The Capture of Attu by Nelson L. Drummond & Robert J. Mitchell & Sewell T. Tyng

Author:Nelson L. Drummond & Robert J. Mitchell & Sewell T. Tyng [Drummond, Nelson L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: WW2
ISBN: 9780359139514
Publisher: Ship to Shore Books
Published: 2018-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

The Attack on Sarana Nose – 2

Sergeant Francis W. McLean and Staff Sergeant John Bacoch, Jr.,

Company K, 17th Infantry.

AT 0200 ON MAY 22 THE shivering men of Company K moved from their bivouac up on the mountain below Point Able and slid and stumbled and fell down a tortuous trail to the valley floor below. An attack was prepared to shove off at 0700 against the Japs entrenched on Sarana Nose. The attack was to move out with Company I on the left and K on the right, with L in support, and included an elaborate setup for supporting fire by three heavy-weapons companies, fourteen 37mm. guns, and a battalion of artillery.

The Company I commander, Lieutenant Ward J. Redmond, had become exhausted trying to find a route to the valley from the bivouac area; and after twenty continuous hours of climbing over the rocks in the fog, he fell and injured his already bad leg. He failed to get back to his company in time for the attack, and so when 0700 appeared on the watches across the front, Company K started out alone across the valley.

From the ridge behind them forty streams of tracer bullets cracked overhead, and higher up on the slopes of Sarana Nose the big mortar and artillery shells began to rip at the Jap trenches.

The first Jap resistance was mortar shells that landed in the company as they were crawling up the first, almost vertical bank out of the valley floor; and one big Jap artillery or heavy mortar shell burst at the foot of the incline. Sergeant Robert W. McAmis and Sergeant William E. Chislett fell, wounded with mortar fragments. Then, as another shell burst, Technician Fourth Grade Jesse H. Pomroy and Corporal Ernest F. Dwight rolled away from the explosion with shell fragments in their bodies. As the big shell exploded, a fragment broke several cartridges in Private First Class Per Thompson’s belt and his clothing caught fire. Corporal Ray E. White was almost under the shell, and it knocked him several feet. He was shocked badly and began to shake and weep as he tried vainly to follow the attack up the hill.

The company crossed over the first Jap emplacements and found them completely deserted. Then, as they moved up, the leading scouts fired at a Jap in the next trench line up the hill. The scouts, Joseph J. Petres and Carl F. Burroughs, passed through a series of foxholes without resistance, and most of the platoon with Lieutenant George W. Thayer had passed through. They were pushing up on the hill, when Lieutenant Thayer and Staff Sergeant Chester H. Brown noticed some Japs still alive in one of the holes. They went back down and got to work on the Japs. The Japs were beaten by the great wave of supporting fire that had plunged into the hill from across the valley, and offered almost no resistance as Thayer and Brown moved from hole to hole killing them. Thayer had accounted for fifteen live Japs that the company had passed over, when he was hit in the leg, and Howard H.

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