Subject: Morotai Landing Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 Another on Morotai---It was a beautiful Island!!!!!!!!! TOM In Olden Times #613 Thomas M. Deas, MD I was scanning some notes I made many years ago to remember certain memorable times. They were made, more or less, in letters to my Scooper and they brought back some great memories. Of course I remember the Beach Landing on Morotai Island. I had heard and read about some other landing and knew of the dangers. I can definitely remember well getting into that landing craft. Thirty of us plus the pilot (driver) and a feller sitting up high, holding on to a 50 cal. machine gun. We started a little slow and when 10 boats were filled we were driving in a circle, out in that Pacific Ocean. When there were several circles of LCM's, I think ten, we lined up in a line abreast and "took off". I didn't know what in the heck to look forward to. We had about 2 miles to shore and we were going like a "bat out of Hades!" I don't know how fast those boats would go, but it seemed to me that they were going a hundred miles an hour. That motor, and the others, roared. I remember looking around and I was the "Old Man" in that vehicle. Most of the men had fuzz on their faces, only a few really shaved. Each held his gun tight, the knuckles were white. There were nervous laughs and far away looks in their eyes. I will never forget that ride! We didn't know what to expect! Then, we hit a coral reef about 200 yards from shore and when they dropped the front "gate", we stepped off into water up to our chins, unless we stepped on a big chunk of coral. I wont forget that landing! Then, we didn't have much resistance in the landing, so things bogged down into routines and I wont go into these days. I just remember how beautiful that Island of Morotai was. It was a coral island, more or less. There were native huts just off our beach, with clean yards. One yard had a lime tree in it, and I picked up some limes to change the taste of the water in my canteen. It helped, for the water had a definite calcium taste. I remember people coming back down to the beach from up in the hills, bringing sewing machines and various household implements they didn't want stolen by the Japanese. I remember we found a stash of canned goods that the Japanese left in one place. There was Alaskan salmon and some cans of sardines. The salmon were labeled in English. They helped our K-rations an awful lot. We didn't have much resistance at all, so we ended up at our D+2 site on Day +1. After 3-4 days we pulled Hq and Hq Medics back to a place up on a high bluff about 100 ft high and about 300 yards from the beach so that we were bivouacked in a place overlooking the ocean, so that we could see Halmahera, off about 17 miles away. The whole beach was a coconut plantation. We cut coconut trees to make pill boxes and the Dutch government charged us $10 per tree. One exciting thing happened to my medics. We had a dispensary up on top of that hill in the coolest place on the island. The trade winds evidently prevailed here just 10 degrees above the equator. One day my driver and lst Sgt. and I went down to 3rd Battalion. We came back to the dispensary in about 2 hours, and when we did it looked as if every one of my medics was scratched up, some bleeding. I asked, "What the heck happened to ya'll?" Sgt. MacClean pointed toward the back of the dispensary and there, about 75 yards away was a C-47, pancaked on the ground. It seems that it took off from the airfield and as it got out over the ocean, one motor went out and the pilot turned to try to get back to the airfield. It struggled to get up over that bluff and back to the field. It took the tops out of some trees coming up the hill and took the top out of a tree right in front of my dispensary. My boys saw that thing coming right at them and hit the ground, made up of sand and crushed coral. They were pretty well scratched up, but they went down and pulled the people out of that plane and sent them to the hospital. The people down at the airfield had that plane moved by the end the next day. It is a wonder that it didn't take my dispensary with it! The late evenings were beautiful. There was a volcano, always smoking, over on Halmahera. As the sun went down, the smoke of that volcano was a panorama of colors. It started as a black, thick and black, as it rose to the sky, then it was a very deep purple as it strung out to the south, parts of it turned a deep blue, then a lighter purple and blue, picking up red and yellow as it strung on out into various colors of green and yellow and lilac. It seemed that it strung out as far as we could see, the colors becoming lighter and wider in scope. It was absolutely out of this world! Then, at times we could see waterspouts out in the ocean, though not too far, for we could hear the swish of the spinning and the water being sucked up. These waterspouts had a wide base and narrowed middle up into the sky. Sometimes the middle part, where it thinned out, seemed to almost make a loop. The middle never stayed the same during the whole time that it spun. These things would last for a few minutes and then disappear. I have seen as many as two or three waterspouts at one time. Never saw any boats in them, though. I believe the moon was larger down there than any place I have ever seem, except on a moonrise as I saw the full moon coming up when I came out of Nob Hill with my niece after supper about two months ago. I know it was more prominent than anywhere I had ever been. I am sure the reason was my intense loneliness for my Kay (Scooper). I used to write her poetry about Junes and Moons. It isn't, or wasn't, hard to write poetry to her or about her. I could find so many beautiful things in those days to bring into the poems. But I won't write about that. I remember going "banana hunting" one day. Someone had found this banana garden about a mile from our area, up a hill. It had been raining and that ground was "gumbo mud" and, by the time we got to the bananas, our feet weighed 10 pounds apiece. When we got there, I saw a beautiful stalk of bananas and cut it down with my machete. Then I looked around and found some really BIG bananas. I cut it down and put one stalk on each shoulder. I'll guarantee, I thought I would never get back to camp with those darn bananas. When I did, I found that the big ones were Plantains (cooking bananas), so I gave them to the cooks and just ate my one stalk. It took me a long time for them to ripen and me to eat them! I did not go back for more bananas! Wasn't worth it. I could get some without having to go. But we did look for shells and "Catseyes" along the beach. Made bracelets and necklaces out of them and we went out and fished with explosives on the coral reefs. We fed ourselves pretty well off those fish, but that is another story, and a good one! Morotai was a very interesting place and there is more for later stories. War is HELL even when you aren't fighting, especially if you are far away from home and not long married and have a tendency to get lonely! ----------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas M. Deas, M.D. Transcribed by Paul M. Webber on 16 February 2002 Home Page: http://home.pcisys.net/~pwebber/31_id/rtw.htm