It sounded to us as if we were being abandoned and written off as martyrs. These were very lopsided battles. The PT's were armed with machine guns and a couple of torpedoes. The enemy cruisers were bristling with six and eight-inch guns and they always travelled surrounded by their destroyer escorts. Their white big-shots and overseers preferred to live on Tulagi and SingSong because of the horrid stench of Guadalcanal.
SingSong is shaped like a lopsided diamond, about a mile long and half as wide.
One point has a small sand beach where we washed our clothes and took salty baths, always keeping a keen lookout for cruising sharks. The island gradually slopes up to the widest area where the Lever Brothers overseer had his house. From here, the land narrows to a point with a sheer drop into the channel. The shed had a tin roof with a gutter system emptying into a cistern. Inside were two huge copper kettles built over a brick firebox.