[Tuttle had a grandstand view for every manner of amusement, some of it put on by devious pranksters.]
…It is also not unusual to see a bridge drive by. Not a truck carrying bridge sections, but an actual self-propelled self-deploying bridge. It can drive up to a river bank, fold itself out over the span, and be driven right over.
Oh, there are people here besides the engineers. The bombers and long range fighters make some racket as they sortie and return. Ships come and go, taking supplies and liberty, heading back out into the fight or to bring us even more stuff.
The ground combat units here, who mostly just stayed on after conquering the place, are the 1st Marine Division, the 7th Infantry Division, and the 27th Infantry Division. The Army and Marine Corps units are camped generally on their respective sides of the island. They are refitting and retraining, as you might expect, but the pace of it leaves some of them restless.
Pranks are to be expected. Inter-service pranks especially. Add in the presence of a hundred thousand technical specialists, and the jokes can get intricate.
Colored smoke grenades are a favorite booby trap device so far. A delay mechanism is set in some way, so a machine will get along a ways before green or red smoke billows out from the engine compartment – or fills the driver’s cab. One group of on-looking Seabees thought it was hilarious to see an Army crane run straight over a jeep, the driver blinded by a well timed smoke bomb, until it turned out that it was the personal jeep of a Navy captain, who only got out a minute before.
Those Seabees kept the Navy officers’ latrines spic and span for the duration of their stay.
