Flier’s body on life raft bares death of 7 on 1,000-mile voyage
By Alan Coogan
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City plans big parade for French sailors
Mayor conferring on move to welcome crews at City Hall reception Tuesday
By Jack Ramsay
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Editorial: Mme. Chiang Kai-shek’s plea for aid will find response in hearts of U.S.
The plea for China made by Mme. Chiang Kai-shek before the Houses of Congress is sure to find a sympathetic hearing with the American public. American friendship for China goes deep and is long-standing. Nothing would please American hearts more than to extend to China all the aid that brave country needs to turn the tables on our common enemy.
It is true, as Mme. Chiang Kai-shek says, that too many Americans think Japan will be beaten easily after Hitler is defeated, but that erroneous belief in nowise will prevent those Americans from pressing the war against Japan to a victorious end. For better or worse, we are committed to defeat Hitler first. Until then we must hold Japan in check.
To allow China to slip into demoralization in the meantime would of course be tragic and is not to be thought of. The American people are not disposed to allow it to happen. Some people say it is impossible to render effective aid to China while we also aid Russia and Britain, and at the same time build up our own forces in many quarters of the globe. The only answer to that is that wars are won by those who accomplish the impossible. And that is what we must do. We must do more than the possible.
Editorial: Jefferson in 1943
A great deal of attention is just now being centered on Thomas Jefferson because the 200th anniversary of his birth will be celebrated this spring on April 13. We can think of no great American whose life and whose ideas fit so appropriately into these days of crisis through which the United States is now passing.
So, it is highly fitting that Americans of today have his life brought more vividly to their attention. And one of the most useful contributions to this end is the fine new play of Sgt. Sidney Kingsley, The Patriots.
It serves many useful purposes. It brings home to us that Jefferson’s ideas are deathless; that the freedoms for which we are contending are the very ones first enunciated by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and later and constantly reiterated by him. The play brings alive some of the burning issues of those most difficult days after we had won our Independence and were finding it so difficult to retain.
Possibly the most important truth hammered home by The Patriots is that freedom is no magic state that, once won, remains ours forever. It must be fought for constantly. That was Jefferson’s great mission.
Thank God that Americans of today came to realize that our freedoms and our democratic way of life were again in peril and have nobly met the crisis by fighting for their preservation in the same spirit as was shown by Americans of earlier generations.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 19, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
At the front in Tunisia – (Feb. 18)
The jeep in which I was riding was almost at the tail end of our immense armored convoy when we started, but before many hours and passed we had overtaken so many slow-moving vehicles that we worked our way well up into the convoy. As we droned along through the night it was hard to realize that we were part of such a fabulously long string of war machines. Vehicles stretched ahead of us for scores of miles, but of course we couldn’t see them, and our only companionship was five or six red taillights ahead of us. We all drove without headlights, but did have taillights so we could see when the fellow ahead was stopping.
Occasionally we would smoke, and I would light cigarettes for the others. We didn’t try to hide the flare of the match, for it was only a flash and then quickly gone. Once in a while we would overtake a truck with a dead engine, or a big wrecker towing a half-track. But our American machines are good ones, and of the hundreds of vehicles in that great convoy, only a handful had trouble during the long journey.
Our convoy was as complete as a circus. There were ammunition trucks, kitchens, repair shops, trucks carrying telephone switchboards and generators for camp lighting, trucks carrying bombs. There were jeeps carrying generals, and there were great wreckers capable of picking up a whole tank. It was quite a contrast to the Arabs we’d pass in the night, with their heavily loaded camels and burros.
The moon gave us enough light to drive by, but how the bulk of the convoy, which started long before the moon came up, ever got over the mountain range is beyond me. They had to drive in total blackness. Guides would go ahead to study the road. They spotted all the sharp turns and steep banks, and they would indicate the direction of traffic with their hooded flashlights.
About every hour and a half, we would stop for the truck driver’s traditional stretch. At one of these stops the drivers checked their mileage. We had been on the road three hours and come exactly 27 miles. Snaking a huge convoy over a mountain range in the dead of night is slow business.
But open country was ahead, and when we reached that we stepped up to 35 and 40 miles an hour. The night wind cut more cruelly now. We didn’t talk much, for it was too cold. My goggles kept steaming inside, and I would have to lift them off and wipe them. Finally, all of us except the drivers pulled blankets over our heads and dozed a little. But not much, for holes in the gravel roads were hard to see and often the jeep would do a backbreaking hurdle.
At the stops, the soldiers would get out and run up and down the road, or stand in one spot jitterbugging in an effort to warm their feet. The ones I felt sorriest for were the infantrymen, packed like sardines in open trucks with no protection from the bitter cold. It seems as if the infantry always gets it in the neck.
Several hours after midnight the convoy got itself into a ridiculous snarl. During a rest stop apparently some driver far ahead had gone to sleep and forgotten to start on again. We waited for half an hour. Then impatient drivers pulled out and started passing. That was fatal. The first thing we knew two lines of traffic choked the road. At every gully and every turn they would snarl up and one line would have to stop. Eventually it got just like those awful holiday jams at home where you move a few feet at a time.
I said to Capt. Riddleberger:
I’m amazed that such a thing could be allowed to happen. This strikes me as being the perfect way not to win the war.
He agreed, but I was sorry for my remarks later, for in an hour or so, everything straightened itself out. We were clear of the mountains now. We passed through silent little Arab villages, and drove across treeless prairies.
About 4 a.m., Riddleberger and I changed places with two soldiers riding in the back end of the truck ahead. We lay down on barracks bags and pulled blankets over us, thinking we’d snatch a little sleep. Pretty soon Riddleberger said:
These blankets smell so bad I can’t sleep.
Mine didn’t smell exactly like perfume either.
The captain said:
Well, hell. The poor guys never have a chance to take a bath.
Apparently, it didn’t occur to him that he and I never took baths either, I wonder how we smell to others.
My feet were so cold and achy that at last I took off my overshoes and shoes and held my cold toes in my hands, trying to warm them. After half an hour or so they quit hurting. Eventually I went to sleep. When I came to there was a faint light in the sky. It was just 7 o’clock. I had been dead to the world for two hours. It was hard to believe, for the truck had been jolting and bouncing and stopping and starting all that time. Weariness is a great cure for insomnia, or maybe I had been anesthetized by those blankets, who knows?
Völkischer Beobachter (February 20, 1943)
Kämpfe in Tunis weiter erfolgreich –
Angriffe starker Feindkräfte abgewiesen
dnb. Aus dem Führer-Hauptquartier, 19 Februar –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Im Westkaukasus und am unteren Kuban fanden bei einsetzendem Tauwetter nur Kampfhandlungen von örtlicher Bedeutung statt. Dabei machte ein eigener Angriff südlich Noworossijsk weitere Fortschritte. An der Donezfront und im Raum von Charkow griff der Feind wieder mit starken Kräften an. Er wurde in teilweise schweren Kämpfen abgewiesen. Zahlreiche feindliche Vorstöße südöstlich von Orel scheiterten. Der Gegner wurde durch Gegenangriff geworfen und hiebei mehrere Panzer vernichtet. Die Luftwaffe griff Panzeransammlungen, Artilleriestellungen und Marschkolonnen des Feindes an und brachte den Verbänden des Heeres dadurch fühlbare Entlastung.
Bei Fortführung der starken Angriffe südöstlich des Ilmensees erlitt der Feind erneut schwerste Verluste an Menschen und Material. Trotz stärkster Unterstützung durch Panzer und Schlachtflieger wurde der Gegner vor den deutschen Hauptkampflinien überall abgewiesen. Auch die fortgesetzten Versuche der Sowjets, unsere Front südlich des Ladogasees und vor Leningrad zu durchstoßen, brachen blutig zusammen, im Gegenangriff wurde dabei eine feindliche Kräftegruppe eingeschlossen und vernichtet. Die spanische Freiwilligendivision hatte erfolgreichen Anteil an der Abwehr der sowjetischen Angriffe. Ein Nachtangriff von Kampfflugzeugen auf Stadt und Hafen Murmansk hatte gute Wirkung.
In Tunesien schreiten die Kampfhandlungen weiter erfolgreich fort. Im Seegebiet von Algier erzielten deutsch-italienische Fliegerkräfte bei der Bekämpfung eines stark gesicherten feindlichen Nachschubgeleites weitere Erfolge. Ein leichter Kreuzer und drei große Transporter erhielten Torpedotreffer. Mit der Vernichtung eines der Handelsschiffe kann gerechnet werden.
In den späten Abendstunden des gestrigen Tages griff ein Verband feindlicher Kampfflugzeuge Nordwestdeutschland an und warf Spreng- und Brandbomben auf das Gebiet von Wilhelmshaven. Die Bevölkerung, vor allem in den umliegenden Ortschaften, hatte Verluste. Neun der angreifenden Bomber wurden abgeschossen.
Unverblümte Bekenntnisse aus USA. –
„Kein Platz für das Empire in einer neuen Welt“
Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“
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USA.-Armee in Verwirrung
Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“
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U.S. Navy Department (February 20, 1943)
Communiqué No. 287
North Pacific.
On February 18:
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U.S. surface forces bombarded Japanese positions at Holtz Bay and at Chichagof Harbor on Attu Island. Results were not observed.
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U.S. aircraft shot down two Japanese float planes which attempted to attack U.S. positions in the western Aleutians. No damage or casualties were suffered.
South Pacific.
On February 19, U.S. aircraft bombed Japanese positions at Vila, on the southern coast of Kolombangara Island and at Munda, on New Georgia Island. All U.S. planes returned.
Brooklyn Eagle (February 20, 1943)
U.S. troops, aided by British, repel attacks on rocky heights
Allies abandon Ousseltia Valley to straighten lines
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Soong expected to visit here to aid Mme. Chiang
Foreign Minister backs China’s First Lady in plea for war help
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The Pittsburgh Press (February 20, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
At the front in Tunisia – (Feb. 19)
This is the last of a series about an armored convoy trip in which a whole great section of an Army moved by night across half of Tunisia, from one fighting front to another. I have written so much about it because soldiers at the front are moving constantly and the battle areas of the world writhe with these vast convoys stealing dangerously across country, hidden in the darkness.
You hear little about them, but this one I’ve just ridden with is typical of hundreds that are moving somewhere this very night.
The head of our convoy started just at dusk and reached its destination at 4 in the morning. The tail end didn’t start till 1 a.m., and it was nearly noon before it reached journey’s end and safety. We were near that tail end.
Just after daylight the members of our little party changed places again. Capt. Pat Riddleberger got behind the wheel of the truck on which we had snatched a couple of hours’ sleep. I went back to relieve one of the half-frozen soldiers in our jeep. When we started again, we were all wide awake and vividly alert, for the hour of danger was upon us. We still had hours to go in daylight, and it was a magnificent chance for the Germans to destroy us by the hundreds with strafing planes.
The sun came up slowly over the bare mountain ridges. The country was flat and desert-like. There was not a tree as far as we could see. It looked like West Texas. We passed Arabs, blue with cold, shepherding their flocks or walking the roads. There was hoarfrost on the ground, and sometimes we saw thin ice in the ditches.
At daylight our vehicles, acting on orders and through long experience, began to spread out. Now we were running about 200 yards apart. As far as we could see across the desert, ahead and behind, the road was filled with drab brown vehicles.
Sgt. James Bernett, 1541 Cheyenne St., Tulsa, Oklahoma, was driving our jeep. I rode up front with him. Pvt. John Coughlin sat in the back. He unsheathed a machine gun and mounted it on a stanchion between us. We kept a careful lookout for planes. After a while we saw trucks ahead stopping and soldiers piling out like ants, but I was in such a daze from cold and fatigue that I didn’t sense at first what that meant. Neither did the others.
Then all of a sudden Coughlin yelled:
Watch it! Watch it!
And we both knew what he meant. By now all the men ahead were running out across the desert as fast as they could go. Bernett slammed on the brakes – and you can stop a jeep almost instantly. I was so entangled in blankets that it took a few seconds to get loose. Coughlin couldn’t wait. He went out right over my head before the jeep had stopped. He caught a foot as he went, and it threw him headlong. He hit the road, flat, and skidded on his stomach in the gravel. He hurt one knee, but he limped the fastest limp I’ve ever seen.
We beat it out across the desert until we found a little gully a hundred feet from the road. We didn’t get into the gully, but stopped and took our bearings. None of us could see or hear anything. We waited about five minutes. Soldiers were strung out over the desert on both sides of the road. Everybody gradually decided it was a false alarm. And so, cussing but immensely relieved, we straggled back to the road.
We were all so cold we were brittle. One tall soldier came limping back saying:
My feet are so damn cold that when I hit the ground my toes broke right off.
That remark seemed to set us off, and suddenly the whole thing got funny. One soldier yelled at Coughlin:
My grandma’s awkward too. But then she’s old.
It wasn’t funny to Coughlin. He was angry and dead serious about his tumble. Sgt. Bernett and I got the giggles. You can do that sometimes when you’re pitifully cold and also wonderfully relieved. We couldn’t keep from laughing at Coughlin’s comical misery and rage, and laughed till we could hardly breathe. Bernett said:
Well, there’s one thing about the Army. It’s good for a laugh a minute.
I can still see us out there on the African desert at dawn, snickering, with death iti the sky. It wasn’t till later that we learned the alarm was real and that far ahead of us, out of sight and sound, the convoy had been strafed and men wounded.
The rest of the trip was like any trip. The road grew dusty and the wind colder, it seemed, than ever. But the danger of attack was always with us, and we stopped and hit the ditch a couple of times before realizing that the planes we saw were our own.
We pulled into our new station a little before 11 in the morning, camouflaged the tanks and trucks, and then broke out some canned rations. We cooked sausages on a gasoline stove on the hood of the jeep. And a half hour later we went to a kitchen truck and ate a big lunch.
Then, while others worked at digging themselves in and cleaning a jumble of gear, I spread my bedroll on the ground and slept in utter unconsciousness, for three hours, with the bright sun benevolently baking my dirty face.