AT HOME & ABROAD: Life on the Atolls

How many islands in the vast, inky blue expanse of the Pacific are occupied by U.S. forces is a military secret. Some islands get into the news from time to time. Many others are just map specks in the southern and middle Pacific. They may become news sometime; they may never be heard of until the war is over.

TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod, who recently made a tour of several islands, last week wrote about life in the Pacific:

The most unpleasant feature of war is waiting. U.S. soldiers, sailors and marines defending Pacific outposts get along all right without much fresh food. They can stand the heat, the glare of the sun, the scarcity of beer and Coca-Cola. Unlike fighting men on islands in the western Pacific, they never see a woman—of any color. But what really annoys them is the itch for something, anything to happen. “I wouldn’t mind sitting here under this gun, looking up at the sky day after day, if something would just come along sometimes,” said an anti-aircraftsman after six months on an island. “If I could just glance around one day and see a lot of Jap planes, boy, I’d be happy.”

The officer commanding that island said his forces couldn’t hold it indefinitely against a strong attack: the place is not big enough. “But the troops just pray for the Japs to come. They think they could make them pay a hell of a price, like the marines on Wake Island. They want to see what their guns and planes can really do.”

Life is Crude. There is nothing much to do except to work hard all day, then go to bed. Up at five o’clock, the troops eat a breakfast which may consist of French toast, Karo syrup, sausages and coffee. The world’s loveliest sunrise is golden and purple and leaden. As soon as light appears (“back over there where home is”) a faint flush of warmth pushes back the cool of night. By eight o’clock it is hot and sticky. Standard dress is a pair of khaki shorts, nothing more. The soldiers, sailors and marines are all brown as leather. Men who are not manning guns usually finish their work of building, rebuilding, camouflaging and drilling two or three hours before dark, so there is time for a baseball game or a swim (being careful of the sharp coral rocks). Or perhaps a can of beer—the ration is two cans a week in the isolated outposts. Supper may be Spam, canned beans, baked potatoes, coffee with chicory and canned milk, Jello.

Twice a week there is fresh meat and, once in a lucky while, lettuce. Salt tablets are required to replace the salt lost in perspiration. At night the trade winds bring cool relief and gentle sleep.

Some of the islands are so small that they seem no bigger than a whitecap from a few miles’ distance. The way a Navy plane’s navigator can hit a tiny speck in the vastest of oceans is amazing. The navigators seldom miss, and no navigator misses but once.

On the larger islands life is luxury compared to that on the little specks. The Officers’ Club on one of these large, well-defended outposts has a radio, a pool table and magazines only six or eight weeks old. The tiny wooden bar is tended by a Negro naval messman who has a big electric refrigerator to keep the beer in. The bar opens at 15:00 hours—three o’clock—and stays open until 22:00 hours. Across the dirt road from the mess there is a barnlike recreation hall for enlisted men, which also serves as a movie theater. It is stuffy because of the absolute blackout. The movies are usually one to two years old, which is better than average for posts outside the U.S. Some camps in Australia have only five-to ten-year-old movies—”so old they are new. We had forgotten them.”

Fauna & Flora. The most exotic feature of the islands is the bird life. Americans get a laugh out of the gony bird for a while. Then he is a plain nuisance. Frigate birds are scoundrels who make a living by snatching food out of other birds’ beaks. The sooty tern lays its eggs on the ends of broken limbs of the breadfruit tree. On one island there is a lone rooster. His morning crowing to high heaven wakes up the whole island—that is how big this atoll is. He makes the farm boys homesick.

Some of the islands have no vegetation worth mentioning, and what few palms and bushes there are were planted in soil that was shipped in. Otherwise, all is coral —white, brilliant, mean. The glare from this whiteness probably would drive men mad in time. That is why the defenders of the coral atolls can expect to be relieved after perhaps a year. (A Naval officer noticed three of his tough marines playing marbles one day. Another was flapping his arms, playing airplane. The marines were beginning to crack after 18 long months of close confinement. By now they have been shipped to wider lands with kinder lights.)

These men of the islands represent every State. The smallest island has soldiers from 35 States on its roster, but Alabama and Connecticut predominate. Their devotion to duty is strong. Their life is lonely and boresome, but they know they are doing a job. In their tents or their barracks at night they are constantly and rashly offering $10 for a chocolate malted or $20 for a glimpse of a blonde. They tell each other they would give a cool million dollars, perhaps a billion, to get back home “just for a week or two.” But they stick hard to the nerve-racking duty of waiting, just waiting. They are not likely to be caught by surprise. They are alert and healthy and they would be happy if the Japs would only come, or something would happen.