Present

Guadalcanal ... Past And

Letter to the Editor IT was enlightening to read the article “Recovery in the Solomons,” in January “Pim,” especially for any of the thousands of Allied servicemen who were among the 150,000 troops which swarmed over the Guadalcanal coastline four or five years ago.

I became first acquainted with Guadal canal in September, 1943, and, from a foxhole, had a worm’s eye view of the final week of air-raids by the Japs—end ing in two Jap bombers being shot down in flames by a daring Yank fighter pilot who dived in among the anti-aircraft gunfire. It was then a fine sight for the troops to see fifty or so Yank Liberator bombers coming in to land in the early afternoon, after dropping their bombs on Japs in Bougainville.

Your Honiara correspondent mentions that old-timers shake their heads over what will happen if the new capital of BSI gets a really bad nor’-west season.

A party of which I was a modest member came back to Guadalcanal from Treasury Island in a convoy of 300-ton ships to find a nor’-east storm raging and big waves breaking along the coastline. Our little ships rocked at anchor for three days. That was in January, 1944. May be, since your correspondent wrote, there has been a similar storm to test out the old wharves and new buildings.

In 1943-4. we enjoyed a lot of good bathing along the beaches near the site of Honiara. There were no beach in spectors then to enforce “neck-to-knee costumes.”

My last glimpse of Guadalcanal was in June 1944, when our tronsport, in perfect, calm weather, steamed through the Russell Islands and past Cape Esperance, and gave us a grandstand view of steep green hills covered in green kunai grass and of the palm-fringed shore littered with wrecks of Jap ships. From the sea, Guadalcanal looks delightful.

I am, etc.,

J.A.S.