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"D" COMPANY ATTACK ON BATTERY MONJA, 21 FEB 1945. FOREWORD
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The next day the battalion began clearing the northwest part of Corregidor from James Ravine to Battery Wheeler. This task would occupy the battalion until they left the inhospitable island. The three rifle companies had quickly overrun the northwest corner of Topside and then turned their attention to the area below the sheer western bluffs, some of them rising 500 feet very nearly vertical from the rocky beaches. Nearly 300 feet below Battery Wheeler's end station at Wheeler Point a 155 battery position, Battery Monja, had been tunneled in the face of the cliff. The 2d Battalion commander, Lawson Caskey, ordered E Company to patrol north from Searchlight Point to Wheeler Point, a straight-line distance of some 600 yards. The patrol would start out in the morning of February 23d. The 1st Battalion had been in this area for several days meeting considerable resistance believed to be centered at Wheeler point and Battery Monja. |
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On 21 February the cliffs in the Wheeler Point area between Topside's high ground and some 500 feet below it on the rocky shore, had been reported cleared of all "but a few stragglers" after "a combined naval and ground strike.[1] The journal was incorrect since in fact C Company, 1st Battalion, “unable to move due to heavy fire coming from the cliff face north of them, had never advanced beyond Searchlight Point.” Movement below Topside, on the face of the bluff was restricted for all practical purposes, to the South Shore Road and, to a very limited extent, along the beach. The road cut into the steep face of the bluff about 150 feet above the narrow rocky beach, had been built to serve Battery Monja, the searchlights and beach fortifications on the rugged cliffs. In the company's zone of action it wound be between Searchlight and Wheeler Points ending a few yards west of Battery Monja's casemated gun. E Company relieved C Company [1st Battalion] in the morning of February 23d at their positions above Searchlight Point. E Company began their advance north toward Wheeler Point with the 2d platoon moving on the road while the 3d platoon moved along the shoreline. As the company continued north they neared Battery Monja's two entrances close to the road. Suddenly shots exploded to the front. The company's lead riflemen immediately fired into the tunnel entrances on the road but were unable to advance in face of heavy fire- coming from Battery Monja and other positions on Wheeler Point. During the skirmish, three E Company riflemen were killed and another would die of his wounds. At about 4:15 in the afternoon ;the company withdrew along the South Shore Road. The company had killed "between one hundred and one hundred and twenty Japs". [2] The Japanese that E Company had encountered at Wheeler Point, would fire on D Company from these heights the next day. By the 23d, the enemy had been pushed off the high ground at the western end of Topside and had little choice but to move to areas below Topside. Itabuchi, the Japanese naval commander of Manila had ordered the 6800-man force, mainly naval ratings, he had sent to Corregidor shortly before February 16th to fight to the death. [3] The Corregidor garrison, scattered by the parachute drop was systematically bring slaughtered piecemeal. Aside from one notable exception, the night of February 18/19’s battalion strength attack on Wheeler point, they had not managed to mount a single organized effort of any significant size to strike back at their tormentors. A stand at Battery Monja on Wheeler Point was probably the best the enemy could hope for at this stage, if they were to continue to fight. If this is indeed true, they couldn't have chosen a better position from which to make a stand than at Battery Monja. In the end its handful of survivors was all that was left of the sizeable garrison of nearly 7000 troops on Corregidor in January 1945. [4] Why the enemy chose to defend at Wheeler Point is not hard to imagine, the position was well nigh impregnable. It was impossible to bring machine gun, artillery or mortar fire down on it from topside. Naval guns firing directly in the cliff from the North Channel never managed to hit the reinforced concrete structure, much less silence it, even after several hundred round were fired at Wheeler Point on four successive days. [5] The only possible approach to it on the ground was from the south. Trying to reach Battery Monja from the North was impossible.
Why all this preoccupation with a relatively
minor 155mm gun battery? Although probably no one knew it at the time, the
casemated battery with its tunnels and buried magazines was at the center of
the resistance of Wheeler Point. The 503d had ordered three separate
assaults on wheeler Point. C, D and E Companies each had attacked, and each
had failed. After D Company's attempt on February 24 came to nothing, the
503d never returned there. [6] After the 2d Battalion, 151st Infantry
relieved the 503d in March 1945, it mounted an amphibious assault on Wheeler
point but was forced to turn back before the troops could unload [7] from
the landing craft. Battery Monja's garrison remained in their |
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