Back to NewZealand

Back to New Zealand, February 19,1943

Sick, tired, weary, our First Battalion, Sixth Marines loaded our gear and got into Higgins boats for the short ride out to the “Unholy Four”, (the Hayes, Adams, Jackson and the Crescent City”.
Our ship was the Crescent City this time. It was built a little different from the President ships. I could always recognize it and many times later when I was aboard another ship in convoy, I would see it. It had a distinguishable cutout at its very rear. This was about 3 feet below the main deck and extended about 12 feet back forward. The cut was about 3 feet in depth. I think that a five-inch gun was mounted in there during some combat situations.
We had been on Guadalcanal for about six weeks. About four weeks of that had been in action. The Army joined us in mopping up and securing the island. By this time the airfield at Henderson Field was being used by scores of planes, including some bombers. The Japanese had intended using it as a stepping toward further action in the Pacific. Now we would use it as a stepping stone, a base on our way to Tokyo. We left Army troops to garrison the island.
Guadalcanal had been used by Lever Bros. as a source of material for its manufacture of soap. It was a beautiful island. The water was very clear and blue. I expect it is now a vacation paradise.
I had three souvenirs that I would have liked to bring or send home. Two were a pair of beautiful Japanese Swords. I got them fairly early and of course I had trouble carrying out my duties and transporting them with me. I marked a spot carefully and wrapping them in oilcloth, I buried them. I hoped to come back for them some day. I never got to do it. Another was a simple black notebook that had about 100 blank pages. It had been written in Japanese on a couple of pages. I was able to keep it and I still have it. I used it to keep schedules and minor information. It has the names of many of my friends of that time and keeps me from forgetting them. I also had a couple of small Japanese silk flags at that time. They just disappeared as time went by. The souvenir that most of wanted to bring back was both of our dogtags!

As I remember, we rode trucks back to Mackay,s Crossing and Camp Paekakiriki where we had been before. I had not contracted malaria on Guadalcanal but I came down with it fairly quickly here. We were housed in “squad tents” which slept 6 men on cots. In the center of the tent was a potbellied stove that was fueled by coal or kerosene. The climate, opposite to that in the United States was moving toward winter. Since we were sick and had lost a lot of weight, we thought we were going to freeze even though the temperature was above freezing. Everyone had his bout with the “bug”. It seemed to come about every other day. When you got it, you would grab the center pole of the tent and shake the whole place. I was one of the last to come down, but when I did, my temperature got up to 105 degrees. The sick bay doctor sent me to the naval hospital at Silverstream. I was loaded into a cattle truck along with about ten others and we rode the 30 or so miles in the open air. I spent about five days there.
Silverstream was a vacation type, spa town. There was harness racing that we could see from our hospital beds. Another thing I remembered was that there was a Scottish company stationed there and they would close order drill pretty early in the morning on the pavement outside hospital. They wore hobnailed boots and it was quite entertaining to here them, all in step and in cadence. Sometimes they wore kilts and even had a bagpipe playing.
We were very well taken care of. I think they gave us quinine here. We didn’t have it regularly. It seemed to knock the bug pretty well. Most of us never did quite get rid of the malaria, dengue and yellow fever. I had recurrences all the time I was in the Pacific, but only once after I got back in the States.
When I got back to camp, changes were occurring. Two of my friends, both corporals now, had a chance to go back to the States in what was called the V-12 program. They would go to college for whatever time needed to obtain a degree and then they would receive commissions in the Marine Corps. It was a wonderful break. I should have taken advantage of it, but my priority was to get the war over and return to farming. One of the men was Corporal Boggs, a handsome blonde young man, who was a special good friend and one of my tentmates. I might mention here that in the tent were Spicer and Smith, both corporals and both killed later on Tarawa. I think Berger was there, along with Marlow, one of two Jewish men. The other was Skora. We were in rest camp. Our duties were small and liberty was plentiful.
Liberty meant going in to Wellington where there was considerable interesting things to do. There was a USO where there was dancing. There was plenty of beer and some liquor. The New Zealand young men were mostly away fighting in North Africa and the girls were friendly to the Marines. I was never attracted to the New Zealand girls. They didn’t, as a rule, have good teeth. This had something to do with their water, I believe. I did hear that some of the rougher girls could open a beer bottle cap with their teeth, which didn’t arouse me very much.
Artie Shaw came to town while I was there and Eleanor Roosevelt visited us. I always had a warm feeling for her after this.
We had some leave coming and of course, we couldn’t go home so we took short trips. A Marine named Byrd from Carney, Nebraska and I took a trip to Palmerston North, a Spa town about 100 miles away. The New Zealand people liked us very much and we liked and respected them. We spent the night with a farmer and his family. They were surprised that I could milk a cow. They had a car that ran on charcoal some way. They had a son and a nephew who were fighting in North Africa. We promised to keep in touch with them, but didn’t.

Soon we began training for our next battle. We did exercises with maps and compasses. This was difficult for me, because all the time I was in New Zealand the sun came up in the North. I could force my brain to adjust but it would have been easier if it had felt natural. Another feature was that we had no North Star but used the Southern Cross for our reckoning. The Second Marine Division used the Southern Cross in its decal after this.
We had received replacements and we began to seriously train them for our next action. We had learned from Guadalcanal that ignorance or inattention could get us killed. In our wire section, we climbed poles and strung wire. I was promoted to sergeant and because the wire section had a sergeant and the radio section didn’t I was selected to take charge of the radio section.
This was a New World. Everyone in the section knew more about their work than I did. I didn’t let them know and I buckled down and when I held school for them. I learned, too. One of the things I learned was Morse code. We had TBY portable, (pack on your back) radios for our radiomen who would be with the infantry company commanders. One TBY operator was always with the battalion commander. These were heavy, tube-type radios with heavy batteries. They gave lots of trouble. There were some smaller handheld radios, which were given directly to the platoon commanders, but they were almost useless. We had a TBX Hallicrafter Transceiver that was very good and we used it to communicate with Sixth Regimental Headquarters Command Posts. We could receive international news from KFS San Francisco in code and sometimes we would publish a one sheet newspaper. We were hearing about Marines at some place like Vella Lavella and began thinking our next battle would be at Truk or Bougainville.
As Radio Section Chief, I was responsible for the effectiveness of a lot of this equipment and operators who would accompany battalion and company commanders. The men were superb but the equipment was lousy.
About this time our battalion made a training march with full battle gear up to Foxton (?) about 60 miles. It was plenty tough. Jeeps followed us, picking up people who dropped out. I don’t remember that any of my group dropped out. It rained on us. We spent the night on the road. The radios quit working. One of my memories was as I walked beside Colonel William K. Jones, a radioman named Corpier attached to Jones was carrying his wet radio along with his regular pack which made quite a load. “Poor Corpier,” said the Colonel, “you have to carry it and the darned thing doesn’t even work!”
We were issued new shoes that were smooth on the inside and rough on the outside. They were made by the Jarman company and were excellent. We had New Zealand woolen socks and some beautiful, wonderful New Zealand woolen blankets. About this time we were issued “Reising Guns” which were a poor man’s version of a Thompson machine gun. They had a “coat hanger” folding stock. They fired 45 caliber cartridges from a clip. They fired single fire, semi-automatic and full automatic. They didn’t carry very far and no one could hit anything with them. On full automatic they would rise too quickly and you could get rid of a clip in about 7 seconds. We fired them for record. I had always scored Expert or Sharpshooter. With them I barely qualified as “Marksman”. I knew that if I got into action I would try to get hold of a Springfield or a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle).
We made many more maneuvers. Sometimes we made practice landings from a new vehicle, an amphibious tractor. These could travel through the water, carrying about 25 troops and then keep on going when they got to land. It didn’t do either very well. They were about as reliable as my TBY radios. We were to use them in our next action. They were bad news!