U.S. conquest of Guadalcanal in last stages
But air-sea battles around isle are still in pre-showdown status
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Angelo J. Cincotta wins Lt. Colonel’s rank in Marines
Boro lawyer active in veteran circles – served in last war
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Hint Indian prince here for divorce
San Francisco, California (UP) –
Maharaja Yeshwant of Indore, 33, wealthy Indian prince, is in the United States to attend to “personal affairs” which may include divorcing his pretty Maharani, a former American nurse.
The Maharaja announced his marriage to the former Marguerite Lawler of Los Angeles in 1939. He met her on a visit to the United States in 1937, when Miss Lawler, a nurse-stewardess for the Union Pacific Railroad, attended him.
Marriage to American women runs in the Maharaja’s family. In 1928, the young Indian ruler’s father, Tokoji Rao Holkar, caused a sensation by marrying the former Nancy Miller.
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The Pittsburgh Press (February 6, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Algeria – (Feb. 5)
The sawbones who aided me to victory in my recent battle with North African flu was a young Boston doctor named Lt. Albert Deschenes. He and I had happened to be on a couple of trips together before I fell ill, consequently we already knew each other by our first names. Thus, the doctor’s bedside manner was all that the most plaintive patient could ask. Furthermore, I was the first of my breed that he had ever seen, and he felt it would be a bad omen to lose his first correspondent. So, Dr. Deschenes leveled his full professional skill in my direction and thus preserved one more lousy newspaperman for posterity.
The Army takes no pay for medical services rendered, of course, so my only hope is to keep on surviving all and sundry foreign germs for the duration, and wind up in Boston some beautiful day in 1944 and buy Dr. Al Deschenes a drink. He’ll need it by then.
Another of the Medical Corpsmen who came to render services at my bedside was Cpl. William C. Barr – a high-school teacher by profession. Barr lives at 1314 Logan Ave., Tyrone, Pennsylvania, and he taught arithmetic, history, and English in the Tyrone High School before going into the Army. He is a bachelor.
Barr has a degree from Muskingum College at New Concord, Ohio, and has been working on his master’s at Penn State. You’d think it would be pretty devastating on a fellow of Barr’s background to swing into the rough-and-tumble life of the Army. But he says he’s had no trouble adjusting himself. He actually enjoys his work in the Medical Corps, even though some of it is pretty menial. He says he’d rather be here than in any other branch of the Army. He even goes so far as to say you meet a lot of interesting people.
One advantage of being sick is that people keep bringing you things. Sgt. Chuck Conick, from Pittsburgh, took an airplane trip to a neighboring country and brought me back bananas, grapefruit, and lemons. Maj. Raleigh Edgar, of Columbus, Ohio, barged in one evening with two cans of American oyster stew. And Maj. James V. Smith gave forth with a big slice of old-fashioned fruitcake, direct from Mrs. Smith’s personal oven in Greenville, Mississippi.
The Red Cross sent me books to read. The sentries downstairs sneaked up with cups of hot coffee late at night, coffee which I didn’t want at all but which I drank hungrily out of deep gratitude for their thoughtfulness. Even a general wandered in one night and sat on my bed and talked a while, thinking he was in somebody else’s room, I presume.
One afternoon Lt. Duncan Clark of Chicago, one of the press censors, came past to help cheer me up, and since I was busy killing flies with a folded-up French newspaper, he contributed a little item on fly-killing technique. Lt. Clark said he had discovered, in some earlier research, that flies always take off backwards. Consequently, if you’ll aim about two inches behind them, you’ll always get your fly on the rise. So, for the next few days I murdered flies under this scientific system. And I must say that I never missed a fly as long as I aimed behind it.
The African flies, incidentally, are worth a little essay of their own. They look just like American flies, but there are two differences. One, while eating they raise high up on their legs and flutter their wings, like a chicken stretching. And, two, they are the most indestructible damn flies I’ve ever seen.
It is almost impossible to kill an African fly outright. It simply cannot be done with one swat. You stun him with the first blow, and then you have to beat him to death.
The blow with the Sunday New York Times would merely knock an African fly off his pins. It would require the Sears Roebuck catalog to bludgeon one into insensibility. And if you insisted upon execution at one stroke, I know od no instrument carrying sufficient weight and power short of the unabridged Webster’s Dictionary.
Thus ends one phase of my North African campaign.
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The Afro-American (February 6, 1943)
Fresh troops from the States rejoice to escape cold, snow
Boys buy all dictionaries in town and start a run on the barbershop; bugler puzzled
By Ollie Stewart, AFRO war correspondent with U.S. troops in Africa
AFRO on job at history-making conference
When the history-making conference of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill was held at Casablanca, Ollie Stewart, AFRO war correspondent with U.S. troops in Africa was present to record first-hand for AFRO readers an account of the proceedings. Stewart is jotting down the notes for the story which the AFRO printed last week – a story which scooped all other weekly publications in the nation.
Casablanca, Morocco – (Jan. 29, censored)
The boys here are still asking where are the colored combat troops and the colored air squadrons. And still they come.
A unit of the transportation corps arrived here recently to increase the already large number of colored troops in North Africa.
The new arrivals are trained troops to do special duty and will supplement the outfoits already designed to the transportation of supplies.
Buy dictionaries for girls
During their first few days in camp the men bought up all the French-English dictionaries the Arabs could produce. 1st Sgt. Lawrence Love of New Orleans says:
We cannot compete with the guys who have been here since November if we can’t talk to the girls, and most of my men can’t speak a lick of French but we’ll learn.
Although their work is some distance from the actual battlefront, these troops who have only recently left the comparative safety of the United States are anxious to get on the firing line. I have not heard one complaint about the hard work they are doing.
Barbers are busy too
Company barbers are doing a rushing business as men slick up for their first leave in town. The absence of hot weather for shaves and baths annoys some, but generally everybody is excited over the warm sunshine in January after the snow and cvold recently left behind in the States.
Reading matter in English is still so scarce that every scrap of old newspapers and magazines in the luggage of new arrivals have been rationed to us who have been here some time. Everybody agrees that folks at home could really help by sending bundles of colored newspapers and magazines and by writing often.
Men talk for AFRO
Included in the new group, who grinned happily as they talked for the AFRO, are two warrant officers, George W. Williamson and Arthur D. Smith. Williamson is from Sycamore, Illinois, and attended Illinois State Teachers’ College, where he was a track and football star. Smith, who hails from Gibsland, Louisiana, graduated from Leland and was a high school teacher before induction.
Many are college men
Like the warrant officers, the men come mainly from Illinois and Louisiana and most of the noncoms are college-trained. M/Sgt. Cornell Cromer of Evanston attended the University of Illinois and was a policeman while Sgt. Frederick R. Hiver, also from the University of Illinois was in the U.S. Public Health Service in Champaign.
Howard alumnus
Sgt. Samuel Reed of St. Paul is a University of Minnesota alumnus.
Reed is the same soldier who was demoted and transferred to Fort Dix, New Jersey, from Camp Lee, Virginia, several months ago for complaining of discrimination at the Virginia camp.
Sgt. John W. Washington of Washington, DC, is a Howard University grad; Cpl. Frederick Manson of Eckman, West Virginia, attended Southern University; St. Wilbur Hayes of Minden, Louisiana, attended Wiley College, and Sgt. Maj. Frank Stephens of Louisville, Kentucky, graduated from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
Company clerk is musician
Pvt. Earl Holmes, company clerk, of Baltimore, says he expects to continue displaying here the musical talent be developed at Perkins Square Baptist Church.
27 bugle calls
Also from Baltimore come Staff Sgt. Leonard Ayers and Pvt. Raymond Moore.
The unit bugler is Pvt. Lilben Streeter of Chicago who swears he knows 22 regular calls and seven extras but is worried because he does not know what to blow for an air-raid alert. If it is the real thing, that may not be important.
I wonder if they were less vulnerable.
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DISCRIMINATION IN AIR FORCE CAUSED DR. HASTIE TO RESIGN FROM WAR DEPARTMENT
Labor battalions set up for colored only, departing aide says
Entire future of colored soldier in combat aviation in danger, he warns in valedictory
By John Jasper
Former U.S. Judge William H. Hastie, in a public statement issued this week, declared he resigned as civilian aide to the U.S. Secretary of War Stimson because of reactionary policies and discriminatory practices affecting colored servicemen in the Air Corps.
Publicly he added that there were other reasons also besides those affecting the Air Corps, but the Air Corps was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Recommendations futile
Judge Hastie said he quit when he was convinced that recommendations within the Department were futile, and he was taking the only course he felt would bring results – an appeal to public opinion.
Before stepping down, he counselled colored soldiers to square their shoulders and do their best – confident that millions of Americans outside the Armed Forces and more persons than he knows in high places within the military establishment will never cease fighting to remove every racial barrier and humiliating practice now confronting them.
His office bypassed
The judge said that the Army Air Force was reluctant to accept colored men. The Jim Crow flying field at Tuskegee was set up over his objections, and the segregated officer candidate school at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, without his knowledge.
Not wanting colored fliers, he said the Air Force doubted their capacity and created special so-called aviation squadrons for colored only. These are in reality labor battalions for performance of odd jobs. There are no equivalent white labor units in the service.
Sufficient ground crew mechanics were not trained, and all colored applicants for weather officers or other special flying officers, including service pilots, were rejected. Full medical training was refused colored medical flying officers.
Demoralizing Jim Crow
Judge Hastie described discrimination and segregation even at the Army’s colored flying school at Tuskegee as so demoralizing as to affect the entire future of the colored soldier in combat aviation.
The Air Command, he concluded, is not on the right road – directing its policies and practices so as to develop the spirit in colored soldiers that they are the best men in the best unit in the best army in the world.
The Hastie statement, issued after his resignation was accepted, is as follows:
Reactionary policies and discriminatory practices of the Army Air Forces in matters affecting colored men were the immediate cause of my resignation as Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War.
The Army Air Forces are growing in importance and independence. In the post-war period, they may become the greatest single component of the armed services. Biased policies and harmful practices established in this branch of the Army can all too easily infect other branches as well. The situation had become critical.
Yet, the whole course of my dealings with the Army Air Forces convinced me that further expression of my views in the form of recommendations within the Department would be futile. I, therefore, took the only course which can, I believe, bring results. Public opinion is still the strongest force in American life.
To the colored soldier and those who influence his thinking, I say with all the force and sincerity at my command that the men in uniform must grit his teeth, square his shoulders and do his best as a soldier, confidence that there are millions of Americans outside of the armed services, and more persons that he knows in high places within the military establishment, who will never cease fighting to remove every racial barrier and every humiliating practice which now confronts him. But only by being at all times a first-class soldier can the man in uniform help in this battle which shall be fought and won.
When I took office, the Secretary of War directed that all questions of policy and important proposals relating to colored men should be referred to my office for comment or approval before final action. In December 1940, the Air Forces referred to me a plan for a segregated training center for colored pursuit pilots at Tuskegee. I expressed my entire disagreement with the plan, giving my reasons in detail. My views were disregarded. Since then, the Air Command has never on its own initiative submitted any plan or project to me for comment or recommendation. What information I obtained, I had to seek out. Where I made proposals or recommendations, I volunteered them.
This situation reached its climax in late December 1942, when I learned through Army press releases sent out from St. Louis and from the War Department in Washington that the Air Command was about to establish a segregated officer candidate school at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, to train Negro officers for ground duty with the Army Air Forces. Here was a proposal for a radical departure from present Army practice, since the officer candidate-training program is the one large field where the Army is eliminating racial segregation.
Moreover, I had actually written to the Air Command several weeks earlier in an attempt to find out what was brewing at Jefferson Barracks. The Air Command replied as late as Dec. 17, 1942, giving not even the slightest hint of any plan for a segregated officer candidate school. It is inconceivable to me that consideration of such a project had not then advanced far enough for my office to have been consulted, even if I had not made specific inquiry. The conclusion is inescapable that the Air Command does not propose to inform, much less counsel with, this office about its plans for Negroes.
But the reactionary policies and discriminatory practices of the Air Forces are much more serious a man’s capacity and aptitudes. The tragedy is that by not wanting the colored man in the first place and by doubting his capacity, the Air Command has committed itself psychologically to courses of action which themselves become major obstacles to the success of colored men in the Air Forces.
The colored program of the Air Forces began some two years ago with the organization of several so-called “Aviation Squadrons (Separate).” These units, now greatly increased in number, were organized to serve no specific military need. They have never had a defined function.
Except as individual commanders on their own initiative have found some military function for particular small groups of men, the characteristic assignment of the “Aviation Squadron (Separate)” has been the performance of odd jobs of common labor which arise from time to time at airfields. There are no equivalent white organizations.
“Aviation Squadrons (Separate)” would never have come into existence except for the necessity of making some provision for colored enlisted men in the Air Forces. Reluctant to use colored started off on the wrong foot by men at all, the Air Command organizing some colored labor units, while every effort was being made to recruit white volunteers with mechanical ability for skilled service.
Somewhat later, in order to provide enlisted technicians for the new air base at Tuskegee, a few colored soldiers were accepted for technical training at Chanute Field where a large school is maintained. The men were well received and did excellent work.
I urged the importance of continuing such training of colored men in this existing unsegregated school. But the program stopped with the first group. The Air Forces then made efforts to set up segregated technical training at Tuskegee or elsewhere. Difficulties were encountered. Meanwhile, successive classes of colored pilots were being trained, but no technical schooling of supporting ground crew members was in progress.
Thus, even the segregated program got badly out of balance in the effort to effect its extension, the prospect is that in 1943, even with a tardy resumption of technical ground training, colored pilots will be ready before the faster than adequate numbers of trained ground crews are available.
The Air Forces, however, do need large numbers of additional weather officers so badly that white volunteers are being solicited and accepted, despite a general policy against voluntary enlistments in the Army. Yet, it is unthinkable to those in authority that a colored officer can fill such a position except at Tuskegee.
The same situation exists in armament and engineering, both ground specialties for which the Air Forces have been accepting cadets generally, but refusing colored men.
To date, all colored applicants, a number of them well and fully qualified for appointment as Army service pilots, have been rejected. Two applicants were actually instructed to report for training. They did soi but were sent home as soon as it was discovered that they were colored men. I am advised that this matter is receiving further study.
The simple fact is that the Air Command does not want colored pilots flying in and out of various fields, eating, sleeping and mingling with other personnel, as a service pilot must do in carrying out his various missions.
Colored medical officers in the Air Forces are getting only part of the special training in aviation medicine which is available. They are not admitted to the principal school of aviation medicine at Randolph Field. Even the branch school program in which it is represented that colored officers share without discrimination is in fact discriminatory.
Many white officers enrolled at branch schools of aviation medicine have the opportunity of full-time resident study. The colored officer is permitted to commute periodically from his home station at Tuskegee for work at the Maxwell Field branch school. Such grudging partial tender of makeshift schemes may be expected to continue unless a genuine change of racial attitude and policy occurs in the Air Command.
While colored trainees and cadets at the Tuskegee Air Base have done well from a strictly technical point of view, they have suffered such demoralizing discrimination and segregation that, in my judgment, the entire future of the colored man in combat aviation is in danger. Men cannot be humiliated over a long period of time without a loss of combat efficiency.
Specifically, colored and white officers serving at Tuskegee in the common enterprise of training colored men for air combat have separate messes. They are not permitted to have quarters in the same building. Separate toilet facilities have been provided. If the group of white officers at Tuskegee insist upon this – and I have no evidence that they do – they are psychologically unsuited to trained colored men for combat. If they do not so insist, the racial attitude of the local commander or of higher authority is all the more apparent.
Despite original design to advance colored officers and to place them in posts of administrative responsibility at Tuskegee as rapidly as they should qualify, that design is not being carried out in the post administration, except in the station hospital.
Early in the history of the Tuskegee project, a colored soldier guarding a warehouse was disarmed and arrested by civilian authorities because he had challenged a white civilian.
From then on, friction continued. A new commander was appointed. He disarmed colored military policemen assigned to patrol duty in the town of Tuskegee.
A recent member of the Alabama State Police force was assigned to Tuskegee as an Army officer with duties related to his civilian experience. The colored soldier was embittered but the prejudiced community was somewhat mollified.
Fundamentally, it seems to me the Air Command has either failed to comprehend or failed to care that its policies and practices are tending to tear down rather than build up the pride, dignity and self-respect which colored soldiers, like all other soldiers must possess if they are to achieve maximum combat efficiency.
Military men agree that a soldier should be made to feel that he is the best man, in the best unit in the best army in the world. When the Air Command shall direct its policies and practices so as to help rather than hinder the development of such spirit among its colored soldiers, it will be on the right road.
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White ensign would ban Navy bias; gives paycheck to NAACP
New York –
A white Navy ensign sent one of his monthly paychecks to the NAACP last week, and urged continuation of the fight for the inclusion of colored in all branches of the Navy.
His letter stated:
I always intended to contribute to your organization, but never felt so strongly about the matter until I came in contact with the attitude of the officers of our Navy, I sometimes wish the law that prohibits making false claims for commercial products also prohibited making false claims for our democracy.
Christmas almost unnoticed in Africa
Stewart spent Yule with troops, sans light, sans gifts, sans everything
By Ollie Stewart, AFRO war correspondent with U.S. troops in Africa
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Recreation on African front taking shape
By Ollie Stewart, AFRO war correspondent with U.S. troops in Africa
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Army-Navy grudge forgotten in Africa
Sailors bring news from the U.S. to soldiers and even the newsman
By Ollie Stewart, AFRO war correspondent with U.S. troops in Africa
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