A great moment showing in time, 80 years ago today. AP Photo caption, “During the hard street fighting against Japanese strongpoint at the New Police Station, Pandacan district, GIs of the 129th Infantry Regiment, 37th Infantry Division, climb through some Japanese barbed wire in Manila, Philippines. 13 February 1945.”
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Check out this inset, with details showing a rifle grenade launcher on the Joe’s M1 Carbine to the left, what looks to be a religious medal hanging from the neck of the man to the right, large eye bale netting on the M1 helmets for attaching camo, and grim, determined faces.
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A National Guard Division from Ohio, the 37th was known as the Buckeye Division for obvious reasons. Activated for federal service on 15 October 1940 under native son Maj. Gen. Robert S. Beightler, they shipped overseas to Fiji just six months after Pearl Harbor on 26 May 1942 and, from there went into combat in the Solomons at New Georgia the following year, campaigning around Bougainville through 1944.
January 1945 saw them, under Kruger’s Sixth Army, landing on the beaches of the Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines where they would race inland to Clark Field and Fort Stotsenburg, fight through Manila, and into Northern Luzon where they ended the war processing the last Japanese forces to surrender there post-VJ-Day.
The 37th Infantry Division suffered 5,960 battle casualties during WWII, surpassing their butcher’s bill for the Great War which stood at 5,387.
