Seabees work like demons on Tarawa
By Richard W. Johnston, United Press staff writer
With the U.S. Marines at Tarawa, Gilbert Islands – (Nov. 26, delayed)
The Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack flutter peacefully over the shattered cocopalms and down on the beaches, the surf ripples among the bodies of our dead, but here on the landing strip at Tarawa the Seabees are working like demons.
They are working to convert the bomb-picked Jap landing strip – once a major threat to our island positions in the Pacific – into a new air base for the planes which will help us take a few more steps toward Tokyo when we have consolidated our positions at Tarawa and Makin.
The Seabees swarmed over the airstrip while Jap machine-gun bullets still whistled overhead from their last-stand positions on the north end of the island.
Our fighter planes soon will come in.
There is still occasional gunfire as our patrols mop up Jap remnants huddling in the flame-seared wreckage of their cocolog blockhouses. You can never tell when you will run into a straggling sniper.
One fired a burst of rifle shots at Lt. John Popham of New York and me the other night as we headed for our foxholes in anticipation of a Jap nuisance raid. He missed us by inches but hit a Seabee, Fireman C. R. Witmer of Maxwell, Iowa, in the foot.
This dispatch is written while folks at home are sitting down to platters of Thanksgiving turkey. We share that spirit of Thanksgiving. Most of all, we are thankful to be alive. But for the chance of battle, we would be in one of the cemeteries on the island, hanging grotesquely from the barbed wire in the surf or lying among the wounded who have been taken aboard ships en route to hospitals.