Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [72]
Joe wasn't able to keep that promise to himself, but that was different from getting rock-happy. He could do something about not drinking. That was up to him. But there was nothing he could do about the rock.
He and eight hundred other guys were put on the rock. Somebody had to be there. If it wasn't Joe, it would be somebody else. There he stayed! He was on the rock when the Marines went into Guadalcanal. He was there when a new general named Eisenhower landed in Africa. Half the men on the rock thought he was a Nazi big shot. But later on they learned. He was on the rock when Mussolini hauled tail, and on the rock Joe heard the news about Normandy. Some Marines flown out of Tarawa landed there, and then flew on. Eddie Rickenbacker was there for a few days. And so was Mrs. Roosevelt. They went on, but he stayed. For Joe the war was the rock.
It was a coral atoll west of the date line. From it you could see absolutely nothing but the Pacific Ocean. Only the flaming sun, almost directly overhead, told you where east and west were. At night half the stars were upside down and the other half you had never seen before.
The island within the atoll was a mile and a quarter long and a quarter of a mile wide. The airstrip for land planes used up practically the entire island. The seaplane base used up the rest. It was, everybody on the rock stoutly believed, the finest seaplane base in the Pacific. No one told them that there were at least a dozen better.
Trees had once covered the rock, but now only a fringe remained, like hair on the head of a bald man. Living quarters clung to the sides of the island or clustered at the southwest end.
The rock had one great blessing and one great curse. There was inadequate drinking water, and each night about seven a breeze blew off the ocean. Joe, in particular, used to say, "The only thing keeps me goin' is that breeze. No matter how tough the day is, you can always look forward to the breeze!"
In a way, the water problem was not an unmixed curse. It gave the men something to think about and something to work on. What they said about the water could not be repeated, but what they did about it was amazing. Every spare piece of tin on the island, every chunk of canvas, every old oil drum was put to use. First of all, men built a watershed. For this they used a large, flat, sloping surface. Most were of tin, some of wood, and a few of canvas. Then they built gutters around the sides, and sloped the principal gutter into a spout, which ran into a barrel. Ingenious men, like Joe, somehow procured lengths of rubber hose, which they fitted over the spouts. In this way they could fill three or four drums without shifting them. All they did was shift the hose. Joe was unusual, too, in that he invented the ready-made shower. He built his watershed out from a tree and placed his four drums on stilts. For a bath, he stood under one of the drums and let her go! The water was always warm. He never had a cold shower, but at least he got clean. That was more than he had been able to do for the first five months he was on the rock!
But no matter how much Joe washed, he still got skin diseases. Everybody in the South Pacific got the same diseases, but it was somehow worse when you got them over and over again, always on the same rock. Joe first noticed that something was wrong when he began to feel dizzy at