On July 1, 1943, after 11 months of consolidation at Guadalcanal, U.S. forces were headed up the slot of the Solomons toward the big Japanese air force base at Munda, on New Georgia Island. The landing was to be at nearby Rendova in pouting rain., which was standard weather in that area. The first Marine landing had pretty well taken care of the Japanese on Rendova but not on Munda. The only obstacles were nature, Japanese guns and planes on nearby Munda and snipers left on Rendova. Here's how Commander Whittaker described things, as quoted in William Bradford Huie's book "Can-Do". Where we landed the soil was unbelievably marshy. A swampy coconut grove lay just back of the beach and we had to cut a road through there. Guns had to be transported from our beach over to West Beach so that shells could be hurled across the narrow strip of water into the Jap positions at Munda. And still that rain poured........
All day long, we sweated and swore, and worked to bring the heavy stuff ashore and hide it from Jap Bombers. Our mesh, designed to snowshoe vehicles over soft mud, failed miserably. Even our biggest tractors bogged down in the muck. The men ceased to look like men. They looked like slimy frohs working in some prehistoric ooze. As they sank to their knees, they discarded their clothes. The Japs were still sniping, but in spite of this, the men began felling the coconut palms, cutting then into 12-foot lengths and corrugating the road. Our traction-treaded vehicles could go over these logs, but the spinning wheels of a truck would send the logs flying and the truck would bury itself. To pull the trucks out, we lashed a bulldozer to a tree, then dragged the trucks clear with the dozers winch.
When night came, we had unloaded six ships, but the mud was about to lick us. Foxholes filled with water as rapidly as they could be dug. The men rolled their exhausted, mud covered bodies in tents and slept in the mud. The next day, at 1330, without warning, the Jap planes came in with bomb bays open. all of us began firing with what guns had been set up, but most of the Seabees had to lie in the open on the beach and take it. The first bombs found our two main fuel dumps and we had to lie there in the mud and watch our supplies burn while the Japs strafed us. One bomb landed almost under our largest bulldozer and the big machine just reared up like a stallion and disintegrated. Then every man among us thought that his time had come. A five ton cache of our dynamite went out, exploding the eardrums of the men nearest to it. Two of our best officers and 21 men were dead. Many more were wounded, others were missing and a number were out of their heads.
Our galley equipment, most of our supplies and all the men's seabags and personal belongings were destroyed. By the morning of the fourth day, we had opened the road to West Beach, but what a road it was. We had literally snaked those big 155's guns to fire at Munda, through two miles of mud and the Marines began setting them up. Our men had been under constant strain for 90 hours. At least 50 of them were running high temperatures. They could only jump between gasoline drums and powder when the Japs came over. And the beach, as always, was a potential torch with ammunition, diesel oil and gasoline everywhere. To move the inflammable stuff back into the storage areas, the men had to emplace themselves in the mud in bucket brigade fashion. For hour they worked that way, sinking deeper into the mud each time they handled a package. And still the rain poured. Late that afternoon, from over on the West Beach, the Marines opened up on Munda with 155's. Our men stopped work and cheered almost insanely. No group of men had endured more in order for guns to begin firing. Our number of psychopathic cases had begun to mount. We had to evacuate ten men who had become hysterical. As men grow physically exhausted, they become more and more susceptible to nervous collapse under bombing. By the sixth day, the 155's were pouring shells into Munda almost incessantly and we had the supply road open, bur our position seemed more impossible than ever. None of us could remember anything except mud and bombs. The rains seemed to get heavier. But somehow, the men kept working. The air raids continued, but Whittakers Seabees did their jobs. Finally U.S. planes started to provided effective air cover and things improved. Later, the Japanese were chased out of Munda and the Seabees went in to build a large airfield there.