Use of yellow fever vaccine by Army defended by medicos
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WLB denies pay boost
Recent increases ample for NY workers, officials decide
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland (By Wireless) – When our sailors and Marines arrived here to take over our new naval base, things were only half finished. Everybody had to live as best he could.
For lack of better facilities, the officers lived in Nissen huts. Life in the main camp wasn’t so bad at that. Most of them could still take it without much grumbling. But the government began to make other arrangements.
Today the officers are scattered around in old country estates, farmhouses, grand town mansions, and some even downtown apartments.
Most of them are living in a half-world that would tickle you – a combination of bleak, castle-like splendor and whatever improvised home touches they can rassle up at this distance from America.
You can get the picture from the house where I am a guest. The house is old and dingy-looking outside, but a palace in its way.
It sits on a hillside, with a view somewhat like that from Mount Vernon. The grounds are huge. Down below are giant beech trees, wandering walks through shrubbery, and flower gardens. The whole thing is on a magnificent scale, but of many years ago.
The owner is now away, a fighting officer in the Allied armies. The house has been leased by our government. All except the essential basic furniture has been taken out.
The house has a great wide center hallway. At the far end is a grand staircase. There is a living room on each side of the hall. The officers seldom use more than one.
The dining room is an immense one, at the rear. The officers all eat together at a long table.
Nine officers, some Navy and some Marine, live in this mansion. Each man has a room of his own upstairs. And the rooms are immense. Each has a gas-log fireplace. There is no other heat, but the gas takes the chill off.
Some of the rooms have regular beds and wardrobes. Others are bare except for Army cots and tables.
Some of the officers feel that it isn’t worthwhile to add anything to take the bareness away. Others have scattered family photos on the mantle.
There were some bathrooms but not enough. So the upstairs end of the huge hall has been blocked off with beaverboard, and lavatories and hot showers put in.
Alongside the house is a newly built bomb shelter exactly the same as those in the camps. That is true of every house in which officers live.
Breakfast runs from 7 to 8:30. It is a good old American breakfast, too, with eggs and everything.
A little mimeographed newspaper gives the latest news received by wireless.
Typed at the top of it is, “For Navy personnel only; to be destroyed after reading.” But I have got to be such a thorough piece of Navy personnel myself that I read it without batting an eye, and nobody says anything. To tell the truth, there’s nothing in it that you wouldn’t find in American newspapers anyhow.
Immediately after breakfast, the officers leave for their respective camps. Some have been assigned cars of their own – Chevrolet sedans. Others go by groups in station wagons. Everybody is back for lunch at 12:15. They sit around for a half hour after lunch talking about their work and recalling funny yarns and famous naval characters.
Dinner is at 6:30. The officers usually get home in time to clean up first. Frequently there is a guest. It may be an American nurse, a British WREN, a local member of the Home Guard, or the dean of the cathedral – just anyone they want to invite.
The living room where they sit and talk for a while after dinner is bare except for a davenport, a few chairs and a big round table with some old newspapers on it. There is not a picture or an ashtray or a knickknack. But little enough time is spent there, so it makes no difference.
In the evenings one officer always has night duty at camp. Others go out. Some stay in their rooms and read or write letters home. Most have radios.
There is very little noise. The house is so big and thick-walled that you couldn’t hear a noise in another room if there was any.
The blackout curtains are drawn about 10 o’clock, though it is not dark till midnight. Marine sentries guard the house all night. Usually you can hear rain pattering on the trees when darkness finally comes.
It isn’t the best way in the world to live but it is pretty good for war. And as one officer said, “It’s a hell of a lot better than living on a destroyer in the North Atlantic.”
The Pittsburgh Press (July 29, 1942)
COUNSEL CHARGES FDR ROBBED SPIES OF CIVIL RIGHTS
Biddle raps appeal for civil trials
Claims saboteurs ask privileges not given American soldiers
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U.S. consumers facing more food shortages
Dozens of commodities listed by Agriculture Department; President Roosevelt warns ‘many sacrifices lie ahead’
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U.S. troops arrive on coast of Africa
London (INS) –
American troops have arrived on the West African Gold Coast, Lord Swinton, British Minister, revealed today in a broadcast.
Talking from Accra, capital of the Gold Coast, Lord Swinton said:
The Americans are here with us, as they are everywhere in this worldwide conflict. I already have experienced the cooperation and frank partnership of General Fitzgerald, commanding the United States forces.
British girls warned against war weddings
London (AP) –
A warning against ill-considered marriages of British girls to American or other foreign soldiers in Britain was issued today by Dr. George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester.
He advised parish priests before accepting marriage notices to obtain written assurance that the prospective bridegroom was unmarried and of sound character.
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FBI ‘deluged’ with tips on three Nazi saboteurs
Washington (UP) –
Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said today they have been “deluged” with tips that three wanted German saboteurs have been seen in virtually every section of the country.
Sought are Walter Kappe, instructor in the sabotage school at Berlin; Rheinhold Rudolf Barth, former Long Island Railroad draftsman, and Joseph Schmidt, former farmer, hunter and trapper in the province of Alberta, Canada.
Officials said they were gratified with the public’s reaction to a plea to be on the watch for the confederates of the eight saboteurs now on trial here.
Flying Tiger coming home
Birchrunville, Pa. (AP) –
Peter Wright, who bagged 13 Japanese planes over Rangoon as a member of the American Volunteer Group, wired his father here:
Got last Jap for AVG.
The 23-year-old flier is en route home from Calcutta with 13 other “Flying Tigers.” He was a bomber pilot on a U.S. aircraft carrier before joining the AVG last year.
Army takes over hotel
Atlantic City, NJ (UP) –
The Knights of Columbus Hotel, one block off the Boardwalk, was taken over yesterday by the Army Air Forces replacement training center. The six-story, brick structure was completed in 1928 at a cost of $650,000.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland (By Wireless) – At the new American naval base here the chief petty officers’ huts are all together at one end of the camp, and just behind them is their clubhouse, in a Nissen hut. It has just been opened.
The manager is Chief Yeoman David Hurley, who is a sort of master of ceremonies for the whole station, and a character in anybody’s country.
Hurley is an old-timer in the Navy. His sleeve has service stripes clear to the elbow. He is a good-natured guy, and he talks your head off. He has a hand in everything – arranges Sunday picnics, puts on all the movies, plans and supervises the weekly dances. He’s an arranger at heart, and he’s in his glory over here.
Last week he had three days’ leave, but he never even left the camp. One of the officers found him in a recreation hall stringing up colored pennants on wires.
“What are you doing here, Hurley?” he said. “You’re supposed to be on leave.”
Hurley said, “Yes, but all these British sailors and Irish girls are coming to a dance tomorrow night. This place has got to look nice, and if I don’t do it, it won’t get done.”
He acted very mad and persecuted about it, but he couldn’t have been pried out of there with a court-martial.
Hurley hasn’t any upper teeth. He goes around with his cap pulled down, making his ears stick out, and with his lower lip folded up over his toothless upper one. He’s a sight to behold.
He says he plays 11 musical instruments. And he is a constant actor. He’ll break into a skit on a moment’s notice. Two of his chief acts are a crying jag and an imitation of Stepin Fetchit.
Wherever he goes Hurley produces his own good time. I don’t think he even knows he’s in Ireland.
The chief petty officers had just opened their club a couple of nights before I got here, so I sat around with them one evening and thereby added a laurel to my belt of odd distinctions.
I became the first honorary member of the CPO club of the American Naval Base at Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
It was Hurley’s idea. Of course he is going to make me some kind of membership card so I can show it off around the world. It will go well with my membership in the Squaw Men’s Union of Seward, Alaska, and my vice presidency of the Rio Grande Steamboat & Navigation Co.
Twice already the Navy and Marine camp has thrown a big British-American dance. They invite all the British sailors in town. Everybody digs up a girl.
The dance takes place in the camp’s big recreation hall. The Navy has an orchestra.
There isn’t much trouble between the British and American enlisted men. What trouble there is springs largely from the fact that the Americans get more pay than the British, and that of course gets all the girls. The colleens are like girls everywhere. They like to have money spent on them.
It has got so they walk up and down outside the camp gate about the time the boys are coming out for the evening on pay day, and for a few days after. The congestion gets pretty heavy.
The boys say they like the Irish girls all right. The main trouble with them is they all want to get married. The reason for that is that they want to get to America eventually.
A lot of girls won’t waste their time on a man if they find out he’s married, so intent are they on sewing up that old ticket to America.
The other day a Marine officer was standing near a private at camp when a train went by. A note flew out the window and landed nearby.
“I wonder who that’s for,” the officer said.
“For me, sir,” the Marine said. “She’s been passing every day on the train, and I’ve been waving to her.”
So he picked up the note, and here’s what it said:
“If you’re single, call me tonight at such-and-such a number. If you’re married, forget about it.”
The Marines tell me the Irish girls are a clannish lot. There is indeed honor among girls wanting to get married. They say the minute one of them gets crazy about an American all the others lay off, and he couldn’t get a date with anybody else if he got up on a soapbox and pleaded.
The sailors, when they first arrived, threw out a lot of self-protective misinformation around town. For instance, they told the girls that any man wearing gold braid (an officer) had a contagious disease and should be avoided.
And that red stripes on a man’s sleeve (a petty officer) meant he was a criminal out on parole. But the girls soon found out the truth for themselves.
About the only way an enlisted man can get a girl at first is at a public dance or by the plain old pickup method. But this doesn’t mean they’re all of the street variety. Many swell girls have been picked up in this neck of the woods.
The officers, of course, fare better, for they have opportunities to meet girls through regular introductions.
The American officers run around mostly with the uniformed girls known as WRENS and WAAFS, and with American nurses and Irish girls whose families they have met.
Shortage of men teachers may force dropping some courses
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