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 interpret and 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 will 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. The British and the Germans have created some elite outfits of trained mountaineers to fight or act as guides on extremely high peaks, and this is one of them.

"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, destroying a radio station and causing considerable Japanese casualties. The Japanese retaliate with airstrikes, to little avail.

Nine Marines, accidentally marooned on the atoll, 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 district 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 deploys stretches of dummy minfields, 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 wanted me to do. And we will do it, sir. What a man!"

Rommel's judgment is more pointed, "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.