Ah, Lovely Lovely Barrigada!

My first day I'm to go to Barrigada the Lt. asked me to do a chore for him and he said he would be back for me shortly so he took as many of the men as his Jeep would hold and then came back and got the rest of us. As we approached the sentry the Lt. noticed he had just taken the previous sentry's place and when we told him we were going to Barrigada he sort of paused and then he told us, "You guys are crazy to go in there; the Japs are still out there and last week some Navy people went out there and were killed!" The Lt. didn't say anything but, as we cleared the sentry, he said it was true that men were killed but the Marines "had cleared the area." The Lt. felt it was o.k. to go out. We all had our carbines & ammo and we understood we were only going about 500-1000 yards so we felt confident we were o.k. Also, the Seabees had cleared about a hundred yards or so from where we would be so it would be hard to sneak up on us. Naive, that's what we were. As we went in we greeted the other 4 guys who were clearing an area by hand; we observed there was a Japanese 2 man tank that was disabled; all over the area there were canteens and as we picked them up they were made of aluminum because they were very light. I opened one and could get a liquor smell, probably Saki, and it looked like this was a major fighting area. It was confirmed it was. Probably the Japanese had seen the situation wasn't good and had Saki and then attacked, probably took a few lives and then were killed.