WW2 Chapter 33 - First Day and Night on Leyte




Waterbury Newspaper, October 20, 1944



By noon on the first day, Franklin’s 7^th Infantry Division was able to capture the village of Dulag with little resistance. They then pushed inland along a road that paralleled the Daguitan River, encountering a dense concentration of enemy defenses.

The 7^th Division was composed of two infantry units, the 32^nd Regiment and Franklin’s 184^th Regiment, and were later joined by the 17th Regiment. One of their first objectives was to capture four airfields that the Japanese had built or improved between the villages of Dulag and Burauen.

The first night ashore was reported to be very difficult. According to one of the men from the nearby 96th Division, “Of course, no one slept that first night. Off our left flank we heard a lot of shooting and noise. We heard that Japs had made a banzai charge in the 7th Division area. One of our guys, whom I knew very well, got out of his foxhole and crawled toward the company CP [command post]. Someone shot him in the head. We had been told over and over not to get out of our foxholes at night.”

Throughout that first night, the Japanese launched six separate attacks against the 7^th Division. The men of Franklin’s Rifle Company G filled in the gap between the two regiments, using their rifles, machine guns, bazookas, rifle grenades, artillery, and mortars to repel the attacks. Although two men of the 7^th Division were killed, they counted more than 35 dead Japanese the following morning.