Word: 7th
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...part of his plan he had insisted that U.S. patrols must keep the initiative: mud or no mud, they must keep the enemy off balance. Said Krueger: "I asked my troops to do the impossible and they did it." The next phase of Krueger's plan required the 7th and 32nd Divisions to step up their pres sure on the enemy and thus suck in his reserves. They did that, too, while the rainy season deluged them...
Harding was relieved. MacArthur sent Lieut. General Robert L. Eichelberger to take command of all the Buna forces, which included the 41st Infantry Division-as green as the 32nd-and units of the 6th and 7th Australians. MacArthur's instructions to Eichelberger: don't come back until Buna is taken. Brigadier General Albert Whitney Waldron, put in command of the 32nd, was wounded. Brigadier General Clovis Byers succeeded him and he was wounded. Buna finally fell...
...24th Infantry Division units, weary after more than three weeks of steady fighting -Major General Frederick Irving's 24th still bore Leyte's brunt-pushed southward from Carigara Bay, but had advanced no more than two miles by week's end. From the south the 7th and 96th Divisions progressed just as slowly while the Japs prepared for the big battle...
Then Irving's soldiers hit strong Jap defenses on the road to Pinamopoan. The 24th took heavy casualties in a 50-ft. by 400-ft. defile, finally forced its way past Pinamopoan toward Ormoc. Veteran 7th Division troops advanced from the south toward Ormoc, where the Japs probably would make their last stand...
Major General John R. Hodge, commanding the XXIV Corps (7th and 96th Divisions), called the fighting the fastest in the Pacific war, observed that "the Japs will run if they have a place to run to ... they are running in all di rections." Jap pillboxes were flimsily constructed. When Lieut. General Shiro Ma-kino's 16th Division men counterattacked, they came not in overpowering thousands, but in driblets of 50 to 200 men who were easily mowed down by machine-gun fire...