ADDITIONAL TROOPS ARRIVING ON BOUGAINVILLE, 25 December 1943. Trucks in foreground are 4-ton 6×6’s (top). 40-mm. automatic antiaircraft gun M1 on carriage M2 in position to protect landing operations; loaded ships in background are LST’s (bottom). Troops continued to land at the base established on Cape Torokina for two months after the invasion.
SOLOMON ISLANDS
MAIL CALL NEAR THE FRONT LINES (top). Message center in operation, 9 January 1944; note the lamp shade improvised from a tin can (bottom). By this time Allied air and naval power had isolated the enemy; his line of communication to Rabaul had been severed.
SOLOMON ISLANDS
LITTER PATIENT being carried by medical aid men into an underground surgery room (top). Emergency operation being performed in a dugout. This underground surgery room was dug about four feet below the surface and the sides were built up with sand bags and roofed with heavy logs. The entire structure was covered with a pyramidal tent, shielding the occupants from the sun (bottom).
