August 16th, 1942...The four destroyer-transports sent from New
Hebrides to Guadalcanal drop off 300 bombs, 400 drums of avgas,
120 maintenance personnel, and Royal Australian Navy Lt. Cdr.
Hugh Mackenzie. His job: set up Coastwatcher headquarters on
Guadalcanal, so that messages can go direct to the Marines.
Mackenzie's team includes Henry Rayman Martin, a civilian refugee
from New Ireland, who speaks pidgin English.
     A few minutes after they come ashore, the need for clear
communications is seen as a Marine sentry nearly bayonets Rayman
when he can't pronounce the password "Lilliputian."
     Mackenzie sets up shop in a Japanese dugout just north of
the airstrip, 50 feet long, five feet deep. Nobody can stand up
straight in it, and the roof leaks. Three Marine radio operators
sleep and work here, Mackenzie takes up a shack a half mile away.
     It takes only a day to set up the teleradio and plug a field
telephone into the central exchange, called "Texas Switch."

     Japanese troops of the Ichiki Detachment (Second Echelon)
and 5th Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force head to sea from
Truk, behind the light cruiser Jintsu. Behind them, Adm. Isoroku
Yamamoto has assembled four battleships, four carriers, 16
cruisers, a seaplane tender, and 30 destroyers, to defeat the
Americans.
     Since the Midway debacle, Yamamoto has re-shuffled his
fleet, basing it around the carrier Shokaku and Zuikaku. American
codebreakers inerpret establish these deployments perfectly.

     In Egypt, 44 Division replaces 2 NZ Divison at Alam Halfa,
at the rear of the Alamein line. 44's 132 Brigade comes under NZ
command, as Freyberg comes back to 2 NZ Division.
     Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Lewis Brereton's American B-24s hit
Afrika Korps troops convoys, an early appearance for the US Army
Air Force in Egypt.

     Australian troops in New Guinea run into the Japanese on the
Owen Stanley Ridge.

     Mohammed Ali Jinnah, president of the All-India Moslem
League, announces from Bombay that he will end his "cooperation"
with the British if they sacrifice the interests of 80 million
Moslems in India in reaching any settlement with the Hindu-
controlled All-India Congress party. Anti-British rioting
continues in India, with nine persons shot by police in Calcutta
and seven arrested in Bombay.

     The Polish Government-in-exile reverses a long tradition of
Polish anti-Semitism by announcing at a Zionist conference in
London that it wll back the establishment of a Jewish national
home in Palestine.

August 17th, 1942...Mackenzie opens his Guadalcanal station. His
call letters: KEN.

     Blitzkrieg rolls on in the East as the Germans establish
bridgeheads in the Kuban Peninsula. The Soviets continue to
retreat around Stalingrad. A German high mountain battalino
prepares to climb the 18,000-foot peak of Mt. Elbruz.

     "Carlson's Raiders," known officially as the 2nd Marine
Raider Battalion under Lt. Col. Evans Carlson, moves by two
submarines to the Japanese-held atoll of Main and begins a two-
day raid with 221 Marines on Butaritari Island, destryong a radio
station and causing considerable Japanese casualties. The
Japanese retaliate with airstrikes, to little avail.
     Nine Marines, accidentally marooned on the ataoll, are
captured, taken to Kwajalein, and beheaded.
     The Japanese react to this raid by shipping captured British
coast defense guns from Singapore and similar weapons from
Manchuria to beef up the chain's defenses. One of the atolls that
will be best defended is an obscure piece of coral and sand named
Tarawa.

     The good news is that the Italian transport Nino Bixio is
torpedoed in the Mediterranean. The bad news is that it was
carrying PoWs. 120 New Zealanders are drowned.

     Lt. Gen. Bernard Montgomery drops in on Brig. Howard
Kippenberger's 5 NZ Brigade. Kippenberger is astonished to meet
an Army commander who is more interested in fighting than making
sure officers wear their Sam Browne belts properly. Monty tells
Kippenberger that 5 Brigade is here to fight, and there is no
question of retirement to prepared positions or anywhere else.
Kippenberger is impressed.

     US 8th Air Force B-17s, escorted by RAF Spitfires, attack a
rail center at Rouen.

August 18th, 1942...Coastwatcher Jack Read on Guadalcanal gives
the word that the Japanese are coming to bomb Guadalcanal, and
Henderson Field goes to battle stations, flying warning flags and
wailing a bicycle siren.
     Mackenzie watches his first air raid from the steps of his
dugout, fascinated, oblivious to the danger, even when a Marine
is cut in half.

     Indian riots go into extra innings as six people are killed
when police fire into a mob after it burns down the courts at
Devacottsh in the Ramnad ditrict of Madras.

     In Egypt, Montgomery sends out a stream of orders. The
elderly Valentine, Crusader, and Grant tanks of 22nd, 23rd, and
8th Armoured Brigades will be used as mobile artillery fighting
alongside the infantry from hull-down positions. These brigades
will support 44 and 2NZ Divisions. 13 Corps, which controls these
outfits, gets a new boss, a mercurial protege of Montgomery named
Brian Horrocks. Monty also delpoys stretches of dummy minfeilds,
dummy tank battalions, and dummy infantry, to fool the Germans.
     The 8th Army feels the new broom. Montgomery himself goes
around to as many commands as possible, to explain the situation.
His fiery speeches and visible presence boost morale, as does his
casual dress and intolerance of buck-passing.
     "He told us everything," says RSM Vladimir Peniakoff (who
later founds one of the 8th Army's oddest outfits, Popski's
Private Army, "what his plan was for the battle, what he wanted
the regiments to do, what he weanted me to do. And we will do it,
sir. What a man!"
     Rommel's judgment is more poinrted, "The war in the desert
ceased to be a game when Montgomery took over."

     German troops of the 302nd Infantry Division, defending the
French port town of Dieppe, take a break amid fine weather from
the tedious business of defending the Atlantic Wall to go
swimming in the English Channel.
     On the opposite side, at Southampton, Portsmouth, Newhaven,
and Shoreham, 5,000 men of the 2nd Canadian Division, joined by
two Royal Marine Commando battalions, 50 US Rangers, and some
Free French commandos, load aboard 250 ships to mount a raid on
Dieppe that will both test German defenses and Allied abilities
to mount an invasion of Europe.
     That evening, a German battalion commander assigned to
defend the town of Puys, near Dieppe, decides to give his men a
snap practice alert at dawn the next day.