World Battlefronts: Welcome Home

The invasion of Leyte was like no other in the long series which had carried Douglas MacArthur back to the Philippines. It was the first piece of recovered U.S. soil he had trod; it was an area where fighting had never entirely ceased.

After the Japs had isolated the central Philippines in 1942, hard-bitten Philippine Scouts, Philippine Army men and U.S. Army stragglers had kept up the fight. To get ammunition, they had dived to retrieve thousands of rounds in a sunken Jap ship and some had burst their eardrums in the job. Fifteen out of 16 rounds had misfired, but even soaked ammunition was better than no ammunition at all.

Somehow the guerrillas also established radio contact with MacArthur’s headquarters; they got their instructions.

When the decision was made to bypass Mindanao and land on Leyte (as a result of the Navy’s success in using carrier-borne air power to batter down Jap land-based air power), the guerrillas were alerted. Commando parties were sent by MacArthur’s Sixth Army commander, German-born, 63-year-old Lieut. General Walter Krueger, to gather information and to destroy a few key Jap posts.

Sentinels Silenced. Even then, the landings in force could not be made with the shattering surprise characteristic of other amphibious assaults in the Pacific. Surprise had to be sacrificed, because Leyte Gulf was guarded by three sentinel islands. On A-minus-three,* company combat teams from an Army Ranger battalion landed from light, fast assault craft on Homonhon, Dinagat and Suluan. Jap communications were hamstrung but not completely destroyed. Tokyo got some kind of word that something was afoot, but apparently could not make up its mind that this was it. Field Marshal Count Juichi Terauchi, once the butcher of North China and now island commander in the Philippines, made no special preparations for resisting a major assault.

After the Rangers had landed, minesweepers set about clearing the gulf for the 600-ship assault fleet then on the way. For two days and three nights they coolly quartered the gulf, watched for the assault that did not come. Experts in underwater demolition probed among the coralheads for mines; some of them swam for miles to the glistening white beaches, where they found more obstacles to destroy.

Meanwhile, the combined naval attack forces, under suave, bushy-browed Vice Admiral Thomas Cassin Kinkaid, were on their way. For a while it was a toss-up whether A-day would have to be postponed; a minor typhoon was whirling through the gulf. It died out and gave no trouble.

Pleasantries at Sea. The Nashville, bearing MacArthur, drew into the convoy on A-minus-three. Kinkaid blinkered: “Welcome to our city.” Unusually exuberant, MacArthur blinkered back: “Glad to be in your domicile and under your flag. We’re nearly there.” Until they were there, and established ashore, Kinkaid would be “over” MacArthur.

The rendezvous had been made 450 miles from the Leyte beaches. From then on, the convoy advanced as a unit, so vast it spread over hundreds of miles of the Philippine Sea. On the night of A-minus-one, the weather man announced the departure of the baby typhoon; dawn would be clear, almost perfect weather.

It was. “Bull” Halsey’s battleships rained 1,400-and 2,100-lb. shells on to the beaches, amid the coconut and nipa palms which covered the narrow plain below the rolling, jungle-clad hills. There were two main beachheads: to the north, the X Corps under Major General Franklin Sibert was put ashore by Rear Admiral Daniel E. Barbey. On the right flank, the dismounted ist Cavalry Division had “White Beach,” with orders to strike out for the airfield on Cataisan Point and the town of Tacloban (pop. 20,000), capital of Leyte Island. To the left, the 24th Division stormed “Red Beach,” and pushed ahead into Leyte valley.

Black & White. Overhead were swarms of light bombers and fighters from Kinkaid’s jeep carriers, constantly swooping, to bomb and strafe where Jap gun flashes revealed emplacements. Along the coast, column after column of dense smoke mushroomed up from the bursts of battleship shells. Fortified hilltops were crowned with white phosphorus bursts. Red Beach took an especially heavy lacing. But Jap mortars, rifles and howitzers poured in shells which hit several landing craft.

Except for Red Beach, the opposition from the Japs’ 16th Division, conquerors of Bataan and perpetrators of the “March of Death” (TIME, Feb. 7), was so ineffectual that the troops waded in upright, and advanced hundreds of yards within a few minutes. Ten miles to the south, it was the same story.

There Vice Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson put ashore the XXIV Corps under stocky, phlegmatic Major General John R. Hodge, the captor of Munda.

Fifty-five miles to the south, a regiment detached from the 24th Division landed without opposition, eight minutes ahead of H-hour (10 a.m.) and seized control of Panaon Strait, between Leyte and the pendent island of Panaon, leading to the boat anchorage-of Sogod Bay.

Old Stamping Ground. To Tacloban, where he went ashore, MacArthur was no stranger. It was here that he had had his first Philippine duty as a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, 41 years ago. Krueger, onetime enlisted man, had won his commission in the islands. Lieut. General Kenney surveyed the airstrip possibilities as the beachheads were deepened and MacArthur announced: “We are now commencing the preparation of a great base for all arms for future operations.”

For the Japanese, “future operations” were menacing words. Most immediately destructive effects of MacArthur’s landing would be wrought by air power. From airfields on Leyte and the other Visayan Islands, Japan could be effectively cut off from its stolen southern empire and its direly needed raw materials. MacArthur had also put ashore many more men (100,000 to 150,000) than he needed to take Leyte itself. There was another menacing meaning: Leyte was to be a great staging base for the recapture of all the lost archipelago.

* A day is equivalent to D-day in European operations.