In Mid November 1944, for the 5th time, we packed
up, boarded and LST and followed MacArthur to the Phillipines.
It was an uneventful trip and we unloaded on a beach about 20
miles S. of Tacloban, I guess the principal city on the Island.
We set up camp right there on the beach, and sat on our duffs
for six weeks. Unfortunately it proved to be the rainy season
on the East side of the archipelego and the only airstrip operating
was a fighter strip a couple miles inland from us. We never flew
a mission off Leyte.
But it was not without interesting events. The
first being my second bout with Dengue Fever and spending another
Thanxgiving Day in the hospital with it. Shrortly after returning
to the outfit a typhoon blew in from the ocean one nite with 90
MPH winds. By morning there wasn't a tent standing and there was
a thouroughly soaked 3rd BombGp. ground echelon. But in a way
we lucked out, as those critters will sometimes create a tidal
wave (sunami?) several feet high. Had this happened, being several
miles from high ground, the 3rd would probably have been wiped
out.
Not long after that we had a Red Alert tht lasted
most of the nite. Turned out the Japs dropped some paratroops
on the air strip inland from us. The Sqs. set up perimiter guards,
and it was a pretty touchy nite. There was a lot of small arms
fire up and down that beach that nite, and I don't believe anybody
got any sleep. Came morning and daylite it didn't take the Infantry
(bless their hearts) long to round up the Japs and things settled
down.
While there we had a chance to get into Tacloban
a time or two and it was pretty well shot up. There wasn't a whole
lot there to see except shell and bomb damaged buildings. Capt.
Speath, our photo officer, had been active with the Boy Scouts
in civilian life and we found a monument to the Boy Scouts of
the Phillipines. Need less to say we had to get a photo of him
by it. And another , very momentous, event occured at Leyte. We
got our first G.I. issue of beer. Finally after three years, the
powers-that-be figured we had earned a free beer.
On Dec. 28th 1944 and LST pulled up to the beach where
we had unloaded six weeks before, and we reloaded our equipment (most
of which had never been unpacked). That nite we pulled away from Leyte
and headed thru the Phillipines straits for Mindoro Island on the West
side of the archpelego. The next 2-1/2 days would prove to be the scariest
days the 3rd Bomb Gp. ground echelon had spent in almost 3 years in
combat zones.
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