The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1944-01-06

Back in 194l, during maneuvers in
| Louisiana, some troops, conscious Of
! insects and snakes, used their shelf
er halves as hammocks. Now the
Army issues jungle hammocks, COM
plete with mosquito bars.
Along about P. NJ, any day, a
| soldier is pretty apt to crawl INTO
his hammock if he has no particular
duties. He settles down as comfort
ably as possible and maybe begins
to wonder how the wife and young
sters are getting along, if he has
them, or his sweetheart, or the girl
next door at home, OF about that
last furlough he had.
AIR RAID WARNING
Likely as not, it begins to rain
and his wonderings turn to his fox
hole and how much water there's go
ing to be in it. Then about this
time, to add to his troubles, there is
an ear-splitting wall from the warn
ing siren. The reaction is apt to be
tenseness and a wild hope that 1t is
false alarm, with practically a
simultaneous realization that there
are no false alarms on Bougalnvllle.
| So the soldier opens the upper OF
his moquito netting, hunts for his
shoes and runs and slides into the
foxhole which, unhappily, is about
half full of water by this time.
About now Washing Machine
Charley" drones over on one of his
frequent nightly visits. Charley IS
a japanese two-engined bomber SO
named from the fact that its motors
seem to run more slowly than the
American variety. Anyhow, 1t
makes its dummy run, circles back,
and the bombs begin to drop. Be
fore a bomb is released peculiar
| noise like three clicks is heard,
| and the missile is on its way. The
explosion sounds like it does in the
movies, say the soldiers but it is
| much closer, and the ground shakes
for several thousand yards around
the point of impact. Then the frag-
ments whistle through the trees.
Wet from the water in his fox
/ hole. the soldier crawls back into his
hammock. Commonly, there aren't
any very picturesque remarks. Prob
| ablv. the conversation will consist of
such observations as: Il wonder
where they dropped" "Did you hear
the antiaircraft give 'em hell?,"
"Did we have any night fighters
up?" and 81 didn't hear any clicks. "
COUNT BOMBS DROPPED
Another interesting speculation
concerns the probable number of
| bombers up there. It's guesswork,
of course, since they cannot be seen
at night. A further diversion is
counting the number of bombs drop
ped. There are those who are GER
tain they counted each and every
one of them, but usually it is a con-
| luSillS SainS'
OF course, the early bombing is
ordinarily only the first of nightly
series. Maybe there will be another
around midnight, and agai1 after
another couple of hours sleep and sc
on during the darkness. The same
process must be gone through each
time.
| Naturally, there are other perils
Japanese like to infiltrate back into
| the American lines. Depending up
on how close to the Japanese the
American soldier is, he sticks to his
foxhole or sleeps in his hammock
In foxholes, snoring isn't safe. II
| is too good a direction finder foi
japanese on the prowl for sleeping
victims. A snorer is speedily awak-
ened. Alertness is necessary to con-
tinued living.
But soldiers can grin at them
selves when alarms have turned out
to be merely night sounds which
1 lOOleu lIieilfs otdll EC1 SCalt oeshios
G. Smith herein describes what hap.
pened to him, Captain Reginald S
Jackson of Kenton, and Master Ser
geant Henry Brandt of Lakewood
as follows:
UNDERBRUsH RATTLES
"Just as we were doing off, 6
rattle in the underbrush along the
trail startled us into wakefulness.
whispered across the intervening
darkness to the captain, did yor
hear anything?'
"The captain replied that he, too
had heard the sound, and Brandt
announced from his hammock thai
he had also. All of us crept from
our hammocks and got as close t.
the ground as possible. Aiming our
selves, we crawled out into the trai
and listened intently for repeti
tion of the noise. 1t came again;
stealthy rustling in the underbrusl
off to our left. Moving forward,
bumped into figure crouched in tn,
darkness.
Its me- whispered Brandt, ant
sat back on my launches anC
strained my eyes peering into tn,