Word: coconuts
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...have certain theories we go by. After that there is the Jesus factor - the unpredictable." Each new objective has its peculiar problem. The Marshall Islands differ from Guadalcanal, which is an 80-mile long island with a great jungle-covered spine and coconut groves, jungles and grassy flatlands along its shores. No coral reefs guard its coast. The Marshalls, like the Gilberts, are ancient atolls - coral reefs ringing irregularly around blank and limpid lagoons. On the reef, like beads in a necklace, are occasional land masses of coral sand, large enough to support airfields and artillery installations. Hot and waterless...
...Guinea. General MacArthur's men (Sixth Army veterans of Buna) had landed at Saidor on the northern New Guinea coast, found scant opposition, lost three men dead, buried eleven Japs, seized the settlement's grass huts, coconut groves, rubber plantations (the first recovered from the Japs), an unused air strip. Then they fanned out, trapping Jap patrols who were skirmishing with Australians some 60 miles down the coast. With an Australian column poised inland in the Ramu Valley, they set up a two-pronged threat to Madang, the next important Jap base northwest of Finsch-haven...
Prize: An Airfield. From their beachheads the Marines plunged along jungle trails to the main Jap positions. At Cape Gloucester the Japs had hacked a pattern of runways through the coconut groves, had built a staging point for barges bound from Rabaul, on New Britain's northeast tip, to outposts in northern New Guinea...
Atolls of War. The Marshalls group has more than twice as many atolls (33) as the Gilberts (16), but in total land area they are slightly smaller. Their 160 sq. mi. (half as large as New York City) of sand, coral and coconut palm are scattered over 150,000 sq. mi. (as large as Montana) of blue water...
...these key atolls, and perhaps to others, the Japs have been hauling tons of cement and steel. As at Tarawa, they have fashioned pillboxes of coconut logs, concrete, metal and many feet of sand. Under palm trees are coastal batteries...