General Robert L. Eichelberger Visits With Angels Just Outside Imus, Luzon

After the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment dropped on Luzon’s Tagaytay Ridge just south of Manila, on February 4, 1945, COL Orin D. Haugen obtained permission from MG Joseph May Swing to lead the division’s push into the city.

“(Colonel Haugen) picked D Company to lead the regiment,” 1st Platoon’s 1LT Andrew Carrico recalled. “And Captain (Stephen) Cavanaugh put my platoon out in front of everybody. The tip of the spear.”

Carrico then added with a smile, “My squad leaders all asked, ‘Why do we get all the dirty jobs?!’

CPT Stephen Cavanaugh traveled with 1st Platoon’s Leyte veterans as they were trucked towards Imus with the objective of finding a way across the Imus River. After reaching town’s main bridge, which had been blown, CPT Cavanaugh had 1st Platoon dismount and move west through town looking for a rumored secondary crossing, the last remaining structure across the river that could support the division’s two-and-a-half ton trucks. If it fell, so would the fast pace of the Division’s drive into the city.

Cavanaugh, pictured right, was apprised of an enemy camp in town around 0600 by 1LT Edwin B. Jeffrees of 2/511’s S-2. D Company’s Paratroopers carefully walked along the river until they reached a large walled courtyard containing several stone buildings. Various Angels described the main building as an old two-story Spanish barracks, a warehouse, a school, or an old church/mission (evidence indicates it was the Imus Cathedral grounds).

CPT Cavanaugh and 1LT Carrico quietly studied the courtyard and observed that it contained an enemy force preparing to depart the stone compound, possibly to cross the nearby dam/bridge before blowing it.

PFC James Wentik, part of the S-2 Jeep patrol which now accompanied D Company, noted, “(The Japanese) were entirely unaware of our presence and clearly did not expect us at that time since there seemed to be no effort toward security... This church yard was quite large and there could have been a couple of hundred Japanese.”

The troopers also noticed that the Japanese had the approaching roadways bracketed with mortars and machineguns, giving them control of access along this route into the city. CPT Cavanaugh felt that the strongpoint would have to be eliminated before the rest of the division arrived.

1LT Carrico told 1st Platoon to spread out and as the troopers prepared themselves to face over one hundred of the enemy, Carrico and CPT Cavanaugh studied the courtyard (the Imus Cathedral’s Plaza Santiago). Their trained eyes detected numerous spider holes and enemy positions in or around several wood-framed structures out in the open. Unfortunately, the main buildings’ five-foot-thick walls provided the enemy with extremely well-positioned defenses and with only two doors on one end, the structure’s rear face appeared to be the weak point.

Noticing the hedgerow running along the west side of the compound, with 2nd Platoon now onsite CPT Cavanaugh left a machine gun squad as a base of fire with orders to open up when the rest of the company went in. He and 1LT Carrico then shifted the rest of the men to the left.

“(We) reached a position about a hundred yards behind the building and took cover along a stone wall,” 1LT Carrico recalled. Regrettably, CPT Cavanaugh realized he had no way to signal the still-in-place machine gun crew to start firing since 1st and 2nd Platoons left their colored rifle grenades and launchers back in their larger packs on the main road.

Kicking himself for the oversight, Cavanaugh recalled the World War I practice of “going over the wall” and quickly ordered his men to do just that; the gun crew was sure to get the message and open fire. Upon hearing the command to rush the courtyard, D Company traded knowing looks and Cavanaugh prayed he made the right call.

D Company, 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment while on New Guinea in 1944

“There was no longer any recourse,” he noted, “so with one surge we vaulted the wall and went towards the building.” Charging across the open grounds, the young troopers bellowed and fired their rifles, killing dozens of enemy soldiers throughout the courtyard. Those with Thompsons took care of spider holes and grenades were tossed into outbuildings. Initially the startled Japanese took heavy losses, but soon recovered and began dropping mortars and firing machine guns which wounded and killed several troopers in the open.

“My scout, (PFC) Arthur ‘Art’ Chlebove, was shot and killed,” Carrico noted solemnly. Andy moved to rescue his friend, but PFC John Tkacyk waved his platoon leader off. Tkacyk pulled Art to safety, but the bullet had ripped through the scout’s chest and the Bronze Star recipient from Philadelphia, PA bled out in minutes.

“Another one of my men, (S/SGT) George Taylor was wounded,” Carrico added. “I also saw (PFC) Ed Rathert, not in my platoon, get shot and killed there.” Other D Company casualties at the Battle of the Stone Courtyard included SGTs Clifford G. Tahsler (KIA) and Donald J. Hyatt, 3rd Platoon Sergeant S/SGT Murray Perlman, PVTs Everette Shaw and Anthony G. Walter (both KIA) and PFC Norman “Red” Zadoorian.

A final D Company casualty was S/SGT Henry F. Gumm (KIA - pictured right), the rigger who helped train the 511th PIR’s men at Fort Benning. The Gumms were America’s first family to hang a four-star flag in their window with Henry’s three brothers serving in in the Army and Army Air Corps. General MacArthur wrote to Henry’s mother, saying, “His service under me in the Southwest Pacific was characterized by his complete devotion to our beloved country and by his death in our crusade for freedom and liberty he is enshrined in its imperishable glory.”

After two hours of fighting, a hot and sweaty D Company’s progress was halted by the main structure’s thick stone walls which protected the enemy soldiers within. CPT Cavanaugh told me that when a self-propelled M-8 “Scott” howitzer arrived, the Angels were ready to break the stalemate (some recollected it was a 75mm pack howitzer).

The gun crew fired into the stone building with little structural effect, so SGT Ed Sorenson’s squad rushed in to eliminate the residual bottom-floor opposition. The rest of 1LT Walter Kannely’s 3rd Platoon was sent to clear the dust-filled building and minutes later Kannely led his men out the side door to declare the building secure.

It wasn’t.

“We cleaned up all the Japs outside,” remembered S/SGT Wilbur Wilcox. “But those inside had moved into a small room and blocked all avenues of approach.” And as MAJ Patrick Cotter, S-2 of the 188th Para-Glider Infantry Regiment, wrote, “Any area is never secure until every Jap is rooted out...”

The adrenaline-fueled troopers around the courtyard had just begun to relax (the field piece even moved on) when suddenly the Japanese marines opened fire from their upper floor room. From their courtyard vantage point, PFCs Elmer “Chuck” Hudson and Weldon O. Shafer watched in horror as 2nd Platoon’s S/SGT Cliff Tahsler walked in front of one of the building’s two open doors where a hidden enemy cut him down. To Chuck’s right another comrade was hit and the trooper who rushed to help him was also shot.

“If we had access to a flamethrower, something the division couldn’t furnish, we might have been able to save some of our soldier’s lives,” S/SGT Wilbur Wilcox noted later with disappointment.

Diving behind whatever cover they could find, everyone cursed 3rd Platoon who had “secured” the building.

“I never really figured out what Third Platoon had not done in allegedly ‘cleaning out’ the building,” CPT Cavanaugh noted. “And with the firefight under way, I had little time to investigate.”

Surprisingly, an irate Regimental S2 CPT Lyman S. Faulkner, Dog Company’s former CO, arrived and loudly asked Cavanaugh why the secondary bridge was not secured. It was an objective Rusty had been told about, but never been given since the bridge by the courtyard was his main focus. He and Faulkner walked back to the road and looked at the small stone bridge across the Imus River one mile away.

“I promptly directed (1st Platoon) toward the bridge,” Rusty remembered. “And they just as promptly strolled across this ‘major objective’ (the Bridge of Isabell II) without resistance.” In the meantime, T/SGT Robert C. Steele decided it was time to eliminate the final Japanese defenders in the main stone building. Calling for covering fire, Steele dashed towards the main building then climbed up the structure’s side. Reaching the top, Robert began tearing a hole through the roof.

“He poured gasoline through the hole, then ignited it, and the enemy, with a white phosphorous grenade,” 1LT Carrico said. “When the enemy rushed out, 2nd Platoon mowed them down.”

HQ2-511’s PFC Deane Marks had arrived with his machine gun squad including future famous artist PFC William “Bill” Porteous who set up their A-4 on the stone wall. They watched Steele’s actions and Deane noted, “As twenty to thirty Japs came scampering out the doors, mainly the front door, we cut them to pieces.”

T/SGT Steele then dropped to the ground, peered into the building and dispatched the last two enemy soldiers hiding inside. By now, GEN Robert Eichelberger himself, commander of Eighth Army, had arrived in a jeep with his G-3 COL Frank S. Bowen and aide SGT Clyd Shuck. The trio huddled behind the enclosure’s wall for protection where they observed Steele’s actions which earned Bob the Distinguished Service Cross.

CPT Cavanaugh put Steele in for a battlefield promotion, but sadly the sergeant from Los Angeles, California died three days later in the fight for Manila.

Leaving the stone courtyard, and 84 enemy dead behind, at 1650 D Company joined 2nd Battalion’s move north along Highway 17 and Route 1 towards Las Piñas on Bacoor Bay. Passing through Zapote, 2/511 moved abreast of 1/511 into urban Bacoor where they were met by a crowd of 3,000 who offered gifts and shouts of “Veectoree! Mabuhay! God bless you!” A seventeen-piece band even came out to (roughly) play America’s national anthem and several Sousa marches.

“Their hearts were obviously in it,” D Company’s SGT Ed Sorenson noted of the Filipinos’ celebration. “They were happy at last.”

A-511’s SGT Steve Hegedus remembers moving into the town of Santa Rosa later in the campaign and said of their reception, “The whole town turned out to see their first Americans in four years. The occupying Japanese soldiers had left about a week ago; hail the Liberators! The euphoria of new freedom, and the promise of a better life, was in the air. We were the symbol of better days ahead.”

But those better days were still far away, and the Angels continued north towards their objective: Manilla and the suicidal Japanese defenders that awaited them there who would fight with fanatical viciousness until they were eliminated from every bunker, building and hiding place.

The Battle for Manilla was just getting started for the 11th Airborne Division and it would soon prove costly for the Angels...

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