A Division At War — Part II
Fe . Getting into position alone took nearly a month of heavy fighting . The losses incurred in that move exacerbated an already dangerous personnel situation . The 32 nd entered Luzon with only 11,000 officers and men , 4,000 below their authorized strength ( those 4,000 were the losses in the Driniumor River and Leyte campaigns 8 ). Due to all the operations going on throughout the SWPA and on different parts of Luzon , no reinforcements or additional support were available .
Lack of men alone did not plague the 32 nd . The terrain was so miserable that an effective supply route did not exist . The division had to build one as it moved , all under Japanese observation and machine gun , mortar , and artillery fire . General William Gill , the division commander , noted :
… the 32 nd Division was headed for the Villa Verde Trail , which was nothing more or less than a foot trail over the mountains . As far as our 32 nd Division was concerned , our first job was to build some kind of a road … We had to supply ourselves with food and water , and while the road was being built [,] we were fighting at the same time … General Krueger came up to see me quite often on the Villa Verde Trail ( once we got road enough for a jeep to come up ) and he says in his book of having made several personnel inspections , that his conclusion very definitely was that it would be a long , slow , and costly operation . And indeed that ’ s what it turned out to be . Morale was poor because the men were tired . They had been in there in combat for months , they had had only a little rest after Leyte and during January , February , March , and April we had to fight the Japs on the trail and build the road at the same time . 9
Tank support was unavailable because of the terrain . Artillery and air support were discarded because of poor observation and the close proximity of Japanese and American forces . It was a small-unit infantry fight on numbered hills and the Salacsac Passes . To progress , the 32 nd had to get through those passes . To get to the passes they first had to move up the Trail under the continual observation of the Japanese from those endless hills .
The 32 nd ’ s fight happened in two phases . The first , between March and mid-April , was little more than a stalemate in the vicinity of Salacsac Pass # 2 . The second phase continued until the division was finally pulled off the line at the end of May , with the fighting moving toward Salacsac Pass # 1 . I Corps noted in its history of the campaign what the 32 nd faced in its first days on the Trail :
Fiercest enemy resistance continued to be met along the VILLA VERDE TRAIL west of IMUGAN where the Japanese were taking full advantage of high ground studded with mutually supporting pillboxes and caves . Routes of advance offered only sparse cover , making concealed maneuver virtually impossible . 10
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