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pg. 28

At the same time we anxious to practice ( after all it had been over three months since any of us had been in the unit, and we wanted [[strikethrough]] its [[/strikethrough]] to check the calibration of the scopes.)

Some of us at this time were living under pup-tents fastened together to accommodate six or seven or eight men - with some crowding. We got a bulldozer to dig out a better revetment so that in case of an air raid we could move truck andtrailer out of the open. We spent several hours one day filling and sandbagging our tents. A few of the boys [[strikethrough]] lived [[/strikethrough]] took up housekeeping in an abandoned Jap concrete pillbox nearby. There was still intense fighting going on at the central and north ends of the [[strikethrough]] island [[/strikethrough]] tiny island and the presence of Jap snipers made us very wary of walking about unnecessarily. We still slept with our loaded guns by our sides and knives within easy reaching distance. The writer had also a large machete within easy reaching distance. By this time we had grown quite accustomed to the constant roar of artillery, machine gun fire, etc. so a little matter of Japanese rifle fire didn't bother us. We were limited to two canteens of water per day per person. The writer hadn't shaved or washed for quite some time and must have presented a very frightening picture - anyway a very dirty one. We were now eating K rations and, though  better than D bars, were far from considered a square meal. We heated our food over a campfire and it's amazing how quickly you can get used to eating everything with a spoon. We set up power lines out of telephone wire for electric lights for our revetment and also strung phone lines to the control tower