Evening star., 1943-04-30
CHAPTER XIX,

The Japs kept coming at night
and kept trying to hide by day. Our
planes would go all over everywhere
looking for them and, when some
body would spot Jap force, the
aviators had job of work on their
hands and ran to it. More often
than not they'd run and get no.
where. What the search plane had
seen would turn out to be islands or
the ships would just vamoose off
somewhere or weather would come
up and block out everything there
was below it or in it.
The ships kept coming through
the weather. In the morning, up
by Kokumbono or Cape Esperance
(the Jap-held parts of Guadalcanal
Beach, there was the spoor of the
ships glittering festively in the early
light - brand-new metal landing
boats for taking men and supplies
on vessels and dumping them into
the laps of the marines.
Then the planes would take out
again, knowing Jap ships must be
within minutes (airplane time) of
Henderson Field, and sometimes
they'd find what they were looking
for and fetch it a clout over the
ears, but more often they wouldn't.
That was the life there as lived
IN the air. 1t wasn't anything for
a man to get fat on. You never
knew, when you took off, what YOU
were going to run into. The sky and
the water were alive with enemies
and whether you stumbled into
them or not, the pull on the nerves
was there, that jittery, f1uttery
tugging going on in you that the
aviators call butterflies in the
stomach"
1t went on when you were on the
way out and went on when Won
were on the way in. There was
always a temptation to relax on the
way In, unbutton your nerves and
sit back in the cockpit because here
was home and nothing left to do but
land on it. However, the Japs fixed
tnat last little moment, too. A cou-
pie times they dropped down out
OF clouds on fellows who were lust
greasing in for a landing and that
was an easy shot for them. That
was just chopping meat in a bowl.
Hard to Let Go.
so nobody ever relaxed until the
motor was dead and he was walking
back up the slope to operations
"here ounces of brandy was
waiting or, if that had given out. a
bottle OF warm beer. And then it
look persistence to really let 20 of
yourself. For there was always
shooting going on at Guadalcanal
or bombing or shelling in those davs
and anywhere from a third to one
half the time the stuff was being
aimed in your direction.
Torpedo 8 lived in tents they had
put up themselves in a coconut
grove. There they learned some
things about war that a man can't
learn flying around in the air look
Ing down at the subject. The Coco
nut grove was nicely pruned of
brush and creepers so that you
could count on seeing snipers be-
lore they got to where they could
hurt you. But bombs falling there
and shells had bad, habit of hit
ting the trees and bursting in the
air overhead and showering their
stuff in a downward spray instead
of upward as when they hit the
ground. That made the holes you
lay in small protection. Fellows
lying in holes cut in open ground
had had to have a direct hit to get
killed, but when you were under
trees you had a good chance of
getting it from shrapnel.
Then the men acquired a more
accurate appreciation of bombs and
of the difficulties in the way of
doing damage with them. An avi-
ator who has never been bombed or
strafed from the air is likely to
think of himself as cutting wide