For recreation we had movies, volley ball, baseball and swimming in the ocean. Our camp was on the edge of the beach concealed in the trees. The air raids were never serious and ceased after the first few weeks. I did not have a single bite.Ĭape Sansapor is a long way from civilization but life was bearable and we only worked eight hours a day, seven days a week. When washing our coveralls we gave them a final rinse in a dimethyl phthalate insect repellent and then hung them up to dry. Then I was thankful for my long sleeved coveralls buttoned down around the neck. The tree was an ant nest, one inch long ants and I was covered from head to foot. The tree disintegrated on hitting the head ache bar overhead.
The grade foreman yelled a warning to me and I hit the floor of the D-8. One night I clipped the side of a rotten tree about four feet in diameter and it fell over on the tractor. These required tunneling under and blasting down with ammonium nitrate satchel charges ignited with TNT blocks. Some trees were too large for even a D-8 to knock down.
The only way down is to have another tractor pull you off. It is possible for the roots of the falling tree to burst through the ground under the bulldozer and hold it suspended with the tracks whirling in the air. When the tree starts to fall, you kick the tractor into reverse and back down the ramp as quickly as possible. An eight or ten inch vine connected to the tree behind you can be strong enough to pull this tree on top of you as you push over the tree in front of your blade. Another hazard is the vines connecting the trees. A ten inch limb falling from a height can be lethal. The impact of the tractor may break off a limb high up in the tree. There are hazards to this, especially at night. If the downside hole is deep enough and the upside ramp is high enough the tree goes down.
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The you run the bulldozer up the ramp at full speed with the blade raised high to hit as high up the trunk as possible. Then push the dirt to the opposite side of the tree to make a ramp. The usual procedure for knocking down a large tree with a bulldozer is to first excavate a hole under the down side roots. A tree fell on him and fractured his skull. The sergeant woke me in the middle of the night and said I was going to run Joe’s D-8. This is where I learned to operate a bulldozer. While the work was rushed on the Middleburg strip for the P-38 fighters our part of the 1897th started clearing jungle at Sansapor. This location was flat but in a swamp covered with large trees. A larger strip was needed for large bombers that required the space available at Cape Sansapor. The area was limited but obviously a strip could be quickly constructed by bulldozing off the palm trees and leveling the coral.
This island was a coconut grove on a coral reef. Part of the 1897th went to work with another Aviation Engineering Battalion to build the air strip on Middleburg Island. We quickly set up camp under trees that offered camouflage from air raids. Everyone had a clip in his rifle and a few hand grenades hung on his fatigues. Our memories of Maffin Bay were fresh in our mind. The LST was deadly quiet as we approached shore in the dim pre-dawn light. There was no preliminary bombardment because supposedly there was only empty jungle.
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July 30 at the crack of dawn we landed at Cape Sansapor. Initial unopposed landings were on Middleburg and Amsterdam on July 29. The air strips at Sansapor and Middleburg Island not only helped isolate the enemy at Manokwari where the Japs would die of starvation and disease but these strips provided air cover for the next advance to Morotai, one of the Halmahera islands. This advance bypassed 25000 Japs at Manokwari on the Vogelkop Peninsula. MacArthur, adhering to the principle of avoiding massed enemy concentrations where feasible, advanced to Cape Sansapor and Middleburg and Amsterdam islands 200 miles to the west of Biak and Noemfoor islands which had been subdued by July 22.