Lesson of Bataan now being felt in U.S. arms output
Year after America suffered its biggest and most humiliating defeat, we are marching back
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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We’re not eating steaks, Yanks in Guinea explain
Troops would like to greet offer of tinned food with firm kick in the teeth
By George Weller
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Governors plan for states’ share in post-war rule
Test to come with reabsorption of men in service and war industries into peacetime economy
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Revive rights of individual, Dewey warns
‘Totalitarian trend in U.S.’ hit by New York Governor
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Tunisia –
When correspondents first came to the Tunisian front last fall, there were no special facilities for them and every man was on his own. Some got around by hitchhiking on Army vehicles. Some bought French sedans. They wrote wherever we could; sitting in their cars or in some bleak country hotel. They got their copy back to the city by many methods, including the one of walking up to anybody about to get on a plane and saying:
Hey, Joe, would you mind taking this in for me?
Things are different now. The Army Public Relations Office has set up an advanced post well back of the lines. They look after a regular aerial courier service back to headquarters and send out our mail to us. They have a few jeeps to dole out to correspondents, and for a while they had a house where meals were served and correspondents could throw their bedrolls on cots when they came back from the lines. The PRO hopes eventually to acquire tents and tables and cots and a regular kitchen crew, so that it can move right along with the advancing troops, just like a circus. We’ll be covering the war in style.
Jeep from Ford City man
When I was first in Tunisia, I traveled by hanging around some headquarters until I hit somebody who was going my way by truck or jeep, then threw my stuff on and set out. A little later, I was lucky enough to get a jeep. The man responsible for that was Capt. Ed Atkins, of Ford City, Pennsylvania, who controlled a certain motor pool. He and Lt. Max Kuehnert did so much for me in the way of little things all through the campaign that it will take me 10 years to repay them.
Only two or three of us had jeeps at first, so we always tried to double up. I shared mine for some time with Don Coe of the United Press. Will Lang of Time-LIFE and I made a couple of trips together. And some of the time I wandered around alone, although that isn’t wise anymore, for you need one man to watch the rear for strafing planes.
On the jeep, we carried everything we had – bedroll, typewriter, musette bag, tent. We also carried extra cans of gasoline, a camouflage net, and a box of canned rations, in case we got stuck somewhere away from an Army kitchen.
We knew where all the gasoline dumps were throughout the 100 miles or so of American front. We’d simply drive up to one, tell the soldier in charge we needed some gas, get out our pliers, tap a couple of five-gallon cans, and pour it in. He’d say, “Who’s this to be charged to?" And we’d tell him any outfit number that popped into our heads, or even some mythical unit such as “the Sahara Task Force.” He’d seldom put it down anyway, for obviously it was Army gas going into an Army vehicle.
Stalled British trucker stands popeyed
I remember once a stalled British truck flagged us down, and the kid driver said he was out of gas. Much to his astonishment, we said we’d give him five gallons. And when he asked if we had a form for him to sign and we said, “Hell no, just pour it in,” his amazement was complete. These crazy Americans, they make things so simple.
Correspondents on the prowl sleep wherever they stop. Usually, you can find a bare tile floor in some old farmhouse being used as a headquarters. We’ve discovered that after a few nights on the floor or on the ground it doesn’t seem hard. I believe I’m about the only correspondent who frequently pitches his pup tent. Some correspondents carry folding camp cots, but I don’t because I haven’t got one, and secondly, it’s much warmer sleeping right on the ground.
Our main difficulty has been in keeping warm. I have my bedroll cover and two blankets under me, then three blankets over me, plus mackinaw and sometimes the canvas top to the jeep. You always sleep with your clothes on, taking off only your mackinaw and shoes.
The greatest mistake I made in this campaign was in not bringing a sleeping bag and rubber mattress from home. They’re just as light to carry as a bedroll, twice as comfortable, and three times as warm. I think about half our line officers did bring sleeping bags. But now that spring is here, it isn’t so important.
Just one bath in 5 weeks
Oddly enough, you don’t get up terribly early at the front. Breakfast at a field headquarters usually runs till 8:30 a.m., so you can sleep till around 8. If it’s a semi-permanent headquarters, you eat at tables in a tent. If it’s a field kitchen, you’ve served on trays from the back end of a truck, and you eat standing up.
Most officers manage to wash once a day, but I personally go more on the enlisted man’s psychology and just skip it. Between Dec. 28 and March 1, I had just one bath. When I finally went into the city and had my first bath in five weeks, it was too much for me. I came down with a seven-day cold.
Tensions with Russia
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 sixth article in the series.
Spring has come to Asia and with it the seasonal rumors of impending Japanese attack on the Soviet Union. They are the same old stories that turn up every spring and autumn with clock-like regularity. And this season’s crop sound no more convincing than those which have gone before.
Russia and Japan may some day go to war, but it’s hard to believe that the time is near at hand. Japan, to be sure, would gain enormously from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet it would achieve nothing but grief were it to strike until and unless it were sure that by so doing it could knock Russia quickly out of the war. The impressive reserve power displayed by the Red Army in its winter offensive must have gone far to discourage the Japs from any idea that Russia was ripe for the kill.
As to Soviet policy, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that Moscow has no intention of opening a new front in Asia as long as the Red Army is preoccupied with Hitler – unless, of course, the Japs show positive aggressive intentions. Once again. The Russians and Japanese have renewed their fishing agreement for another year. This fits right in with the coldly realistic policy of the two powers and means little one way or the other. Had it not been signed, there would have been real cause for surprise, and the significance might have been great indeed.
Alarming prospect
Because of recent evidences of Russo-Japanese cooperating, there is a school which envisages the alarming prospect of Russia and Japan joining hands and going down the garden path together at the expense of the Anglo-Chinese-American war effort in the Pacific. Such conjectures can be given a semblance of reasonableness on the basis of long-range power politics, but they are dwarfed by a mass of evidence, historical and otherwise, which show up Russia and Japan for what they are – rival powers separated by a wide, deep chasm of differences. The bridge that links them is convenient but shaky, like most temporary structures.
There is, perhaps, one thing that could conceivably bring Russia closer to Japan. That is if the mistrust of Russia, which is so evident among some sections of the American public, grows into open hostility. Anti-Bolshevik suspicion is deeper in the United States than in any country I have visited.
While stressing moral considerations, it minimizes the cold, hard, all-important truth that Russia’s downfall would complicate enormously our problem of winning the war, not only in Europe but in Asia. A Soviet collapse would certainly prolong the war, perhaps by years, and possibly rob us of the absolute victory which we have set as our goal.
Whether the Soviet Union, after the defeat of Hitler, will choose to enter the Pacific War on our side, is something else again. You can amass plenty of logic on either side, but very few facts that prove anything. When I left China, I was laying even money that the Russians would be drawn in after the European phase was over. However, since coming home and seeing the state of mind of some Americans toward Russia, I have given up gambling.
Japs in Manchuria
Despite rumors of Russo-Japanese animosity, there is no indication that the Japanese have withdrawn a single soldier from the huge garrison which they maintain in areas adjacent to the Soviet frontier. In Manchuria, Japan has kept and is still keeping the most powerful concentration of military strength in the Japanese Empire – the elite of its troops, the best of its equipment.
The strategic proximity of Soviet bases to the heart of Japan is still as glaring a menace to Japanese security as it has ever been. The ideological gulf between Bolshevism and Shintoism is still as impassable as it has ever been. Moreover, in my 10 months in Russia, I found a whispered resentment against Japanese militarism as bitter as that which exists in the United States. And it is just as strong among Red Army officers and men as among the people.
Nor is it conceivable that the Japanese Army could be easily purged of the intense anti-communist indoctrination to which it has been exposed for years. The facts, of course, may have no influence whatever on Russia’s continued neutrality in the Pacific, if she chooses for practical reasons to remain neutral. But they made unconvincing the fears of those who suspect Moscow of adopting a deliberate policy designed to make Japan stronger at our expense.
China, too!
In China too, the enigma of Russia and its policies looms large. Only there, it is more immediate and direct, for the Soviet Union has a long land frontier on China. The problem of putting Sino-Soviet relations on a sound and lasting basis is complicated by differences between the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Parties, by the special status of such border regions as Outer Mongolia and Sinkiang and by uncertainty as to Russia’s post-war aspirations in Asia, of which Moscow has said little.
In Far Western Sinkiang, where Russian influence was considerable, Gen. Chiang Kai-shek has recently scored the first stroke in what may prove to be an important political coup. The chronic impasse between the ruling Chinese party, the Kuomintang, and the minority Chinese party, the communists, is still far from a fundamental solution. On the main immediate issue, the two parties are agreed; that is, resistance to Japan.
But each party is carrying on resistance in its own way, with its own armies and in its own territory. Though neither party has renounced the articles of cooperation by which they established a joint front against Japan, the only real connection is a loose liaison through resident emissaries.
Gen. Chiang’s policy has been unification of China by political means, if possible, but by military pressure, if necessary, when other means fail. Once, during the past year, a dissident group in the backwoods of Kweichow Province raised the banner of revolt. The uprising, small in scale, was apparently plotted and provoked by agents of the Japanese puppet, Wang Ching-wei, who took advantage of the economic crisis to fan popular resentment. The trouble was quickly and easily suppressed.
Senators fight over war trip
But Gen. Marshall throws cold water on plans
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Army political ban may affect Roosevelt plans
MacArthur status same as Commander-in-Chief’s, Republicans say
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The Pittsburgh Press (April 10, 1943)
EIGHTH ARMY TAKES SFAX
Yank forces seize Pichon and Fondouk
British advance 10 miles in north, capture 1,000 Nazis
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
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48 enemy aircraft downed in one raid
London, England (UP) –
U.S. Flying Fortresses shot down 48 German fighters in their raid on the Paris industrial suburbs on Sunday when the crew of the famous bomber Dry Martini was credited with destroying 10 enemy aircraft.
The official total was released today following previous statements that 47 enemy fighters were destroyed on the raid. In addition, the Fortresses were credited with “probably” destroying 13 other German fighters and damaging six. Four U.S. bombers were lost in the raid.
U-boats seen again off the East Coast
Washington (UP) –
Enemy submarines have reappeared off the U.S. East Coast after an absence of more than seven months, the Navy revealed today.
The disclosure was made in a Navy announcement that a medium-sized U.S. merchant vessel was torpedoed and sunk by a U-boat early this month off the U.S. East Coast. Survivors of that ship were landed at Miami.
This was the first merchant ship sinking in U.S. coastal waters since last August, when the Axis abandoned its submarine campaign off the East Coast.