Peter Flahavin  Guadalcanal Revisited

Monday , January 12th 1998
  Got up at 7.00 a.m. and had breakfast . At 8.00 a.m. we walked down to the Museum to have a chat to Lawrence the Director ( I met him in 1995/96), but he was not in until later. To fill in that time we drove down to the West and East bank of the Ilu River . However , due to a lot of recent rain the road to the beach on both sides was impassable - we would have got bogged for sure. So we decided to try again in a few days when it had dried out.

 Back at the Museum we saw Lawrence and had a chat. I gave him some books and videos on the Guadalcanal Campaign . He requested we give him a list of any items we wanted to remove by midday Thursday at the latest , as the Minister had to sign the permit. We promised to also get items for the museum as well.

Barbwire on Edsons still bytes!

Afterwards we drove out to have a look at Edsons Ridge . Up at the Ridge we walked the ground and I explained the battle to Leo and Timothy. The kids were there in a flash with relics of course and we got expended US and Japanese cartridge cases, including 2 Japanese Navy 25mm AA machine gun cases. I managed to impale myself recovering some US barbed wire, but not seriously (the flies loved it of course). Up at the front of the Ridge I got a Japanese mess tin with internal and lid (marked "II/4" - 2nd Battalion of 4th Infantry Regiment spearheaded the assault down the spine of the ridge - 60 men broke through before they were mopped up in the rear) and Leo got a US Water bottle.

  As we drove back towards the airfield we paused to examine an overgrown American Nissen hut. In the course of conversation with the villagers on the ridge we were told that the battlefield was sold in November-December 1997 for S$8000.00 (US$2000.00) for a housing estate . I had noticed a few new hut foundations going in . They said the Japanese Embassy had bought 3 acres of the site so that new houses would not encroach on their memorial (the people living on the front ridge take care of the memorial for the embassy) . We were shocked that a sale could have been allowed.

  The rest of the display was pretty much the same as I remembered from 1995 (shells ,helmets , equipment , aircraft relics , photos , machine guns etc) and they had a few good US Army photos of Henderson on the wall that I hadn't noticed before . They had the US Army archive numbers on the back, so I hope to get copies (245128 {3798} and 171863) . Back to the (you guessed it) pool and dinner. That night Leigh arrived from Brisbane and we showed him what we had found so far.

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