MacArthur builds up Army, checks Japs in first year
General still long way from goal, races to beat enemy to offensive
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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Here’s reason for slow pace in African war
10 tons of equipment are needed to land one doughboy
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In North Africa –
The Arab kids that swarm the roads around the Army camps and nearby villages are a friendly bunch.
It takes them only a few hours to learn the worldwide habit of begging from Americans. I’ll bet our soldiers aren’t two days in a new place until every kid in town is able to say in English “chewing gum, chocolate, cigarette, goodbye, okay.” They pester you to death for these tidbits, and the soldiers keep giving them away as long as they have any.
The Arab kids seem to have more sense than the pestering child-natives of many countries. Instead of being dumb and surly, they have a nice spark of life about them. If you say you have no chewing gum and smile at them, they’ll smile back and then stand around good-naturedly just smiling at you. Their favorite word is “okay.” Even some of the grownups have adopted it. They yell it at every passing American. You can’t walk down the road nowadays without being walled in by a surging melody of hundreds of “okays” coming at you from all sides.
Once in a while you see a light-skinned, clean-gowned, almost sheik-like Arab. But mostly their clothes are unwashed, and their long gowns an unbelievable mass of patches.
At first the Arabs were allowed to roam the airdromes, and they helped the crews fill the planes’ big tanks from the countless five-gallon tins.
There are quite a few carriages for hire in the desert towns and soldiers take rides in lieu of anything better to do. If I were an Arab, I know how I’d make a small fortune.
Passing up easy money
I’d get about 10 camels, and rent them out to soldiers to take rides on. I’d also get a camera and take pictures of soldiers on camelback, and sell them for 100 francs apiece. Apparently, no Arab has thought of it, but somebody is passing up an opportunity of making about 10,000 bucks awfully easily.
The horse carriages are fancy. The driver sits on a high box up front and is often dressed in bright clothes. One of these carriages the other evening provided the funniest sight I’ve seen since leaving America. It was just before dusk and the air-raid signal swept across our airdrome by dinner bell and rifle shot. I was standing way out on the field, when suddenly there came dashing out from behind the palm trees one of these Arab carriages.
The driver had brought some soldiers to the field, had heard the alarm and being touchy about raids, as Arabs are, had decided to get the hell out of there in a hurry.
Currier & Ives touch
He was standing up in his box, coattails flying, whipping his horses for all he was worth. The team was in a dead run. The buggy was bouncing and swaying over the rough desert trail. The horses were going so hard their bodies were stretched out, their flying feet almost level with their noses, and one was a little ahead of the other, just as on the racetrack.
With the carriage’s red wheels and the driver’s red coat for color, the scene looked exactly like a Currier & Ives print. The poor, frightened man’s pathetic hurry was so comical that we all stopped and laughed till he was out of sight, still going like mad.
Queer little incidents happen in war. Mechanics on the Flying Fortresses kept discovering empty machine-gun shells in the engine nacelles. Where they came from was a mystery. Finally, it dawned on somebody. Planes were dumping the empties in midair after shooting them, and they were being carried back by the slipstream, right through the propellers of the following planes, and lodging in the nacelles. You’d think it would damage the propellers, but apparently it doesn’t.
Gunner ‘wounded’ in pants pocket
And speaking of freaks, a Fortress gunner came home the other day with the corner of his pants pocket torn, apparently by a piece of flak, although it must have been fairly spent, for he didn’t know when it hit. Later, he put his hand in his pocket and discovered the metal fragment nestling there right in his pocket.
Practically all of our soldiers in North Africa have slept on the ground ever since they got here. The other day, I overheard one boy tell about going to Algiers on leave, and sleeping all night in a hotel bed. He said:
I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning with a splitting headache, just because the damn bed was so soft and I never did get back to sleep.
U.S. Navy Department (March 18, 1943)
Communiqué No. 316
North Pacific.
On March 16, U.S. Army aircraft carried out the following attacks on Japanese installations and aircraft at Kiska:
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During the morning, Liberator heavy bombers (Consolidated B‑24) and Mitchell medium bombers (North American B‑25) supported by Lightning fighters (Lockheed P‑38) bombed the main camp area and the submarine base. Hits were observed in both target areas.
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During the early afternoon, eight Lightnings engaged eight enemy planes in the vicinity of Kiska. Two of the enemy planes were shot down and an additional two were probably destroyed.
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Later in the afternoon, Liberators, Mitchells, and Lightnings again attacked the enemy submarine base and other installations. A large fire was started in the camp area.
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Still later in the afternoon, a group of Mitchells again attacked and scored bomb hits on the submarine base.
South Pacific.
During the night of March 16‑17, Liberator heavy bombers carried out minor attacks on Japanese positions at Munda and Vila in the central Solomons and at Kahili and Ballale in the Shortland Island area. Results were not observed.
The Pittsburgh Press (March 18, 1943)
Americans push 30 miles in drive to trap Rommel
Gafsa seized; Axis retreats toward Gabes
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
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‘Six-shooter’ Patton leads African push
‘Old Blood and Guts’ now in his favorite job – fighting
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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Coast Guard ship sights big sub – and sinks same
Cutter Campbell rams Nazi U-boat after forcing five others to crash dive in Atlantic
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It’s up to President –
Portal wage turned down by operators
Move in definite invitation for government to intervene
By Fred W. Perkins, Press Washington correspondent
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Bombers blast Kiska three times in day
Washington (UP) –
American fliers have delivered three more blistering attacks on Kiska in the Aleutians, hitting the Jap submarine base there ands shooting down two enemy planes in a dogfight, the Navy announced today.
The new raids occurred Tuesday. It was the second successive day that Kiska underwent a severe aerial drubbing, as the American airmen followed up the six heavy raids made on that base Monday.
Meanwhile, Liberator heavy bombers made minor attacks on four Jap bases in the Solomons, including Munda, which was hit from the air for the 85th time.
Fortress crashes, 10 saved
Baton Rouge, Louisiana –
A Flying Fortress crashes and burned in swamplands 20 miles west of here yesterday but all ten crew members parachuted to safety. The men started bailing out at 18,000 feet and the last man, the pilot, left the ship at 1,000 feet.
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so…did the americans then claim that their freedom was being suppressed like some (idiotic) americans did during covid?
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Yes, and we’re not being idiotic, even if done for a good cause. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and screwing over people’s rights, even with good intentions, is a horrible idea. The same story then and now.
It’s one of the reasons why I despise Roosevelt so much.
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I DARE SAY —
Police the world?
By Florence Fisher Parry
And now talk is rife in Washington about our policing the world when the war is won for the Allies.
I think it is an unhappy phrase. I think it should quickly be dropped, and some other wording devised.
Police the world? We?
It has an ugly sound, an ugly connotation, made more so by the cruel events of the past ten bitter years.
It has always been an ugly word, invoking the feeling of compulsion. And now more than ever it jars upon the sore heart of mankind. This very war – yes, and all other wars – was brought about by mankind’s revolt against force. And the very word police suggests force.
Is there no other phrasing to convey that we are not going to replace one force with another? Is there no other wording that will carry reassurance to the world that we are going to safeguard the world, not police it?
What, indeed, is the matter with this very word SAFEGUARD? It is a good word.
Safe. Guard.
Safely watch over and protect: that’s what the word means. Safeguarding from harm.
The power of a word
It is important, the way we use words. Words, chosen to indicate a course of human behavior, have changed the course of history. They can poison and they can heal. They can divide and they can unite. Consider some of the words which, in our own country, in our own language, have changed whole trends of thought.
The word Democrat. The word Republican. Consider these two words. No words could be more American; they spring from the very soul of our nation. This is a democracy. It is also a republic, BUT – in the past decade, the word democracy has become a world word; it has become a word of common usage all over the earth. The world is fighting for democracy. The word has come to mean freedom, deliverance, every benign status of mankind.
Who shall say to what extent the rise in power of the Democratic Party (as opposed to the Republican Party) is attributable to this happy new connotation of the word Democrat? For all over the world, the people of all countries and all languages know the meaning of the word democracy. So, when they hear of the Democratic Party, they leap to the conclusion that it is the party which favors democracy.
Here in the United States, there are millions of voters who have this idea. While abroad the notion is prevalent that because our President is a Democrat, he is the representative of the party here that believes in democracy!
O the power of a word!
Now let us take another word: the word capital. Encouraged by the administration in office, the word capital, in the last 10 years, has fallen into grave disrepute. And with it, its sister words industrialist, banker, Wall Street, privileged class, financier, any word, in fact, that denotes success based upon economic security.
In peacetime, the decline of these words, in public esteem, was serious enough; but when the war overtook us, it could have produced a cleavage between capital and labor which would have brought destruction upon our war effort. The administration at least had to recognize this danger and take quick action to prevent its damage to America at war.
So, what did it do? It changed a word. It changed the word capital to the word management. For the duration at least, we were to eschew the phrase capital and labor, and instead embrace the phrase management and labor. And behold! A truce!
Danger ahead
Now it has come to be recognized that after the war, peace will not come at once. Safeguards for the peace will everywhere have to be thrown about, to insure its maintenance. But surely, we must set about at once to reassure those who are to be restored to freedom that it is freedom and not another policing system. Oh, I should think that Europe would be tired of the word police, never mind how benignant its functioning! The people of Europe have lived under policing of one sort or another for too long to trust it in any form. A more reassuring word, a more reassuring method, must be found!
And besides, who are we to impose OUR policing upon the world? We are strong and magnificent, and more than any other country, trusted. But our ways are not their ways, our systems not their systems; and I think it would be presumptuous of us to impose upon them OUR idea of world management. It smacks of superiority and smugness. It is premature. It is – a mistake.
Planning board suggests U.S. enter business
Proposal calls for government to participate in basic industries
By Merriman Smith, United Press staff writer
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