When the light fades out in the tropic dark,

                                    Or you’ll hear the song of the Cactus nights,

                                    “Hey you!  Turn out them  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ lights!”

                                    Condition red or condition green,

                                    Just strike a match in the tropic scene

                                    To hear the chorus of Cactus nights,

                                    “Hey you!  Turn out them _ _ _ _ _ _ _ lights!”

                                    Colonel, General, Seargeant (sic) Major,

                                    Light a lamp and it’s a wager,

                                    You’ll hear the song of Cactus nights,

                                    “Hey you!  Turn out them _ _ _ _ _ _ _ lights!”

                                    And you better turn out them _ _ _ _ _ _ _  lights

                                    When you hear the song of Cactus nights.

                                    A Marine is looking down his sights,

                                    And he’ll shoot as one of his sacred rights,

                                    If you don’t turn out them _ _ _ _ _ _ _ lights.

            Comments:      This poem was found only in Doc Livingood’s Flight Surgeon’s log, page 139.  It was handwritten and was anonymous.

                                                A perfect face is hard to find,

                                                But harder still is a neat behind.

                                                Some far to thin  - some much to plump,

                                                Yet others with unsightly bumps.

                                                Some closely cased their contours hide,

                                                Some gaily gig from side to side.

                                                And some that wobble – blithe and gay –

                                                Bulge badly in the oddest way!

                                                Some near the shoulder blades are found,

                                                Whilst others barely clear the ground;

                                                And some delight the artists’ eye

                                                While some, it seems, don’t even try.

                                                The perfect face it seems to me,

                                                (If you’re observant, you’ll agree)

                                                That makes the hardened heart go thump,

                                                So seldom tops the perfect rump.

            Comments:      This poem was found only in Doc Livingood’s Flight Surgeon’s log, page 140.  It was handwritten and was anonymous.

Comments:      This poem was handwritten into Doc Livingood’s Flight Surgeon Journal on page 141 and appears attributed to Albin J. Pearson.  The letters C.B. often applies to the Navy Construction Battalions, better known as Seabees.

Early in the war a campaign in the prevention of malaria was initiated. A synthetic drug, sold under the name of Atabrine and invented by a German researcher before the war, was distributed to American troops stationed on the South Pacific islands. Complaints against the yellow pills became common.  Atabrine was bitter, appeared to impart its own sickly hue to the skin. Some of its side effects were headaches, nausea, and vomiting, and in a few cases it produced a temporary psychosis.  Two VMF-213 pilots were recorded as having reaction to atabrine.

Tojo Hideki, (1884-1948), was a Japanese political and military leader and the premier who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.  His name was Tojo Eiku before he became premier.

A Marine in a corner, quiet and glum

Stripped to the waist and burned by the sun

Crouched by a box with a candle’s faint flame

With inspiration he dare not name

He wrote these words to the rhythm of the rain.

Where there aint no ten commandments

And a man can raise a thirst

We’re the outcasts of civilization

The victims of life at its worst.

Down in the rain soaked islands

Are the men that God forgot

Battling the treacherous fever

The itch and tropical rot.

Now nobody knows they are living

And nobody gives a damn

Back home they are soon forgotten

These Marines of Uncle Sam.

Marines on “Foreign Duty”

Earning their meager pay

Guarding the country’s millions

On a dot of land so far away.

Living with dirty natives

Down in the sweltering zone

Dreaming of wines and loved ones

Eight thousand miles from home.

Drenched with sweat in the evening

They sit on their bunks and dream

Killing themselves with Gook beer

To drown memory’s horrible to dream.

Vermin at night on your pillow

Its that, no doctor can cure

Hell, they’re not convicts

Just Marines on a “foreign tour.”