TheCodeBreakers
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. So close were they that on Leyte late in 1944 Japanese
paratroops dropped on the unit, apparently having mistaken it for a
command post because of its numerous antennae. One startled
radioman, isolated in a direction-finding booth in the middle of a
clearing, suddenly heard bullets whizzing all around him. The
codebreakers dropped their pencils, grabbed their rifles, and engaged in
rather more direct action against the enemy than that to which they were
accustomed. The paratroopers were driven off, but not quickly enough to
annaabi.ee 
