The river was a defining geographical feature in what became known as the Abucay Line, a final defensive position in efforts to hold out against Japanese General Homma's advance down the east side of Bataan until promised reinforcements arrived. Meanwhile, General Wainwright aligned his forces south of the Calaguiman River which flowed from nearly-mile-high Mount Natib which splits the Bataan Peninsula, eastward into Manila Bay. They, along with other units of General Jonathan Wainwright's Northern Luzon force had been finally forced to fall back. After ten days of resistance, Captain Wermuth no longer had a force to command-only 37 of his soldiers had survived. Departing Manila on the day after Christmas with the 150 men of Company D, 57th Infantry (Philippine Scouts), he had been ordered by Colonel George Clark to put his small force in the lines on Northern Luzon and "Dig in and hold!.įacing Wermuth's small and generally untrained but equally determined force of Philippine Scouts was an entire division of Japanese, rapidly pressing south after landing on the northern coast of Luzon. Sporting a mustache and Vandyke beard, the former football star from South Dakota endured his baptism of combat in the last week of 1941 and into the first week of 1942.