Not all of the sea stories I heard as a kid were from the Chief. This one came from my buddy Bobby's dad, the one who got us the job at Bloc Arena on Pearl. He was one of those WWII vets with apparent baggage but I never saw him act out on it. He was kind of sour alot of the time, but he really loved telling this story.
In the south Pacific somewhere, early in the war, Boats (that's what we're calling Bobby's dad cause that's what he was) was detailed with a small group of sailors and a few local natives to help with the labor, to go to a very small neighboring island to set up some sort of supply depot or something like that. It was a VERY small island, with a low hill in the middle. The chief in charge sent a cou;le of the sailors up the hill to set up a machine gun for air defense, just in case, and the rest set to work with whatever they were supposed to do.
As luck would have it, a Japanese scout plane spotted the activity and shortly there followed a couple of Zeros to mess up the operation. The planes dove in to attack and the sailors ran for the machine gun on the hill or for whatever cover they could find...the natives didn't know what to do so Boats yelled, "RUN"...and they did. Boats wasn't sure how long the attack lasted...combat has a way of compressing or expanding time...but he said it was long enough for that group of natives to make three full laps around that island before the Zeroes broke off and flew away.