24 January 2022
In the summer of 1942, during the first seven weeks of fierce fighting between U.S. Marines and the Japanese on Guadalcanal, an island in the Solomons, the Americans were watched over by a young correspondent from the International News Service, Richard Tregaskis. In his pockets he carried notebooks, on which he wrote key details about the brutal conditions faced by the Marines in this first major combat offensive in the Pacific theater.
Tregaskis would transfer the information nightly into a black, gilt-edged diary. "The theory and practice was that I could get all the details I needed by referring to the notebook number-one, or three, or four-when and if I could later get to writing a book from my notes," he recalled.
