chapter 5 | for god and country
South Pacific Task Force
Monday, January 18, 1943 Noumea, New Caledonia.
0420 – General Quarters. The earliest yet. Was I sleepy getting up at this hour!
0515 – Mass as usual on the Upper Deck Aft. Quite gusty. Sky looks threatening but fortunately continues to only look so. This day we make port. All hands on tiptoe of expectation as we steam ahead. About 1000 we have General Quarters, a sure sign that we are nearing our destination, even though we sight no landfall. 1100 – Word
runs through the ship like a prairie fire. “Land! On our starboard side!” Sight of the good earth again. Just a short distance away, surf is breaking over the coral reefs. As the article in the National Geographic magazine for July described it, this island, New Caledonia, is surrounded by coral reefs that extend from one to ten miles off shore. We can see indistinctly mountains in the distance; even through the long glass they are vague. At twelve we take the pilot aboard and snake our way up the channel to anchorage. On our port, a lighthouse, immaculate white on a little fifty-foot island. We turn back on our wake; on the south side of the island is the whitest sand we have ever seen and the greenest of water. Day is now sunshiny, clouds have burnt away and a pleasant breeze is blowing. Suddenly it gets very humid. The mountains apparently shut off the wind.
63 | chapter 5: south pacific task force
The mountains are intense purple in the distance, primitive looking, as though they were built at the very dawn of creation. One of the men standing up on the gun platform group #3 remarks: “They don’t believe in foothills here, Father.” First there are little mountains out wading in the sea. Then there are three tiers of them, the next higher than the one ahead of it. The last tier pushes its head up into the clouds. All of them look as though they were fashioned when the world was young. Another sailor, a CB this time, remarks, “You get mighty close to God looking at the tops of those peaks.” How do our passengers feel about their new home? One of them put it this way, “We have our job to do here and we’ll be happy doing it.” We make our way in slowly for two hours. Now we can see the scenery at close range. The coastline is like a comb, cut in by innumerable inlets. As we skirt them, we note that ships are hiding around the hills at the mouth of each of them. We make our entrance into one of them. It is a narrow passage, only about 300 feet wide. Carefully we nose in, while searchlight signals are concentrating on us from four different places, two ships and two shore stations. We are amazed at the collection of shipping. First, about 30 freighters are counted. As we come by the two little hills rising sharply and standing guard at our inlet, we count many more, 28 in all, plus the 30 others. We now descry men of war, a big battlewagon, destroyers and minesweepers. Something is being built here alright. We had seen the same building up before we set out for Africa. May God be as good to us and as generous with His protection on our new mission as He was then – rather may we show ourselves worthy of His protection and care.
