For once, Jake Dillon thought at the time, the Reporter had stuck pretty close to the facts. He hoped there was still some truth in the line about him... The King of Flacks would need every bit of his royal Hollywood experience if he was going to make a success of what he had in mind to do:
He was going to put together a little movie about the Marine invasion of Bukavu, Tulagi, and Guadalcanal. He'd made the decision solely on his own authority; nothing about it was put on paper; and he didn't tell anyone about it except his cameramen.
His film would come in addition to the footage the combat cameramen shot when the invasion was actually in progress. As soon as possible, that would be sent undeveloped to Washington, where somebody else would soup it, screen it, and do whatever they decided to do with it, passing it out to the newsreel companies and whatever.
What Jake Dillon had in mind was to have his people shoot newsreel feature stuff-as opposed to hard news. The emphasis would be on the ordinary enlisted Marine. They'd follow the 1st Division as the Division prepared to go to the Solomons, and then of course, they'd be with them when they got there.
He had a number of scenes in mind. Training shots, primarily. Life in tent city here in New Zealand. Life in the transports en route to the rehearsal in the Fiji Islands, and then as they sailed for the Solomons, and then after they landed. Human interest stuff.
In point of actual fact, it would be the first movie that he had ever produced. But he had been around the industry for a long time and knew what had to be done and how to do it. The idea was not intimidating; God only knew how many successful movies had been produced by ignoramuses who couldn't find their own asses with both hands without the assistance of a script, a continuity girl, and two or three assistant directors to put chalk marks on it for them.
He learned early on in Hollywood that a good crew makes all the difference when you are shooting a movie. If you have a crew who know what they are doing, all you have to do is tell them what you want, and they do it. And even if it was a damned small one, he had a good crew here with him.
They understood what he wanted to do; and, just as important, they thought it was a pretty good idea.
That meant, for example, that he could tell them that he wanted to show equipment being off-loaded from transports, and they would go shoot it for him. He didn't have to stand around with a script and a megaphone in his hand, yelling at somebody to get a tight shot of the sweating guy driving the truck. His people made movies for a living; they knew what was needed, and how to get it.
As Dillon walked down the Quay, he thought, If I was making a movie called "The Greatest Fuck-Up Of All Time," I could finish principal photography this morning right here on this goddamned dock.
Jake Dillon had seen some monumental screw-ups in his time, but this took the goddamned cake: The ships carrying the supplies of the 1st Marine Division had not been "combat-loaded" when they sailed from the United States. That meant they all had to be reloaded here, since they could not approach the hostile Solomon Island beaches the way they were originally loaded.
The term "combat-loaded" refers to a deceptively simple concept: Logisticians and staff officers spend long hours determining what equipment will be needed during the course of an invasion, and in what order.
As a general rule of thumb, the ships carrying the invasion force would have in their holds supplies for thirty days' operations. Adequate stocks of ammunition, obviously, had to be put on the beach before the chaplain's portable organ, or the Division's mimeograph machines. But the barges and small boats ferrying supplies from the ships to the beach would be a narrow pipeline. Thus it would not be prudent to fill that pipeline with ammunition and nothing else. For other supplies were no less vitaclass="underline" The men had to eat, for example; so there had to be rations in the pipeline. And all the complex machinery on the beach needed its sustenance too-what the services call POL (Petrol, Oil, and Lubricants). And so on. When the obvious priorities had been determined, then the loading order was fine tuned. This wasn't simply a case of saying off-load so much ammunition, then so many rations, then so many barrels of POL, and repeating the process until all the important supplies are ashore, after which you could off-load the nonessentials, like typewriters. For example, while a radio operator receiving messages intended for the Division Commander could take them down by hand, he would be far more efficient in terms of speed and legibility using a typewriter. So, while a typewriter might not seem to be as necessary in the early stages of an invasion as, say, a case of hand grenades, at least one typewriter would head for the beach early on, probably with the first ammunition and rations supplied.
When all the priorities had been established and fine tuned, the ships of the invasion force were ready to be "combat-loaded." This followed the logic of "Last On, First Off": Once The Division was on the Solomon Islands beaches, the supplies needed first would be loaded on last.
Doing this was proving far more difficult than it sounded- the combat-loading planning for an amphibious invasion has been described as a chess game that cannot be won.
One major problem the 1st Marine planners faced- though it was by no means their only major problem-was that since the ships were not originally combat-loaded back in the States, the supplies had to be removed from the holds of the ships and sorted out before they could be reloaded.
This problem was compounded by the Wellington Longshoreman's Union, which had very strong views about how ships should be unloaded and loaded; and by whom; and on what days during what daylight hours. They had come to an understanding with management regarding the role of longshoremen in the scheme of things only after long hours on the picket line and extensive negotiations over many years. They had no intention of giving up these hard earned prerequisites for anything as insignificant as a war with the Japanese Empire.
The Americans solved the labor problem by using a cut-the-Gordian-knot approach: American Marines were unloading the ships around the clock, seven days a week. At the same time, they let it be known that armed Marines were posted at various spots around the Quay, with orders to shoot at anyone or anything interfering with unloading and loading of the ships.
Jake hoped the threat would suffice. While it wouldn't have bothered him at all if half the longshoremen in Wellington got shot between the eyes, the flack in him was concerned with how "MARINES MASSACRE THIRTY NEW ZEALAND LONGSHOREMEN IN LABOR DISPUTE" headlines would play in the papers in the States.
Technically, it was not his problem, since he was not the PIO for the 1st Marine Division. But he was over here to "coordinate public information activities," and he suspected that if there was lousy publicity, he would get the blame.
While the supplies were being off-loaded for sorting, another major problem had come up: There was no way to shelter the off-loaded supplies from the dismal New Zealand July winter weather (the seasons were reversed down under). It was raining almost constantly.
For openers, the supplies for the First Marine Division- not only rations but just about everything else, too-were civilian stuff. The quart-size cans of tomatoes, for example, had been bought from the Ajax Canned Tomato Company, or somesuch. These cans had been labelled and packed with the idea in mind that they would wind up on the shelves of the "Super-Dooper Super-Market" in Olathe, Kansas. They had paper labels with pictures of pretty tomatoes attached to the metal with a couple of drops of cheap glue. There were six cans to a corrugated paper carton. The carton was held together with glue; and a can label was glued to the ends.