For one man in the wartime Pacific, a grizzly bear was big medicine.

Combat artist Tom Lea spent 66 days on the USS Hornet (CV-8) off Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942 on assignment for Life magazine. He left her just days before she was lost on 26 October in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. In 1943, by then on assignment in China, Lea reminisced about the carrier and her crew with Darrell "Berry" Berrigan, the Associated Press correspondent in Chungking. Following is part of Lea's reflections.

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