2 U.S. ships hit off coast
3 subs sink merchant vessel; 6 men killed; 33 survivors land
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British left wing retreats in Burma
Taungoo new objective of Japanese troops
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23 Jap ships sunk or damaged
Allied planes hit fleet at New Guinea
Smash invasion force that includes 12 enemy warships
One bomber lost
American sub Shark missing; second has to be demolished
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Errors arise in drawing
One number duplicated and two missing in draft lottery
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Reading girl assisted in U.S. lottery
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4 U.S. planes crash near Lima, Ohio
First reports indicate there were no survivors
Lima, Ohio, March 18 (AP) –
Four Army planes were reported to have crashed in flames in a field five miles east of Lima shortly before noon today. First reports said there were no survivors.
A newspaper reporter at the scene telephoned the report to The Lima News and said no other details were immediately available. The state highway patrol said it had received word of a crash and sent officers to investigate.
U.S. set to train men in desert warfare
Washington, March 18 (UP) –
The U.S. Army will soon inaugurate its first large-scale training of troops in modern desert warfare as part of a broad program to produce “a wallop to assure a victory throughout the world,” high-ranking officers revealed today.
The announcement was made at a press conference with Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, new commander of the U.S. ground forces, and Brig. Gen. Mark W. Clark, his chief of staff.
They said the new training program also stresses development of specially trained task forces for any required operations overseas, mountain warfare, airborne troops, armored warfare, and joint ground-air operations.
Clark told reporters that high-ranking armored force officers had already selected a site “west of the Colorado River” for desert warfare training.
Army plans war reviews
High Command to give resumes on military situation shortly
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Nelson warns hagglers
Promises to beat down all interferences to war production
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Japs try to make capital of MacArthur’s promotion
Editor’s note:
President Roosevelt warned yesterday that Axis shortwave propagandists would try to make capital of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s transfer to Australia by picturing it as abandonment of the Philippines. Following is the first Japanese reaction to the transfer to be broadcast.
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MacArthur’s arrival welcomed by Bennett
Sydney, Australia, March 18 (AP) –
Maj. Gen. Henry Gordon Bennett, Australian commander in the Malayan campaign, said today that:
…the arrival of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Australia is the healthiest and most welcome sign we have had.
He declared:
MacArthur’s stand in the Philippines stamped him as a man with the fighting spirit which will soon be needed and which will be extremely welcome to the people of Australia in particular.
Backs corps for women
House approves plant to create auxiliary of volunteers
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Japs claim 25 planes shot down in raids
Tokyo, March 18 (AP) –
Imperial Headquarters announced today that naval air units shot down or destroyed 25 planes in raids last Friday and Saturday on New Guinea and the Horn Island.
11 were destroyed in the raid against Port Moresby, New Guinea, while 14 craft were shot down or destroyed at an Allied air base on Horn Island, it said.
Roosevelt asks $17 million more for War Department
Half to go to Air Corps, FDR says
President’s request is sent to Congress without comment
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40-hour law change seen
House intent on pushing ahead with plan to end maximum rules
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Nazis claim U.S. patrol and five other ships
Berlin, March 18 (AP) –
The German High Command said today one American patrol had been sunk and that U-boats had destroyed five more merchant vessels totaling 41,000 tons off the American coast.
In the Mediterranean, it was announced, a German U-boat attacked a strongly-protected convoy east of Tobruk and sank an 8,000-ton tanker.
The Pittsburgh Press (March 18, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. – On the way up the coast I stopped past LaJolla to see Max and Margaret Miller. My periodic knockings at the Miller door have become sort of a tradition, so now one of them just opens the door and calls to the other, “Here he is again.”
Max Miller, as you well know, writes books. He is on his 14th now, if I have kept count correctly. He had just finished the first draft of his newest one, and felt so relieved over it he decided to take a vacation and ride up to Los Angeles with me.
We put the top down and came ripping up the highway in our camel’s-hair coats and with the sun beating down on our balding heads, and we were the cynosure of all eyes, as Shakespeare would say.
On the way up we told spinach jokes, and finally got around to the more serious question of what each of us was going to do, personally, about the war in lieu of continuing to write our respective brands of deathless literature.
It wound up that we were both in a quandary, didn’t know what we should do or wanted to do, probably couldn’t do it if we tried, and got exactly nowhere with our problem. “I thought maybe you’d have an answer,” Max said. "But I guess it’s the halt leading the blind.”
At any rate, neither of us can see how writing a thousand words a day – even such beautiful words as ours – can destroy any Japanese.
Margaret Miller has caught the writing habit, too, and has recently composed what is doubtless an epic, on sea life. It is a book for children. It isn’t out yet, but will be very soon.
Also, Margaret not long ago sneaked over on Max a magazine piece on the trials and tribulations of being an author’s wife. Her title for it was: “It’s Better Than Working in a Fish Cannery.”
Max still feels like spanking her.
Ocean passes front window
It being a literary day, we stopped in South Laguna to see another author – John Weld by name. We stayed a couple of hours and all praised each other to the skies. It was wonderful.
John Weld writes semi-historical novels. So far he is little known, but he is a painstaking craftsman with a facility for words and a tenaciousness about research – he devotes as long as two years to a book – and I don’t doubt that some day his name will carry great respect.
He and his wife Katie live in one of the most spectacular houses you ever saw. It is a small cottage perched on a shelf half way down the high perpendicular cliff that rises smack out of the Pacific Ocean.
You can’t even see their house until you walk to the edge of the precipice and peek over. Then you look right down upon its roof. You descend by a steep stairway. You walk in the back door, through the house, and look out the front window. And from there you look straight down into the ocean, far below you; and look at ocean northward, and southward, and westward.
The ocean is the highway that passes their front window, but the traffic on their highway is much more interesting than on any concourse for wheels and tires.
Last week on the rocks below their window a huge turtle lay for hours, a gigantic fellow that must have weighed a ton. Such a turtle is almost unknown in these parts.
Yesterday they saw two white whales. And as Katie Weld says, “I always thought Moby Dick was the only white whale that ever existed.”
Occasionally they’re thrilled by a procession of warships and submarines; and when Los Angeles puts on its anti-aircraft fireworks they can see it better than the people in Los Angeles; and one day John Weld swears he saw a regular fictional sea monster swimming past, although Katie laughs at him.
They recently picked up part of a rudder from a wrecked ship on their beach. And just a few days ago a can of Navy paint came floating intact to their threshold. A quart can, in perfect shape. So now the Weld back door and porch – which have wanted painting for many a month – are a nice, new battleship gray.
My job looks wonderful to a lot of other people. Other jobs look wonderful to me. The next pasture is always greener. I envy the Welds and their hidden house by the side of the vastest road on earth.
A sailor has his troubles
Coming out of San Diego on this trip I picked up a sailor who had been there on 24 hours’ leave and was headed for his station back up the coast.
I don’t know the sailor’s name, and he doesn’t know mine. He rode with me less than three miles. But that three miles was proof of how sometimes a man just has to talk.
For in that short time he told me where he was from and we discovered a mutual acquaintance in his home town; told me how proud he was of having advanced through three ratings in less than a year and a half in the Navy; told me he got married five months ago to a swell girl and they had a nice apartment in San Diego, and he had just been down to see her.
But the main thing he wanted to tell – and he told it almost as soon as he stepped into the car – was that this swell girl had told him the night before she was going to divorce him!
“She just said she didn’t love me any more, that’s all she’d say,” the sailor said. “And all the time, every day, she’s written how much she loved me. And just married five months. Ain’t that a hell of a note?”
U.S. Navy Department (Marc 19, 1942)
Navy Communiqué No. 58
Far East.
In compliance with orders from the Navy Department, Rear Admiral Francis W. Rockwell, USN, the Commandant of the 16th Naval District (Philippine Islands) has arrived in Australia. Rear Admiral Rockwell left Corregidor in General MacArthur’s party which reached Australia on March 17. He is now in Melbourne.
When Japan attacked the Philippines without warning, Admiral Rockwell was in command of the 16th Naval District, with his headquarters at the Navy Yard, Cavite, which is across Manila Bay from Manila. When the Naval Establishment there became no longer tenable, it was destroyed effectively. Admiral Rockwell then proceeded to Corregidor with the Naval and Marine Corps forces under his command and since then has taken part in the defense of Corregidor and the Bataan Peninsula under command of General MacArthur. His Naval and Marine Corps forces number only about one-third of the regular U.S. Army troops in that area.
It is expected that Admiral Rockwell will be assigned to an appropriate command, probably at sea.
There is nothing to report from other areas.
Reading Eagle (March 19, 1942)
Allies blast three more Jap ships
Jungle troops of foe pushing for Australia
Head for Torres Strait and Port Moresby; Darwin hit; enemy cruiser set afire
By the United Press
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Irish Army spying on AEF exposed
Plot to obtain data on units laid by Nazis
Train attendant accused of carrying letters relayed between Dublin, Belfast
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Sunday 'double time’ may be suspended
Administration leaders to seek approval of ‘day-and-half’ pay plan for Sabbath
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U.S. planes guarding Guatemala airfield
Guatemala City, March 19 (UP) –
United States long-range bombers, fighter planes, pilots and soldiers are stationed in Guatemala, 750 miles north of the Panama Canal, it was revealed today.
The bombers, of the four-motored fortress type, patrol far out into the Pacific on the west and into the Caribbean Sea on the east. The soldiers and the fighter planes are in Guatemala to protect the airfield.