#cape gloucester

[theworldatwar]

Men of the US First Marines Division at Cape Gloucester, New Britain, Bismarck Archipelago- late December 1943 CREDIT : Royston Leonard

[carbone14]

Des soldats du génie naval (Seabees) examinent les corps de japonais dans les ruines de leur casemate après 4 jours de bataille pour l'aérodrome de Cap Gloucester – Bataille du Cap Gloucester – Campagne de Nouvelle-Bretagne – Campagne de Nouvelle-Guinée – Guerre du Pacifique – Cap Gloucester – Papouasie-Nouvelle-guinée – Décembre 1943

©Imperial War Museums - NYF 15202

[hjmarseille]

December 1943: photographed from a Coast Guard-manned ship, a Japanese bomb scores a near miss during the landings by 1st Marine Division at Cape Gloucester, New Britain. (AdeQHA)

Photo and caption featured in US Coast Guard in World War II (Elite Book 180) by Alejandro de Quesada

[poor-bloody-infantry]

New Britain. January 1944. Kenneth R. Elkins of East St Louis, Illinois, rests on the jungle floor against a pile of twigs and branches, exhausted after a gruelling patrol following the Cape Gloucester landing.

[ralphspina-blog1]

that one pacific fic i mentioned

short untitled character study/gen fic type thing about snafu as a replacement on cape gloucester, as well as his early friendships with burgie and jay and the development of his methods for dealing with nervous fellow marines. warning for period-accurate racial slur. @webgottrash and @aces-low, heads up since you expressed particular interest!

Cape Gloucester is more of a nightmare awake than asleep, at least when Snafu can tell the difference between the two. He blinks and still sees pitch darkness when he opens his eyes, darker than even the night of a new moon over the bayou, then flinches as a flash of lightning affords him a few precious seconds of vision. In that time, he must kill everything that moves.

 He thought he’d feel some sort of impact when he killed his first man, like a heavy stone dropping into his gut, but he hardly has time to mark the first before the second falls beside that one, then the third, then the fourth. They run at him in ceaseless waves and he thinks, wildly, don’t they care? Don’t they have any love for their lives at all? Don’t they have anyone who will miss them?

 One of the Guadalcanal veterans, a man with curly hair a bit like his, tells him about kamikaze pilots and how intensely the Japanese believe in death before dishonour and seppuku and the emperor as a child of the gods. Then he says not to think of the people he’s here to slaughter en masse in such human terms.

 The suggestion is easy enough to follow. And besides, he has no great love for his life, and doesn’t have anyone who’ll miss him, either.

 Burgie (given names Romus Valton, and Snafu thought he was hurting with the name Merriell) is better at compartmentalizing all of their experiences than Snafu, while Jay (last name De L’Eau, and nearly startled out of his skin when Snafu demands to know if it’s him who brought all this rain when he hears it) is worse. Neither comes as much of a surprise to Snafu, because Burgie was as confident and charming in Melbourne as Jay was shy and antsy, which gave him a pretty good idea of their personalities at base level; Burgie also gave him his new moniker after he made a particularly bad joke about Australian money coming in pounds and ounces, which told him that while Burgie has a very low bar for weird, he also takes things that fly well above it in good-natured stride.

 Jay thinks too much. He obsesses over every worrying thought that comes into his head until he’s acting and talking like it’s completely real. For days after the initial suicide attack, he’s forever pulling Snafu aside to whisper about how the Japs have probably been following all this time, peering at them through the waxy green leaves and fronds, and are only lulling them into a false sense of security before swarming them in numbers they can’t even begin to imagine. His eyes are massive when he says it, his hands clenched tight around Snafu’s forearm.

 “Fuck’s sake, Jay,” Snafu finally drawls when he’s heard about enough, “how secure we gotta fuckin’ be before they pounce, ‘cause right now I’m about ready to settle down and buy a house with ‘em, maybe have a couple rugrats together, I’m so goddamn secure.”

 Jay still looks deeply hurt when Burgie comes to collect them after a few moments of awkward silence, but his expression has shifted to chastised by the time they get back on the move, and at least somewhat in his right mind an hour or two later. Snafu thinks he dealt with it the right way.

 “You gotta be more gentle with him,” Burgie says later, when the two of them are huddled in their tent and glaring out at the rain, equally unable to fall asleep. “Firm, but gentle.”

 “Don’t tell me that li’l shit snitched on me.”

 “I won’t, ‘cause he didn’t. I overheard y’all talkin’.”

 Sometimes Burgie gets the kind of look on his face that Snafu’s always seen on his eldest brothers when they come home to visit and get a good dose of him: half disapproving and half despairing, like they can’t condone the existence of someone like him, but they also aren’t about to blame anyone for how he turned out because he seems like such an unstoppable force of nature. He swings between proud and furious every time he endures it from them, but when Burgie looks at him that way, he just feels guilty right to the tips of his toes.

 “The kid’s drivin’ himself off the fuckin’ deep end, Burgie,” Snafu says, more sullenly than he’d like given that he’s trying to defend himself. “Can’t coddle that shit, we gotta snap him out of it.”

 “Ain’t you ever heard of tough love?” Burgie asks with a winning smile, almost too bright for its murky surroundings.

 “Sure,” Snafu says with a smirk to counter that smile, “just don’t believe in it.”

 “What’s there to not believe in ‘bout it?”

 Love, Snafu thinks, but he just lies back down and closes his eyes instead of answering aloud. Behind his eyelids, the darkness is less complete than when his eyes were open.

[carbone14]

Marines tenant une position défensive avec une mitrailleuse Browning 1917 durant la bataille de Cape Gloucester – Campagne de Nouvelle-Guinée – Guerre du Pacifique – 1er janvier 1944

©National Archives and Records Administration - 532522

Se retirant d'abord dans la jungle, les soldats japonais ont finalement rassemblé leurs forces pour lancer une contre-attaque. Ces mitrailleurs les repoussent...

[hjmarseille]

Ranking American ace Capt Dick Bong (40 kills) is seen in conversation with fellow high-scorer Lt Col Tom Lynch (20 kills) at Cape Gloucester in early 1944. Between them they claimed four “Tonys” destroyed. Bong is sitting on his famous P-38J-15 Lightning 42-103993 Marge, in which he claimed his last “Tony” on February 15, 1944 for his 22nd kill. Lynch was shot down and killed by flak over Tadji on March 8, 1944, (via John Stanaway)

Photo and caption featured in Osprey Duel 26 P-38 Lightning vs Ki-61 Tony New Guinea 1943–44 by Donald Nijboer

[poor-bloody-infantry]

(AWM - 016380) US Marines digging in after landing on Cape Gloucester, New Britain, Dec. 1943.