Note 38 — Chapter XII · The Mountain Barrier: Part One
Reading edition
The troops moved out as scheduled. Company E, on the west of the road, reached the branch ridge at 0915 and came under fire from enemy automatic weapons on the right. Company G ran into about 200 men from the 3d Battalion, 57th Infantry Regiment. They were well entrenched at a bend of the road on the forward slope of the high ground, and Colonel Weber had the self-propelled guns of the tank destroyer battalion brought forward. These fired into the pocket, and although they killed the commander of the 3d Battalion the unit held fast.38 Weber then called two tanks forward, but as they moved along the road a Japanese soldier jumped out of the high cogon grass and disabled one of the tanks by planting a magnetic mine against it. The other tank then withdrew.39