There
are trees there and a fountain, but the settees and tables are rusty and
filthy, and the ground as barren of lawn as a horse corral. Possibly the
war accounts for the dilapidated appearance of Noumea, but I have
an idea that the French are not an orderly nor cleanly people. There was
excellent music, furnished by an army band. General Lincoln
and his staff attended the dance and remained for some time.
At dinner on Monday I met Commander Sherman Everett
Burroughs Jr., USN. He said that his wife had met me in Honolulu.
Today I became an "Assimilated 2nd Lieutenant"! The first
one certified in this area, according to Col. Skaates. All it means
to me is that I have one more item of identification to lug around.
Ran into Jack Rice yesterday. He is the photographer
with whom I had my first flight in a Fortress several months ago
from Hickam Field. He said he had seen Hulbert two weeks before. Everybody
seems to get here eventually.
About 2:00 PM I picked Ramsey up, and we drove out across
the causeway and around a long, winding road to Dumbea Bay.
In one place, where they were widening the road, we had to wait while a
bulldozer made a road for us. All the road work here is being done by our
own forces. When we pull out of New Caledonia, it will have a road system
the French would never have attained in a thousand years. But we need 'em.
The island is dotted with army and navy posts, hospitals, and air fields;
and at the time I was there there were five thousand military vehicles
hell-whooping all over the landscape day and night.
In places, the road, winding up and around hills, was
steep and narrow with a drop of a hundred feet and more straight down to
the bay. In such a place we met a big Army truck coming down, and I had
to back down a long way until it could pass us. The road ended at the top
of a promontory at the north entrance to Noumea harbour. There was
an old, abandoned French fort there with a battery of four rusty 14 cm
guns overlooking the harbour entrance. Their breech blocks had been removed.
One of the guns bore the date 1849, one in the 50's. They may have been
there since the time of Napoleon III. They were huge (5 1/2 bore) and cumbersome.
It must have been a terrific job getting them up there in those days.
There was a beautiful view of the harbour, which is quite
large. (When I was taken out to the Shaw later, which lay just outside
the submarine net at the mouth of the inner harbour, I had
a trip of five miles.) There were many fighting ships and merchant men
in the inner harbour -- battleships, flat tops, cruisers, destroyers; and
more merchant men in the outer harbour. It used to worry me to see such
a great concentrations of shipping so close to the front as were often
assembled there. I could not but recall Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.
New Caledonia is in some respects one of the most beautiful
islands imaginable, especially the deeply indented coast along which are
many fine harbours, and all backdropped by rolling hills and lofty mountains
clothed in the green of forest and jungle. With its potentialities for
peacetime hunting, fishing, hiking, riding, and boating, it could be made
a wonderful playground after the war is over. And not the least of its
attractions lies in its pleasant all-year climate and its freedom from
malaria.
A Commander Atkinson, USN, out for a hike, joined
us at the old fort; and I gave him a lift down the hill. On the way home,
we passed close to the leper colony, a very pretty, well kept establishment,
with nice barracks, . . .
.
. . jumped into Bouncing Baby and headed for the range, several
miles away. We got there after the second flight had landed, but in plenty
of time to see the third flight jump. Out of the plane they poured,
their bodies snapping grotesquely as their chutes opened, arms clasped
around the auxiliary chute strapped to their chests, legs flying above
their heads.
.
. . hospital buildings, and a church -- quite an elaborate affair. Beside
the road, off the leper reservation, we passed a boy already partially
rotted away. I had seen inmates out on public highways thus before. Always
natives, for only non-whites are required to live in the colony.
