By late morning there were enough places on the beach to land boats. Bates and I got back in ours and proceeded to do the routine job of beach salvage work. Jack and I had worked out our plans for salvage work in detail and found that they worked beautifully. We stayed about one hundred feet off shore of the boats when they hit the beach and pulled them off the moment they began to get into trouble.
The beach is very tough from a boat operation point of view because the lava sand is so coarse and light and loose. The surf was not bad at all, news reports to the contrary being completely inaccurate. If we had had a really rough surf we would have had a picnic handling our boats.
Jack and I confined ourselves strictly to salvage work because that was what was needed most. We left the traffic control to other ships’ officers who did a good job. My boat and crew (without any replacements) did salvage work every day, all day for nine straight days with three nights aboard the ships six nights in the boats and only six hot meals. My boys showed the kind of courage and stamina that made me very proud to be in the boat with them.
