Ickes’ optimism over rubber is squelched
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Navy gets Kennedy as an air cadet
Chicago (INS) –
The Navy will take over between the games of the White Sox-Senators double-header at Comiskey Park Sunday when Bob Kennedy, third baseman of the Pale Hose, is sworn in as an air cadet.
Lt. Gordon S. Cochrane, baseball coach at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, will administer the Navy oath. Kennedy is expected to enter training at the end of the baseball season.
Cargo plane plans aired
Expanded production of small air freighters aim of Senate
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The Pittsburgh Press (July 31, 1942)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland (By Wireless) – Every now and then an all-day picnic or sightseeing tour is arranged for the men of the new American naval base here. I happened to get in on one of them.
We started out at 9:30 of a Sunday morning in two big busses, each driven by a Navy enlisted man. There were about 60 men altogether.
The sailors drifted up to the busses one by one, but the Marines with their traditional order came marching up.
I happened to be in the bus that was mostly occupied by Marines. Capt. Frank Martincheck of Washington, Pa., who used to be a schoolteacher, was the only officer in the party.
We drove for about an hour and a half. We went across lovely rolling country, past peat bogs where turf was being cut for fuel, through herds of cows on the road, through little villages. We even went through the famous whisky town of Bushmill, but didn’t stop.
Finally we came along the seashore – a rugged, high seashore. We stopped for a little while to scramble among the ruins of old Dunluce castle. Then we drove on a few miles farther and came to the end of the road. A tiny inn was spotted there on a cliff.
Huge boxes of sandwiches were brought out of the busses. We all stood on the cliff and ate standing up against the wind that was blowing coldly across from Scotland. The sailors and Marines lined up while a petty officer opened cans of beer and gave one to each man. Then we started walking toward the high point of the trip – the Giants’ causeway.
I had heard of the Giants’ causeway all my life, yet I didn’t even know what country it was in. I’m now able to reveal, despite the strict wartime censorship, that it’s in Northern Ireland.
It consists of thousands upon thousands of flat-sided rock pilings, about as big as a man’s body, standing together straight up on end. It looks like a crystallization, and they say that’s exactly what it is, on a gigantic scale. Legend has it that old Irish giants used to walk across the causeway clear to Scotland.
We milled around on the causeway for a couple of hours following steep trials along the cliffs for about four miles, and finally returned to the busses.
We sat at the little inn for a breather before starting the trip home. Some of the boys, in fact, had been taking breathers all the time we’d been away, and hadn’t been nearer the causeway than the front door of the inn.
It was the day before payday and there was hardly a shilling in the crowd, but one wise sergeant had borrowed a pound from the captain before we started the walk, and his pound was all inside him when we got back. He felt wonderful.
When we finally started home the sergeant was the last one in the bus. As soon as he sat down he started singing an old Marine song about wishing the captain was in Hades and the major in the brig, or something like that. I looked out of the corner of my eye at Capt. Martincheck, and he was grinning all over. You could feel a sort of tingle of holiday spirit go through the bus, and it didn’t take long to coagulate.
My friend Chief Hurley, the old arranger, had coyly secreted an extra case of beer in the back seat. The first thing I knew the cans were being passed from hand to hand all along the bus. The bars were down, and the spirits up.
The sergeant’s song was taken up by others, and when it came to an end somebody started another. That was the beginning of a songfest that lasted two solid hours.
Marine belts and ties came off. The sergeant got funnier and funnier. Chief Hurley put on his crying-jag act, and then sang “Old Black Joe.” By this time rain was coming down in torrents, Walkers along the road stopped to stare and grin at the bus, from which came the strains of “Tipperary.”
They sang every song I’d ever heard of and between songs you could hear Indian yells. Even I sang.
When we finally rolled back through Londonderry the captain turned around and said:
“Come on, what’s the matter? You want them to think we didn’t have a good time? Make some noise!”
And thus we drove into the middle of the American naval base in Londonderry singing and yelling like a bunch of wild men.
The door of the bus opened, and it was all over. It was probably the best day I had had personally in years – a day of abandon, well done.
To appreciate the point you have to remember that Marine fighting men are rigidly disciplined. I know how tough and unbending Marine rule is, but I had forgotten that true discipline flourishes on or off duty in a democracy. The captain’s presence didn’t hamper the men a bit. In fact he was singing and yelling and taking his beers along with them, and laughing when they stumbled over his feet or the sergeant would lose his balance and fall on him.
But the thing that thrilled me about it was that there wasn’t one minute of that whole trip, riotous as it was, when Capt. Martincheck couldn’t have stood up and ordered the men instantly to form ranks in the middle of the road and marched them away across a muddy field in perfect formation, straight and stiff and proud as a king’s guard. The captain knew it. The men knew it. All accepted it, and were superior for it.
I’ve long since passed the gushing stage, but riding across Ireland with that bunch of yelling Marines on a holiday made me terribly proud of America.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 9212
Transportation to the United States of certain employees terminating service with the Panama Canal or the Panama Railroad Company on the Isthmus of Panama
By virtue of and pursuant to the authority vested in me by section 81 of title 2 of the Canal Zone Code, as amended by section 3 of the act of July 9, 1937, 50 Stat. 487, it is hereby ordered as follows:
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Notwithstanding the provisions of section 15 of Executive Order No. 1888 of February 2, 1914, as amended by Executive Order No. 8215 of July 25, 1939, relating to the granting of free transportation to the United States of certain employees of The Panama Canal or the Panama Railroad Company on the Isthmus of Panama upon termination of their service, and without regard to the means of transportation by which such employees were conveyed to the Isthmus, the Governor of The Panama Canal is hereby authorized to furnish free transportation for any employee to which the said Section 15 is applicable to a port or airport of the United States, such port or airport and the necessary carrier to be selected, in the Government’s interest, by the Governor or by his authority: Provided, however, that transportation may be furnished to a port or airport of the United States, or by a carrier, other than that selected by the Governor or by his authority upon the condition that any cost thereof in excess of the cost of transportation to the port or airport, or by the carrier, selected by the Governor or by his authority shall be paid by the employee.
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The Governor of The Panama Canal is authorized to prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to carry out the provisions of this order.
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This order shall remain in effect during the continuance of the present war and for six months after the termination thereof.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
The White House
August 1, 1942
EXECUTIVE ORDER 9210
Regulations governing the payment of additional compensation to enlisted men of the Navy and Coast Guard specially qualified in the use of arms
By virtue of and pursuant to the authority vested in me by Section 16 of the Pay Readjustment Act of 1942, approved June 16, 1942 (Public Law No. 607-77th Congress), it is hereby ordered that enlisted men of the Navy and Coast Guard who have established their special qualifications in the use of the arm or arms which they may be required to use, according to standards of efficiency that may be prescribed from time to time by the Secretary of the Navy, and who are so stationed by their commanding officers that they may be required to use such arm or arms, including periods while transferred for temporary duty away from the ship to which permanently attached (provided the commanding officer of the ship to which they are permanently attached has retained them in the battle stations where they normally use such arm or arms), shall receive additional compensation, under such regulations and conditions and for such periods of time as are now or may hereafter be prescribed by the Secretary of the Navy, as follows: TABULAR OR GRAPHIC MATERIAL SET FORTH AT THIS POINT IS NOT DISPLAYABLE
Executive Order No. 8040 of January 25, 1939, prescribing regulations governing the payment of additional compensation to enlisted men of the Navy specially qualified in the use of arms, is hereby superseded.
This order shall take effect as of June 1, 1942.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
The White House
August 1, 1942
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The Pittsburgh Press (August 1, 1942)
Second front pleas heard
Report Russian people ‘disturbed’ over delay by Allies
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Ship losses in Western Atlantic total 406
By the Associated Press
The Associated Press count of announced Allied and neutral cargo ship losses in the Western Atlantic since Dec. 7 was 406 today with yesterday’s Navy announcement of the sinking of a Panamanian vessel and disclosure of Brazil’s 11th ship loss of the war.
Sinkings announced in July totaled 79. This represented successful U-boat attacks over a period of many weeks.
In a message to the Argentine Naval Ministry, that country’s tanker Tacito said it had rescued 17 survivors of the Brazilian freighter Barbacena (4,772 tons) off the northern coast of Brazil. The message said nothing of missing crewmen.
Four torpedoes sank the Panamanian ship July 18 off the northern coast of South America. Crew members in two lifeboats were picked up three hours later by a U.S. naval vessel.
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Tried to enlist at 89
Saratoga Springs, NY (UP) –
T. S. Childs, 89-year-old veterinarian, applied for enlistment in the Army today. He was refused.