Once They Were Eagles by Frank Walton

and one side of the strip was studded with them. Roundels identifying some as Japanese stared at us like big red eyes. Here and there, crashed American planes showed that the vital strip had not been won without cost.
    Everywhere there was activity. Bulldozers worked in the glare at one end of the runway, lengthening and widening it. Trucks buzzed around. Aircraft landed and took off regularly.
    A truck hauled us along the strip, around its end, and up a winding hill to our camp area—a cleared space, bulldozed out of the jungle. Back under the trees were the tents and the mess hall.
    Doc Reames and I moved into one of the 16-foot-square tents along with Boyington and Bailey. Our new home had a wooden deck and two six-foot foxholes. The sides of the tent were rolled up to take advantage of any breeze that might come along.
    It was hot, steamy. A foul odor pervaded the air. Flies were having a field day: there’d been no time yet to bury the dead Japanese.
    We walked back to our truck and went down to the airstrip and our “office.” The fighter intelligence office was another 16-foot-square tent with a long table constructed from rough-hewn teak boards. A couple of homemade bulletin boards lined one side. We looked forward to the return of our men from the search mission, but when we saw their long, sweat-streaked faces, we knew that they’d seen nothing of Ewing.
    They flew patrols, photo escorts, and search missions all day. At seven o’clock, the last flight in, darkness covered the island. The strip was secured and we climbed into the trucks to go to our camp area for chow.
    A sign over the mess hall door read: “ MAUDIE’S MANSIONS—A HOME FOR WAYWARD PILOTS .”
    We crunched along the rolled coral floor, sat on splintery mahogany benches at long, rough mahogany tables, ate fly-covered Spam and beans with dehydrated potatoes, and drank warm chicory. (To this day, I can’t stand Spam!)
    After our evening meal, we found our way to our tents and took offour sweat-crusted clothes. Then, dressed only in field shoes, we slung towels over our shoulders. With a bar of soap in one hand and a flashlight in the other, we picked our way around the stumps and mud puddles to the showers in a corner of the camp area. A raised frame had been built some three feet off the ground. Over this had been laid a few strips of the steel Marsden matting that was used to provide a firm surface on coral airstrips. On racks above were a dozen 50-gallon oil drums, and hanging on the nozzles were tin cans with holes punched. These were our showers. The cool water felt good as we soaped and chattered contentedly. Life here was reduced to its lowest common denominator: if you were alive and comfortable and not hungry, all was well. The showers were a luxury. So was our only woman within hundreds of miles: the well-endowed nude (being chased by three pilots) painted on the corner of the mess hall sign.
    Back at our tent, we lighted a candle and sat on our bunks and talked for a few moments. Then we adjusted our mosquito nets and stretched out nude, sweating again from the mild exertion of having walked from the showers.
    The dark, heavy, green foliage pressed in on us almost visibly, working its way back over the area that had been cleared. Jungle birds, tree lizards, and frogs called to each other with eerie, screeching cries. Rain began to pound on our tent and run off its sides in solid sheets. It was like a scene from the movie Rain. Now I really understood what the phrases “coming down in buckets,” “raining in sheets,” and “frog strangler” meant. It was as though a giant had suddenly dumped an entire swimming pool onto our tent.
    I raised my netting and put my hand out under the solid stream; the water was as warm as a YMCA pool.
    It was only nine o’clock, but we had to be up at 4:00 A.M. , and that would give us seven hours of sleep, we thought.
    We thought wrong.
    It