ON GUADALCANAR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 20, 2 November 1943, Page 7

ON GUADALCANAR

IMPRESSIVE LANDING "MORE LIKE A PICNIC" Our landing on the shores of Guadalcanal* must have looked impressively warlike from a distance. The big grey troop transport swung into the channel behind a screen of escorting destroyers, and had scarcely stopped moving before it lowered its fleet of landing barges into the water and stecl-helmeted soldiers, clad in jungle green uniforms,, began to scramble down to cargo nets. Trailing white foam, the barges sped to the shore. The bow ramps dropped and the men leaped on to the beach. Up to that point it was the approved conception of an assault landing, but. now it petered out. The soft morning sunshine laj r smilingly over the coconut palms and the dark green jungle and the blue hills. Blue smoke from a hundred field kitchens drifted straight up through the still air. This was Guadalcanal*, but this was also the month of April. The war was out of sight and hearing. "Heck!" said a private,, whose boots had just touched the white coral sand, "it's more like; going on a darned picnic!" "No Shooiting" Life on Guadalcanar is not yet altogether a picnic, but the hand of civilisation has caressed the island since I left here before the fighting ended in February. For the; newcomers with whom I arrived this time, the first notice boards we saw held a touch of unconscious irony. They said, "No shooting." (They were meant not as a joke, however, but as a warning against the exploding of captured ammunition near inhabited areas). Camps had taken on an air of permanence, with marked pathways and coral decorations around the wooden-floored tents. Military police were stopping traffic offenders on the greatly improved roads. Guadalcanar looked as if it was rapidly becoming a peaceful law-abiding community. But it was never wise to rely on first impressions of Guadalcanar. Before their first day was over, the island showed the newcomers some of its old unpredictable spirit. As I sat. at an outdoor movie show, feeling never more distant from the war, every anti-aircraft gun on tlie island seemed suddenly to open fire. A few fly-high-by-night nuisance raiders were overhead, and we saw two of them caught in the beams of the searchlights while the guns pounded away furiously at them. From far off came the whistle and the dull thunder of a stick of bombs,, but it Avas only the falling of frag-i nrents of our own shrapnel that made our seats at the fireworks display a little uncomfortable. Hali-Hearted Bombing The more night-bombing I see carried out by the Japanese, the more am Ii reminded of the Italians over the Western Desert. It has the same casual, half-hearted, unsystematic characteristics that made us ignore the Italians once the novelty Avore off. Only by sheer chance does it ever seem to do any damage, and probably its real purpose is to keep the other side aAvake. So the best counter to it is to sleep right through it, which you learn to do: after a while—although there is, no saying that a remotely possible, near miss will not get. you out of bed. BetAveen such moments of mild excitement, Guadalcanar to-day is nothing more than "an adA r anced base, in the South Pacific." In this sector there is no front line in the accepted, sense —no point of contact betAveen surface forces —and there cannot be any until either Ave try to take another island from Japan or the Japanese try to . take one from us.