10 die at home for every man slain in battle
Accidents have taken 128,000 lives since Pearl Harbor
…
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Northern Tunisia – (by wireless)
We moved one afternoon to a new position just a few miles behind the invisible line of armor that separates us from the Germans in northern Tunisia. Nothing happened that first night that was spectacular, yet somehow the whole night became obsessed with a spookiness that leaves it standing like a landmark in my memory.
We had been at the new camp about an hour and were still setting up our tents when German planes appeared overhead. We stopped work to watch them. It was the usual display of darting planes, with the conglomerate sounds of ack-ack on the ground and in the sky. Suddenly we realized that one plane was diving straight at us, and we made a mad scramble for foxholes. Two officer friends of mine had dug a three-foot hole and set their tent over it. They made for their tent, and I was tramping on their heels. The tent flap wouldn’t come open, and we wound up in a silly heap. Finally, it did open, and we all dived through the narrow opening at once.
We lay there in the hole, face down, as the plane came smack overhead with a terrible roar. We were all drawn up inside, waiting for the blow. Explosions around us were shatteringly loud, and yet when it was all over, we couldn’t find any bomb holes or anybody hurt. But you could find a lot of nervous people.
Guns thunder for 24 hours
Dusk came on, and with dusk began the steady boom of big guns in the mountains ahead of us. They weren’t near enough for the sound to be crashing. Rather it was like the lonely roll of an approaching thunderstorm – a sound which since childhood has always made me sad with a kind of portent of inevitable doom.
We went to bed in our tents. A nearby farmyard was full of dogs and they began a howling that lasted all night. The roll of artillery was constant. It never stopped once in 24 hours. Once in a while, there were nearer shots which might have been German patrols or might not.
We lay uneasily on our cots. Sleep wouldn’t come. We turned and turned. I snapped on a flashlight.
Chris Cunningham asked from the next cot:
What time is it?
I answered:
Quarter to one. Haven’t you been asleep?
He hadn’t.
A plane droned faintly in the distance and came nearer and nearer until it was overhead.
Chris asked out of the darkness:
Is that a Jerry or a Beaufighter?
I said:
It hasn’t got that throb-throb to it, so it must be a Beaufighter. But hell, I never can tell really. Don’t know what it is.
The plane passed on, out of hearing. The artillery rolled and rolled. A nearer shot went off uncannily somewhere in th darkness. Some guinea hens set up a terrific cackling.
Scorpions, snakes conjured up
I remembered that just before dusk a soldier had shot at a snake in our new camp, and they thought it was a cobra. We’d just heard our first stories of scorpions, too. I began to feel creepy and wondered if our tent flaps were tight.
Another plane throbbed in the sky, and we lay listening with an awful anticipation. One of the dogs suddenly broke into a frenzied barking and went tearing through our little camp as thought chasing a demon.
My mind seemed to lose all sense of proportion, and I was jumpy and mad at myself.
Concussion ghosts, traveling in waves, touched our tent walls and made them quiver. Ghosts were shaking the ground ever so lightly. Ghosts were stirring the dogs to hysteria. Ghosts were wandering in the sky peering for us in our cringing hideout. Ghosts were everywhere, and their hordes were multiplying as every hour added its production of new battlefield dead.
You lie and think of the graveyards and the dirty men and the shocking blast of the big guns, and you can’t sleep.
Everybody is nervous
Out of darkness from the next cot comes:
What time is it?
I snap on the flashlight.
Half past 4, and go to sleep!
Finally, just before dawn, you do sleep, in spite of everything.
Next morning, we spoke around among ourselves and found one by one that all of us had tossed away all night. It was an unexplainable thing. For all of us had been through dangers greater than this. On another might, the roll of the guns would have lulled us to sleep.
It’s just that on some nights the air becomes sick and there is an unspoken contagion of spiritual dread, and you are little boys again, lost in the dark.
Russian, Polish rupture called blow at Roosevelt
Churchill’s diplomacy also suffers because break between Allies bring comfort to Axis
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
The rupture of Polish-Russian diplomatic relations was viewed realistically today as a major defeat for President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s diplomacy if for no other reason than it will comfort the Axis.
It came at a moment when Washington was apparently moving further to appease the Soviet Union with a major diplomatic rebuff to Finland – a state with which Russia is at war and the United States is at peace. There are unconfirmed rumors that the United States is about to break relations with the Finns.
The abrupt Moscow announcement that relations with the Polish government-in-exile in London had been broken came without an advance hint to Washington or London.
Upsetting to Congress
It might be interpreted as a hurry-up prod from Moscow for establishment of a second front and for Washington and London to recognize Moscow’s post-war territorial claims as being exempt from the no-aggrandizement provisions of the Atlantic Charter.
While the State Department “regretted” the Polish-Russians break, some others thought it was grounds for even more emphatic expressions of diplomatic sorrow. Senator Theodore F. Green (D-RI) considered it “tragic,” and other Congressional commentators expressed misgivings.
But there seemed to be no immediate tendency to reproach the Russians. In general, there was uneasiness over a break in the United Nations front and a tendency to charge the Germans with having smartly fostered Polish-Russian friction.
Takes Russian side
Senator Arthur Capper (R-KS), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said:
I am inclined to take Russia’s side in this matter. Russia has done a good job and I am very sorry to see this break.
The Polish-Russian break may lead to establishment of a new exiled Polish government, this time in Moscow. If so, Premier Stalin could easily negotiate with it a settlement of one of his major post-war territorial claims involving eastern Poland. These claims have been set out in detail by the communist press. They embrace an undisclosed but not necessarily large part of Finland; all of the three Baltic states which are Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia; eastern Poland, comprising nearly half of that nation; and all of the Romanian province of Bessarabia and part of the province of Bukovina.
Would expand borders
That would considerably expand Russian borders beyond their limits of Sept. 1, 1939. The Russian thesis is that those areas would be absorbed without the territorial aggrandizement which is proscribed by the Atlantic Charter, and Moscow is bidding for Washington’s agreement that the charter terms do not cover the special circumstances involved.
The Russians assert that those areas owe allegiance to Moscow because they were parts of Czarist Russia or, briefly, of the newborn Soviet Union in 1918-20, or voted to become Soviet republics after they were invaded by the Red Armies in 1939-40.
Formal Russian announcement that eastern Poland would be taken over after the war would raise difficult problems for Washington since it would involve an interpretation of the Atlantic Charter which the Roosevelt administration might be reluctant to make. And the issue is complicated further by the fact that there are considerable numbers of Americans of Polish extraction in the United States – a minority which would be heard and which, in some areas, would be potent at election time.
CANDIDLY SPEAKING —
Male standards on women announcers
By Maxine Garrison
It seems that the radio boys can talk through their hats just as well as they can over the mike.
Pat Kelly, overseer of announcers for NBC, delivered himself of the opinion that as far as radio opportunities for women are concerned:
Girls can’t make the grade in straight announcing.
In his judgment, women lack vocal quality, endurance, versatility and physical prowess (If you’re wondering where that last comes in, it seems that announcers on the job late hours in the nightspots have to keep drunks away from the mike, in addition to their other duties).
This much we can grant Mr. Kelly: The average woman’s voice over the radio is something to be shuddered at – high-pitched, strained and artificial. But that goes for just about any average American voice, our standards of diction being lower than the basso’s choking “Sailor, beware!”
No vocal quality?
But I take it that Mr. Kelly isn’t talking about the average voice. He’s speaking of the trained feminine voice as against the trained masculine voice.
No vocal quality? Did he ever hear Katharine Cornell, Helen Hayes or Lynn Fontanne?
No endurance? Did he ever hear of Gertrude Lawrence, on the stage for almost three solid hours in Lady in the Dark? Or the aforementioned Miss Hayes, playing the several ages of Queen Victoria for several years straight?
No versatility? Did he ever catch Audrey Christie with her nasal, twangy “Likewise, I’m sure,” on Duffy’s Tavern, and then hear her crisp and utterly different delivery in Keeper of the Flame?
No, Mr. Kelly, these ladies are not commercial announcers. We haven’t had much of a chance so far to judge ladies in that capacity – but feminine voices are definitely not what you say.
Why compare them?
As for comparing a woman’s ability as an announcer with that of a man, whoever said that the men set a standard worth comparing anything with?
Do you mean we’re supposed to regard that pompous, pseudo-cathedral tone as ideal? Is that artificially hearty, condescending “let’s get chummy” voice to be emulated? Does it denote versatility to be able to giggle fatuously at a comedian’s joke, switch off the hollow laugh, and leap vocally into the soothing syrup of a subtly (?) introduced commercial?
If those are the things Mr. Kelly wants, he may be quite right in saying that women can’t deliver the goods. Or, rather, that they just wouldn’t put up with it. They’d probably change things around a bit in ten minutes flat.
And that might not be a bad idea at all.
1 Like
U.S. Navy Department (April 28, 1943)
Communiqué No. 358
South Pacific.
On April 27:
-
During the early morning, a group of Liberator (Consolidated B‑24) heavy bombers attacked Japanese installations at Kahili and Ballale in the Shortland Island area and at Vila in the Central Solomons. Fires were started at Ballale and at Vila.
-
Later in the morning, five Flying Fortress (Boeing B‑17) heavy bombers carried out a second attack on Kahili. Poor visibility prevented observation of results.
North Pacific.
On April 26, formations of Army planes carried out eleven attacks against Japanese installations at Kiska. Liberator heavy bombers and Mitchell (North American B‑25) medium bombers, Lightning (Lockheed P‑38) and Warhawk (Curtiss P‑40) fighters participated in these raids. Hits were scored in the enemy main camp area, on the runway and a number of buildings were destroyed. Damage was also inflicted on North Head. Canadian pilots, flying Warhawks, executed two other attacks.
News Release
For Immediate Release
April 28, 1943
Navy patrol plane destroys enemy submarine
Trapping an enemy submarine on the surface some months ago, a Navy Catalina patrol bomber dropped depth charges squarely on the undersea raider and sank her in a surprise attack.
Lt. Richard E. Schreder, USNR, 27, of 837 Wyle Ave., Toledo, Ohio, was bringing his heavy patrol plane in from a routine flight over the Atlantic when his radioman reported that he had sighted a large enemy submarine cruising on the surface. Course was immediately changed, and preparations made for attack.
Carefully keeping the sun directly behind him to blind observers on the raider, Lt. Schreder nosed his heavy plane over in a steep dive, and reared down on the sub. As he leveled off at a low altitude, the submarine attempted to dive, but it was too late. A depth charge dropped by the bomber exploded just under the stern.
The sub again made an attempt to crash dive, but before she could submerge a second charge was released. It struck squarely on the deck and exploded in full view of the crew of the plane. Wreckage was strewn over the surface of the ocean.
Völkischer Beobachter (April 28, 1943)
16 Mordbrennerflugzeuge abgeschossen –
Auch die zweite Angriffsphase in Tunis gescheitert
…
Hindus und Mohammedaner –
Einig gegen Briten und Amerikaner
Von unserer Stockholmer Schriftleitung
…
The Pittsburgh Press (April 28, 1943)
Nazis thrown from 3 hills by Americans
Enemy fights desperately to prevent breakthrough to Tunis plains
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
…
Coal strike spreads rapidly; Army ready for action
Roosevelt may intervene soon; entire steel industry in peril
…
Says so himself –
Ickes’ work as gas chief ‘damned good’
Petroleum boss blames octane fuel shortage on WPB, military
…
Doughton plan ‘forgiveness’ –
Imagine paying $200,689 on your $200,000 income!
Ways and Means Committee chairman’s new tax scheme really ‘soaks the rich’
By Dale McFeatters, Press business editor
…
Congress exempt from 48-hour week
Washington (UP) –
Congress breathed more easily today.
There is no longer any question whether the War Manpower Commission’s minimum 48-hour week order applied to Senators and Representatives.
War Manpower Chief Paul V. McNutt granted the legislators a blanket exemption.