REAL LIFE
These figures are by no means complete. Some pages of my diary were blank
because we were just too busy shooting or being shot at. We were scared a lot of
the time. The weeks and months of anxiety and tension...long days of tedious
work, night watches at the edge of the jungle suddenly punctuated by sheer
terror are only hinted at - if you can read between the lines. What is there are
the impressions of a young 20 year old Marine just as they were written 53 years
ago. They detail the war in the Solomons as I lived it...one day at a time.
We sailed from San Francisco on June 22, 1942. I had just turned
20, and the South Pacific was a long way from Edinburg, Texas, where
I had grown up. Twenty-two days later we landed in Wellington, New
Zealand. It was July 12. We stayed there for a couple of weeks where
we, along with 10 or 12 thousand other Marines unloaded our ship, the
Erickson, and loaded onto the Marine Transport USS McCauley.
Preparing for combat, we made several long hikes in New Zealand to keep us
conditioned for what lay ahead. We left New Zealand on the 21st of July, sailed
around the Pacific and made practice landings on the Fiji Islands. We would
disembark from the ship, climb down the nets, onto the Higgins Boats and go in
toward the beach. But we never actually landed. We would then turn around and
return to the ship. We were informed on August 3rd at a non-commissioned officers
conference there, by Lt. Bradbury (later to become Captain), I Battery Commander,
that we were to land on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. We were going into
battle. Ammunition was issued to all and we spent the rest of the time loading
ammunition belts and getting prepared for combat. On August 6, we were ready.
AUGUST 7, 1942
Our naval ships started shelling the beach at about 6am and we landed on the
beaches at 7:30. We had two air raids. Six Jap planes flew over and one of our
American destroyers was damaged while we hauled ammunition and carried guns
nearly all day. At night there was shooting in all directions. We stayed low.
50 // War Thunder Community Magazine
The GameOn Magazine