More Shameless Self-Promotion.

Coastalwatch.com, Australia's leading surf website, published an interview with me today:

http://www.coastalwatch.com/news/article.aspx?articleId=10507&display=0&cateId=3&

Memorial Day — Our Fallen Troops

“Get the gaff ready, man!”

Mike, a laughing American, beseeched the i-Kiribati boat driver watching him crank the reel, teasing the trembling line from the depths. A large fish was on the other end. Mike’s pale face was flushed red, his white shirt dimmed with sweat and saltwater, his veins adrenaline-fueled. The three of us were aboard a 33-foot panga a few hundred yards offshore, in sight of the waves I’d surfed, admiring the outer-atoll scenery, drinking beer, and we’d trolled for an hour before something else bit.

“Got it!” Mike wrestled the large dog-toothed tuna onto the deck, next to the long barracuda he’d hooked earlier. “Sashimi tonight, dudes?”

Not a fisherman, Mike was a friendly man with a serious mind. He was 41, tall and blue-eyed, a multi-tour combat veteran who spent nine years as a sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. He also spent four years as an infantry squad leader in the California Army National Guard. He was intelligent and thoughtful and unassuming. His blond hair was shaven and he spoke with a slight drawl. He voted Republican. He loved his country. He loved beer. He loved hunting and camping and riding motorcycles under a big sky; he ran a motorcycle-rental business with his wife in Montana, but confided to me that he was unhappily married. He dreamnt of being a park ranger someplace pretty. He hated cities. He missed the military but enjoyed his civilian freedom very much. He carried with him the solemnent weariness of a fighter who had seen the hell of war and humanity at its worst, the suffering and the drama, and he knew well the scent of death.

Like his time in the Middle East, Mike was not in Kiribati for joy, but he’d wrested 24 R&R hours on the outer atoll we fished from. He was not a surfer nor a sailor and had never lived by an ocean—the Pacific was not his habitat. He preferred snowy mountains and open prairie. He’d learned of Kiribati from an article in the January 2010 issue of the USCM’s Leatherneck magazine and had flown from Montana for one reason: the Battle of Tarawa.

In 2010, 67 years after World War II, 74,190 American soliders—nearly 20 percent of the war’s casualties—were still listed as Missing In Action. They never returned to the country they fought to preserve. They died on obscure battlefields and were sunk in makeshift graves, but their bones were never retrieved. Mike knew of this. It irked him. The Leatherneck article smacked his solar plexus.

The story detailed Moore’s Maurauders, a non-profit group of anthropologists, archeologists, doctors, scientists, educators, retired military generals and admirals, police officers, and soldiers who shared one mission of finding the remains of the Tarawa MIAs that the U.S. government deemed recoverable. Mike enrolled immediately and was tasked with recon and logistics.

“The lost men on Tarawa are a mystery and a well-kept secret by our military and government,” he told me as we motored back to land, fresh fish on the dinner menu. “We’ve never lost the graves of so many who were killed. Technically they’re MIA, but it’s more accurate to say their graves were misplaced.”

“Why search for them?” I asked.

“Closure is what this mission really is all about. There are many people who don’t know what happened to their loved ones here. We want to bring closure and awareness of the tragedy and the truth about what really happened to those brave men. They were lost and forgotten and they deserve better from their country.”

Soon after the three-day 1943 battle, the U.S. Navy and Army built buildings and repaired the Japanese runway. Original soldier burial sites were moved and grave markers went astray. During the construction activity, hundreds were lost.

“A total lack of training and procedural control,” Mike said.

Between Army and Navy miscommunication, management of the ad hoc graves promptly failed after the Marines’ Tarawa departure.

In 1946 the U.S. sent a recovery team and 1,100 coffins to Tarawa; just 500 bodies were found and placed in the interim Lone Palm Cemetery. That mission was followed by another to retrieve the bodies from Lone Palm and bring them home. The other 600-plus MIAs were not sought until August 2010, when an archeological team for the U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command set up shop.

“So far, remains have been found under buildings, in trash dumps, under pig pens,” Mike said. “Everywhere.”

“Why’d you get involved?”

“I felt a personal obligation to help bring the story of these men to some kind of conclusion. I’d want someone to do it for my family if I were a MIA. And the courage of those men deserves to be honored properly. Generations of us never knew of the real failure on Tarawa. We never knew the whole sad story. Marines don’t leave their brothers behind, but we did. I can honestly tell you that every last one of us wants to help make this right.”

“Why haven’t they been recovered?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.”

Hours later I laid sticky and wakeful in the muggy darkness of my small bungalow on that desolate isle, listening to the soft rustle of surf on the reef and the dozens of black noddies, cooing and chortling as they flew about. I could also hear the screams of soldiers and the searing din of fighter planes and the exploding grenades and bombs and the swarms of bullets and the hissing flamethrowers and the thud of a man hitting dirt, exhaling for his last time.

Ratta-tat-tat-tat-tat.

Ratta-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

And I thought: today, thanks to our Marines, Kiribati might be a good place to go surfing.

A Lovelace Deuce.

In the segment of Rabbit's Foot-ery, Byron Bay local Ari Browne puts it down it on the 6th version of the Rabbit's Foot at a quick sunrise session before the day's responsibilities set in. In this one, the nineteen year old Mr.Browne is surfing at Lennox Head after no more than 8 sessions in varied conditions over two weeks...Stoking!

Ari is one of the coolest and most potential-ridden people I've met in my travels and rides this design beautifully. I'm really pleased that he now owns this board, as they seem to have a pretty solid connection from the go!



Clovis Donizetti and Trevor Gordon,
time and place are irrelevant.

music: OGD (Road Song) by Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery

Buy "Happy Beach" Today.

Jack Coleman is the man.

store.mollusksurfshop.com/products/happy-beach-download

In Happy Beach Andrew Doheny surfs his way through life at home in California and explores the friendly streets & waves of Mexico. Ford Archbold transcends his larger than life character both in and out of the water. Josh Hoyer plays himself in possibly the darkest, most suspenseful conceptual surf section ever. Ozzie Wright gets loose in New York on a borrowed board & surfs himself into corners in Newport Beach. Chippa Wilson visits Southern California and rides unwanted waves all to himself. Dane Reynolds gets car jacked, and recovers nicely from injury with huge hacks often resulting in his famous cannonball exit. Alex Knost, Albee Layer, Spencer Pirdy, Jesse Steelman, Bobby Okvist, The Wedge, & Jesus as himself all make small cameos. Running time: 31 minutes

Newsflash! Bodysurfing Is Now Officially Cool.

From the May 7 issue of New York Times T magazine:

BODYSURFING IS THE NEW STANDUP-PADDLEBOARDING

Bodysurfing is having a resurgence, thanks to the surfer Keith Malloy’s cinematic homage, “Come Hell or High Water.” According to the San Francisco surfboard shaper Danny Hess — whose wooden hand planes give bodysurfers better lift — the movie’s made the sport cool, maybe for the first time ever. “Every time it screens, I see 20 more people bodysurfing the next day,” he says. His bodysurfing spots: the Wedge in Newport Beach, Calif., and Sandy Beach on Oahu.



Pat Millin buttering a wee bit of bodysurfing when the swell died, South Pacific, September 2011.
Film/Edit: Michael Kew
peathead.blogspot.com
Song: "J'Aurais Bien Voulu" by Babylon Circus.

A Valuable Fashion Tip from GQ.

The Cleanest Line, Part 3.

http://www.thecleanestline.com/2012/05/isles-of-idyll-an-excerpt-from-crossings.html

The View From Shore.

My esteemed South African friend and colleague, Alan van Gysen, landed yet another cover from our May 2011 adventure in the Lakshadweep atolls of India. This time, on the new issue of Surf Portugal, we see Trevor Gordon streaking atop his Lovelace 5'6" Fush, mere inches from van Gysen's fisheye lens:

Meanwhile, sweating on the beach, I captured the same moment. with far less impressive results. Wow, what a difference! Congratulations to Alan and Trevor for getting the shot!