Hills X and Y Offer Strategic Advantage When They are Taken

Hills X and Y Offer Strategic Advantage When They Are Taken 4 March 1945 - Antitank Company of the 123rd Infantry, commanded by Capt. John D. Jones, and Company A 108th Combat Engineers, were jointly assigned the mission of clearing the pass of enemy and readying it for 2nd and 3rd Battalion traffic. Jones' company had been fighting as a rifle unit since first committed on Luzon. Like the other antitank units in the Division the terrain limited the potency of its 57mm guns. Rarely attached to a battalion, it fought out of regimental headquarters as Colonel Serff's select "trouble shooters."

With the mine detecting team from the engineers leading the way, the push out of Agoo began on the morning of 4 March. Nip resistance was met as the company cleared the barrio but the riflemen smothered it and kept moving, followed by A/108th engineers, their vehicles laden with Bailey spans which had been dismantled from less strategic sites and rushed to this vital bottleneck. Once Antitank gained the far end of a bridge, A/ 108, tools and weapons in hand, came on to either strengthen the existing bridge or to replace it with a Bailey span.

Above: Luzon 1945. William Holt and Vernon Brown, AT/123, moving up with help from their pack horses. Photo from Ken Stone of AT/123. (Click picture for larger view)

Sniper and machine-gun fire from the ridges resulted in many casualties but Antitank managed to overrun every organized Jap strongpoint. Two days of close combat and steady repair of bridges

finally brought the force to Tubao shortly before dark on 6 March. No more mines, no more ruined bridges and no more Nips remained to block 2nd and 3rd Battalion moves through the pass. Colonel Serff, 123rd Infantry C.O. breathed a sigh of profound relief when he received Jones' message that the mission had been accomplished. He received the news only a few hours before his companies were scheduled to enter the pass.

Back in the 1st Battalion area near Kennon Road, LTC Coates turned over the Twin Peaks challenge to the 2nd Battalion to the 130th Infantry and organized his force for the trek back to San Luis. One platoon of B Company and a wire laying team from battalion headquarters moved out well ahead of the column as an advance guard. The rest

of Company B, with Lt. Bernard as C.O. led the main body with A, D, HQ, and C Companies following in that order. It was close to midnight when the column finally began to move. Luckily the moon provided enough illumination for the troops to spot pitfalls in the terrain and there were no casualties from the night move - and the cool of the night made the steady pace bearable.

Bernard's advance guard came upon San Luis early the next morning. Normally inhabited by a few farming families, the village was completely deserted. Tall clumps of tropical grass almost obscured the rundown nipa shacks from sight. Warily the platoon circled the barrio and closed in to search the few rickety huts. Sgt. Roman Wesolowski's squad systematically probed them while other riflemen covered them from the rear. As Wesolowski led his men toward the last of the huts, grenades and machine gun fire suddenly swept out from one of the shrub covered windows toward the squad and its covering group. Sergeant Wesolowski and his two scouts each caught grenade fragments.

Picking himself up from the ground, Wesolowski ordered his squad to back up, form a firing line and pelt the shack with M-1 fire. Only after he was in position Wesolowski noticed that one of his scouts still lay close to one of the Japanese-held huts, unable to move because of his wounds.

Disregarding the pain of his own injury, the sergeant rushed out through the fire, gathered the man up in his arms and raced back to the line. Minutes later, the platoon assaulted the but and wiped out the five-man Japanese ambush.

Sergeant Wesolowski later received the Silver Star for saving the life of his scout.

The rest of the battalion reached San Luis, reorganized, and marched a thousand yards northeast of the barrio, and branched off into separate assembly areas.

A platoon from Company G was assigned as advance guard. Silence gripped the column as it moved through the night. All went according to plan. Minutes before dawn Major Wolff's battalion separated from the two battalion column and curved his force around the southern slope of the hill.

At dawn the regiment moved into action all along the line. With F and G Companies in the lead, 2nd Battalion troops swarmed up the side of Hill X on a dead run. No one paused to gain their breath as they raced over the ground at top speed, finally slowing down at the crest where they joined forces with 3rd Battalion riflemen.

Opposition was negligible. No more than a dozen Nips held the hill and they went down in the first blast of rifle fire. The 1 st Battalion's AB, and C companies took Hill Y without firing a shot.

From a vantage point between his widely separated forces, Colonel Serff watched the perfectly executed double envelopment close in on X and Y Shortly after completion ofthe regimental maneuver he was joined at his CP by Lieutenant Garrity and the I&R Platoon just returning from a long range patrol in the foothills north of Pugo.

Garrity told the colonel that Pugo was virtually clear, with the bulk of enemy troops withdrawn the day before. Armed with this information, the regimental commander decided to occupy Pugo without delay. The 2nd and 3rd Battalions were ordered to leave Hill X and sweep through the ridges flanking Pugo on the west. Coates was directed to comb out the terrain on the opposite side.

Colonel Serff then organized a composite force to attack through the valley between the flanking forces and effect the seizure of Pugo.

The force was composed of regimental headquarters personnel, the I&R Platoon and a few medium tanks out of the 775th Tank Battalion, attached to the 123rd for the X-Y envelopment.

With Col. Serffin command of the makeshift unit, riding in one of the point vehicles "Task Force Pugo" moved out at noon.

No enemy were met on the way to Pugo, but once inside the barrio the regimental commander's troops were fired upon by a small delaying force concealed inside a few flimsy huts.

A sharp skirmish ensued during which twenty Japs were killed and three captured. However, once this initial resistance was crushed, remaining enemy broke for the safety of the mountains. Pugo was quickly outposted from forces available while the regimental forward CP was set up in the town's badly damaged church. Since landing on Luzon, the CP had found a rice paddy, a town hall, a brothel, and now a church to direct the 123rd's operations.

Each battalion was contacted and informed that Pugo was in friendly hands. Commanders were told to advance until sundown and then form a horseshoe shaped perimeter around the newly captured barrio.

By dusk the rifle companies were in positions roughly a thousand yards north and northeast of Pugo. It took no grandiloquent orientation to tell the infantrymen what was in store for the immediate future.

Ahead of them they could see a seemingly endless range of mountains with tree-covered peaks so high they seemed to be part of the heavens. They knew too that in days to come they would live and die on those peaks fighting to rid them of enemy until Baguio - the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - shown below the last hill.

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