We had almost forgotten about our cache of raisins, sugar and yeast from which we were going to make "raisin jack". It wasn't that we had forgotten, we just hadn't found the time to fool with it, besides we had found a cave full of bottles of saki. Saki is a rice wine and although I didn't care for its taste, I got pretty high on it. 

    LV and I decided one day to make the raisin jack. We took our four 8-gallon water breakers from under the stern of the boat where we had stashed them with our ingredients. The breakers, or kegs if you will, differed from a barrel in that they laid oblong, rather than standing up like a barrel. There was a spigot on one end and a brass cap that screwed into the wooden slats on top. We put what we had been told was the proper amount of raisins and sugar into each barrel, and very sparingly, as we had been instructed, added the powdered yeast. When that had been completed, LV started screwing the caps into the top of the barrels. 

    I said "LV, you're supposed to leave the cap off." "No no," he said, "the Chief told me exactly how to do it and he said to put the caps back on." Well, I might have been the youngest in the crowd, but I wasn't stupid. Even I knew that with the yeast, this concoction was going to start fermenting, and you shouldn't seal the barrels. I said, "LV, they'll blow up if you put the caps on and seal them." He was adamant. "Okay LV," I said, "You do what you want to,  but those kegs are not staying in my boat with the caps screwed on." He got angry and said, "All right, I'll just take my two and put them in another boat." There was a friend of his whose boat I knew he had in mind. I said, "That's fine with me," I said,  "but you had better get them out of here now." 

    Three days later, there was a muffled explosion from the bilges of his friend's boat. The fermenting raisins, with the help of the yeast, had blown the keg wide open and there were raisins and a brown, sticky, watery mess all over his buddy's boat. LV was contrite. I shared my raisin jack with him and the others. It had taken eight or nine days for it to get to the stage to achieve the effect we were looking for. We strained the beverage through a skivvy shirt into a canteen cup. It was the color of clouded tea, but much more effective. We managed to get pretty drunk on that stuff. Our hangovers were such that we couldn't eat for two days. There was another beverage we used to drink. It was made from fermented coconut, and was called tuba. It had about the same effect as raisin jack. 

    Supply ships were now arriving in the harbor. They carried everything imaginable: building materials, food and cases of beer. Our boat pool brought many of these items into the shore. As a result, we were able to acquire certain comforts other units only hoped and waited for. We were the first to "find" enough lumber to build wooden decks for our tents, and we were fortunate enough to side-track food delicacies, such as canned mushrooms and asparagus. We turned most of it over to the messhall. The cooks made sure the officers received their share. The officers turned their heads the other way whenever they saw us delivering these goods in bulk to the galley. 

    There were four "concrete" ships that arrived. They looked very much like an LST, but their hulls were made completely of concrete. It was hard for us to imagine the concept, but it achieved the purpose they were made for. They were equipped with refrigeration for perishables, in addition to its "holds" being stocked with tons of foodstuff and supplies. The concrete ships had no engines and had been towed from the States by tugs, or another ship. I didn't see them arrive, but that is what I was told. There were so many supplies on these concrete ships that special barges, like the oil barges you see in our coastal waterways, were used. They had huge motors, the same shape as outboard motors on fishing boats, attached on the back of them. Our guys were picked to operate these barges, and it made it easier for us to highjack the barges since our guys, who were operating them, would even help us load our boat. I remember one trip that we put 144 cases of beer in Jacquette's boat. We took it over to Cabras Island and stored it in a cave we had located along with some sake we found. Our highjacking became so flagrant that the harbor master had an armed marine start riding "shotgun" on each barge. After that it became more difficult. Occasionally one of the marine escorts could be bribed. 

    When the concrete ships were empty, they were stripped of all the refrigeration equipment and taken to the end of Cabras Island and sunk in the shallow water to act as a breakwater. The water was shallow enough that the ships only sank halfway. That was the idea. There had been a small surf riding into the harbor, which was constantly creating swells. The concrete ships, acting as a breakwater, eliminated the problem. 

    I awoke one night, aching all over, and I had a fever. I was not surprised when the medic told me I had contracted dengue fever. There were a number of men who already had been confined to their tents with it and I knew the symptoms. Dengue fever is also known as "breakbone" fever, and is caused by a mosquito. You could predict when the disease had run its course through your body. All your joints ached, accompained by a fever that would fall, then rise again only to fall and rise again. When it had risen and fallen a predictable number of times, all symptoms would disappear and you were immune to getting it for another two years; so I was told! 

    Shortly after recovering from dengue fever, Jacquette and I were sitting in our tent playing pinochle with two guys from another area, when a sailor came into our tent with his seabag. He was taking the place of one of our former tentmates, who had fallen from a scaffold and broken his leg. When he fell he suffered other complications and he had been flown to Pearl Harbor for treatment he could not receive on Guam at that time. 

    I recognized the newcomer immediately as one of the men I had been in boot training with in San Diego. I had forgotten his name and had not associated with him, but he was an easy individual to remember. He had a very narrow, mousy face and his arms were covered with at least seven or eight tattoos, including the words "LOVE" and "HATE," whose characters were tattooed on the back of each finger. I had forgotten his name, but when he put his seabag down, I said, "Hey, I know you, don't I?" He looked at me and we shook hands. He said, "Uhhh, yeah, you look familiar. Where did we meet?" I replied, "We were in boot camp in San Diego, remember?" "Yeaaah yeaah," he drawled out, "I remember. Say it's good to see you again." "How long have you been here?" he asked. "Since D-day," I replied, "You know I didn't get to ship out from the Balboa with the unit when they found out I was only sixteen." He said, "You're lucky, a lot of the guys we were in boot with got killed at Tarawa. We got clobbered on the beaches." 

    My former shipmate's name was Andrews. As you might suspect, we called him "Andy". I asked about some of the guys I could remember from our old unit. When I asked about Sappington, he told me he had been killed while his boat was on the beach. I found myself moved almost to tears at this information. I liked Sappington. I thought back to our first meeting on the train from Shreveport, when Sappington told me he joined the Navy before he got drafted into the Army or Marines. I remember his exact words: "I like the water and ships; besides, I think I have a better chance of staying alive in the Navy." 

    Andy must have been about twenty years old. He was from a rural area in Mississippi and had never learned to read or write. He was very outgoing and fun to be with. He wore a gold earring in his left ear. One day we were discussing the merits of such an adornment. Before long, all of us were piercing each other's ears. It was not very painful. Once the hole was in your ear, a broom straw was placed through the hole and then a dab of Vaseline to keep the puncture from drying. My ear got infected, so I pulled the straw out and let it heal. I never pierced it again after that. I had become rather adept at piercing ears however (not that you needed to have attended medical school), and pierced ears for those who asked...I never lost a patient; not even my mother's or my wife's ears when I pierced theirs years later. Most of the guys who pierced their ears were the under twenty-five year old crowd. The older men in the unit thought we had all lost our minds. 

   No one was allowed to leave the camp at night unless they had been assigned some specific detail that took them out of the area. By now I had visited with Chamorita several times during the day. She asked me once if I could visit her at night. I told her it would be difficult but I would try. Chamorita had a girlfriend, who lived in a shack next to her, by the name of Island Girl. She was not as pretty as Chamorita, but like Chamorita, had a nice personality. I told Island Girl about Andy, and asked if she would like to meet him. She said she would be "honored" to meet him. 

    I started slipping up to Agana at night. There was always some vehicle going in that direction, and you could usually get a ride without too much trouble. I took Andy with me one night and introduced him to Island Girl. They hit it off from the beginning. In fact, after I left Guam, I learned that Andy had married Island Girl and went back to Guam to live after the war. 

    One night we got caught by the Marine MP's. It was a pitch black night. Andy and I were standing on the side of the road on our way up to Agana. We never saw the jeep as it approached us without its lights turned on. Suddenly a flashlight beamed on us and we were ordered to "stand fast". Two marines came over to us and asked what we were doing in an "out of bounds" area. We told them we had friends in Agana and thought we would go visit them. We couldn't see their faces in the dark, especially with the light in our eyes. One of them said, "This area is out of bounds for a good reason. There have been incidents of some of the native families harboring Japanese soldiers. You should have known this from your command, and have known better than to be in here. Get into the jeep, we're taking you in!" We crowded into the jeep and the lights were turned on. 

    The marine who had done all the talking was behind the wheel, and in the light I thought I recognized him. I leaned over and asked, "Isn't your name Gilbert and aren't you from Shreveport, Louisiana?" He stopped the jeep and flashed the light back into my face. "How do you know me?" he asked. I told him I knew of him from Byrd High School, when he was a senior and had been a high-ranking officer in the ROTC. It was another stroke of good luck. At least I hoped so anyway. He was "Cotton", and he was the sergeant in charge of this MP detail. He was called "Cotton" in school because of his blonde hair. It did turn out to be a stroke of good luck. We sat in the dark and talked about where we had both served since leaving Shreveport. We did not have any mutual friends in Shreveport or Byrd High. He was several years older than I, and besides, I had only been in Byrd for a little over a year before I ran away. Instead of taking us to the MP station, he dropped Andy and me off at Piti. 

    "Cotton" did not remember me. There was no reason he should; we had never met. I only knew him by reputation, and from having seen him in his ROTC officer's uniform, standing in front of one of the ROTC Company reviews. The officers would always be accompanied by a cute uniformed girl known as a sponsor. The officers would issue commands to the company with drawn swords, and we would usually march past them in review. It was impressive and a memory that had obviously stuck with me. 

    As we were heading toward Piti, "Cotton" said, "I'm going to take you back to your unit. If I ever find you in Agana after dark again, I'm going to take you in. If I do, it's not going to go well for you, so do yourselves a favor and stay the hell away from here at night, okay?" We promised that we would stay out of Agana when it was out of bounds, and we thanked him for letting us off so easy. I never saw Gilbert after that encounter. 

    Andy and I decided, at that very moment, not to stretch our luck any further, and to stay away from Agana as we had promised. I never went back again while it was out of bounds, but I knew Andy did. His luck held out and he never got caught again. 

    I visited Chamorita a couple of days after our encounter with the MP's. I told her what had happened and what they had said about the Japanese. She said she was not aware of any families that would hide the Japanese. However, she said, a lot of natives had worked for the Japanese, and it was possible a friendship existed between a few of them.

    If memory serves me, it was now sometime in September. Our unit's operations had become fairly routine. Occasionally one of us would be called on to go out in the harbor and pick up a Japanese prisoner who had finally decided to surrender. Most of the ships were using their own small craft for ship-to-shore transportation by now. We had gotten back into a more military mode of daily activities. In the mornings we would line up for muster, followed by a series of calisthenics. Chief Bo'sun Buckelew, and now First Class Bo'Sun Jim Lacy would go over whatever boat activities were required in the harbor that day, and then assign different boat crews for those tasks. At the same time work details would be picked. Working parties were always needed for dozens of daily requirements around the camp. I was picked for these details as often as not. The work ranged anywhere from mess cooking, to general clean-up, to work on or around the boats. 

    Whatever time we had to ourselves, we were pretty free to do as we wished. That is, as long as we stayed away from out of bounds areas! Sometimes we would take our own boats out and just cruise along the coast. One day we hooked the bilge board to the anchor line, as we had done at Guadalcanal, and aquaplaned around the harbor. We came close to a couple of cruisers that were in the harbor for repairs. We could see some of the ship's crew leaning on the gunnels watching us. I thought to myself, they must really be envying us and our recreation, but deep in my heart, I was envying them. I was getting beach weary and longed to serve on a ship of the fleet. We would pass near the ships, and you could hear the bos'un pipe whistling over the address system, followed by "Now here this..........." 

    We were out in Apra Harbor one day when Red Allen showed me some Japanese hand grenades he had found. We were all familiar with the way they worked. They were a little smaller than our egg-shaped grenades. In the past we had used some of ours and some of the Japanese grenades we had found in caves to kill fish. Our grenades had a pin you had to pull in order to activate it. When you let go of it or threw it, a spring-loaded lever would flip over and detonate a fuse that would burn three seconds, or six seconds, depending on the length of the fuse. When the fuse finished burning, the grenade would blow into forty-one segmented pieces of shrapnel. This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about hand grenades, but I want to make a point about one of Red Allen's pranks, and you need to know something about grenades. 

    The Japanese grenades were cylindrical, like a small jar of jelly. They also had segmented grooves in them, and worked on the same concept as ours. However, theirs had a short, pencil-sized rod on top and its detonator was actuated by banging the end of the rod on a hard surface. The Japanese used their helmets to actuate the grenades, which was a tip-off to our marines. Whenever they heard the tap on a helmet, they knew a grenade was soon on its way. The Japanese grenades were like their mortar shells. Many of them were packed with too much picric acid, and would explode into dust instead of separating into individual segments, as ours did. Anyway, Red had taken all the picric acid out of the grenades, leaving the detonator cap and fuse intact. Otherwise, they were harmless. 

    One day, as Red was demonstrating to me what he had done, Ray Jacquette deliberately raced his boat, at full speed, next to ours, throwing water all over us and rocking our boats with the swell he had created. Red Allen waved his fist at him, and started after Ray with his boat. I watched as Red pulled alongside of Ray's boat. Red was acting real angry. He held up a Japanese grenade where Ray could see what it was. Then he tapped it on the gunnel of the boat and tossed it into the well of Ray's boat. When Ray saw the grenade and the thin stream of smoke that trailed behind it as it flew into his boat, he didn't need anyone to tell him what it was. He jumped over the side of his boat and into the water. He had no way of knowing Red had dumped all of the powder out of it. Red was laughing as Ray tried to swim to his empty boat that had drifted quite a distance away. I went over and picked Ray up. As he got into my boat, he yelled over at Allen. "Red, you crazy (expletive)!" Ray could take a joke though. He better had, he had pulled a few crazy stunts of his own. He was laughing about it by the time I got him back to his boat. 

    In the evenings, there were movies that were shown. A large screen was set up in a large open field near our tents. We would all sit on the ground to watch them. Many times we would get rained out, but we usually had our ponchos with us just in case. The movies would take forever to see. They came in anywhere from six to ten 15-minute reels, and like today's television commercials, every ten or fifteen minutes, the guy running the projector would have to rewind the film we had just seen and then thread the next reel on before we could continue. 

    The evenings that I didn't have boat duty on the docks, I would go to the movies or play cards. Most of the card games were played around payday. Adfter a few days, just a few of the card players and the crap shooters would end up with all the money. I would have been better off if they had saved all those two dollar bills they paid us with. There wasn't anything here to buy, so we just gambled. I would have ended up with a lot more money if I hadn't gambled. 

    By November 1944, Guam had not only become a major ship repair port, but was now serving the purpose we had captured it for, as was Saipan and Tinian. That purpose being to establish airfields to strike at Japan's mainland. Harmon Field was located near Agana, and was where the B-29 "Superfortresses" were brought into. There wasn't a day that went by, that the sky was not filled with departing and returning B-29's that were incessantly bombing Japanese cities. 

    About the same time the B-29's had started their daily runs on Japan, several ships returned from a sea battle. The ships had suffered major damage and would be in Guam for a period of time for repairs before returning to the fleet. One of the ships was an escort carrier. I was not aware of it at the time, but fate was about to take charge of my future again. 

    There was a small area of sand beach on the other side of the causeway that led to Cabras Island. The beach was part of Piti and actually only several hundred yards form our tents. In the early days, we would go there and swim. It was almost like a huge pool since the outlying reefs protected it from any surf action. It was also the area where we had thrown hand grenades to stun fish with their concussion. The fish tasted better than the K-rations. 

    This beach had become a popular area for some of the crew members of the ships in the harbor to come to for recreation. It was one of these days that I was on the beach when some crew members of the aircraft carrier were there. I struck up a conversation with one of them. He was no older than twenty or twenty-one. He told me of the damage the carrier had received. I told him of my duty here at the boat pool and how long I had been on the island. I wish I could remember his name. He turned out to be one of those individuals you meet in life whose name you should remember, but I'm afraid time has erased his name from my memory. Anyway, he said he envied me because I was on the beach. I told him I envied him because he was on a warship of the fleet. He then told me a little known fact that I was not aware of. He had been so anxious to get off the aircraft carrier that when he requested a transfer to the beach, he was told he could only transfer to the beach if he could find another seaman of equal rank to "swap" duty with. We were both seamen of equal rank, and we decided that we would try to swap duty stations. 

    We went to Lt. Commander Wygant and he checked out the information we brought him. He confirmed it and then told me that if that is what I wanted, he would approve it. My friend went back to the carrier, and with with the approval of his division officer, returned with the good news. Swapping duty turned out to be very simple. It required very little paper work or typing up of orders. As sailors, we carried everything we owned, and our complete personnel jackets were kept in the administration tent. My friend from the aircraft carrier was ready to swap that day, and we could have, but I told him I needed a day to say goodbye to my shipmates. 

    That afternoon, I visited with my regular crowd. Jacquette was the only one who expressed an interest in swapping and was surprised it was so easy.   That evening I visited Chamorita. I didn't tell her I had volunteered for duty on the aircraft carrier. She asked me to come back to Guam after the war. I told her I would write to her.

    Before I left the next day, I visited with Jim Lacy. Among other things we talked about his promotion to First Class Boatswains Mate. During the war promotions were awarded by the commanding officer of a unit, the criteria being performance and the unit's need. This was the case with Jim Lacy. Commander Hardin was impressed with his performance, and had promoted him to First Class, still reporting to Chief Buckelew. During the time of the peace, you are required to take fleet examination, which are given on specific dates throughout the year, usually twice a year. 

    The next morning Jacquette took me and all my gear out to the aircraft carrier. The seaman I was swapping duty with was standing by with his gear. Jacquette would be taking him back to Piti. Jacquette and I shook hands, he smiled and said, "We'll miss you, mate." 

    I climbed up the gangway of the carrier with my seabag over my shoulder. When I reached the quarterdeck, I saluted the ship's ensign, and then the Officer of the Day, saying, "Permission to come aboard sir!" Returning my salute, he said, "Permission granted."
 

Bob was assigned as a helmsman on the USS Salamaua CVE-96, serving with the fleet for the remainder of the war. 
On September 2, 1945, he witnessed the uncondition surrender of the Japanese, in Tokyo Bay, on the USS Missouri from the flight deck of his carrier.