Soldiers spruce up as WAACs show up
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Short on troops, Allies pin hopes on U.S. airpower
Axis retains numerical superiority on ground, but United Nations will have 2–1 edge in planes
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
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Aerial hitchhiker gives wring answer to question ‘are you a short snorter?’
But he knows now he’s member of fraternity
By A. T. Steele
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
North Africa –
We had hardly got off the ground when a mechanic came back and said the pilot wanted me to come up front.
So, I crawled over a huge stack of boxes, bundles, spare tires and bedding rolls lashed to the floor of the plane, and worked any way up into the pilot’s compartment. The co-pilot’s seat was empty. The captain motioned me into it.
He said:
I thought you might like to see how it looks from up here.
And so, for the next hour and a half, I had the unusual privilege of seeing about 200 miles of Africa from the front of an airplane, up where the view is worth $8.80 a seat.
We were in what the Army calls a C-47, but which flying people at home know as the Douglas DC-3, which all laymen know as one of the great silver airliners that ply all the airlines of America in peacetime – and even today, I suppose. But over here they’re no longer silver; they’re a drab brown, and covered with mud at that. The soft easy seats are gone; on each side is just a long tin bench, with pan-like depressions for parachutists to sit on wearing their chutes.
No longer is there a carpet on the floor, and a hostess at the back. Now the bare floor is covered with mud, and the hostess becomes a sergeant who hasn’t shaved for two weeks.
Airliners absolutely wonderful
For today these once luxurious airliners are the workhorses of war. They are absolutely wonderful. They are making a saga for themselves over here. They are flying anywhere, at any time, doing impossible jobs under impossible conditions.
They run a daily schedule between all our big headquarters in North Africa. They run in big fleets carrying supplies and men right to the front. They carry everything from jeeps to generals. They pay little attention to danger, and little more to weather. They are doing in a way what the spectacular TACA airline did in the jungles of Central America.
These C-47s are over here by the hundred. Their pilots are sometimes looked upon patronizingly by the combat fliers, but it’s an unfair attitude and they sure have the acclaim of everybody else.
In the last few years, I had got to the point, after 15 years of flying, where I wouldn’t get into a plane unless it was on one of the regularly-scheduled airlines. Yet today I climb in with these fellows and flew around over the mountains and deserts of a strange continent with almost the same feeling of safety I used to have on the airlines.
My skipper on this special trip was Capt. Bill Lively, from Birmingham, Alabama. He already has 1,100 hours in the air, which is a lot for a young Army pilot. He says they used to fly real low over here, just for fun. But the Arabs got to throwing rocks and shooting at them, so now they keep at a respectable altitude.
Ours was the lead plane of a formation of three Douglases, with two Spitfires as escort. The Douglases flew very close together, and the Spitfires ranged above and to the side of us, sometimes crossing over and wandering around for good looks into the sky. Every now and then the pilot would look around to check on them.
Time to knock on wood
I asked Capt. Lively:
Have you ever been shot at?
He peered all around the cockpit. He asked:
Where’s some wood?
He finally found some back of his seat, and knocked on it. He said:
Never yet.
Some of the others have though. I asked:
This is one of the best airplanes in the world, isn’t it?
Capt. Lively said:
It’s got my money. You’ve got a big load with 26,000 pounds gross, but I’ve taken off 32,000 out of a field only about half as long as we’d look at back home. I don’t think there’s anything these planes won’t do. If a Civil Aeronautics inspector came over here, he’d go nuts.
We flew over bare, rugged mountains, through passes where the going was rough, out over the desert, over oases and lonely little adobe villages, over dry lakes and dust storms. We never saw anything more exciting than an occasional lone Arab working his fields.
When we finally got to where we were going, Capt. Lively asked me to have lunch with him and his crew. So, he dug underneath the benches where we’d been sitting, and got out about 15 cans of soup, beans, sausages, jam and pears. Next came two big loaves of bread, and then a little stove that sounds like a blowtorch when you light it. Within 15 minutes, we were dining in style out of mess kits, with sand blowing into our mouths, and a pet monkey some pilot had brought from Burma sitting and staring at us. That’s the way you live on the desert. As soon as we’d finished, they got back into the plane and flew off across the mountains.
Just finished the article. Chungking to India to Arabia (not specified where, though part of me thinks it’s the modern-day UAE or Oman or even Iraq) to Italian East Africa (Ethiopia) to Sudan to Atlantic Coast.
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Ein USA-General in die Wüste geschickt –
Noch keine „Großoffensive“ in Tunesien
Von unserer Stockholmer Schriftleitung
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U.S. Navy Department (March 20, 1943)
Communiqué No. 318
North Pacific.
On March 18, Kiska was attacked twice by Army Liberator (Consolidated B‑24) and Mitchell (North American B‑25) bombers with Lightnings (Lockheed P‑38) as escorts. Results were not observed. All U.S. planes returned.
South Pacific.
A force of Wildcat fighters (Grumman F4F) strafed Japanese positions on Munda, New Georgia. All planes returned.
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Why not increase the conscription age?
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Still in discussion…
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The Pittsburgh Press (March 20, 1943)
TUNISIAN MUD STALLS YANKS
U.S. bolsters new positions at El Guettar
Rain turns battlefields into quagmires; tanks almost halted
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
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Gallantry, death ride with bomber
Young Jack Mathis’ aim stays true even as he dies from flak wound in skies over Vegesack
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
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