This picture was taken at a staging area on Leyte in February 1945. My friend Rudy is sitting on one of the boxes packed with equipment waiting to be loaded aboard ship for the next operation at a place I never knew existed. As a precautionary measure, all our clothing and blankets had to be treated with a chemical solution to ward off an acute infectious disease called typhus. It was a rainy morning when we left the staging area and the trucks did not have any tarpaulin but the rain eased up a little so we were not soaken wet when arriving at the beach area to wait...until it was boarding time.
My buddy took this picture of our bivouac area located just south of Kadena. Near the center of the photo, if you look very closely, you will see the curving narrow gauge railroad tracks that runs through a gully or channel right near the large tent. During the air raids I would use the gully instead of my shallow foxhole. A week or so later an Army Field Hospital moved in just to the east of our site. On April 2nd in the late afternoon, a U.S. Navy plane at a very low altitude, passed overhead heading south was in deep trouble because he was being fired upon by the anti-aircraft guns. Shortly after, he came back and was still being fired upon. The AA finally stopped firing leaving me with one unanswered question,"what was that all about?".
My pup tent just happened to be right in the middle of a planned 'Super Highway'. That's what the surveyor told me when I asked,"what's going on here"? A week or so later we moved to a peninsula on the eastern side of the island.>
My duffle bag with my camera in it finally caught up with me on the morning of April 3rd, the date this picture was taken by Rudy. We decided after taking several pictures, that it was time to go back to our area. I was told by another battery clerk in our office that a cook was shot and killed by a sniper near that same location where we took our pictures.
From left to right, Morgan, myself and Kolze. During a night-time air raid I took shelter behind my tent and after a few minutes, I decided it was time to move to another location. There was a bright flash of light but no noise or explosion at the very place I had just vacated. Then I heard someone yell out "are you OK Joe?". I replied "I'm OK, I'm over here ". From then on I would drop down into the gully for protection. The following morning I checked the area behind my tent but didn't see any metal fragments or holes in my tent.
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