Sunday

Dawned beautifully, baby, a gorgeous sunrise entailing many gorgeous colors of South Pacific origin. This was witnessed from the shower room where Russell and I were engaged in the early morning ablutions. It’s rather lovely as the sun peeps over the cloud-rimmed horizon, and bursts in shimmering rays through tropical jungle.

The shower room is a small screened in affair with a concrete floor and has the sum total of five shower spouts. The screening is for protection from mosquitoes.

One of the boys has a Marine brother here, who drooped in today. The Joyce boys. He looks very capable of taking excellent care of himself. He is not unhandsome, and has been in the Pacific area for 13 months and doesn’t expect relief until hostilities cease. We’re lucky. Our sojourn should not occupy more than a year’s time.

He was telling of Jap tactics. It seems they let our scout’s go through and close in behind them. As our main force comes up, they mass firepower and shoot for the abdomens of the advancing men. A man whose guts are shot out may suffer for days, and then, too, it takes two or three able-bodied men to carry each wounded man to the rear. That lessens our attacking force. The more I hear about the Japanese it’s easy to see how diabolically practical they can be. Mean in any fight under any consideration.

We had a class on weather, which was on film and showed the amazing formulation of storms. Quite interesting. Also a class in aviation medicine, its origination and development. Very good. Given by a major who is one of our flight surgeons.

We were to fly “Old 200” again this day, but the boys were changing its props, which knocked that out. So more sack time as is usually the case. Are supposed to fly the same ship at midnight tonight. That’s the “Jinx” one I spoke to you of before. We’ve whipped her though.