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2014-05-26 
Good Memorial Day Morning
Posted by Fred 2014-05-26 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11130 views ]  Top

#1 A solemn day. Thanks vets for your sacrifices for freedom. Memorial Day origins
Posted by JohnQC 2014-05-26 08:52||   2014-05-26 08:52|| Front Page Top

#2 Rio Grande, Cabanatuan, Santa Tomas, Momote Airstrip.

Every situation was different and each situation was handled exactly right. You will not read anywhere certain key details that helped insure the success of the raids. So this is a Rantburg exclusive.

To protect the US from foreign nationals coming into the US illegally during a time of much world turmoil, this division setup and manned machine gun nests along the Rio Grand River.

When World War II did broke out this division was sent to the South Pacific, to help destroy the Japanese Imperial Army. Three documented raids behind Japanese enemy lines in the Philippines were executed by this division. My father was on every one of these raids. Along with other lethal operations that have never been reported. These three raids General Douglas MacArthur personally met with this division either before or in the case of Momote Airstrip the day of the capture, to encourage or explain how important it was to achieve and hold the objective.

1000 men took Momote Airstrip, surrounded by 4000 fanatical enemy and held it against wave after wave of night time bonzai attacks.

250 men went 30 miles behind enemy lines to rescue 500 POWs before they could be executed at Cabanatuan and returned them to the front lines taking out up to 1000 enemy at or on the way out from the camp. Contrary to documentaries the Japanese guards at the two gates were not shot, they were taken out quietly by Filipino bolos, the Americans were inside the gates before the rest of the Japanese in the camp knew what was going on. If you were a Japanese, you were hit before you knew what hit you.

The division carried out a lightening raid 100 miles behind enemy lines into the University of Santo Tomas to prevent the execution of 2000 prisoners by the Japanese army.

In another operation it took only 20 minutes to destroy 10,000 Japanese reinforcements coming off of 3 troop transports in a harbor by harbor guns always manned by Japanese, but this time had been quietly captured by the division, which sank the transports as anchors were dropped.

The WWII operations were the best plans they could come up with to insure as many people as possible came home alive and of course live in freedom. It was not easy. He came home after the war was over with bullet wounds, phosphorous shell wounds, bayonet wounds, malaria, and teeth ground down all the way to the gums from the stress of three years of service. But never skipped a beat in living a good life or never refereed to his service unless asked.

In Honor of the WWII First Cavalry Division of Texas.
Posted by wr 2014-05-26 10:55||   2014-05-26 10:55|| Front Page Top

#3 Wow. Thank you, wr, and of course your father.
and all the others who stepped forward to ensure our peace and safety.
Posted by trailing wife 2014-05-26 11:02||   2014-05-26 11:02|| Front Page Top

#4 amen
Posted by Frank G 2014-05-26 11:14||   2014-05-26 11:14|| Front Page Top

#5 The Most Important War Memorial Is One You Probably Will Never See

Posted by Grinegum Panda3680 2014-05-26 11:49||   2014-05-26 11:49|| Front Page Top

#6 Incredibly impressive.
Posted by Odysseus 2014-05-26 12:08||   2014-05-26 12:08|| Front Page Top

#7 We owe our veterans a debt we can never repay.

Thank you all.
Posted by Barbara 2014-05-26 12:59||   2014-05-26 12:59|| Front Page Top

#8 Incredible WR!
Posted by 49 Pan 2014-05-26 13:04||   2014-05-26 13:04|| Front Page Top

#9 Wonderful Tale WR. Those are the kind of things you won't read in the history books. Thank you for sharing that and your father for doing it.
Posted by CrazyFool 2014-05-26 13:38||   2014-05-26 13:38|| Front Page Top

#10 Great posting, wr! That was something to learn! To all Rantburgers, wishing each and every one of you a meaningful Memorial Day.

My dad showed me a picture of a bunch of Marines, exhausted both physically and mentally after a long, intense firefight. Here is that picture.



The Marine with the helmet on the right, at the same level as the man without a helmet in front of him is Paul Mello, the dad of one of my friends. He said that most of the men in the back of that truck were killed 9 to 10 months later in Peleliu. They never had a chance to live full lives. We owe them a great debt.
Posted by Alaska Paul 2014-05-26 15:31||   2014-05-26 15:31|| Front Page Top

#11 Cape Gloucester was/is a nasty place. Falling trees were just another deadly hazard, the greenest of hells.

Posted by Shipman 2014-05-26 16:06||   2014-05-26 16:06|| Front Page Top

#12 Yes we do Paul, always live life, to the fullest. Never forgetting that they paid for it, for us.
Posted by 49 Pan 2014-05-26 16:11||   2014-05-26 16:11|| Front Page Top

#13 The flags pictured above are Japanese national flags called "Hinomaru" [referred to as 'Meat Balls' by GI's] with the inscriptions of many friends' and relatives' names with their prayers. It was customary to present a flag with prayer inscriptions as a send off charm for a soldier during WWII before he deployed for the war.
Posted by Besoeker 2014-05-26 17:39||   2014-05-26 17:39|| Front Page Top

#14 Thanks for the info on the flags, Besoeker.
Posted by Alaska Paul 2014-05-26 18:26||   2014-05-26 18:26|| Front Page Top

#15 The compliments would have him smile. He passed away at 82. At 80 he finally decided to have phosphorus removed from his back that was always bothering him.

At Santo Tomas several hundred American troops held the university for 3 days surrounded by 20,000 Japanese by making a lot of noise with their artillery to discourage an attack until the main US force entered Manila. The tactic was to fire the artillery briefly to allow the enemy to get a reading on their position, re-position, let the enemy artillery hammer the just vacated old position, identify where the enemy artillery was firing from and smash that particular enemy artillery unit from the new American position. The enemy never charged the university because the Japanese could never hit the US artillery unit and knew an assault would be useless while that unit was in action.

At Cabanatuan the Japanese guards at the gates that were looking up at the sky at a circling US airplane that was to distract the guards and allow the US troops to crawl across a large open terrain without be detected and to quietly kill each guard looking up at the US plane.

These raids by the division were successful through the implementation of deception and being prepared to do what the enemy did not expect the American forces to do and were not prepared to answer.
Posted by wr 2014-05-26 18:26||   2014-05-26 18:26|| Front Page Top

#16 wr, wasn't that the subject of the movie "The Great Raid"?

As I recall, the movie was withheld for release for a while because it might offend the Japanese, showing them murdering POWs.
Posted by Rambler in Virginia 2014-05-26 19:50||   2014-05-26 19:50|| Front Page Top

#17 I have that movie and, as I recall, at the beginning it showed the Imperial Japanese forcing prisoners into a pit, filling it with gasoline and then igniting it. That was shown as the motivation behind the raid.
Posted by CrazyFool 2014-05-26 20:19||   2014-05-26 20:19|| Front Page Top

#18 The trailer for the movie has some true parts to it. There were 2 prisoners who died during the raid. My father said one American prisoner saw Americans as they started coming through the gates and died of a heart attack on the spot. He was too excited for his emaciated condition.

Prisoners were executed during the years before the raid frequently and for various reasons. They were in bad shape when rescued which made them too weak to escape and were easy to manage by the guards The surviving female American nurses who were POWs at Santo Tomas University were a precious treasure to the troops to protect. Some of the American nurses were brutally treated and killed, the rest were taken prisoner during the fall of the Philippines. The American troops and Filipino guerrillas who assisted in liberating the prison camps were not hesitant to eliminate the Japanese guards quickly and mercilessly.
Posted by wr 2014-05-26 20:34||   2014-05-26 20:34|| Front Page Top

#19 1st Team. I did a rotation there, but my heart will always be with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, The Dragoons. All us old Cav troopers will meet at Fiddler's Green.

If you aint Cav...
Posted by OldSpook 2014-05-26 21:45||   2014-05-26 21:45|| Front Page Top

#20 God bless you and WR's father Spook. God Bless you both.
Posted by Charles 2014-05-26 22:13||   2014-05-26 22:13|| Front Page Top

#21 OS, cut my spurs in 1-17th. Out front!
Posted by 49 Pan 2014-05-26 22:30||   2014-05-26 22:30|| Front Page Top

23:42 Hotspur666
23:25 Squinty
23:17 AlmostAnonymous5839
23:12 Hotspur666
22:46 JosephMendiola
22:39 JosephMendiola
22:34 JosephMendiola
22:30 49 Pan
22:23 trailing wife
22:21 JosephMendiola
22:19 trailing wife
22:18 JosephMendiola
22:13 Charles
21:45 OldSpook
21:03 Squinty
21:02 Thing From Snowy Mountain
20:58 Squinty
20:52 rjschwarz
20:34 wr
20:32 Pappy
20:30 JosephMendiola
20:27 Pappy
20:25 Pappy
20:19 CrazyFool









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