TheCodeBreakers
cooks, repairmen, and so forth. The men lived in tents.
The company's mission was to determine the Japanese order of battle
and ascertain military concentrations and movements. Most of its work
involved air-to-ground messages. To pick up these low-power
transmissions, it had to move forward from island to island as the Allies
advanced. Its first position, early in 1944, was at Nadzab, an airstrip in
the Markham Valley of New Guinea. One subordinate direction-finding
group was over a hump at Gusap; another was on an abandoned ranch
near Darwin, Australia, where it enjoyed fresh meat daily. In the middle
of the year it advanced to Biak, a small island north of New Guinea,
where it was nearly strangled by the thick jungle, and it went ashore on
Leyte about five days after the first wave of invasion troops. By then its
direction-finding groups were scattered all over the South Pacific.
The unit worked near the front lines so as to get as many intercepts
as possible