targeted the high ground north of the trail. The plan was to tie down the defenders of Yamashita Ridge so that the 128th could push through the Salacsac passes without drawing harassing fire from the north. Together, the two regiments blasted their way through the entrance to the passes. Initially, the first pass was declared secured on April 10, but as pockets of Japanese continued to dig out from their sealed caves—emerging from the ground like corpses back from the dead—the first pass could not be considered secured until April 16.

It was at this time that Krueger assured Gill that the 32nd was doing all that was expected of it and told him not to expect any relief. Gill was reduced to the expedient of rotating his attacking regiments. He relieved the gutted 128th with the 127th. The 126th was to continue its push against Yamashita Ridge.

The fighting along the trail continued with brutal monotony as the Americans located, isolated and then destroyed individual strongpoints. On April 24, Lieutenant Patrinos’ G Company was moving in tandem with E Company to isolate just such a strongpoint when Patrinos realized that he had lost contact with the other company. Patrinos called back to his company commander to find out what he should do and was instructed to throw a phosphorous grenade, alerting E Company to his location.

Patrinos threw the grenade and moved his platoon after it. Then he heard a plane directly overhead. The American pilot had seen the smoke from the grenade, mistaken it for a marker of an enemy position and commenced his bomb run. Patrinos managed to make it to a burned-out Japanese hole, but most of his men were not so lucky. G Company took 25 casualties from the misplaced bomb—11 of the men could only be listed as missing in action since there were no remains to identify.

G and E companies had been approaching Hill 508, the backbone of the Japanese defenses in the Salacsac passes area, when they were blasted by their own air support. Battered G Company was pulled out of the attack. Five days later, E Company would take the summit of 508, only to find itself virtually surrounded by Japanese emerging from caves that honeycombed the hill.

For the first two weeks in May, the “Kongo Fortress,” as the GIs dubbed Hill 508, was a cauldron of death. The landscape itself suggested a vision of Hell—the trees blasted into stumps, the ground scorched from flamethrowers used to burn out spider holes. Soldiers of the 127th died in attacks, in foxholes and in secured rear areas. Men of the Red Arrow division who had suffered through Buna, survived Aitape and braved Leyte were killed or wounded on the steep slopes of the Kongo Fortress.

One of those wounded was Patrinos, pinned down against the side of the mutilated hill. His battalion commander hailed him on the radio and informed him that the company on his right was cut off. Patrinos replied that he would “see what kind of shape they’re in,” and scrambled toward the missing company’s position. Patrinos quickly determined that the wayward company was in better condition than his own unit. As he started to dash back to his own outfit, a bullet shattered his shoulder blade.

Meanwhile, on Yamashita Ridge, the 126th had been relieved by the 128th. Fred Johnson, the 1st Battalion medic, and his men were ordered forward when a squad was ambushed and several soldiers were wounded. Japanese machine guns continued to spray the fallen GIs, and Johnson could see puffs of dust from their fatigues as the bullets ripped into them. Johnson and his men managed to get the wounded off the hill but were then hit themselves, four of the eight stretcher-bearers going down in a split second. The Americans were finally pushing the Japanese off the Villa Verde Trail, but they were paying dearly for each patch of ground.

To support the reduction of the Kongo Fortress, Captain Maynard of the 128th was ordered to accomplish the impossible. In the late hours of May 3, Maynard led a reinforced company in darkness through the trackless mountains and deployed to launch a dawn attack on the enemy’s supply line. Maynard had pounded into the men the need for silence on the approach, and it paid off when his unit took up its position undetected by the Japanese. American .50-caliber machine guns cut loose on the enemy at dawn. Maynard remembered, “At the end of the machine-gun fire we jumped off…and ran into a bunch of [Japanese] that were on the trail, and above the trail….”

Maynard’s men were locked in a firefight that grew into a 30-minute engagement. The Japanese fought fiercely, knowing that loss of the trail would doom their compatriots on Hill 508. Maynard’s men fought with equal ferocity. They were behind enemy lines, with no hope of immediate relief. Finally, the Japanese broke. Maynard established a roadblock, and despite numerous enemy counterattacks, held the position until relieved days later.

The roadblock stopped the flow of supplies to the Kongo Fortress forces and enabled the Americans to sweep the enemy from the area. Now remnants of Japanese units pitched into the American lines in useless suicide attacks or were buried alive in their caves. The Americans seized the high ground, leveling anti-aircraft cannons at the dug-in enemy positions before Imugan. The artillery slaughtered Konuma’s men. On May 28, the men of the Red Arrow division captured the village.

General Gill’s soldiers had cracked Yamashita’s mountain fortress. Along with the 25th Division, which had seized Santa Fe from the south, the 32nd had shattered all organized resistance in the Caraballo Mountains. From the seizure of Imugan until his surrender on September 2, 1945, Yamashita would simply be running from the U.S. Army.

After the war, General Gill was asked if the price paid by the 32nd Division for that goat path in the clouds had been too high. Gill answered: “The Villa Verde Trail cost us too high in battle casualties for the value received. In other words…I believe the supreme commander [MacArthur] and…his staff violated one of the great principles of shopping….” Gill clarified that statement by explaining that MacArthur had paid too much for what he got. The 32nd had gained too little for the men it had lost.

This article was written by Tracy L. Derks and originally appeared in the February 2002 issue of World War II. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today!

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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