To answer some of the questions our subscribers have been asking about how TIME gathers, verifies, writes and distributes its news.

When General Chennault's flyers swept down on Formosa on the most dangerous raid ever attempted by our flyers in China, they took only one newsman along to witness the devastation of the great Shinchiku airdrome. That newsman was Teddy White of TIME'S Chungking Bureau.

And when the Marines landed on the bloody beaches of Tarawa only three newsmen went ashore with them the first day. One was William Hippie of the Associated Press; one was Richard Johnston of the United Press; and the third was Robert Sherrod of TIME.

On page 26 you will find excerpts from White's story of what he saw from the lead bomber as it dropped its fragmentations from almost suicide level on the Jap bombers massed along the runway just below. If the raid had failed of complete surprise, half the American flyers might have been shot down. Actually everything went off with such perfect precision that "all it cost us was the gasoline!"

And on page 24 you will find quotations from Sherrod's story of what he saw and heard in the bloodiest action in the 167-year history of the Marines.

Sherrod is a veteran of New Guinea, of Attu, and of the dive bombing of Wake, but "I never was so scared in all my life as when our little boat headed for the beach through a barrage of Jap mortar shells and automatic weapons. The first two boats we met had already been disabled. I gritted my teeth and tried to smile at the scared Marine next to me."

With 700 yards still to go they had to scurry over the side of the boat into water that was neck deep, with five or six machine guns concentrating on them. "I don't know when it was that I realized I wasn't frightened any longer. Perhaps it was when I noticed the bullets were hitting six inches to the right or six inches to the left. I remember laughing inside and saying: 'You , you certainly are lousy shots.' That, as I told Colonel Carlson the next day, is what I now call my hysteria period. . . ."

All during that first day on Tarawa "dozens of Marines were being killed or wounded every five minutes. Anyone who ventured beyond the precarious beachhead we held behind the retaining wall was more likely to become a casualty than not. Jap snipers were hidden so carefully in the tops of coconut trees or under earth-mounded coconut logs that they could rarely be seen. Machine guns from slits in those fortifications covered the beach and the areas behind the beach, chattering incessantly as they raked the Americans.

"When night came Bill Hippie of the A.P. and I dug a fox hole in the sand and tried to sleep. . . ."

When his cable was written Sherrod had just gotten back to his ship after three full days under constant fire during which he had only three hours sleep of 88.

Cordially,

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