Noumea was the capitol of the island. All the French lived here and occupied most of the city. I have a picture in my mind of red tiled roofed houses, small and unpretentious, set on the hillside, one behind the other in rows, almost like a terraced garden. Each house had an outhouse and the "honey wagons" came once a day to collect the contents of the buckets. This was then used as fertilizer on the local farms. I refused to eat any uncooked vegetables there.

The only imposing structure in the city was the Catholic cathedral, sitting on the crest of a hill overlooking the harbor. On the road up this hill was a very good bakery and an ice cream parlor with very reasonable prices. During the first week of U.S. troop occupation, ice cream cones soared in price from 5 cents to 35 cents. At that point our commander, General Alexander Patch, sent a contingent of Military Police to the establishment with Off Limits signs and instructions to see that no U.S. personnel entered the store. Within a half hour the price dropped back down to 5 cents a cone. Every Sunday each occupant of our tent chipped in 15 cents and someone made the bakery purchase for the day. The 75 cents total gave us enough cookies to last the day with some left over.

Though the contingent that landed on New Caledonia was basically a division - three infantry regiments (the 164^th, 132^nd and 182^nd), artillery consisting of 105mm howitzers, 155 howitzers and 105 rifles, quartermaster, ordnance, medical, signal corps support groups - it was designated as a Task Force rather than a division. Our ordnance group was larger (medium maintenance) than a divisional group (light maintenance). Our medical group was thin (a field hospital and one dentist with a foot-operated drill). Not usually a part of a division, we had an anti-aircraft battery attached to the group, a 37mm (howitzer and rifle) artillery group and Colonel George's Jeep Corps. In all, we totaled about 25,000 troops.

Colonel George and General Patch were great buddies. They shared both an admiration for the Jeep motor vehicle and a vision of its utility as a battle instrument. About sixteen or twenty vehicles (no one could agree on a count) were manned by fearless road cowboys who practiced running at full throttle over fields, up hills, across creeks and through forests. Each Jeep had a crew of four: a driver and three machine gunners. They practiced strategies on how best to take "enemy objectives."

One day Colonel George brought a Jeep into our automotive section with a question of the plausibility of mounting a 37mm cannon where the rear seats were. Our Master Sargent assured him that a mount that gave the rifle a 180 degree traverse was very possible. Colonel George said he didn't want some jury rig that would break loose after a couple shells were fired. The Master Sergeant guaranteed that the mount would hold up fine.

So the mount was bolted and welded to the rear platform of the Jeep. As a trial run, the Colonel instructed a crew to drive a Jeep across a field to a white line, stop the vehicle so that the cannon was aimed at two hay bales at the other end of the field and fire off a round at the hay. All this was to be done in the fastest possible time.

As reported by our Master Sergeant: "When they fired that first round, the front wheels went north, the rear wheels went south and the body of the Jeep settled down about two feet vertically in a cloud of dust. And, fellows, there wasn't a single cracked weld or broken bolt on that mount." Colonel George's comment: "Back to the drawing board."

Our workshops were in Noumea. The machine shop and the instrument repair shop were in two school bus-size trucks, each fitted with work benches. The small arms, artillery and automotive shops were housed in what had once been a warehouse. On occasion we were sent out up the island to do field work. I visited Bourake, Bouloupari, Thio, Nakety and Dumbea. Actually these were nothing more than localities of shacks and mud huts.

Two of these field trips stay in my mind, probably because of the circumstances. One, I served on a board of inquiry in a case where an artillery shell landed short and killed two soldiers on a patrol. The howitzer had not been moved from where it had fired the fatal round. My task was to visually inspect the artillery scope and the aiming circle (an optical instrument) without making any physical contact with the instruments or the weapon. [There was a stern-faced Major watching me closely and I'm sure he would have screamed if I had lifted a finger toward the evidence.]

After my inspection I was questioned:

• Do the instruments appear to be whole and in good repair?
• As nearly as you can determine, do the instruments appear to be aimed in the proper direction for firing?

I answered "Yes" to both questions and then signed a witnessed statement that I had said Yes to both questions. That was it.

For the second trip I was sent out with the artillery sergeant to investigate a problem (that's all we knew) at an anti-aircraft battery. When we got there we were told that a round had been fired the night before in one of the three-inch guns and it was stuck in the middle of the barrel. These A.A. rounds were pre-set to explode either at a certain altitude or on contact with a solid object. The artillery sergeant said, "No problem," and asked for a tent pole which had a hollow end. He instructed me to get on the open breech-end of the gun and catch the projectile when he forced it down. With no small amount of trepidation, I caught the slug. The sergeant inspected the rifle barrel, said it was serviceable and sauntered back to our vehicle. As soon as we were out of earshot he explained that the projectile would not be armed until it had gone at least fifty feet out of the barrel so there was no danger when he pushed it out. He further explained that he didn't want the gun crew to know that it was a safe procedure, "otherwise they'll attack the next hang-up with hammers and crow bars."

In mid-July '42, a contingent of about twenty was sent to Bourail in mid-island to service the outfits in the upper section of the island. This cut down travel time - the roads were rutted dirt and narrow, winding through steep hills. We had very little work to do. We learned that the artillery and infantry groups wanted to break the monotony of the "wild country" and used any excuse to take their repair work to Noumea, the big city. I was the sole instrument man and I still had practically no call for my services. So I joined the others; explored the country-side, fished a couple of streams, climbed a high hill, discovered an abandoned orange grove (we brought back about a bushel of oranges), and enjoyed other such pleasures. We scared up many deer which gave someone the idea of organizing a hunting party. They brought in two deer the first day so we added venison to our ration of canned meat and vegetable stew. We searched for, but never found bananas, though we knew they were cultivated and grown on the island.

One afternoon the company clerk came into our tent and told the three of us to be prepared to sneak out with him at 4:30 P.M. He had an invitation to dinner at a French planter's house. He had met the planter and used his limited high school French language to start up a friendship. The four of us presented ourselves to the Frenchman and met his wife. Their home was small but comfortable. The clerk translated our English amenities to the husband who retranslated the high school jargon into understandable French for his wife. We had an enjoyable dinner - meat, vegetables, potatoes, fruits and desert. At the end, one of the fellows asked the clerk to thank the wife for the delicious dinner and added: "Tell her the rabbit was very tasty." This was translated to the husband who looked quizzically at the clerk and then broke into a large smile. He translated the remark to the wife who shook her head while she roared with a hearty laugh. The husband then turned to the clerk and in broken English explained: "Not rabbit; flying fox." We had had a tasty dinner of tropical bat! It might be said that the flying fox is as big as a large rabbit and eats nothing but fruit. It is considered a delicacy in the tropics.

News was hard to come by in our area. We had Armed Forces Radio (if someone had a radio) and now and then we would get a copy of the Armed Forces Newspaper (was it called the Stars and Stripes?). Coverage was not extensive. At one point, a contingent was to go to the Northern end of the island to service shore batteries. Suddenly, the trip was called off. At the same time, we started getting "combat training." We actually went out and did target practice with our Lee Enfield rifles. We dug air raid trenches. We learned defense tactics (but not a lot) and suddenly realized that we would be ill prepared if we met an enemy.

This program lasted three days and then one of the crew of the shore defenses visited us with news that there must have been something happening out in the ocean. Much floating wreckage, life rafts, many bodies were washed up near their camp. [This was just about the time of the Coral Sea battle.]

One day at morning assembly the Captain announced that the company had been requested to modify four 155mm artillery rifles from wheeled mounts to Panama (stationary) mounts. The 155 rifle had a barrel (I would estimate) about 15 feet long and fired a 6.1 inch diameter shell. We were asked to take the gun barrel off the six wheel mount and put it on a circular plate which would later be welded and bolted to a concrete and steel base so that it could be swung through an arc of 180 degrees. The catch was that the bases were being constructed in Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides and the 155s and their attached mounts would be transported on the U.S.S. President Coolidge. The Coolidge was in Noumea harbor, due to leave in four days. With one day for loading, we had three days.

Under searchlights at night and under the sun during the day every available man pitched in. I wire-brushed parts and sanded welds and hustled cylinders of acetylene, helped torque bolts - anything that was needed. Everyone pitched in and the job was complete in two and a half days. This resulted in the award of the Meritorious Unit Citation.

On the lighter side: Our Master Sergeant was just leaving the compound in a jeep for a trip up-island when he was flagged down by a lieutenant. The officer explained that he, also, had to take a trip but there were no jeeps left in the motor pool. "So, sergeant, you'd better take the half-ton truck and I'll take the jeep." While both were gone, orders arrived that the sergeant had received a direct commission to Captain. The machine shop hurriedly made a set of silver captain's bars and various officers contributed proper uniform pieces. The new Captain arrived back at camp a half hour before the lieutenant so there was ample time for congratulations. When the lieutenant arrived, the new Captain notified him that, "From now on you take the half-ton," as he dusted off his new shoulder bars.