From New Guinea we went to Manus in the Admiralty Islands. This island was almost clear of Japanese troops and we had a game of football on the beach - there was a small garrison of troops on the island and we were able to buy some Aussie beer. My mates and I bought four bottles each and we swam in a lagoon and put the bottles at the bottom until we had finished playing football. After the game we swam and sat on the beach drinking our cool beer - it was great.
Our next stop was the Solomon Islands, we landed some troops in Bougainsville island where there were still some Japs and Christmas 1944 found us at Tulagi in the Solomons, it was a quiet Christmas, there was a US canteen ashore where you could buy American beer, these cans were opened by pushing them on nails which were hammered into the palm trees. On board the Lothian we had rigged a canvas swimming pool in the quarter deck and as we worked to a tropical routine which was six in the morning to twelve thirty we had plenty of time to spare. We spent most of it swimming over the side or cooling off in the pool. We were all burnt, nearly black by now, all I ever wore was a pair of khaki shorts and sandals and I slept every night on the upper deck.
We left the Solomon Islands in the New Year and we went through several groups of islands until we settled round the Philippines. There was an incident there which made the captain order all hands ashore. What happened was that it was discovered that one of the seamen had not been ashore since the ship had left Brisbane, his skin was as white as a sheet and he was suffering from prickly heat, he also wasn't bathing himself properly and his messmates were complaining of the smell off him. The captain announced that all hands had to go ashore to stretch their legs, we anchored near a deserted island and the L.C.V.S took us ashore in watches. The island was only an atoll with a small beach and jungle. We walked around the edge of the jungle where we could pick wild pineapples and coconuts if you were prepared to climb for them. We finished swimming around the landing craft. It was as we were swimming that my friend Bill Glenton and I were stung by Archer fish, we felt these needles about an inch long going in our stomachs, however we pulled them out when we reached the landing crafts and there were no after affects.
Our next and longest anchorage in the Phillipines was in Leyte Island, we anchored at a place called Tacloban which was quite a large settlement, there was a large clearing ashore which was used as a theatre and here we saw the full broadway cast in a production of Oklahoma!, it was for the American troops really but we enjoyed it. The funny thing here was that some Japanese troops had been caught watching films etc in this theatre and also coming into the camps for food. We saw quite a lot of Jap prisoners doing various jobs. Another good show we saw at Tacloban was Bob Crosby and his Hepcats. Bob was the brother of Bing Crosby and brought with him some top turns from the American world of entertainment. I was very impressed with the way the American forces were looked after and entertained. We were operating from Tacloban for about two months, one of the most disturbing events that happened there was a direct result of the mutiny of which I've already written.
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