ML148449
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Frank Guidone. Timecode In: 00:00:14. Timecode out: 00:44:13. Notes: World War II Pacific Theater; Guadalcanal. Equipment Notes: Two-Track Mono recording. Show: Frank Guidone Interview Log of DAT #: 1 Engineer: Bill McQuay Date: July 19, 2002 World War II - Guadalcanal Frank Guidone Q = Neal Conan 0:44 Q what is your strongest memory? 0:50 I think my strongest memory would have been during the night, we actually were on the extreme right flank with the japans on the lunga, no axial penetration on that side, laying in the foxhole, having to stay awake, trying to react to every noise you hear ¿ because we could hear the firing and the shooting and the Japanese going through the jungle and just laying there on your back and look up at the sky, what you could see with the jungle overhead, and we spent most of the night that way, most of us did, makes an awful long night not being able to do anything just waiting of the attack o come on you then or jumping in your foxhole. Those were the longest hours, the ones that I remember the most. During the day you were busy doing different things, going on patrol, laying barbed wire, those nights were what suck in my mind the most. 2:19 Yes, 13th of September I think Q. probes. First night? 2:30 That they were going to probe into us. We knew they were out there, and we knew there was an attack coming and we were about as ready as we¿d ever be because we spent the whole day to prepare the defensive line. We often wondered how they selected us to put us in that prime spot. 3:00 We had a whole division perimeter circling the airport, Henderson field, and they pulled us off the beach because we just came from a raid on Tasimboko, and they said they were going to move us to a better spot, inland, up to this ridge, and we though ¿well, this is pretty good¿ it was a nice area, and we had our bivouacked area just down in the jungle. and Gen Edson they knew they were defending the most logical place the Japanese could hit 3:50 Yes, we were going up to the rest area. The planes would come and bomb, we were so close to Henderson Field that some of them would drop on us. We figured it would be because we were so close, that would have been the only bad feature of having that area as a rest area, because they bombed every day at noon. Q. when you know, what¿s that like? 4:24 Well the first thing is that most of us had foxholes, and that was the first place you when¿ we didn¿t have too many strong bomb shelters, later on they made coconut logs and steel plates, that time the early refuge was a foxhole. You expected to come over and there you go you run in our foxhole and most of us laid on our back and you could see the big V¿s, the bombers coming over there and it¿s just matter of waiting. You could get killed in a couple of ways, one of their bombs could go off in the coconut trees and drown you with shrapnel or could come down, make impact and wipe you out totally. It was just luck, that was it. Q nothing you could do 5:24 There was nothing you could do. The fighters went up thank god, and they would disrupt the attack effectively, most of the time. Q. football game? 5:47 If we could see the dogfight, there were times we could look off towards Tulagi and see the dogfights, the planes making loops, and you could hear the noise, but you couldn¿t ever tell really who was winning, I don¿t know about the rooting part, they might have rooted a bit after the fighters came in after the battles.. I can¿t surmise or do I know of any rooting going on, it would have been difficult because we were at well dispersed foxholes for one thing, and you had no idea who was getting shot down, they were too far away. Q. sept 1942. what was life like? Daily routine? 6:48 Well if we weren¿t out on a patrol or on the l... (Notes truncated)
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- Cataloged
- 11 Feb 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 11 Feb 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 11 Feb 2010 - Ben Brotman