Page:Papuan Campaign; The Buna-Sanananda Operation - Armed Forces in Action (1944).djvu/63

 On the 17th Brigadier Wootten assumed command. During the evening the seven General Stuart light tanks of X Squadron, Australian 2/6 Armored Regiment, rumbled up close to the front while mortars fired as rapidly as possible to conceal the noise of their motors. Later in the night a Japanese patrol alerted the front of the 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry, but moved off to the east without discovering anything.

Before dawn on the 18th, our troops in the Plantation withdrew 300 yards to allow the artillery to smash directly at the bunkers which the infantry had located in the advance of the past 3 days. During the 10-minute concentration by artillery and mortars, the Australian 2/9 Infantry Battalion under Lt. Col. Clement J. Cummings passed through the American units and worked its way toward the former front line. To insure complete surprise, these Australian units had been kept in rear areas until the actual time of the attack.

At 0700 the Australians jumped off. The artillery and mortars had wrecked the enemy front lines, and within an hour and a half, A and D Companies of the 2/9 Battalion, advancing with the tanks, had reached the Cape. They then swung west along the north coast but were stopped in front of a new line of Japanese bunkers which the artillery had not reached. Two tanks were knocked out by 13-mm antiaircraft pompoms, and after 1100 there was no further advance in this zone. During the afternoon the 3d Battalion, 128th Infantry, moved forward in the Plantation, mopping up and establishing an all-around beach defense south of the Cape.

C Company, 2/9 Battalion, attacked the enemy strongpoint at the spur of the New Strip. Enemy reinforcements were observed entering this ground in the morning, and the strongpoint put up stiff resistance throughout the day. Although tanks knocked out three or four bunkers with their 37-mm guns, the Australian infantry could not advance because of heavy fire from the remaining bunkers. Shortly after noon one tank was burned out in front of the 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry, which had been committed by this time on both flanks of C Company. Finally, in the late afternoon, the Australians began to work around the bunkers. Under the threat of being cut off, the enemy evacuated the strongpoint and fell back westward along the jungle north of the New Strip to the bunkers near the bridge. In the bridge area the 1st Battalion, 126th Infantry, 46