Imperial Valley Press

STOCKTON, Calif., Jan. 19 – (UP)—High praise for the air ground crews and Navy construction "Sea Bees" who keep the planes flying on Guadalcanal was related today by Sergeant Major O. Bass, veteran of 61 bomb raids and 17 shellings, just returned from the South Pacific war front.

Sergeant Bass (Major is his first name) told of huge bomb craters on Guadalcanal's Henderson field being filled in barely more than an hour to keep American planes in the air, and of ground crews working from three in the morning until nine at night, often under fire.

"But the strangest things I've heard of in this war are people at home rushing to butcher shops and trying to get more butter than somebody else," Bass said.

The sergeant, flown out of the war zone with a severe case of bomb shock after a bomb landed only 15 feet from him, is now assigned as a gunnery instructor to the flying cadets at the Stockton advanced flying field. He has just won appointment to an officer's candidate school.

Bass recalled the day he landed on Guadalcanal and was visited by "Washing Machine Charlie", a Jap bomber pilot, and "Millometer Mike", a Jap with a six-inch gun hidden back in the hills.

"We called him Washing Machine Charlie because his propellers were so low pitched they sounded like an old family washer," Bass said. "But there was nothing homey about his bombs. He'd come over all by himself nearly every night and drop just enough of them to chase us out of bed and into the foxholes. We only had nine nights of 'peace' in the two months I was on Guadalcanal.

"Mike's shells used to drop in a ravine at one end of the Henderson field runway. Of course, the shrapnel would spray around where the ground crew men were working so we'd just jump behind some gasoline drums—no, the shrapnel never hit the drums . . . and the Marines finally located Mike . . .

Lauding the Marines, Bass recalled that almost the first Marine he encountered was Whizzer White, the Colorado football All-American. White was a private "and a pretty swell guy. He and a lot of Marines used to come down on the line just to pat our planes and say 'Good Old Airacobras.'

When a Jap cruiser shelled them for eight hours on October 17, Bass said 17 men crowded into a foxhole built for four.

Bass added we needn't worry about the caliber of the new cadets because their only concern was to get enough bombs and ammunition when they get into action.