thedrifter
11-01-07, 07:53 AM
Article published Nov 1, 2007
The beachhead
Gerard Joyal, Marine at Bougainville
Concord Monitor
On Dec. 7, 1941, Gerard Joyal was a 16-year-old attendant at the New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord. When he learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he hitchhiked to his mother's house in Franklin and asked her to sign his enlistment papers. She refused but allowed her son to join the Marines a few months later. After training, he joined the Pacific fight. Here is his story, as told to Monitor reporter Meg Heckman.
We ended up going to the Russell Islands, above Guadalcanal. We had an airfield and we would service the planes to bomb the other islands. The thing I remember most is the parrots. That place was loaded with parrots. When they took off, it was pretty, like a flying rainbow.
We were taking a lot of islands, but the biggest one was Bougainville. They wanted to take this one because they could bomb Rabaul, which was a big Japanese naval base. When we got Bougainville, we could arm the planes and bomb the Japanese. That's war.
We hit the beach, the front of the LST (landing ship, tank) opened up and we drove out with our equipment. All we had was 10 square miles, but we had three airfields on it. The Japanese had had an airstrip, and we built two more, another fighter strip and a bomber strip.
We had Douglas dive bombers, Corsair fighters and Grumman torpedo bombers. That was about it. A couple of B-24s came in that we serviced, but they weren't part of our squadron. Some of them were pretty well shot up. I saw one B-24 that looked like a sieve, but they came back.
The rest of the island was Japanese. We turned all our planes around so the machine guns would be facing the lines. The Navy came in with a destroyer and a light cruiser and shelled them all night long. You could hear the guns fire and see the flames, hear the bombs go overhead and see them land.
We were on Bougainville about 14 months. It rained about 200 inches a year. It was all swamp. There weren't any parrots on Bougainville, just snakes and wild boars and jungle. Once, swimming in the water on the edge of a reef, I saw an octopus. I got one look at him and I got out.
I was a crew chief, responsible for about 60 men. I didn't have much interaction with the Japanese, but they used to bomb us every night. We would dig a hole in the ground and put our cots in it, so when they came, we didn't have to get up. One night, I laid there and watched a rat and a centipede on top of my mosquito net, fighting. The rat won. Then he left.
We would put bombs together and store them for the other squadrons on small trailers. We might have 1,000 trailers loaded and ready. We had a bomb dump where we'd bring the bombs in and stack them. One day, a Jap shell hit the bomb dump and set off 250 of our bombs. There were four guys in a tent a few feet away, but they had sandbags around them, so it went overhead.
We had several different types of bombs. Some would go off if you just dropped them, so you had to be very careful. You had to know what you were doing.
In our spare time we used to make up these bombs called daisy cutters. We'd put in nails, scrap metal, boosters to make them explode quicker. When it exploded, it would shred everything. The planes used to drop them on the Japanese gardens. We didn't want them to get too healthy.
Torpedo juice
I got a fungus. It was like blisters. They'd break and then they'd run. It got to be like a big scab. My hands, my feet, my head were all scabbed over. I couldn't even bend my fingers. They evacuated me down to the Russell Islands to a hospital and couldn't cure it. Then I had to go down to Guadalcanal, and they couldn't cure it either. It got somewhat better, so they sent me back to my outfit. I didn't get rid of it until I got home.
About once a week we got letters. My mother was born in Canada, so she had a lot of trouble writing English. I'd get a letter that would be half French, half English, but I knew it took her all night to write that letter so it meant a lot to me. They'd load a sea bag with mail and then call your name. It was worth waiting for.
We didn't eat too good: Spam, Vienna sausage. The rats would eat up the food dump, so three nights a week all the squadrons would get together with clubs and chase rats. They'd chew right through a can, whatever. The most I ever got in one night was 43. That's a lot of rats.
The torpedoes ran on alcohol and they used to put what they called pink lady in it, to make you sick if you drank it. If the planes didn't use the torpedoes, we were supposed to dump the liquid out. We dumped it out, but not back in the barrel. We made torpedo juice instead. We had copper tubing and guys from Tennessee. They knew what to do. At night in the foxholes, we'd run the stuff through a still and get the pink lady out of it.
I didn't drink it. It was 100 proof and a great bartering tool. That was like money. We could barter for stuff we didn't have, for food from the Navy and the Seabees: peaches, pears, powered eggs, butter.
We stole a jeep from the Army. Transportation was hard to come by. We went up to our place, threw the top away, painted it Marine green and wrote USMC on the side. We had it a couple of weeks. Then we got a call from the captain. So they used it during the day and we used it during the night.
It's survival. You did whatever you could to make it easy for you or the other fellows. On one island, we found a brook with trout, but we didn't have fishing poles. So we went back with hand grenades and block TNT, threw them in, and the fish came to the surface. There were lots of wild boars and we'd hunt them. Just the life of being in the service, I guess.
Joyal returned to the States with his unit during the summer of 1945. He was on a 30-day leave when Japan surrendered. He returned to New Hampshire and married his childhood sweetheart, Beverly. They were married for more than 57 years. He worked as a tradesman for the state for nearly four decades, surviving severe electrocution in 1953 and helping drive President Eisenhower around the state in 1955. More recently, Joyal received a medal from the government of the Solomon Islands, thanking him for helping capture the region from the Japanese.
Ellie
The beachhead
Gerard Joyal, Marine at Bougainville
Concord Monitor
On Dec. 7, 1941, Gerard Joyal was a 16-year-old attendant at the New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord. When he learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he hitchhiked to his mother's house in Franklin and asked her to sign his enlistment papers. She refused but allowed her son to join the Marines a few months later. After training, he joined the Pacific fight. Here is his story, as told to Monitor reporter Meg Heckman.
We ended up going to the Russell Islands, above Guadalcanal. We had an airfield and we would service the planes to bomb the other islands. The thing I remember most is the parrots. That place was loaded with parrots. When they took off, it was pretty, like a flying rainbow.
We were taking a lot of islands, but the biggest one was Bougainville. They wanted to take this one because they could bomb Rabaul, which was a big Japanese naval base. When we got Bougainville, we could arm the planes and bomb the Japanese. That's war.
We hit the beach, the front of the LST (landing ship, tank) opened up and we drove out with our equipment. All we had was 10 square miles, but we had three airfields on it. The Japanese had had an airstrip, and we built two more, another fighter strip and a bomber strip.
We had Douglas dive bombers, Corsair fighters and Grumman torpedo bombers. That was about it. A couple of B-24s came in that we serviced, but they weren't part of our squadron. Some of them were pretty well shot up. I saw one B-24 that looked like a sieve, but they came back.
The rest of the island was Japanese. We turned all our planes around so the machine guns would be facing the lines. The Navy came in with a destroyer and a light cruiser and shelled them all night long. You could hear the guns fire and see the flames, hear the bombs go overhead and see them land.
We were on Bougainville about 14 months. It rained about 200 inches a year. It was all swamp. There weren't any parrots on Bougainville, just snakes and wild boars and jungle. Once, swimming in the water on the edge of a reef, I saw an octopus. I got one look at him and I got out.
I was a crew chief, responsible for about 60 men. I didn't have much interaction with the Japanese, but they used to bomb us every night. We would dig a hole in the ground and put our cots in it, so when they came, we didn't have to get up. One night, I laid there and watched a rat and a centipede on top of my mosquito net, fighting. The rat won. Then he left.
We would put bombs together and store them for the other squadrons on small trailers. We might have 1,000 trailers loaded and ready. We had a bomb dump where we'd bring the bombs in and stack them. One day, a Jap shell hit the bomb dump and set off 250 of our bombs. There were four guys in a tent a few feet away, but they had sandbags around them, so it went overhead.
We had several different types of bombs. Some would go off if you just dropped them, so you had to be very careful. You had to know what you were doing.
In our spare time we used to make up these bombs called daisy cutters. We'd put in nails, scrap metal, boosters to make them explode quicker. When it exploded, it would shred everything. The planes used to drop them on the Japanese gardens. We didn't want them to get too healthy.
Torpedo juice
I got a fungus. It was like blisters. They'd break and then they'd run. It got to be like a big scab. My hands, my feet, my head were all scabbed over. I couldn't even bend my fingers. They evacuated me down to the Russell Islands to a hospital and couldn't cure it. Then I had to go down to Guadalcanal, and they couldn't cure it either. It got somewhat better, so they sent me back to my outfit. I didn't get rid of it until I got home.
About once a week we got letters. My mother was born in Canada, so she had a lot of trouble writing English. I'd get a letter that would be half French, half English, but I knew it took her all night to write that letter so it meant a lot to me. They'd load a sea bag with mail and then call your name. It was worth waiting for.
We didn't eat too good: Spam, Vienna sausage. The rats would eat up the food dump, so three nights a week all the squadrons would get together with clubs and chase rats. They'd chew right through a can, whatever. The most I ever got in one night was 43. That's a lot of rats.
The torpedoes ran on alcohol and they used to put what they called pink lady in it, to make you sick if you drank it. If the planes didn't use the torpedoes, we were supposed to dump the liquid out. We dumped it out, but not back in the barrel. We made torpedo juice instead. We had copper tubing and guys from Tennessee. They knew what to do. At night in the foxholes, we'd run the stuff through a still and get the pink lady out of it.
I didn't drink it. It was 100 proof and a great bartering tool. That was like money. We could barter for stuff we didn't have, for food from the Navy and the Seabees: peaches, pears, powered eggs, butter.
We stole a jeep from the Army. Transportation was hard to come by. We went up to our place, threw the top away, painted it Marine green and wrote USMC on the side. We had it a couple of weeks. Then we got a call from the captain. So they used it during the day and we used it during the night.
It's survival. You did whatever you could to make it easy for you or the other fellows. On one island, we found a brook with trout, but we didn't have fishing poles. So we went back with hand grenades and block TNT, threw them in, and the fish came to the surface. There were lots of wild boars and we'd hunt them. Just the life of being in the service, I guess.
Joyal returned to the States with his unit during the summer of 1945. He was on a 30-day leave when Japan surrendered. He returned to New Hampshire and married his childhood sweetheart, Beverly. They were married for more than 57 years. He worked as a tradesman for the state for nearly four decades, surviving severe electrocution in 1953 and helping drive President Eisenhower around the state in 1955. More recently, Joyal received a medal from the government of the Solomon Islands, thanking him for helping capture the region from the Japanese.
Ellie