Editorial: Somervell wins
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The Pittsburgh Press (June 21, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Africa –
Our soldiers like Leopoldville fine, although they suffer from a monotony complex. For even a town of 50,000 has its limitations.
Of an evening they can go into town, have a couple of beers at a sidewalk café, and then go to a movie. The Army runs a truck back out to camp each night after the movie.
The only prostitute in Leo was an anemic French Mademoiselle who followed the worldwide custom in all lines of endeavor of upping the price about 300% the moment Americans heave into view. But the colonel in charge beat her to it by putting her place out of bounds the instant they arrived.
There ensued a long correspondence in which the Mademoiselle was first insulted, then standing on her rights, then humble, then pleading, and as it wound up, she got so utterly lonesome she finally wrote and begged the colonel just to let the boys come in to sit and talk about the weather. The colonel still said no. The boys said she only weighed 85 pounds and was too ugly to talk to anyhow.
Thus died the only vestige of a Sadie Thompson story that I’ve run onto in the tropics.
We had a big Army hospital at Leo. It was built to care for hundreds, but the most it ever had was a few score patients. The staff was still hanging around when I was there, but they’ve moved long before now.
An odd thing about it was that due to the censorship of mail, and the average American’s complete lack of knowledge about Africa’s size and climate, most of the nurses’ families back home thought they were about 5,000 miles from the war.
One Saturday night when I was there, the doctors and nurses gave a big farewell party for themselves and invited me. The early part of the evening was spent signing each other’s Short-Snorter bills. Then finally it came to the point where I either had to get up and dance voluntarily or else be dragged bodily out onto the floor by a few husky nurses, so I slipped out the back door and ran home.
Some of the nurses wrote their names down for me on scraps of paper. Much time has passed, and now I can’t remember what each individual looked like or anything, but here they are, and I know that by now they’re in a happier place and as busy as they want to be:
Chief Nurse Josephine Balestra, of Salinas, California (we had a common bond, for Salinas is where I registered for the draft); Rachel Badger of Ogden, Utah; Gracie Blair and Mayellen Ross, both of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania; Sarah Hale and Bertha Pollard, both of Richmond, Virginia; Jane Mogarry, of Butler, Pennsylvania; Kathleen Merran of Philadelphia, and Catherine Androulski of Washington, DC.
The surgical and medical staff was largely from the Presbyterian Hospital in New York. Lt. Col. William Casey, of Portland, Maine, was in command, and he spent most of his time worrying about the prodigality of keeping surgeons who were $30,000-a-year-men in civil life just sitting there 5,000 miles from the nearest shooting, with nobody to operate on. But, as I say, they’ve moved since I was there.
On the staff were such men as Maj. Charles Flood, assistant dean at Columbia, and Capt. Robert Wylie, who they say is one of the finest chest experts in New York.
They were a grand band of Americans there at Leo, all sort of hanging closely together in desperation against boredom and nothing-to-do and lonesomeness.
Out at the camp the few boys who are left do a little work on the roads and keep the camp utilities going, and that’s about all. The first night I was there, they asked me to come and sit with them at the post exchange, and they all stayed at camp just to pump me with questions about what it was like in Tunisia and the rest of Africa.
Their attitude was that they would prefer to be up north in action, but since they weren’t and had nothing to say about it, they guessed they weren’t so badly off at that.
None of them felt that the tropics were getting them or anything like that.
The boys amuse themselves by going on Sunday picnics into the bush, playing cards at the post exchange of an evening, taking lots of photographs, sending home ivory carvings, going to town to see the movies, and writing letters.
Their mail service is good, their food is all right, their health is fine, and life in general for them is OK – with the one important exception that after a while, it just sort of gets like living in a vacuum.
PROCLAMATION 2588
Directing Detroit race rioters to disperse
Whereas, the Governor of the State of Michigan has represented that domestic violence exists in said State which the authorities of said State are unable to suppress; and
Whereas, it is provided in the Constitution of the United States that the United States shall protect each State in this Union, on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive, when the Legislature cannot be convened, against domestic violence; and
Whereas, by the law of the United States in pursuance of the above, it is provided that in all cases of insurrection in any State or of obstruction of the laws thereof, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on application of the Legislature of such State, or of the Executive, when the Legislature cannot be convened, to call forth the militia of any other State or States and to employ such part of the land and naval forces of the United States as shall be judged necessary for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection and causing the laws to be duly executed; and
Whereas, the Legislature of the State of Michigan is not now in session and cannot be convened in time to meet the present emergency, and the Executive of said State under Section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution of the United States, and the laws passed in pursuance thereof, has made due application to me in the premises for such part of the military forces of the United States as may be necessary and adequate to protect the State of Michigan and the citizens thereof against domestic violence and to enforce the due execution of the laws; and
Whereas, it is required that whenever it may be necessary, in the judgment of the President, to use the military forces of the United States for the purposes aforesaid, he shall forthwith, by proclamation, command such insurgents to disperse and retire peacefully to their respective homes within a limited time;
Now, Therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby make proclamation and I do hereby command all persons engaged in said unlawful and insurrectionary proceedings to disperse and retire peacefully to their respective abodes immediately, and hereafter abandon said combinations and submit themselves to the laws and constituted authorities of said State;
And I invoke the aid and cooperation of all good citizens thereof to uphold the laws and preserve the public peace.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
The White House
June 21, 1943
U.S. Navy Department (June 22, 1943)
Communiqué No. 421
South Pacific.
On June 20:
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During the afternoon, three Navy Wildcat (Grumman F4F) fighters intercepted and shot down a Mitsubishi bomber north of Florida Island.
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During the evening, Army Liberator (Consolidated B‑24) heavy bombers attacked Japanese positions at Kieta, Bougainville Island, and Kahili, Buin Area. Results were not observed.
On June 21:
During the afternoon, Navy Dauntless (Douglas SBD) dive bombers and Avenger (Grumman TBF) torpedo bombers, escorted by Wildcat fighters, attacked Japanese installations at Munda, New Georgia Island. Hits were scored on the antiaircraft positions and several were silenced.
Brooklyn Eagle (June 22, 1943)
U.S. BOMBERS BATTER RUHR, BELGIUM
RAF blasts Krefeld with 2,000 tons
44 big planes lost out of 700 – heavy damage is admitted
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Troops halt Detroit riots; war plants slowed, 25 die
Negro absenteeism tops 35% – blame laid to fifth column
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
Motorized Army troops restored law and order to Detroit today after violent race riots, but production slumped in war plants because of an excessive rate of absenteeism among Negro workers.
Federal Army detachments in battle uniforms bivouacked along a two-mile stretch of Woodward Ave., the city’s main thoroughfare, and mobile units – light tanks, jeeps and armored cars – rolled through narrower streets of the Negro section with guns loaded and orders to “use them, if necessary.”
The troops moved into the city shortly before midnight under direct orders from President Roosevelt to halt rioting Negro and white mobsters whose 24-hour reign of terror left 25 persons dead, nearly 700 injured and thousands of dollars of property damage. Tension seemed to vanish with arrival of the soldiers.
Violence has ended
Governor Harry F. Kelly said reports from state and city police and federal authorities were “very good” this morning. Last violence, he said, was reported at 4:30 a.m., when Negro was killed while looting a store.
Production in Detroit’s busy war plants, curtailed yesterday by disrupted transportation services, was still hampered today by absenteeism of Negro workers. The Ford Motor Company reported that “several thousand” Negroes – approximately 35% of its foundry personnel – remained away. Unless more of the employees turned by noon, it may be necessary to close the foundries, a Ford spokesman said.
General Motors reported its production undiminished despite the fact that “more than 50%” of its Negro employees failed to report today. Its spokesman said other workers picked up the slack and kept production at normal levels.
High absenteeism
Chrysler Corporation reported that absenteeism at its Dodge plant, which employs many Negro workers, amounted to nearly 35%. Briggs Manufacturing Company likewise reported abnormally high absenteeism among Negroes.
Negro and white leaders alike blamed fifth-column activities for yesterday’s widespread race riots – the nation’s worst, civil disturbance since World War I – and urged immediate steps to prevent recurrence of the bloody street fighting.
A statement by white leaders read:
This is not an isolated incident arising from a chance fistfight. It is part of an organized national fifth-column conspiracy to break our unity and disrupt the home production front.
Branded conspiracy
They charged that the Ku Klux Klan and “other fifth-column elements” inspired the riots and asked an “immediate roundup and arrest of all known Klan and other fifth-column leaders” in this area. The Negro statement said it wished to “tell the white citizens of Detroit that the Negro people are their friends.”
Governor Kelly also announced that the ban on “assemblages” invoked yesterday would force cancellation of today’s scheduled Detroit-Cleveland baseball game and a race meet at the Detroit Fair Grounds track.
Brig. Gen. William E. Gunther, in charge of federal troops here, said three battalions of Regular Army infantry – approximately 2,100 men – are en route from Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, to relieve military police, many of whom will have been on duty 24 hours.
With fixed bayonets, the soldiers marched slowly behind armored cars, whose machine guns were trained upon second-story windows from which there had been sniping earlier in the evening. Within a few minutes, streets were cleared and peace was restored. However, the streets still bore evidence of the rioting – overturned and demolished cars and trucks, looted shops, broken glass and bloody remnants of clothing scattered almost everywhere.
Brig. Gen. Gunther said 1,200 additional soldiers were being held in reserve at Fort Wayne and Selfridge Field, Michigan. Detroit’s 3,500 weary city police were also to be joined today by 1,500 state troopers from as far north as the upper peninsula of Michigan and by Michigan Guardsmen mobilized by the Governor.
The death toll reached 25 – 22 Negroes and three whites – early today, with at least 15 of the victims reportedly slain by police. Dr. Austin Z. Howard, chief surgeon at Receiving Hospital, which alone treated more than 500 of the injured, described the rioting as the “worst calamity” in Detroit’s history.
Started with fistfight
The fighting began Sunday night on the bridge to Belle Isle Park – an island off the east side of the city – with a fistfight between a Negro and a white man. The rioting continued until it reached full battle proportions yesterday.
Kelly’s state of emergency proclamation ordered everyone, except those going to and from work in Detroit’s busy war plants, to observe a 10 p.m. curfew. Barrooms and places of amusement, including theaters, were closed until “further notice.”
There were pitched battles everywhere despite police efforts to disperse rioters with tear gas and gunfire.
Police battle 200 Negroes
Biggest fight of the riot saw 200 state and local police dislodge Negroes who had been sniping at them with shotguns and revolvers from upper windows of a downtown apartment building. Police returned the gunfire and tossed dozens of tear-gas bombs through the windows. The battle raged for two and a half hours before the Negroes surrendered. When the smoke and tear-gas fumes had cleared, two Negroes were found dead and one policeman was injured seriously.
The riots, the worst since a reign of tenor brought death to 33 persons in East St. Louis, Illinois, on July 2, 1917, filled hospitals and prisons with battered and bruised Negroes and whites.
The outbreak, although it came so quickly that it overwhelmed civil authorities, was not entirely unexpected. Conditions in Detroit have been pointing steadily toward an outbreak since the heavy influx of Negroes from the rural areas in the South and Midwest seeking the high wages paid in the world’s greatest production center.
In the last census, of the total population of 1,623,452, Negroes accounted for 149,119. But the figures have grown proportionately with the boom of war prosperity and the population of the metropolitan area is now estimated at 2,500,000.
Sailors save Negro
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
A gang of white youths began to close in on a Negro front of the City Hall. Three sailors, none of them more than 20, stepped in and broke it up.
One of the sailors said:
He isn’t doing you guys any harm. Let him alone!
One of the mobsters snapped:
What’s it to you?
The sailor barked:
Plenty! There was a colored guy in our outfit and he saved a couple of lives. Besides, you guys are stirring up something that we’re trying to stop.
25 fires sweep Italy after big night-day raids
100 Flying Fortresses lead bomber fleets – foe loses 23 planes
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50% of U.S. Steel furnaces closing due to coal strike
Pittsburgh area hard hit by mine strife – Ickes, Lewis renew parley seeking accord
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Senators warn of perilous sag in home front
Predict Allies will lose initiative unless people go all-out for war
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U.S. raids hint offensive by fleet at Japs
Bombers hammer 3 bases in Solomons after hitting Gilberts
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McNutt: Draft spares fathers till very last
All alternatives to be exhausted first – governors hear Marshall assure victory
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New U.S. war device eliminates radio static
To be put to use at once – rubber substitute also bared at new laboratory dedication
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Rayburn stands firmly against Roosevelt foes
President is nation’s best, he tells 1,000 at Jefferson dinner
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