Lunga Point (CVE 94) - Naval Cruise Book

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considering the fact that 79 per cent of the Ship ' s Company had never even been to sea be- fore. It was not, therefore, too much of a sur- prise when on Saturday, 15 July 1944: 12-16 Steaming as before. 1207 Pilot came aboard. 1212 Commenced standing in to Fin- schafen. New Guinea harbor on various courses and speeds. Pilot, C aptain Bell, Royal Aus- tralian Navy, at the conn. Captain, Executive Officer and Navigator on the bridge. 1233 Stationed all special sea details. 1326 An- chored in Dreger Harbor, Finschafen, New Guinea, in 1 5 fathoms of water, mud and coral bottom, with 45 fathoms of chain out to the port anchor on the following bearings; Left tangent of Matura Isla nd 039°T, right tangent of Nussing Island i9i°T, Nababangdu Point 000. 5°T. SOPA: U.S.S. Liinga Point. 1355 secured special sea details. Set Condition of Readiness III, Material Clondition Baker. Cut out generator 3; cut in generator 2. Gen- erators I and 2 in use. All engines in standby condition. 1400 Set clocks back one hour. New Guinea presented a picturesque sight to us from the ship soon after the first landfall, with her stately coconut palms swinging gently in the breeze, but after coming to anchor we had a close-up view that was not so pretty, be- cause we then saw the ra ages of war at first hand. The outer islands were entirely burned out of all undergrowth from shcllfire, and even the graceful palms still standing were shell- scarred and broken. While this was a horrible sight to us then, it was to be a common sight to us in the future, since most every island we visited during our first year bore such mute evidence of the ravages of war; damage to nature ' s beauty that would take generations to restore. •Shortly after arri ing in Finschafen we se- cured docking space and shifted over to the pier where we immediately started unloading our cargo of planes and disembarking our many passengers. Not a one of our passengers knew exactly where he was going; their orders merely designated various bases with code names, however, they all disembarked at Fin- .schafen for further transportation to their ul- timate destinations, and they were a funny, yet pathetic sight as they stepped from that quickly thrown up dock into the foot-deep mud of New Guinea, not knowing how or when they were lea ing there or where they were going. Having gotten our ship down there, we were quite prepared for most any kind of a surprise. The entire West Coast of the United States was, at that time, operating under dim-out con- New Guinea; bottom: Marine camp at New I 39

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jiimixtl from mid-iUKln S;iiiiicl;iy to inid-ni lit Siiiuliiy willi very liul ' rlioit. ilic priiK ipal clloii Ixini for tin- QuartormasicTs to move tlic ship ' s throiiumctcrs forward 24 hours. Con- SL ' qucntly. we held Divine Services on Mon- day, but all liands were lookini forward with pleasant antiriijation to f ettinK that Sunday bark on our return Jcnirney to Uncle Sutjar, which couldn ' t be too so(jn for us. Oruisint; alont? over the broad expanse of the Pacilic, it suddenly occurred to us that the ci ilian Nyvee was doini; a remarkable job, because we were almost to our destination, and we hadn ' t gotten off the road even once; thoui h. one of tho.se lawyer OOD ' s did run us out on the shoulder about 500 miles a couple of limes, tnit he was assisted to some extent by om- Navigator, who is actually a dry ice salesman in civilian life, the extent of his navigating heretofore having been to plot a course from his home to his plant in San Fran- cisco. At any rate, it seemed perfectly un- canny that we were, at least, in the general vicinity of the South Pacific, and not too far from Finschafen, New Guinea. In all fairness, however, wc must admit that we had had some help in getting the boat that far, because, to be honest about it, there were scattered remnants of the Old Nyvee to be found here and there in more or less strategic parts of the ship. Our . ir Ollicer. in charge of Hying machine operations, was of th fairly old Nyvee, having graduated from the Naval Academy in 1935. Fortunately, our Head Mechanic (some folks call him the Chief Engi- neer) was of the Fighting Nyvee, and he had live other regulars to help him grind the valves, put in new rings, clean the spark plugs, remove the carbon, change the oil, adjust the Lowly PoIJywog receives nourishment. points on the distributor head, and keep her otherwise tuned up. Then, we had a Boat- swain (pronounced Bos ' n ) to pull in the anchor. We had a fellow down in the C. R. Department to teach us wood-carv-ing as well as to repair leaks in the plumbing. Then there was another one up in the Radio Shack to get the news out of the air for us. We also had another one up there as C.W.O. Then, there was a long, lean and lanky guy known as the Gunner, who was supposed to teach us to shoot, but we ne% ' er see him when the shootin ' s going on. There was also a fellow known as the Gas King, his job corresponding to that of the corner filling station operator, because it was none other than that guy who was constantly and eternally outing the smoking lamp while he filled the tanks of our fly-ing machines. Then, we had a Ship ' s Scrive- ner (some call him the Ship ' s C ' lerk), and. belie ' e me, we needed him because anyone who has ever attempted to write an official letter the Ny ' ee way- is thoroughly convinced that it takes a specialist of long standing to write it according to the book. Last but not least, we had about twenty-five Chief Petty Officers and possibly fifty enlisted men to form a nucleus on which our Skipper had to work in training us into a first-class fighting crew. Therefore, taking everything into consideration, it must be admitted that the civilians didn ' t drive the boat down that far all by themselves, al- though, even the civilians, at that point, as a result of their intensive indoctrination pro- gram, were beginning to take on the appear- ance of Old .Salts, which was quite surprising 38

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clitioiis at nii ht that losrly resembled a hlat k- oul, and all the way down we had relii iously darkened ship one-half honr Ix-fore sunset each evening, and no one was allowed to smoke in any exposed location. What C(juld ha e Ix-en more siirprisini; to us, then, than to learn that there would he no black-out in Finschafen, even in oin ship? That night, Finschafc ' ii and the surroundinu; military installations looked like Times .S |uare. It seemed c|uite bold to us, what with thousands of Japs entrapjjed Just north of us around W ' ewak. At any rate, we had no attack that night and were able to pro- ceed with our job of unloading unmolested. We had another .surpri.se in the distorted picture we had had of the natives. Naturally, wc had all read books, and we had all seen movies about the .South Pacific, and we e.x- p cctcd to find the natives not bad to look at to say the least. Since our stay there was to be short, very few were allowed to lca e the dock. Fortunately, however, the Captain needed some khaki pants, and when the Old Man needs khaki panl.s the .Ship ' s .Ser ice Orticer has to go into action; in fact, when the .Skipper needs anything, somebody has to go into ac- tion. The only good thing that ever came out of being Ship ' s .Ser ice Officer was the oppor- tunity to go shopping for the C ' aptain ' s pants in New Guinea. We, being .Ship ' s .Service Officer at the time, bright and early the next morning, took our Number 2 Jeep, hoping to find tlie Captain ' s pants at an Army Post Ex- change we liad heard of about ten miles up the coast. We took along Bos ' n Luck and Dr. MacDonald; Boat.s to help us weigh an- chor in that mud. and Dr. MacDonald to treat us in case of snake bite, because we had already heard of an eight foot python crawling in the bunk of an Army Ofticer his er ' first night there. After leaving the dock, we found that the SeaBees, as usual, had done an excellent job of building roads up and down the coast; so we headed north along a er - good dirt road, only occasionally running into deep mud. We passed camp after camp of Army and .SeaBee units as we dro e along through the hot. humid groves of coconut palms. We finally found the Post Exchange we were looking for, but they- didn ' t have the correct size pants for the Captain: so we began our return journey to the ship. On the way up we had seen numerous natives in British uniform, patrolling the roads, but we hadn ' t seen any natives in their native dress. Finally, returning to the ship along this jungle road, we saw two individuals with a very dark sun-burn emerging from the jungle on our p)ort hand. .Slowing down to get a go(xi look, it turned out that they were none other than New Ciuinea ' s Dagwood and Blondie out for a .Sunday morning stroll. We had always heard that the natives in these parts made the women do all the work, and these two con- firmed it. Pop was out frcint. wearing a loin cloth and nothing else, and carrying about a six fofjt staff in his right hand. He .seemed to be awfully well built and in the best o( shape physically. It was, of course, impossible to tell his age, but, though he didn ' t look it, we guessed his age as about fifty. Mom was trudging along about six feet astern, wearing a length of what appeared to be brightly colored, but dirty, gingham wrapped around her body from her arm pits to just above her knees, and she was carrying a heavy burden on her back, suspended in a sort of sling from her head. .She was diminutive to say the least, and appeared to be aljout 15 years old, but not holding her youth too well under the burden imposed on her by being Dagwood ' s spouse. .She was everything but the Dorothy Lamour type we had expected to find. Returning to the ship, we found them load- ing old planes and a few passengers for trans- pwrtation back to the .States. We also found lots of visitors at our Gedunk .Stand, Ijuying ice cream and anything else we could sell them. These . rmy lads and .SeaBees had been there a long time without too much in the way of luxuries; so it was a pleasure to let them have anything we could spare, including our pre- cious cargo. We also found three .Army- Nurses, not too glamorous looking in their cover-alls, waiting for the .Ship ' s .Service Officer to see if he would sell each of them one of the pretty leather compacts that were reserved for the .Ship ' s Company. After one good look at them we realized that they were in desperate need of something to combat the effects of. the New- Guinea climate on their complexions; so we let them each have one, and they were three happy girls if we ever saw .any. As a matter of fact, we believe they would gladly ha e paid five times the price we charged them. The sight of these three girls, undergoing the same hardships as the men in New Guinea, convinced us of the many sacrifices they are 40