Manning a .30-caliber heavy barrel machine gun M1919A4, flexible on Bougainville. by Captain Steve Cibik, USMC as told to James D. Horan and Gerold Frank Bougainville—to most pre-war Americans who had ever heard of the place at all, a name conjuring exotic and sensuous visions. An island of travel poster beaches and perfumed flowers, of smiling maidens and languorous moonlight breezes. Yet, to the young Americans from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Nevada who fought for this island, the thoughts will always be different. They’ll be of murky heat, of mosquitoes big as a penny, of primeval slime into which a man could disappear and never be seen again… and of the enemy, ever-present and relentless. American forces landed on Empress Augusta Bay, Bougainville, on 1 November 1943, in order to secure an airfield site within effective striking distance of the big Japanese base on Rabaul, key to the southwestern Pacific area. But to operate an airfield, the surrounding jungle had first...