Letter to the editor

Last year I submitted a letter about an incident that took place during World war Two when I was serving on a Destroyer Escort with a convoy carrying troops and supplies to Mark Clarks army in North Africa. The incident took place on Christmas day when the captain of a German U-Boat radioed Christmas greetings to the capitan and crew of my ship.

This letter deals with another incident that took place a year later. I was no longer attached to the Destroyer Escort and had been transferred to the island of Guam in the Pacific. The year was 1946 and the war was over...or it was for most of us.

Unfortunately, four to five hundred Japanese soldiers and marines, not believing that Japan had surrendered, were hiding out in the jungles of Guam and were making periodic raids on the naval base to which I was attached. One rainy night around Christmas time, we were alerted that a Tsuami (called a tidal wave at that time) had struck Wake island and was on its way towards our island. We were given ponchos and carbine rifles and ordered to make for higher ground. We were told to expect waves of from ten to twenty feet high. We spent a miserable, wet night huddled together (there were twelve men in our group) wondering which would get us first, the wave or a band of desperate Japanese soldiers. It was pitch black and all we had by way of light were our Zippo cigarette lighters.

Around two o'clock in the morning we were blinded by lights from a vehicle coming out of the jungle. Thankfully, it was a contingent of U.S. Marines who thought we might be enemy soldiers and were ready to dispatch us forthwith. Once they realized who we were, they made a few derogatory comments about the navy, as Marines will do, and went on their way. The tsuami never reached Guam and when morning came we found that we had spent the night on a Japanese graveyard. We had wondered what those mounds we had slept on were.

It was certainly a strange way to spend Christmas and some of our more religiously inclined group attributed Divine intervention for our safe outcome. Of course there were those who were skeptics, myself included, but all the same, we wondered. I still do sometimes.

Merry Christmas to all.
George Morin
Auburn