MEN OF AN ORDNANCE UNIT ASSEMBLING VEHICLES which had arrived crated in sections. By October 1942 twenty-five men were completing six vehicles a day on this assembly line.
NEW CALEDONIA
ENLISTED MAN CATCHES UP ON LOST SLEEP after spending all night packing and moving with his regiment to the port of embarkation in preparation for a move from New Caledonia to another South Pacific island. The hilt of the saber which shows on the right side of the pack is that of an Australian cavalry saber issued in lieu of a machete.
THE STRATEGIC DEFENSIVE
AND
TACTICAL OFFENSIVE
SECTION II
The Strategic Defensive
and Tactical Offensive[2]
By August 1942 the Allies had established a series of defensive island bases, along an arc reaching from Honolulu to Sydney, which served as steppingstones for the supply system and the springboard for later offensive operations. The Japanese threat to these islands in late summer 1942 put the Allies on the tactical offensive, strategic defensive. Rabaul, the principal Japanese base in the Southwest Pacific, became the objective of a two-pronged Allied counterattack. One prong, starting with Guadalcanal, was directed up the chain of Solomons; the other prong, starting from Port Moresby, was directed through northeastern New Guinea toward New Britain.
[2] See John Miller, jr., Guadalcanal: The First Offensive, Washington, D.C., 1949 and Cartwheel: The Reduction of Rabaul, Washington, D.C. 1959; Samuel Milner, Victory in Papua, Washington, D.C., 1957; and Philip A. Crowl and Edmund G. Love, The Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls, Washington, D.C., 1955, in the series U.S. ARMY IN WORLD WAR II.