Spring comes to Tunisia but strafers still strafe
Like way back in January, reporters dive for cover at sound of machine-gun fire
By William H. Stoneman
…
Senate to hold Bankhead bill as wages’ club
Farm bloc will avoid showdown vote on Roosevelt’s veto
…
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria –
Our visit to the French Foreign Legion was made particularly pleasant by a Legionnaire who is an Englishman – Sgt. John Whiteway. Whiteway is not an adventurer at all; he is a normal kind of businessman.
Just after the last war, he went to Paris to live. For 20 years he was the Paris representative for American refrigerator and radio companies. He married a French girl, and they have three handsome children, the youngest of whom he has never seen although the child is now nearly three.
When war seemed imminent in 1939, Whiteway felt he should fight for the country that had supported him for 20 years. He couldn’t join the regular French Army, so he joined the Foreign Legion. They fought through the fall of France, and then were shipped back to Algeria. And here Whiteway has been ever since.
It was tough going, the first few months for a man of his maturity and intellect. But his business ability and office experience made him invaluable to the Legion, and he was soon put into administrative work at headquarters. Thus, he has escaped most of the rigors and the deadly barracks life of the Legion.
When the Americans came, Whiteway was one of the few English-speaking men in the Legion. So, he was immediately attached to American headquarters as a liaison man. He wears civilian clothes now, and it was he who brought us to Sidi Bel Abbès.
Royal homecoming for sergeant
Although Whiteway had been away only a month, his return was like a royal homecoming. Everywhere we went, both soldiers and officers of the Legion saluted and stopped and shook hands and jabbered as if he’d been gone for years. Little French girls, whom he had been teaching English, came running down the street to kiss him. He seems to be one Englishman who has made the French like him.
We were a happy party who visited the Legion. In addition to Sgt. Whiteway and myself, there were five American Army officers – Lt. Col. Egbert W. Cowan, who has served all over the world in the Regular Army and whose daughter Shirley is about to become a ferry pilot at home; Capt. Art Nillen, a boisterous dentist from Dallas, whose motto is “See your dentist every day and brush your teeth twice a year;” Lt. Albert Deschenes, a young Boston doctor who speaks French, and well he might with a name like that; Lt. Max Kuehnert of Chicago, who was America’s best brick salesman before the war, and who still carried around his sales booklets of model brick homes; and Lt. Leonard Bessman, a likable Milwaukee lawyer who doesn’t speak French, but who has the virtue of continually trying to speak it.
Foreign language gabfest
Lenny and Max are enthusiasts. Everything they see is wonderful. Lenny has been a Foreign Legion fan ever since he was a child, and we almost had to hold him to keep him from signing up right on the spot.
It was Lenny’s efforts at French which endeared him to a Romanian cavalry sergeant named Paul Baron Ecsedy de Csapo, who hung around with us all day and wound up by almost tearfully pinning his most prized medal on Lenny’s blouse, as a token of his esteem.
Max hit his stride when we dropped into a little bar patronized almost exclusively by the Legion. It is run by a man named Lucett Paume, a Swiss who spent 20 years in the Legion and is now retired. His wife and two children help him run the bar.
Max speaks German, and this is how it wound up – Max and the Swiss in one huddle talking German; Lt. Deschenes and the proprietor’s daughters in another huddle speaking real French; Col. Cowan with a little group around him telling about hunting elephants in Indochina; Art Nillen standing in the doorway shouting “Zid, yalla, you little…” at all the passing Arab kids; Lenny and the sergeant in another huddle speaking pidgin and making motions, and me sitting all alone in a corner ordering my breakfast in Spanish over and over to myself.
Breakfast words happen to be the only Spanish I know, and damned if I wasn’t going to talk some kind of foreign language amid all that international sewing circle, even if I had to keep ordering hypothetical breakfasts all afternoon. Thus, the day passed. Vive la Légion Étrangère!
Chinese fight Japs minus guns and food
By A. T. Steele
Almost a year before Pearl Harbor, Arch Steele, of the Chicago Daily News foreign staff, took a trip into Japan and dug up startling facts about Tokyo’s plans against the United States. Then, to avoid censorship, he slipped back into China, and filed his now-famous series on “Japan Takes Aim.”
Since then, Mr. Steele’s accurate and uninterrupted war coverage has carried him into many battle zones – including Russia’s. And now – back in the United States for the first time in four years – he has written a fact-filled series on the task that faces us before we can come to final grips with Japan. The following is the fourth article in the series.
We cannot close our eyes to the fact that the Japanese blockade is slowly draining China’s military and economic strength and that real relief is not yet in sight.
Though the flow of airborne supplies to China has nearly doubled in volume during the past few months, the Chinese are not receiving sufficient materials to maintain even the status quo. It would take a fleet of airplanes much bigger than is now flying the Himalayas to enable China just to hold her own.
Under the circumstances, there is little reason to hope that China can take the offensive on anything like an important scale until the Allies have reopened a satisfactory overland line of supply. That is still some time off. The best that can be done, in the meantime, is to nourish China to the maximum degree possible with the largest number of transport and combat planes that can be spared for that theater. An air offensive is possible even from a blockaded China.
Just a dribble
The materials which the Chinese Army is receiving from us by air consists chiefly of raw materials for Chinese arsenals and specialized equipment like radio sets and instruments. In the line of finished war materials, like firearms, ammunition and armament, the Chinese are getting considerably more from the Japanese than they are from their allies. Every so often, puppet Chinese forces surrender en masse to the Chungking government, bringing their Japanese equipment with them.
Since Pearl Harbor, the Japanese have withdrawn several divisions of troops from China, though their garrisons in that country still total well over 600,000 men. Against this, the Chinese have disposed an army of more than 4 million soldiers, with others in reserve. In view of this disparity, some people ask why the Chinese do not take the offensive. They do not remember that the Chinese are equipped only with rifles, machine guns, hand grenades and very limited quantities of artillery. They are practically without tanks or big guns. They are woefully short of motor transport and are lacking parts and fuel to maintain properly what they have. Their air force is small – much too small for sustained offensive action on a large scale.
Food shortage
Another distressing aspect of the Chinese military picture is that undernourishment is slowly undermining the vitality of many of China’s best divisions. An army cannot march and fight with full efficiency on a diet of rice. And yet that, with an inadequate addition of vegetables, is about all that most Chinese soldiers ever see. Meat, for the soldier, is a great rarity. Nutritional ailments and diseases like malaria are epidemic. Such deficiencies as these have never been uncommon in China, but they have been seriously aggravated by the blockade.
Of course, it is impossible to generalize about the Chinese Army. There are among China’s divisions a number of crack units which are fully equipped and well fed. They are in the minority. It is doubtless true, too, that China, with reasonable foresight, has laid away certain reserves of war materials and fuel as an insurance against possible emergencies in the future. This is a precaution which any country would take under the circumstances. The Chinese are willing to draw on these reserves for an offensive action that will get them somewhere, such, for instance, as a drive on Burma in collaboration with the Allies.
But they see no point in dissipating their precious – and very limited – stocks of operations of an indecisive nature. It would be easy for them to shoot away in a few days as much as they are receiving from us in a month. Something, they point out, has to be held back with which to defend the country against further Japanese invasions, should they come.
Drive costly
The most important offensive action which the Chinese have attempted since Pearl Harbor was the drive against the Mid-Yangtze port of Ichang. In the process, they paid a terrible price. Nothing could better illustrate the difficulties that blockade has imposed on the Chinese Army.
Ichang is a key point straddling the main supply line between Central and West China. If the Chinese could gain permanent possession of Ichang, their food problem would be considerably improved, for it would then be possible to ship rice and other products from Central China, where there is sometimes a surplus, to West China, where there is sometimes a shortage. Present connections between the two areas are roundabout and tenuous.
Displaying great gallantry, the Chinese captured Ichang from an enemy force inferior in numbers but vastly superior in equipment. It gave a momentary thrill in inspiration to the whole country, for China had waited long for victories. But it did not last long. The Japanese, favored by excellent lines of communication and unlimited reserves of armament, brought up reinforcements. They deluged the Chinese defenders with aerial bombs.
Officers killed
They bombarded them with gas shells. They brought up tanks and gunboats. The Chinese, after a brief but tenacious resistance against this mechanized onslaught, to which they could offer no barrier but flesh and blood, were obliged to withdraw. But not all of them came back. Most had died. A Chinese general told me afterward that this brief and bloody offensive effort had cost:
We used two divisions [between 10 and 15,000 men] in that action. All officers above the rank of regimental commander were killed. 60% of all battalion commanders were killed. All that was left to those two divisions were 2,000 men. Our losses were more than 10–1 in relation to Japanese losses. Do you wonder, after that, why we hesitate to take the offensive against such terrific odds?
Human life is cheap in China, but not so cheap that Chinese commanders are anxious to risk their under-armed manpower in suicidal maneuvers against a foe armed to the teeth with everything that modern science can produce.
Hidden arsenals
Hidden away in the fastnesses of West China are a number of small but excellently equipped arsenals. American military men who have visited them speak highly of the efficiency with which they are run. These plants are producing rifles, machine guns, ammunition, trench mortars, bombs, grenades and an occasional small artillery piece. They are able to provide a considerable part of China’s needs in the line of small arms – but by no means all of it. The shortage of raw materials is so acute that not all of even these plants are working at full capacity. Much of the Lend-Lease stuff which is being flown into China consists of materials for these arsenals.
Generally speaking, the military situation in China has been stagnant since Pearl Harbor. The Japanese have launched several fierce offensives of a limited nature, but generally for the purpose of breaking up concentrations of Chinese troops rather than to acquire new territory. The Japs have also vigorously pushed “mopping-up” operations in the guerrilla regions behind their lines, with only indifferent results. While the danger is ever-present, there is yet no indication that the enemy is preparing for any attempt at a knockout offensive in China. He has too much urgent business elsewhere.
There are those who criticize the Chungking generals because they have deployed a part of their crack forces along the frontier of the territory controlled by the Chinese Red Army. Whether the strength so immobilized would materially alter the strategic picture in Asia if it were stationed elsewhere is, however, very doubtful. There are others who ask why Chinese guerrillas are not more active. The Chinese reply that problems of supply and coordination are excruciatingly difficult. Moreover, they come back with the question:
What is the record of Allied guerrillas in Burma and in Africa? Is it any better than ours?
Maybe they have something there.
General terms photo a fake
‘Battle’ picture taken in training camp
Washington –
The War Department has revealed that a picture taken in Tunisia by an Associated Press photographer and purporting to depict a battle scene was actually taken at a training center and does not show U.S. troops under fire as the caption stated.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied commander in North Africa, advised the War Department of the deception, and the Associated Press announced the photographer had been suspended.
Last night, the War Department issued a statement saying that there were five pictures in the series submitted to the still-picture pool of American photographic agencies by the suspended man. the one that attracted the most attention purported to depict an American patrol advancing under fire in Tunisia. Two explosions depicted in the photograph were actually caused by landmines planted at the training center to simulate enemy fire. In the foreground, two Red Cross men were shown allegedly treating a wounded soldier.
The picture purporting to show the patrol advancing under fire was widely printed and caused considerable comment in photographic circles. Jack Price, photography editor of Editor & Publisher, wrote:
Harrison B. Roberts, Associated Press cameraman now covering the war in Africa as a representative of the still-life pool, has taken the picture that every news and military photographer dreams of getting.
Aren’t the main agricultural areas of China in Japanese possessions? Also in 1940, the japanese (if I remember correctly) brought rice from the Australians to feed the Chinese but now in 1943… they are war with them… So who is feeding them?
1 Like
U.S. Navy Department (April 8, 1943)
Communiqué No. 337
South Pacific.
On April 6:
-
During the morning, a force of Dauntless (Douglas SBD) and Avenger (Grumman TBF) dive bombers, escorted by Wildcat (Grumman F4F) fighters, attacked Japanese installations at Vila, in the Central Solomons. Hits were scored in the target area and a large fire was started. All U.S. planes returned.
-
In the early evening, three Japanese planes bombed Guadalcanal Island. There were no casualties to personnel and only light damage was reported.
-
During the night of April 6‑7, Catalina (Consolidated PBY) patrol bombers attacked Vila. At the same time Flying Fortresses (Boeing B‑17) attacked Japanese installations at Kahili, in the Shortland Island area, and also small enemy shipping between Choiseul Island and Santa Isabel Island.
On April 7:
-
During the early morning, a force of Dauntless and Avenger dive bombers, escorted by fighters, attacked Vila. Hits were scored on Japanese antiaircraft positions and the camp area. A large fire was started.
-
In the early afternoon, a force of Avenger and Dauntless dive bombers, escorted by fighters, attacked Rekata Bay, Santa Isabel Island. A Japanese four‑engine flying boat was destroyed. All U.S. planes returned.
-
Fifty Japanese bombers, escorted by 48 Zero fighters, attacked U.S. shipping in the vicinity of Guadalcanal Island. U.S. fighters engaged the enemy and shot down 21 Zeros, 5 dive bombers, and 10 other enemy planes whose types were not reported. Another enemy plane was later observed to crash. U.S. planes lost were 1 Airacobra, and 6 Wildcat fighters. One U.S. pilot was rescued.
The Pittsburgh Press (April 8, 1943)
Yanks rout Jap airmada, destroy 37 of 98 planes
Guadalcanal shipping saved at cost of only 7 U.S. fighters
By Sandor S. Klein, United Press staff writer
…
ALLIES SMASH ROMMEL TOWARD SEA
Eighth Army, Yanks meet and advance
British gain 15 miles in south, squeeze Nazis back in north
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
…
3-B class erased; draft ‘hardship’ cases go into 3-D
Boards to reclassify childless husbands; fathers temporarily ‘frozen’ – ‘imminence’ rule to be tossed out
…
Plan to pass pay-go levy in a day told
‘44 million Americans can’t be wrong,’ GOP chief tells House
…
Coal parleys settle into name-calling
Center of vituperation is Lewis, taking and dishing it out
By Fred W. Perkins, Press Washington correspondent
…