Page:My 1102 days of wwii.djvu/18

 over to the the main island, where we slept in the jungles and ate K rations until we cleared a spot for our tent and had the mess hall operating. The tent location we (Morris, Sloan, Rice and I) were assigned happened to have a small stream running through it. I wrote Rose we were living in class as we had running water in our tent. This was soon corrected by a ditch back of the tent and also a board floor.

Before the American forces landed on Bougainville, the Navy had really poured the big gun ammunition and bombs into the beachhead area, particularly the small island of Puruata. This left the island in a desolate shambles of blasted trees and countless shell holes, the majority of the Japanese were killed; the rest committed suicide, rather than being taken prisoners - consequently it was given the name "Suicide Island."

When we - the United States - went into Bougainville, our intentions were not to take the whole island but to gain a beachhead. This was accomplished. This horseshoe-shaped area was about 5 miles deep and 15 miles around which included two airfields taken from the enemy. This was secured and a three-stage defense line built around it.

For several months the Japanese planes came over every night just after dark and this meant a total blackout. They did not do a lot of damage - it was more of a nuisance raid that kept us in our foxholes for about half of the night. They did hit one of our gasoline storage dumps which caused a terrific explosion and fire. They had a big airbase 300 miles west of us on Rabaul, plus a huge naval base 900 miles north of us at Truk Lagoon.

Our real danger was from flak or shrapnel falling from the exploding 90 millimeter shells being thrown at the planes. To protect ourselves we built bunk-size shelves over our bunks and stored our sea bags, duffle bags and all our gear there to protect us in case we were not able to make it to the foxhole in time. This flak would come down about the speed of a bullet which