Louis Roney: Stories from war

When we got to Guadalcanal, we dropped a couple of small boats from the davits into the water. Two officers and two enlisted men in each boat, we headed for shore about 50 yards away. Once there, we opened our folding shovels and dug two big fox holes. We knew that the Japs were on the other side of the island of Bougainville. I had a hand-held machine gun and a bag full of hand grenades on my belt. We knew that our guys were soon coming in behind us en masse to take the island from the Japs and that we would have to leave Guadalcanal ourselves for the mainland.

Most of the natives we had already seen in that area were suffering from filariasis, which resulted in elephantiasis — testicles that were so large that some of their owners had to carry them in wheelbarrows. Our medics had a big job ahead of them to help these people and would begin as soon as we could set up small field hospitals. As Americans commonly do, we brought winning warfare and life-saving medical knowledge. The natives had long since known that Americans were good news who would remove the bad guy Japs, and return freedom to the land. The Japs were a tough enemy and our encounters with them had been horrific and costing lots of American lives.

Our ship, a destroyer escort, was soon buoyed a few yards behind us.

Some Australian military were housed in small bungalow buildings and were most happy to see us. I was soon sitting on a porch talking with one of the Aussies. He told me that the guys from New Zealand nearby were the toughest soldiers anywhere and the Japs seemed loath to fight them at all costs. The Solomon campaign was a major American undertaking, and its success after we took Tulagi and Bougainville made us all sure that we were now on the road to winning World War II.

I was sent down to Nouméa, New Caledonia, to load up on depth charges, and I had a chance to walk around in a fairly civilized town that was out of reach of the war. The population there seemed to be almost sedated, and oblivious to the killing going on just a few miles away. I went in a bar and had a beer and noticed a line of American troops standing at the foot of a long staircase that went up to the top of a big house nearby. I asked a soldier what was happening up there. He said, “Girls up there who like American dollars. Each guy gets 10 minutes.” Ah, the vicisitudes of war, I said to myself.

An American Naval officer asked me to join him in his house where he lived with a Navy comrade. We sat on the porch and looked out to the ocean where the dim vision of the New Hebrides houses was barely visible over the horizon. The American guy told me he had been there over a year and was assigned some kind of shore duty by the Navy. He said that he had a Navy nurse for a friend and lover, so life wasn’t bad.

Aboard ship we hadn’t seen women for a very long time and there was no use thinking of them now, as we would be gone all too soon. Some of us would surely get to Australia before long where, with so many of the men gone to war, the women would be waiting for us with open arms. I learned that this fact was greatly resented by Australian men, but what was anybody to do about it?

It seemed to me that in WWII almost everyone had lost something that he held to be of value. Many had lost their homes, their wives and children, and even we young bachelors were mostly living in a kind of womanless state. The kind of women who were easy to get for us, were not the kind we wanted.

Ashore, we played softball, and I got boxing gloves and boxed with a lot of my officer pals to the delight of cheering enlisted men who enjoyed every blow that landed on an officer’s face.

Life was not real during the war, and we thought of our lives as long and dangerous pauses until we could get back to the U.S. and all the great things that were awaiting us. Lots of guys among us didn’t get back at all, but we managed not to dwell on that harsh reality. Any assignment we were sent on could be a march to our death, and we wouldn’t know until we got there. The missing among our ranks were gone but not forgotten — and we seldom reminded ourselves of them. War is hell all right, and best won and gotten over with. Period.

The good world was waiting for our return, and to celebrate with us if that far-off time would just finally arrive.