On the first day there, the service groups were told that a Japanese reinforcement force was expected to be landed that night and they were the repulse group. They were put in trenches twenty feet from shore, with nothing but the ocean in front of them and a thin line of 1^st Marines behind them. They saw no action; the Japanese landed about a mile north.

Near the end of October, our Lee Enfield rifles were replaced with Springfields. In early November the rest of the division was on Guadalcanal. The island was exactly as it has been described endlessly: hot, humid, mosquito-infested. A vast sea of mud, damp and soggy. Standard joke: Don't hang your laundry out to dry. It will just get wetter.

One of the first things I learned was to be able to tell the difference between our and Jap two-engine bombers by sound. The motors on our planes were synchronized and gave an even, steady sound: --------------. The Jap Betty (for such was it called) gave an undulating sound: __/\__/\__.

"Charlie" brought his Japanese bomber over nearly every night for the "milk run." Searchlights would pick him up immediately but he was out of range of our anti-aircraft guns. Soon after he arrived, shells from Japanese cruisers came shwish, shwish, shwishing overhead to explode at Henderson field. Charlie would hang around for thirty to forty minutes and would then sign off by dropping a single bomb. He, of course, was directing fire and he did a good job. One night the shelling was particularly heavy and the next morning we had one airworthy aircraft, and that was a Piper Cub scout plane. For some reason they did not follow through that next day: no uncontested low level bombings, no attempt at reinforcement.

One day, I was at Henderson field, which was two parallel landing strips separated by a twenty foot grassy strip. An air alert sounded and just as we got into the slit trenches up on the hill, the bombers came in at a low level and dropped the bombs in the grass strip (one bomb hit the edge of a runway). It was explained that this happened more times than not.

The South Pacific was the "other front." Most of the better equipment was earmarked for the European Theatre - this was the stated strategy. Our air defense was mostly Naval aircraft, operating off the carriers. There were some land-based pursuit planes; they were not great in number and also were outmoded craft, far inferior to the Japanese Zeros.

One day a flight of P-38s, our vastly superior pursuit plane, flew in to Henderson Field, probably from Espiritu Santo. They were a full flight of twelve and they were cheered as they circled the field. The first plane landed and taxied to a parking area off the strip. The second and third likewise landed and formed a neat row with the first. The fourth hit the runway, blew a tire, veered directly into the first three and all four went up in black smoke. It was most disheartening.

I was called on to inspect and repair, if possible, an anti-aircraft director - a cubic-yard size box full of wires. It was an electrical-mechanical device connected to an anti-aircraft gun. As the gunner sighted on the aircraft and followed it in flight, the director calculated how much "lead" the gun should have.

Early in the morning I was at the Navy pier and was put on a PT boat. The skipper looked familiar and I was trying to place him. Had he been an Alfred classmate or someone from my hometown? One of the other boat riders said that he, too, thought the skipper looked familiar.

The engines roared and we were on our way to the island of Tulagi, forty miles away. We slowed once to pick our way through floating debris. We stopped for a short time to inspect a downed Jap plane, still afloat. One of the sailors pointed ahead and we saw - and smelled! - Tulagi. The island is covered with wild geraniums and what it sweet smell it was. We disembarked: forty miles in forty minutes. As we set foot on the pier we were told: You had a famous skipper. That is Robert Montgomery, the movie actor.

I was Jeeped to the AA battery. I asked where the AA Director was. It was in a tent on a long table, entirely disassembled in spite of warnings on top, bottom and four sides. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OPEN ANY PANEL. LEAVE ALL SCREWS INTACT. My aghast reaction was, "Who did this?" A voice behind me boomed out, "I did, Joe Ritz. What the heck are you doing here?" He was a First Marine Gunnery Sergeant but he had been a messenger at the Van Raalte Silk Mill, Dunkirk, N.Y. while I was a cloth tester. We both decided the time would be better spent talking and swigging beer, of which he was able to round up four cans.

One evening word got around that there would be a special show at the movie area with live talent. Unbelieving, we still went to see. Of a sudden there was a roar of a Jeep motor, a screech of brakes as the driver negotiated a sharp turn in the rutted, muddy road. Sitting on the hood of the Jeep with his arms outstretched was Joe E. Brown, the comedian with the big mouth. Even seeing him it was hard to believe that he was there in the middle of a stinking, sloppy, dangerous combat area. He did several of his famous routines, mostly baseball characters and after a half hour followed the audience out of the area when air alert sirens sounded.

One day I came in from the field and went into the repair bus to drop off my tools. I found one of the fellows working industriously at a vise. He told me he was making a neat souvenir - he had a 50mm bullet and was using a small screwdriver to drill out the powder from the center of the shell. "Nothing but tracer powder," he said. I told him he was out of his mind and headed for the rear door. Just got there when the thing exploded. He came charging out and I caught him. He was peppered with literally hundreds of tiny pieces of brass, covering just about completely from his hair line to his belt area and not a single piece in his eyes! There were four other soldiers sitting at the benches and none of them were touched. After we got the injured man to the aid station and he had been treated, the doctor said to me, "Let me look at you." I had picked up four small pieces of brass in the top of my head and one went through my ear - in and out. They were so small I never knew it.

Although we were a small part of the history, we did not share the news. We knew that things were "tough" but that we were doing "pretty well" - this from an infantryman who came in for supplies. There were no maps of the field of action or description of the fighting. We were in a complete void. So it was a complete surprise, in February '43, to be told that the Japanese had left the island and we had won! The shellings and bombings were no longer daily incidents but became now-and-then, hit-or-miss affairs.

And then the reorganization: A division was to be formed - the three regiments of infantry and the field artillery batteries were to be the nucleus and were supported by service groups. Our ordnance company was to be split into two companies: 22^nd medium maintenance and 721^st light maintenance. My name was on the list for the 22^nd and no one knew where they would be stationed. In a week a new list came out and I was with the 721^st to be stationed in an unnamed rest area. We felt we had a good deal when we found the rest area was Fiji. We learned that 22^nd was sent to New Zealand where they spent the rest of the war. They lived in the Wellington Hotel when they were on the North Island and in a country inn when at the South Island.