Linn Sheckler and his ship mates attended Fire Fighting School here.

After the area was secured with such groups as LST's or P-38 fighter planes, from the Japanese in early 1944, this area was used for Training  U.S. personnel, included Scouting, Air-to-Air Training, , but more important it was a major supply port.  The town itself was inland about 14 kms from the port along the spectacular "$14million" highway constructed by the  Americans who landed here in 1944 with about 300,000 men, Royal Navy Cadet - 1952

Unloading at Red Beach 2

"When you send women into combat zones, you had better train them as well as the men," she added, tongue in cheek. "You can never assume a typewriter shields them from combat."

Base G, where she worked, was 15 miles from where the WACs were billeted. Hollandia, three degrees south of the equator in rainforest that gets some of the most rainfall in the world, offered a new experience.

"The area is volcanic, with mountains that look like little kids had drawn them," she said. "The roads had been built by our troops, and were still being built right out of the sides of the mountains. That trip to work everyday was without exception a hair-raising experience. The traffic was bumper to bumper.

"Hollandia had become a string of encampments along the coast with 85,000 troops. It was supplying the landings on Leyte (the Philippines), which had just occurred in October 1944. I have never in my life seen so much of everything. Stuff was stored in temporary warehouses or on pallets in the open. There were simply miles of 55-gallon drums of gasoline. Hollandia processed virtually everything and everybody for the Philippine campaign."

It also processed a myriad of crypto traffic. Weise logged messages in and out that were to be encrypted or decoded. She also deciphered parts of codes.

Diving for Pennies:
My dad left basic with a Seaman Second Class rating and was shipped out to the 7th Fleet in the south Pacific. He was first assigned to Amphibious Training Command at Milne Bay from 27 June 1944 to 15 September 1944, then assigned to the boat pool under the flagship USS BLUE RIDGE from 15 SEP 1944 to 9 OCT 1944, then to the USS HENRY T. ALLEN from 9 OCT 1944 to 1 DEC 1944. His final destination was Navy Base 3115, Hollandia, New Guinea, where he served from 1 DEC 1944 to 4 DEC 1945, rising to the rating of coxswain. At Hollandia, he remained assigned to a squadron of small boats and LCVPs.  The area around Milne Bay had water clear enough to see to the bottom for many feet, and the sailors entertained themselves by pitching pennies (and washers, and anything else appropriately shiny and tiny) out into the water and watching the island kids dive for them.  This seemed to take up a lot of time.  I remember thinking that these kids must have had it pretty good to get to hang around with a bunch of sailors all day.

Dip Your God**** Flag!
In addition to piloting the landing craft, my dad also somehow got assigned to ferry a very junior officer around in a motor launch.  This little hotshot j.g. or whatever he was had managed to scrounge an oversized flag for the stern flagmast, which was so large the tail would drag a little in the water.  It was a customary protocol when craft met underway for the junior officer to dip the ensign as a salute, which would be returned by the senior officer’s craft.  Of course, it had to happen that one day this young yahoo officer would cross paths with one of his betters, and not wanting to get his flag wet, he neglected to tell my dad to render the proper salute.  That is, until the senior officer on the other boat got hold of the megaphone and screamed out the title of this little paragraph.  The flag got wet, but was later replaced with one sized appropriately for the lieutenant’s place in life. 

How Many Did You Get, Joe?
One of the things dad’s squadron did was ferry native tribesmen upriver to hunt Japanese.  One particularly successful fellow was called Joe, who enjoyed riding along on the LCVPs while lounging on a tarp stretched across the troop well.  Whenever anyone would pass by and shout “How many did you get, Joe?” he would hold up two or three or more fingers indicating his success.  Joe was not known to exaggerate.