“Cactus,” Guadalcanal

All hands still a little shaky from yesterday. Ensign Carroll was accidentally run over by a truck. At first we thought his legs were crushed, but they were only badly bruised. Rested all day.

The commanding officer of the Army B-24 squadron is a full colonel. Our skipper is only a Lieutenant Commander, a rank which carries about as much water as a small tin cup. But the Navy has a set policy that squadron commanders be only Lieut. Commanders despite the fact that they comprise 400 to 500 men and millions of dollars worth of equipment. However, out on the bay sits a light cruiser, whose crew also consists of 4 – 500 men, and whose values well up in the millions, too. But the skipper of that cruiser is no Lieut.Cmdr., hell no, he’s a full captain, with three or four Commanders as heads of departments, each of whom has a Lt.Cmdr. as an assistant. The difference lies in the fact that one is aviation while the other is Navy.