would go right through the tent and floor into the ground.
Our beachhead area had a squadron of Australian fighter pilots, a battalion of Fijians soldiers in addition to the American troops. All total there were about 45,000 of us at the height of the conflict. Our estimate of the enemy troops at that time was about half as many as ours, but it turned out that there were about 80,000 of them.
Both Guadalcanal and Bougainville are very mountainous, the latter had two active volcanoes. One of those, Mt. Bogona, over a mile high, was only about ten miles from our camp. It steamed and smoked continually; a number of times at night we were awakened by its rumbling and shaking the ground.
The 3rd Marine Division - 2nd Raider Reg. placed this sign on Bougainville in honor to the Seabees of which I have a picture:
When we reach the isle of Japan
With our caps at a jaunty tilt
We'll enter the city of Tokyo
On the roads the Seabees built.
******
On 2-27-44, 27 months since Pearly Harbor, our forces launched the largest naval air strike of W. W. II against the huge Japanese naval base in the Truk Lagoon, sinking more than 50 of their ships of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Fleet, destroying 265 of their planes in the air and on the ground, plus the majority of their ground fortifications.
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