Ferguson: Job-hunting after 40
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
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Simms: United Nations to blame for Italy’s tragic plight
Had cards been played right, Rome might have been on our side against Germany
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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Gen. Clark indicates Allied invasion aims
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Yanks set nine records in May raids on Europe
U.S. fliers drop 3,000 tons of bombs, RAF 13,500 tons; Nazi planes over London again
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, North Africa – (by wireless)
The nicest American camp I’ve ever seen in the fighting area of North Africa is one inhabited by about a hundred men who run the smokescreen department around a big port to help confuse German air-raiders.
I happened upon the thing wholly by accident. Another correspondent and I were driving through country that was strange to us. We came to a town late one afternoon, and were told by a bored billeting clerk that there was no place in town for us to stop and that’s that. So, we just said phooey on you, friend, we haven’t slept under a roof in months anyhow, we carry our own beds with us, and we hate cities to boot.
Whereupon we drove right out of town again and started looking for some spot under a tree where we could camp for the night.
It was during this search that we passed a very neat-looking American camp by the roadside. On an impulse we drove in and asked the first officer we saw if we could just throw our bedrolls down on the ground and stay all night with them.
He said:
What do you want to throw them on the ground for?
We said:
Well, we don’t want to put you to any trouble, and we’re accustomed…
He said:
Nonsense! We’ll make room for you in our cabins. Have you had supper yet?
No, but we’ve got our own rations with us.
He said:
Nonsense! Come and eat first, and then we’ll find you a place to stay.
What an outfit!
The officer was Lt. Sam Kesner, of Dallas, Texas. He was wearing coveralls and a field cap and you couldn’t tell him from a private except for his bars. He went to Texas A&M and got his chemical engineering degree and his Army commission both on the same day.
Lt. Kesner’s boss is Capt. J. Paul Todd, of Clinton, South Carolina. He was a schoolteacher before the war. He taught mathematics at Rock Hill, South Carolina, and at Atlanta, Georgia. Their outfit is a part of the Chemical Warfare Service, but instead of dealing out poisonous gases they deal out harmless smoke that covers up everything when raiders come over.
By the nature of their business, they work all night and sleep all day. They take their various stations in little groups in a big semicircle around the city, just before dusk, and stay there on the alert till after daylight. At midnight a truck makes the rounds with sandwiches and hot coffee. Capt. Todd himself also makes a four-hour tour of the little groups each night, ending about 2 a.m.
Their assignment has been permanent enough to justify their fixing up their camp in a homelike way. They have taken old boards from the dock area and built about three dozen small cabins, sort of like tourist-camp cabins back home. They have board floors, board side walls, and canvas roofs.
Cabins have been named
They have built bunks for their bedrolls, hung up mosquito nets, hammered boards together for chairs, made tables, and put little steps and porches in front of their cabin doors. They’ve named their cabins such things as “Iron Mike’s Tavern,” “African Lovers,” “The Village Barn,” “The Opium Den.”
Lt. Kesner has a sign hanging outside his door that says, “Sixty-Five Hundred Miles from Deep in the Heart of Texas.” The heart is drawn instead of spelled out.
Capt. Todd has a wife back home named Marigene and a daughter named Paulagene. He left when his daughter was four weeks old. Now she’s a year and a half. But he keeps himself well reminded of them, for tacked on the wall of his cabin are 34 pictures of his wife and baby. He’s the picture-takingest man I ever ran onto.
The hundred men in this camp are just like a clan. They have all been together a long time and they have almost a family pride in what they’re doing and the machinery they’re doing it with.
One of the boys in the kitchen said he’d read this column in The Cleveland Press for years. He is Cpl. Edward Dudek, of 8322 Vineyard Ave., Cleveland. I asked him what he did before the war besides read this column, and he said he was a chemical worker. The Army clicked long enough to put him into the Chemical Service, but then a cog slipped somewhere and now he’s a cook instead of a chemical worker. But I suppose he can make his own fumes when he gets homesick by spilling a little grease on the stove.
We spent a comfortable night with this outfit and tarried around a couple of hours the next morning, just chatting, because everybody was so friendly. Then, they gassed us up without our even asking, and we finally left feeling that we’d visited the nearest thing to home since hitting Africa.
Millett: Will the women want to get out of uniforms after war?
Sure, when the men go back to ‘civies’
By Ruth Millett
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Soap opera audience isn’t limited to gals
Women listeners ask fewer washboard weepers
By Si Steinhauser
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No yoo-hoo?
Diary of a WAAC reveals vital statistics
Louisville, Kentucky (UP) –
An official release from Fort Knox today revealed the social statistics in the life of a WAAC.
The Army said these figures were taken from the diary of pretty WAAC Aux. Rita Smith of New Albany, Indiana. In one week, Aux. Smith was:
| Asked for dates | 26 times |
| Whistled at | 389 times |
| Danced with | 89 times |
| Stood up | 0 times |
U.S. Navy Department (June 2, 1943)
Communiqué No. 399
North Pacific.
On May 31, on Attu Island, mopping up operations by U.S. Army troops against isolated Japanese groups continued.
As of midnight May 30, the Japanese casualties on Attu were estimated as follows:
| Killed | 1,500 |
| Captured | 4 |
On May 31, formations of Army Liberator (Consolidated B‑24) heavy bombers, Mitchell (North American B‑25) medium bombers and Warhawk (Curtiss P‑40) fighters bombed and strafed Japanese positions at Kiska. Hits were scored on the runway, North Head and Gertrude Cove.
Press Release
For Immediate Release
June 2, 1943
Coast Guard cutter sinks German sub
The U.S. Coast Guard cutter SPENCER (WPG-36) has chalked up a definite submarine sinking to her credit.
In an engagement in the Atlantic several weeks ago, the SPENCER skillfully tracked down a U‑boat which tried to slip away under the roar of the propellers of a convoy, forced the raider to the surface with depth charges, and destroyed her in the gun battle which followed, taking many survivors prisoner.
Casualties aboard the SPENCER were light, while the cutter suffered only slight damage.
The Pittsburgh Press (June 2, 1943)
Coal strike up to Roosevelt; WLB halts pay negotiations
Pledge violation charged; ‘coercion’ method put under ban
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Allied fleet twice shells Pantelleria
Italian island isolated; bases on Sardinia and Sicily pounded
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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Howard aboard missing plane
Lisbon transport reported shot down by Nazis
Leslie Howard – Death in Bay of Biscay!
London, England (UP) –
A British Overseas Airways transport, which Lisbon dispatches said carried the famous actor Leslie Howard and 14 other persons, is missing on the regular flight from Portugal to London and has apparently been shot down by Nazi warplanes over the Bay of Biscay.
The big Douglas passenger plane, operated by the Dutch KLM Line and carrying three British children who had just arrived from America en route home, was “shot down,” according to the British press attaché in Lisbon, where little hope was held for survival of any of those aboard. The last wireless message from the plane reportedly said it was under attack.
Reporter on board
Mr. Howard’s business manager, Alfred Chenhalls, was also reported aboard the plane, which carried 13 passengers and four crewmen. Another reported passenger was Kenneth Stonehouse, Washington correspondent of the British news agency Reuters.
Mrs. Howard was reported grief-stricken at her home. Dale Harris, son-in-law of the Howards, said that the family had heard nothing definite about the plane.
Leslie Howard was one of the great names of the contemporary American and British stage and of the motion picture. To the British public, he was often thought of as that “American actor,” though in fact, he was thoroughly British, so much so, indeed, that to the American public, he was always regarded as “that British actor.”
His fame as a producer and director of motion pictures was only a little less than as an actor. In addition, he was a distinguished satirist, particularly on subjects relating to the theater, and a playwright of skill.
Made ‘outward bound’
One of his best-known parts was in The Petrified Forest, in which he played both when it was a play and a motion picture. He costarred with Humphrey Bogart.
His popularity with the American movie audience started in 1930 with his first movie, Outward Bound. After that, he devoted his talents principally to the movies, dividing his time between American and British companies whom he served in varied capacities. He maintained a country home in England but he spent the great part of his time in his Hollywood home.
He was firmly established on the British stage by 1920, but after that year, he made only one appearance on a London stage.
Born in London
Mr. Howard was born in London April 3, 1893, the son of a stockbroker.
He went to work as a bank clerk after his graduation from Dulwich School, London, but found it dull. After he was invalided out of the British Army in 1918, he was unable to bring himself to enter the financial marts again and drifted into the theater.
For a while, he toured the British provinces in such pieces as Peg o’ My Heart and Charley’s Aunt. Then came London and a part in The Freaks. His star rose rapidly from then on.
In 1921, he appeared in New York for the first time in Just Suppose, followed by uncounted other plays.
Mr. Howard met his wife, then Ruth Martin, while serving in the last war. Three weeks after they met, Mr. Howard got an hour’s leave and they eloped.
Of his movie successes, some of the better-known were Never the Twain Shall Meet, Devotion, Smilin’ Through, The Woman in His House, Captured, Berkeley Square, The Lady Is Willing, Of Human Bondage, British Agent, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Petrified Forest, Gone With the Wind, Pygmalion and Intermezzo.
Destruction of Nazi subs best in May
Number blasted tops any previous month and construction too
By Clinton B. Conger, United Press staff writer
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