Word: 77th
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When it sloshed ashore fortnight ago on the west coast of Leyte, Major General Andrew Bruce's 77th Division caught the Japs so far off balance that, before they recovered their poise, the 77th had penetrated Ormoc. But there the Japs stood, and stood fast. Most of last week the 77th used its artillery to blast a group of coconut log and concrete blockhouses 600 yards north of Ormoc on the road to Valencia. The Japs still had artillery and mortars, still had enough infantrymen to make three desperate counterattacks...
...shortened for fear of hitting U.S. troops. That enemy drive was stopped by machine guns, and the enemy dead that day were estimated at 500. But no position constructed like Coconut Grove could withstand the artillery pounding indefinitely, and at week's end it was mopped up. The 77th swiftly pushed west and north, closing on Valencia...
Farther north, the 32nd Division and the 1st Cavalry Division (dismounted) were engaged in equally bitter, hand-to-hand combat, but drawing steadily closer to Valencia and a junction with the 77th. Japanese lines were beginning to crumble. But it had taken the bloodiest fighting of the second Philippine campaign to make them crumble. Leyte was not the pushover it had seemed when Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines nine weeks...
Line Drive. Once ashore, the 77th made rapid progress. It overran Camp Downes, and from that plateau rolled downhill with momentum unchecked, entering Ormoc at week's end. The end run had produced a touchdown. The 77th now held the vital position on the west coast of Leyte; the position could serve as an anvil while other U.S. divisions, like hammers, pounded the Japs caught between. To the northeast were the hammers of the ist Cavalry Division (dismounted) and the 32nd Division; to the southeast was the hammer...
...Arthur Dewey Struble, a Normandy veteran, lay off shore. At 6:30 the destroyers opened up on the beaches with 5-inch guns; after 20 minutes, LCIs carrying rocket launchers belched their loads onto a 1,200-yd. beachhead. At 7:07 (because General Bruce likes sevens for his 77th), the first troops sloshed up the beaches, without a casualty. Most of the Japs had been sucked into the interior; the rest had been dazed by the barrage, although this strip of beach which might decide the entire campaign for Leyte was but three miles south of their main port...