Brian Bruce’s ‘MacArthur’s Bloody Butchers’

By Christopher Miskimon

The U.S. Army had hundreds of thousands of troops serving in the Pacific Theater, among them G Company, 163rd Infantry, of the 41st Division. This Montana National Guard unit began the war with its citizen-soldiers but soon received draftees from across the country. The unit trained in the Pacific Northwest before moving to Australia. From there the company entered combat in the jungles of New Guinea, where it played a key role in defeating Japanese forces at the Battle of Sanananda. Company G later fought at Biak, on Mindanao and in the Sulu Archipelago in the Philippines before going to Japan at the end of the war.

The author tells the story of an infantry company in the Pacific through the narratives of official records, and more importantly the experiences of four members of the company. Each significant battle is covered in detail from the individual to the divisional level. The book provides an engaging and fascinating look at a small unit at war and its effects on its members.

MacArthur’s Bloody Butchers: Company G, 163rd Infantry Regiment, in the Pacific War (Brian Bruce, Casemate Publishing, Havertown PA, 2024, 224 pp., maps, photos, notes, bibliography, index, $34.95, HC)

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