Note 69 — Chapter XV · Battle of the Ridges

The 1st and 2d Battalions of the 17th Infantry jumped off abreast. The 1st Battalion reached the ridge which led west from Hill 918 and overlooked the Palanas River, where it found strong enemy positions that had been abandoned. While the 1st Battalion reorganized, advance platoons, one each from Companies B and C, went across the Palanas River to the next ridge, which overlooked the Tabgas River. The 1st Battalion, in conjunction with the 2d Battalion, 184th Infantry, followed the platoons at a distance of about 500 yards. Company B moved behind a “protective nose” which led south from the main ridge and Company C pushed “a knife edge east of Company B.”69 As Company C reached a point just short of the main ridge, the men moved in single file and were pinned down by heavy machine gun cross fire from both flanks and to their front. Company B, attempting to envelop the entrenched enemy from the west, encountered heavy fire on its left front, which made any envelopment in that direction impossible. At 1500 a strong column of the enemy counterattacked the left flank of Company C, but six machine guns from Company D broke up the enemy attack. The 1st Battalion dug in for the night halfway up Hill 380.70