groups, bunker to bunker, until the last stubbornly defended bunker was taken. Toward the end of December the introduction of light tanks and the weakening of the enemy forces speeded up the action, but throughout the operation it was the individual soldier's battle. Often cut off from his fellows by dense jungle underbrush, crawling on his belly in the sticky mud, each infantryman had to learn to fight alone.
Feeling out the Enemy Lines (20–25 November)
The disappointing results of the attack on 19 November did not destroy the confidence of our troops in a quick success, for Buna Mission was only 3 miles away. The 1st Battalion, 126th Infantry, arrived at the front during the 20th and went into the line on the right of the 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry, which by evening had pushed to the edge of Duropa Plantation. For the 21st, Division Headquarters ordered an all-out attack along the entire front, to be preceded by a bombing run of our planes along the enemy positions in the Plantation.
The front lines were so indistinct in the jungle that the bombing on the eastern front caused some casualties in the 3d Battalion, 128th Infantry, and damaged the morale of the entire unit. Apart from the failure of the air preparation, things went wrong, for the troops did not receive the divisional attack order until well after the bombing was over. The infantry attack was finally launched late in the afternoon, following another bombing raid and a mortar concentration. Units made slight advances, met well-directed fire from snipers, machine guns, and mortars, and then withdrew to their original positions.
On this same day, our first offensive against the western end of the Japanese stronghold also failed. The 2d Battalion, 128th Infantry, moved up west of the great swamp to take the place of the 1st Battalion, 126th Infantry (less three platoons of C Company and all of D Company), which, after its exhausting march over the mountains had been attached to the Australian 7th Division in operations west of the Girua River. The fresh battalion attacked up the Ango trail toward the junction where branches forked to the Mission on the right and to Buna Village on the left. As the point of the battalion approached this junction, the leader, Sgt. Irving W. Hall
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