The 1st battalion, on the right, passed through the 3d and attacked west on the north side of the airstrip on a 400-yard front toward the other end of the airstrip. The 1st Battalion immediately encountered a highly intricate system of pillboxes and bunkers, which slowed the attack until the tanks arrived. From that time on, a fiercely contested struggle continued throughout the afternoon. The battalion employed tanks, antitank guns, artillery, and mortars to cover its advance, and destroyed many bunkers with grenades, demolition charges, and automatic rifles.[34]
Company B bore the brunt of the assault and, fighting tenaciously, had battled through 900 yards of the fortified area by 1700. The 1st and 2d Battalions made contact on the edge of the airstrip and formed their night perimeters; the 3d Battalion protected the rear. During the night the 32d Infantry repulsed several light counterattacks.
On the following day, 27 October, the time for the attack was set an hour earlier in the hope that the Japanese would be caught off guard. At 0700 the 32d Infantry moved out, with the assault battalions in the same formation as on the previous day.[35] To their happy surprise the troops encountered little opposition as they readily secured bunker after bunker. The 20th Infantry Regiment had spent its strength. The American troops found enemy dead “in every bunker, trench, foxhole and bush,” and wreckage of enemy 75’s, machine guns, grenade launchers, and rifles was scattered about. More than 400 Japanese dead were found in the sector of the 1st Battalion.[36] The infantrymen encountered only an occasional rifleman while mopping up. By 1130 the Buri airstrip was secured.
On 28 October the 2d Battalion was alerted to move to Abuyog at 0400 on the following day. The 3d Battalion was ordered to move to Guinarona for possible attachment to the 17th Infantry, which had committed all three of its battalions in the fight north along the Burauen-Dagami road.
On to Dagami
After securing the barrio of Burauen at 1300 on 24 October, the 17th Infantry had rested for an hour before attacking along the Burauen-Dagami road.[37] The 2d Battalion, 184th Infantry, remained attached to the 17th. As the 17th Infantry started north, a patrol of four jeeps was sent ahead to reconnoiter. It encountered a strong force of the enemy on a road that forked off to the Buri airfield, and after a short but determined fire fight the enemy withdrew north. On its return the patrol reported that the road to Dagami had been mined with aircraft bombs that were buried nose up in the road and covered with palm fronds and other vegetation. A platoon from Company A, 13th Engineer Battalion, removed the mines and the column continued forward.
About 1530 the right flank of the 17th Infantry came under mortar and machine gun fire which came from a ridge north of Burauen and east of the road to Dagami. The ridge was about 700 yards long, 50 feet high, heavily wooded, and covered with dense undergrowth. Most of the fire seemed to be coming from an eastern spur that overlooked the Bayug and Buri airfields. On the left (west) of the road the terrain was flat and marshy.
At 1630 the 17th Infantry began to form its night perimeter on the southern edge of the ridge. The 1st Battalion protected the left (west) flank and tied in at the road with the regiment’s 2d Battalion. The lines of the 2d Battalion, 17th Infantry, covered the forward line of the ridge that extended to the rear where the 2d Battalion, 184th Infantry, held the entrance to the eastern finger. The perimeter of the 2d Battalion, 184th Infantry, extended south to tie in with the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry.
Only the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry, was able to set up its night perimeter without incident. The 2d Battalion, 184th Infantry, ran into determined resistance but was able to establish a firm bivouac for itself, using the vacated enemy positions. The 2d Battalion, 17th Infantry, received scattered rifle fire but did not encounter any of the enemy. During the night the 2d Battalion, 184th Infantry, and the 2d Battalion, 17th Infantry, were harassed by patrols of ten to twenty Japanese each, probing for a break in the lines.
Shortly after nightfall there were two abortive charges against the American lines. As soon as the troops heard the enemy, they called for protective fire, which prevented any of the Japanese from entering the lines. The enemy, however, continually fired into the area throughout the night. Earlier in the day an American tank had bogged down in a swamp to the left of the road, and the crew was forced to abandon it under fire, leaving the guns intact. During the night the Japanese captured the tank and sprayed the areas of the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry, and the regimental command post with the tank’s 37-mm. and machine guns, and with four of their own machine guns. Fortunately the bullets passed harmlessly over the heads of the troops.