Guadalcanal

When I started to read "Close Up of Guadalcanal" I approached it with the dislike of books about "the Islands" that is ingrained into everyone who was there. But despite this unfavourable initial attitude I could not help becoming absorbed in Mr. Andrews' book as he described so accurately the places I had seen and the almost exactly similar places I had not. The mosquitoes, the mud, the dust, the rain, the sweat—all the things his camera saw his pen recorded also.

But there were other things Mr. Andrews' camera did not see, and in his written words only occasional glimpses appear. He went to war looking for battle pictures—and missed all that was important to us who were there. His camera could have explained our physical hardships to home fronters and perhaps impressed them. But because he came from outside, a visitor under officers' conditions and free from a daily routine that never seemed to bring any end nearer, he sensed only outward glimpses of the killing apathy that settled on us. Only one of us, who lived days, weeks, months and into years on one spot, where the end grew out of sight as we approached it and when it came, came almost too late—only one of us, who got to feel we could remember no other life, that we didn't care anyway—only one of us could really tell what "the Islands" meant to us.

So read it as a book by someone who saw objectively and recorded. It's good. But don't ask us what it was really like to be there. I don't think we want to tell. Not yet.

Our copy per courtesy of Progressive Publishing Society. Retail price 1/3.

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