CHAPTER 16 JANUARY 8, 1945 -- FEBRUARY 11, 1945 NAS PITYILU

The trip to the Admiralties took from the 26th of December, 1944 to the 7th of January, 1945, minus the lost day of 1-1-45. The Admiralty Islands are three degrees below the equator and about 120 degrees above zero degrees Fahrenheit. Sure as hell didn't need my winter flight gear there. The ship dropped anchor in Seadler Harbor, Manus, Admiralty Islands. Our squadron was to have relieved VC-76. We were late and they had left a couple of days earlier for the Linguyan operation, supposedly our operation.

The squadron and it's equipment were transported by LCI to Pitilu, a small island on the outer reef of the harbor. This island contained one airstrip made of crushed coral and the living area for the squadron and about 5,000 other sailors. The living quarters were Quonset huts that held about 20 men. These were corrugated metal huts constructed in a grove of coconut palms so it was necessary to be careful where you were walking. One coconut on the head was a trip in a body bag. It was not uncommon in the middle of the night to have a coconut drop on the Quonset hut, ring out like the "Bell's of St. Mary" and shake the hell out of that tin can.

The head (restroom) was a covered hut at the end of a dock built out over the water inside the reef. The sides were laced with strips of olive colored cloth that gave a feeling of no privacy. The showers were out in the open and there was usually a string of naked men walking down the street with a towel over their shoulder. One day, as we were walking down the street, two jeeps loaded with nurses from a hospital ship drove down the same street. As you might guess no one made an effort to cover up. I guess you might say that we could have been the first "streakers". And I guess you might say that the nurses didn't show any signs of being impressed. At least I didn't hear any "oohs and ahs".

  We were cautioned upon arrival in these islands about the disease called Malaria. It is a disease that is spread by mosquitoes and is something that will lay you low with fever, headaches and diarrhea and make you shake like a dog passing razor blades and make you wish you were dead. To prevent this disease we were ordered to take Atabrine. These were little yellow tablets taken orally with water. The pills would turn a person's skin as yellow as the color of the pills had been before he had taken them. There were a lot of yellow people on that little bitty island.

We had pretty much the same flying routine with the addition of simulated attacks on ships. The one I can remember was making practice runs on was a British cruiser. Regardless of how brave I thought I was at the time, I'm glad that it wasn't a Japanese cruiser. That would have been a situation we would have been in if it hadn't been for the "fickle finger of fate". If our squadron had been on a training schedule three months earlier, we may have very well been on board the Petrof Bay or one of the other CVE's, of which some didn't "fair so well", in October and been involved in the Lye Gulf operation and would have been involved in a very serious battle with the Japanese fleet in the Gulf in place of VC-76, the squadron that we were scheduled to relieve on January 7th. This was the last battle that VC 76 was supposed to have been subjected to. The battle was fought between a task force of Japanese battleships and a very surpassed task force of gutsy brave American "Escort Carriers" and destroyers. Against overwhelming odds, the "Escort Carriers" and destroyers won the battle due to timidity of the Japanese Admiral, who believed that an American task force of large carriers and battleships was near by. He was wrong, Halsey and the fast fleet weren't within hundreds of miles. The Japanese could have wiped out the escort carriers and demolished the American invasion forces, leaving a mass of sunken American ships and thousands of dead and wounded in Leyte Gulf.  The planes and the destroyers of the

Coral Runway - Pitilu

escort carrier task force gave the Japanese hell and were largely responsible for the defense of the landing party. And as the "fickle finger of fate" would have it VC 76 was to receive two more operations, Linguyan and Iwo Jima, that were scheduled for VC 93. Their "bad luck" - our "good luck", maybe? I would have liked to have been in those two operations. Not only had the person in charge of scheduling ships missed the "boat", he had caused our squadron to miss the "boat".

As I was saying, the airfield consisted of one strip of white coral. The high heat reflecting off the coral gave an extra lift to the plane while over the runway on take-off. When the plane passed over the hot, white sandy beach and over the cooler air of the dark water the extra lift disappeared and causing the plane to mush because of a lack of airspeed giving the feel of settling into the water. A God awful eerie feeling when you can do nothing about it but wait!

It was on this Island that Jim Wells" true personality really began to reveal it's self. Due to the number of people on the island, transportation was at a premium. The squadron was assigned one jeep for the skipper and one personnel carrier for the rest of us. Anywhere you went was on foot. This included walking down to the flight line. You can imagine our surprise when here comes Wells driving up to the barracks in an eight wheel truck. He had conned the transportation officer out of the

Inside reef at Pitilu

thing with the story of how he needed transportation for his photographic work. Since it was the only vehicle available he took it. I don't think he took a picture while he was on the island. However, he did gain access to their photo lab where he helped himself to their photographs. Don't know why he needed the truck, he didn't have anywhere to go.

Sailing at Pitilu

Not only was the truck in his name, but he wouldn't let anyone else use it. The truck had a right hand drive since we were on a British island and we were required to drive on the left side of the streets, which is strange since everyone on the island was an American. A truck wasn't his only possession, but he claims to have taken possession of a F6F fighter plane that had been surveyed ( that is: written off the books by the Navy). While there, he increased his supply of government

issued gear. Where each officer had one cruise box for all his gear including uniforms, Wells had three and gaining on four. He had extra of everything, not just one extra but six or more of everything. If he could have gotten that stuff home he could have opened a war surplus store after the war. I do have to say he was pretty generous to the rest of us when we needed a pair of gloves or anything he had

Swimming and searching for shells on the reef was one of the main sources of recreation. There were several of the men who constructed sailboats out of various pieces of junk found around the base. One of the favorite pieces of junk was abandoned drop-able gas tanks. One fine day, Roy Kinnard and I confiscated one of these "tank" sailboats and put to sea. That is, at sea inside the reef. For the most part the water is shallow but in places it gets over your head. Well, neither of us had ever sailed a sailboat in our lives and we immediately capsized the thing in water over our heads. We worked for hours swimming and dragging that can against a light current until we got it beached about a mile from where we had departed. The mast and sails were mutilated mass. We abandoned the thing there and "thank God" we never heard from the owner.