The 1st Battalion moved to the water’s edge, where it was pinned down by enemy fire. Companies E and F of the 2d Battalion, however, were able to push north 500 yards through the heavy brush, and amid a driving rain they managed to ford the river unobserved. Once on the other side they charged the entrenchments of the 41st Infantry Regiment on the river, with Company F in the lead. As Company F neared the bridge it overran three mortar positions without stopping but was finally halted by heavy machine gun fire. After the company’s 60-mm. mortar had knocked out the machine gun, the unit continued to advance and passed the bridgehead before it ran out of ammunition. Company E then relieved Company F, while the latter set up heavy machine guns to silence enemy machine guns in the woods to the west. By 1500 the bridge was in American hands. The Japanese had placed a demolition charge on the bridge, but the American advance had been so swift that the enemy never had an opportunity to set off the charge.
The 3d Battalion had meanwhile moved up to the rear of the other two battalions and established contact south of Santa Fe with the 19th Infantry, which was protecting the southern flank of the division.
Seizure of Pastrana
On 25 October the 3d Battalion, 19th Infantry, advancing toward Pastrana, had pushed against slight opposition into Castilla and established a perimeter there.[11] On the morning of the same day, Maj. Elmer C. Howard, the battalion commander, told Lt. Col. George H. Chapman, Jr., of the 19th Infantry that he had learned from the Filipinos that there was no organized resistance along the three miles from Castilla to Pastrana. He therefore asked permission to go to Pastrana and establish a roadblock. Colonel Chapman told Major Howard to stay out of Pastrana but to send patrols to locate defenses around the town.[12] Colonel Chapman later rescinded this order, and at 1300 on 26 October Major Howard moved his battalion out from Castilla to attack Pastrana, which was 5,000 yards southwest of Santa Fe. Company I, the lead company, proceeded over a trail that was too narrow to accommodate vehicles. At 1600 the point of Company I reached the outskirts of Pastrana but came under heavy enemy fire. The battalion pulled back and then attacked with Companies I and K abreast. The companies were stopped by fire that came from an unusual fortification—a star-shaped fort, with a tin roof, which looked like three or four native shacks in a cluster. The sides were banked with earth, over which grass had been allowed to grow—a feature so exceptional that it aroused suspicion and gave away the nature of the installation. Pillboxes flanked the fortification, which was backed by a system of trenches. Colonel Chapman ordered another attack at 1630, but casualties were so heavy that the troops dug in after getting within 100 yards of the fortress.
At 1750 Battery C, 11th Field Artillery Battalion, placed fire on the fortification, but after forty-two rounds of ammunition had been expended, the battery reported that the muddy ground “caused [the] guns to go out of action.”[13] From 1850 to 1905, Battery A of the 14th Field Artillery delivered harassing fire on Pastrana,[14] and from 2200 to 2400 the 13th Field Artillery Battalion took over the task of placing fire on the sector around the town.[15] With the coming of daylight, the 4.2-inch and 81-mm. mortars took up the shelling. The night-long pounding of the Japanese positions around Pastrana was so effective that on the morning of 27 October Company K of the 3d Battalion was able to move around the town and establish a roadblock at a demolished bridge a few hundred yards southwest. The rest of the day the 3d Battalion, assisted by Colonel Zierath’s 1st Battalion, which had followed the 3d Battalion, mopped up in the town and sent out patrols to investigate the terrain and enemy dispositions west and south of the town.
The 19th Infantry was to continue to protect the southern flank of the 24th Division, which was driving toward Carigara, by moving toward Jaro—the proposed assembly point of the 35th Army. On the morning of 28 October, Colonel Zierath had the 1st Battalion establish a roadblock north of the Binahaan River in the vicinity of Macalpe. The 2d Battalion pushed forward to Tingib and established a perimeter there. For the next two days the 19th Infantry sent out patrols in all directions; they met only scattered resistance from the Japanese. On 29 October Company K left Pastrana and established a roadblock at Ypad. On the following day it moved south from Ypad to Lapdok, where it established contact with elements of the XXIV Corps. On the 30th two platoons from Company C encountered about 100 Japanese at Rizal. The enemy fought aggressively, but resistance ceased after artillery fire had been placed on the town. It was estimated that the majority of the enemy force was killed. As a result of the skirmishes and patrols, General Makino was unable to establish contact between elements of the 16th Division at Dagami and those at Jaro.[16]
PASTRANA was left a mass of smoldering ruins after the shelling of 26–27 October.
Fall of Jaro
At the crossing of the Mainit River, a one-lane all-weather branch road runs southwest for about three and a half miles to Jaro, and then northwest along the western edge of Leyte Valley for about ten and a half miles to Carigara on the north coast. At Jaro many dirt roads and trails branch out in all directions.