Herman "Vincent" Anderes was born Nov. 27, 1919 on a farm near Elmo, KS. He attend Hope, KS High School and graduated in 1936. There are two events Vincent Anderes remembers about the war. One is the first bombing raid at Rendova, New Georgia three days after his arrival there and the second was repeated two days later. The first raid was on July 2nd, the 24 year old says he had just returned from the Red cross beach after washing up and was standing in front of his pup tent in only his shoes and shorts. His buddy, Leo McGowan of IA called his attention to some approaching planes. Since we had no warning of an enemy raid we assumed they were our planes and were tying to decide whether they were B-25s or B-26s. They came over at tree top level and suddenly bombs started to fall. I grabbed my helmet and made a dive for my fox hole. It was about half full of water. No sooner did I land in the fox hole than someone landed on top of me. Bombs were dropping one after another and casualties were high. One piece of shrapnel struck my foot but caused only a minor bruise. Two days later they came back. One of our planes had spotted them, so our anti-aircraft crews were prepared. The Japs were over-confident because of the lack of ack-ack on their previous visit. So they again came in at tree-top level. Our gunners were ready for them and knocked down 13 zeros with 85 rounds of fire, establishing a record for hits. It was a beautiful sight to see those planes plunging to the ground and we all felt the Japanese had been well repaid for the damage and death they had inflicted July 2. This air raid happen at Aukland, New Zealand. Anderes liked the scenery in New Zealand and commented they had fresh eggs, steak and ice cream while there. After the war Anderes returned to Elmo to farm, marrying Virginia Baier. They had 9 children. Courtesy of The Dickinson County Heritage Museum, Abilene, KS.