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see exactly nothing, nothing but blazing blue sky over them. Just when they were bursting with curiosity!
    Suddenly the boats roared, rapidly turned around, and they were skimming across the water—headed like swift sea birds for Pacific Island 14.

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    Island 14
    cherry stood up in the boat. rising out of the tropic sea were three islands, fringed with tall palms and ablaze with flowers. Their boats sped toward the center island. From this distance, it looked to Cherry like a giant ant hill, with crawling movement everywhere. Nearer, she made out men in green fatigues working up and down the long beach.
    The Higgins boats crawled right up on the sand. The girls jumped off and blinked in the intense sun and heat. Cherry did not know where to look first.
    Seabees, the sailor-workmen, carried boxes of supplies on their shoulders. Other Seabees were hammer-ing away on a half-finished wooden building under the trees. Engineers drove a noisy bulldozer, laying down rough roads. A big stout man, apparently a beachmaster, 37

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    roared orders. Cherry’s trained eyes picked out several camouflaged fortifications.
    What really made her catch her breath were signs of recent battle. In hollow ground stood a heavy mortar, the gun camouflaged with a net roof of leaves. She saw half a grass hut standing, the other half crumpled on the ground, sliced neatly away by a shell. She stood there and stared at the mute evidence of war that lay all around her.
    Major Pierce and another officer, in green fatigues, came up the beach to the waiting nurses. “I think the first thing the unit had better do,” Major Pierce called out, “is get acquainted with the place. This is Captain May, the Intelligence Officer. Captain May’s headquarters, called G–2, is on Island 13, but you will see him around here on 14 once or twice a week. Captain May is going to take us on a tour and explain things.” The Intelligence Officer nodded pleasantly to the medical people, who gathered around. He was a very young man, self-contained and average-looking, except for his extraordinarily alert eyes. Cherry liked the friendly, informal way he talked to them.
    “Well, I’ll start at the beginning. Only about three weeks ago, these three small islands were the scene of combat. We took them from the Japs. That was the gunfire you heard on Janeway. Our troops are fighting on, trying to seize more islands to the northwest. That’s the I S L A N D 1 4
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    gunfire you’ll hear occasionally on Island 14. We may be bombed,” he warned. “The Japs haven’t bombed for a long time, they must be saving up for something.
    Or our troops on the forward islands are keeping them too busy. You can’t see those islands, but they’re only thirty miles from here. So you see,” Captain May turned to the nurses, “you young women are as close to the fighting as the Army lets its nurses go.” Cherry spoke up, “If we were in a field hospital, we could go within six miles of combat, couldn’t we?” Captain May smiled. “Yes, in an emergency. But this ought to be dangerous enough to satisfy anybody. The Japs may make an attempt to retake these islands, or as I said before, they may bomb us. That is why we black-out every night.”
    The medical unit listened with visible excitement.
    Captain May gave them a sharp look, and resumed, “As soon as Islands 13, 14, and 15 were ours, the Seabees and the Engineers came in. Three weeks ago this place was a wilderness. The Japs never make their islands habitable. Their troops live under the most primitive conditions—they built only some pillboxes. There was nothing at all here but jungle. Now—well, you’ll see!” Jeeps and trucks rolled up. The entire unit climbed in and followed the Intelligence Officer’s jeep all around the island. Here, to their amazement, they found a small community hacked out of the jungle. There was a power 40
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