Landmark Books in All Fields
ItemID: #118436
Cost: $5,500.00

Leyte Historical Report of the 24th Infantry Division Landing Team

World war ii

"I SHALL RETURN": OFFICIAL 1945 REPORT ON THE PHILIPPINE LIBERATION CAMPAIGN, WITH MAPS AND PLATES

(WORLD WAR II) (MACARTHUR, Douglas). Leyte Historical Report of the 24th Infantry Division Landing Team. [Philippines]: 67th Engineer Topographic Company, 1945. Folio (8 by 13 inches), original post-bound printed gray-brown paper covers; ff. [9], 202, with 27 plates, mostly folding. Housed in a custom chemise and clamshell box. $5500.

First edition of the detailed and extensively illustrated official report—stamped "Restricted"—of the 24th Infantry Division's important role in the campaign to retake the Philippines, from October 20, 1944 to December 25, 1944, with 27 maps and plates, many folding.

An extensive, and extensively illustrated, field-printed report on the actions of the 24th Infantry Division during the invasion of the Philippines in late 1944. The production of this volume was the work of the 67th Engineer Topographic Company, assigned to support the 24th Division in the Philippines, and was printed on the islands soon after the conclusion of the campaign. The "Victory Division" took part in the landing near Tacloban on October 20, 1944, and then advanced across the northern portion of Leyte Island through the Leyte Valley to Cariaga, before assaulting Pinamopoan and the Japanese units that fortified the surrounding ridges. This work, compiled by division staff in the direct aftermath of the campaign, provides a detailed and lively narrative of the operations undertaken by the unit, combined with contemporaneous reports from various support sections (signal, medical, ordnance, etc.), as well as lists of casualties and citations.

The whole is illustrated with 27 plates, almost all folding, that include battle plans, maps of troops movements, reproductions of aerial reconnaissance photographs, schematics of enemy fortifications, and charts. Overall, a thorough account of a campaign that, according to division commander Roscoe B. Woodruff in his Foreword, "provided the opportunity for our division, one of the two divisions at Pearl Harbor on that fateful day of 7 December 1941 to 'square accounts' with the Japanese Sixteenth Division, the so-called 'Tiger' Division, infamous for its mistreatment of Filipino and American prisoners-of-war in the tragic 'death' march from Bataan," not to mention the significance of the Philippines invasion to the overarching war effort. The fact that this work was produced in the field, soon after the events it describes and with much information apparently deemed classified, no doubt contributes to both its vitality and its scarcity. We locate copies only in the libraries of the U.S. Army War College and the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth. Contemporary "Restricted" ink stamps on front wrap, crossed out in pen.

Light wear and dust soiling to wraps. Internally clean. Very scarce.

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