Distinctly Montana Magazine

54 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 5 replaced the exhausted Australian infantry, Japanese attacked twice, each time fast and hard for an hour, leaving six U.S. men dead. Four days after his first combat kill for the 163rd, Fisk died leading his platoon in an attack. When his partially cannibalized body was recovered by Company A near perimeter KANO, 300 yards northeast along the corduroyed Sanananda Trail, KANO became FISK. This was the hellish reality facing Montana's 163rd Infantry Regimental Combat Team in the steaming jungles of Papua New Guinea. The men from Montana's small towns—farm boys and ranch hands, miners and shop clerks—were in jungle hell- holes, L-shaped to help them survive rolling grenades. Straddle latrines outside the trip-wired rattle-cans and grenades were for day use. The fetid water rotted clothing and jammed weapons. From a half hour before dark until a half hour after daylight, they listened and looked for snipers with grenades, pins pulled, lying at arm's length. Any movement in dripping darkness was considered enemy. Black rats as big as cats, roaches, land-crabs, snakes seeking body warmth, tusked boars, corpse-eating croc- odiles, tree kangaroos and monkeys made their own sounds. Leeches and spiders stayed quiet, as did soldiers even in day- light. Swarming mosquitos, chiggers, gnats and flies brought malaria, scrub typhus, dysentery and dengue fever. Ambulance service for sick or wounded came as stretchers borne by "Fuzzy Wuzzies," deeply compassionate wild-haired indigenous people who often wept when their patient died. Japanese soldiers following the Bushido military code, treating surrender as dishonor, moved about from vine-covered con- crete-lined log bunkers engineered with fire lanes coordinating machine guns, at perimeters P, Q, R, S, T and U. P had four pe- rimeters comprising blocking the Killerton Track and Sananan- da Trail 300 yards southwest of HUGGINS. Between HUGGINS and FISK were R and Q on the trail's right and left, respectively. Northeast of FISK in the trail's bend, jungle hid U across from S and T on the left. THE COST OF HOLDING GROUND On the second day Company B sent a patrol to destroy a sin- gle machine gun. The gun hidden in a camouflaged pillbox wounded patrol leader Sgt. Joseph Reddoor from Poplar, who then killed most of the emplaced Japanese. The gun still fired, wounding Sgt. Herman Belgard from Brockton, who rescued his patrol leader. Next day two Company B platoons lost eight men killed, another wounded and one missing bayonet attacking the position which turned out to have four more machine guns guarding the flanks of the first. Trying again on January 8, Com- pany B walked with fixed bayonets against R, while Company C attacked Q. The old long-style bayonets caught in the vines when raising to fire ended their use, with nine killed and eight wounded. Company B fought two weeks protecting HUGGINS: "Like a frontier outpost against Indians." They held off day attacks on seven sequential days and night attacks on five sequential nights. The night of January 11 was a grenade-throwing battle with no losses. A dead Japanese sniper hanging 30 yards over the kitchen area from a rope around his leg and the sniper-kill-

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