15C this am. Heavy dew. Went prawning with bowling friends on their 28 footer. Beautiful day, found a bay to float about while we had lunch. Got a 5 gallon bucket almost full of prawns. Got home around 3pm. Read a bit out in the garden but I must confess I dozed off!

No word came through for a couple of weeks, then one day when we just got back from some field hand to hand stuff, I was called again to the Colonel’s office. No shot of booze this time, he just said, “Your request for active duty is approved Master Sergeant, be ready to go within the hour. Dismissed.”

  An hour later I was headin’ out with one other, The Captain, came up just before we left and shook hands with both of us, “Good luck men, I hope when I get back out there we’ll be in the same unit.”

  Five days later I was jumping out of a Dakota onto a sand runway just off the coast of New Guinea. Over the next few months I was at Nassau, Arwe and Cape Gloucester; in July of ’44 we hit the beaches at Guam and then on to Angaur. I tell ya, there were many times I wished I was back in that Oregon desert.

  Finally I got rotated back stateside, had just about a month’s furlough then spent a few months with a recruiting officer. I was not much good at that;  I think he asked for me to be transferred out.

  I was sent up to Fort Pendelton to help with basic training but I didn’t get much out of that. I was having a hard time, what I had been trained for was to be a fighting soldier; I was no mechanic, was a lousy driver and  wasn’t smart enough to work in officer country.

  I started drinking too much, got into fights, lost my Master stripes, once was even demoted back to Corporal for a month.

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ne afternoon in mid January of 1945, I was just hanging out at the non coms bar when I got a call to head over to the adjutants office. I finished my beer and strolled over. There were five other guys waiting in the little waiting room. We waited for perhaps ten minutes when this little female private came out, “Here’s your orders, you’re being transferred.” She said.

  We were out of there before supper and were on our way to what they called a refresher facility down in California. Actually it was a place where they whipped you back into shape and squeezed the booze out of your veins.

  Two weeks later we were boarding a ship and heading once more for the South Pacific. We practiced beach landings using amphibious vehicles and landing craft then on February 16, 1945 we attacked Corregidor, I think the spot was called Wheeler Point.  The enemy were supposed to have been softened up by the air force but there was still plenty of muscle left in those guys. Ten days later we had retaken all that we had given up three years earlier.