Planes blast six Jap ships
Three and possibly four war vessels sunk
By Brydon C. Taves, United Press staff writer
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Wartime fashions –
Carrots, pea and cabbage adorn milady’s new gowns
Influence of victory gardens shown in the newest creations of New York’s designers
By Maxine Garrison, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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I DARE SAY —
Holiday
By Florence Fisher Parry
I used to have a little wire called “Hey-Wire,” which I had to get rid of for a very sad reason. Although he ecstatically welcomed every visitor to the house, when the time came for the guests to depart, he viciously bit their ankles. This was carrying hospitality a little too far and there was nothing to do but consign him to a domicile where visitors were not the order of the day.
Personally, I had great sympathy for Hey-Wire’s unorthodox approach to the social amenities. Conformity, as well as consistency, is the hobgoblin of little minds, and I have always felt a sneaking attraction for those who have the courage of their own eccentricities.
I dare say we all nurse peculiarities. There is no family which does not indulge in its own funny little habits which, to the outsider, appear ridiculous.
Take this morning, for instance: I am what is called “sick in bed.” I am dictating this column through a blanket of cerebral fog.
But is my plight cause for commiseration? Indeed, no! It is, instead, cause for general rejoicing, and always has been. For to my family, my being sick means one happy thing: IT MAKES ME STAY HOME. And so always has been regarded by my progeny at least as a red-letter holiday.
This blithe attitude toward sickness has extended also to them. All their lives they have rejoiced at their every passing brash, for it meant that I would have to stay home from work, and wait on them, and read to them, and be, indeed, a mother.
Sick-a-bed day
Looking back over the years of their children, I am seized by a pang past describing. I dare say this spasm of nostalgic regret is suffered by all busy mothers who have been cheated of a normal home life. But looking back upon the compromise my children have been made to accept, I have come to the conclusion that no mistake a mother can ever make is so grievous as that of foregoing a normal home with her children while they are growing up. No compensation, no reward, can justify the loss.
I look upon the time I had to spend away from my own children with the most bitter resentment; and, if I had my life to live over, I would undertake any compromise that would permit me to be home with them through their growing years.
Frankly I just cannot understand women who, given the alternative, deliberately and selfishly choose a career to the rearing of their own children.
It is all right to say that you can do both. That you can have your cake and eat it. I rise to testify that it cannot be done. One or the other will suffer, and it is usually the children who do.
My advice to all young widows left with small children is to marry again and at once, and provide, if possible, by this recourse, a normal home for their children.
My children can tell me ‘til the cows come home that they had a happy childhood; but I cannot be fooled. I know now there was something wrong somewhere, if only because, when I was sick in bed or they were sick in bed, it was a signal for general rejoicing.
Too late now
There is never a spring comes around that when I see a violet growing. I don’t remember the times that we were going out in the country to pick Johnny-jump-ups, and never did, because I was busy and had to go to town.
I never see a picnic table along the highway that I am not rebuked, remembering the picnics we were to have and didn’t have, because I was too busy.
All around me I see young mothers doing just what I did, young mothers left widows, so easily attracted into the rut of a career, so easily persuaded to get someone to look after the children while they follow their own selfish paths! I never see one that I don’t feel like standing before her, stopping her in her tracks, and warning her against the mistake that I made and have lived to rue.
For nothing vanishes as quickly as childhood. Now it is here, heartbreakingly beautiful and importunate; and then it is gone, and cannot be recovered. Such a few years until they are grown. Fools, we, that we do not grapple them to our hearts and make the most of them, while there is still time!
Texas sheriff nabbed by FBI
Aided in jailbreak, accusers say
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Roosevelt orders study of race riots
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Yank troops stab first, ask questions afterward
Americans near Munda sleep with hands on hilt, set to repel Jap night attackers
By George E. Jones, United Press staff writer
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Court decision may be sought on portal pay
Operators discuss plan; UMW policy committee seeks wages’ basis
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Grim picture faces Axis as leaders meet
Hitler may be attempting to savage what he can in Italy
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Corner on tin and diamonds starts inquiry
U.S. still the victim of cartel system, despite war
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Yanks play rough –
The Japs die hard in jungle trap as tanks close in
U.S. troops on New Georgia Island again beat foe at own game, destroying force surrounded on beach
By Ira Wolfert
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Southern Sicily, Italy – (by wireless)
On our first morning in Sicily, I stopped to chat with the crew of a big howitzer which had just got dug in and camouflaged. The invasion was only a few hours old but in our sector, it was nearly over.
This gun crew was digging foxholes. The ground was hard and it was very tough digging. Our soldiers were mad at the Italians. One of them said in real disgust:
We didn’t even get to fire a shot.
Another one said, “They’re gangplank soldiers” – whatever that means.
Their attitude expressed the disappointment of lots of our soldiers. Our troops had been through such keen and exhaustive training they were worked up to a violent pitch and it was an awful letdown to find nothing to take it out on.
Dieppe veteran sore
I talked with one Ranger who had been through Dieppe, El Guettar and other tough battles, and he said this was by far the easiest of all. He said it left him jumpy and nervous to get trained to razor-edge and then have the job fizzle out, the poor fellow, and he was sore about it!
That Ranger was Sgt. Murel White, a friendly blond fellow of medium size, from Middlesboro, Kentucky. He has been overseas a year and a half. Back home he has a wife, and a five-year-old daughter. He used to run his uncle’s bar in Middlesboro and he says when the war is over, he’s going back, drink the bar dry, and then just settle down behind it for the rest of his life.
Sgt. White and his commanding officer were in the first wave to hit the shore. A machine-gun pillbox was shooting at them and they made up hill for it, about a quarter of a mile away. They used hand grenades. White said:
Three of them got away, but the other three went to Heaven.
Since the invading soldiers of our section didn’t have much battle to talk about, they looked around to see what this new country had to offer, and you’d never guess the most commented-upon discovery among the soldiers that first day.
No, it wasn’t signorinas, or beer, or Mt. Etna. It was that they found fields of ripe tomatoes! And did they eat them! I heard at least two dozen men speak of it during the day, as though they’d located gold. Others said they found some watermelons, but I couldn’t find any.
I hitched a ride into the city of Licata with Maj. Charles Monnier, of Dixon, Illinois, Sgt. Earl Glass, of Colfax, Illinois, and Sgt. Jaspare Taormina of 94 Starr St., Brooklyn. They are all engineers.
Sgt. Taormina was driving and the other two held Tommy guns at ready, looking for snipers. Taormina himself was so busy looking for snipers that he ran right into a shell hole in the middle of the street and almost upset our jeep.
Sick of Nazi browbeating
Taormina is of Sicilian descent. In fact, his father was born in a town just 20 miles west of Licata and for all he knows his grandmother is still living there. The sergeant can speak good Italian, so he talked to the local people on the streets. They told him they were sick of being browbeaten and starved by the Germans and the reason they put up such a poor show in our sector was that they didn’t want to fight.
They said the Germans had lots of wheat locked in granaries in Licata and they hoped we would unlock the buildings and give them some of it.
Before the sun was two hours high our troops had built a prisoner-of-war camp, out of barbed wire, on the rolling hillsides, and all day, long groups of soldiers and civilians were marched up the roads and into the camps.
At the first camp I came to, about 200 Italian soldiers and the same number of civilians were sitting around on the ground inside the wire. There were only two Germans, both officers. They sat apart in one corner, disdainful of the Italians. One had his pants off and his legs were covered with Mercurochrome where he had been scratched. Civilians even brought their goats into the cages with them.
After being investigated, those who were harmless would be turned loose. The Italian prisoners seemed anything but downhearted. They munched at biscuits, asked their American guards for matches. As usual, the area immediately became full of stories about prisoners who’d lived 20 years in Brooklyn and who came up grinning, asking how things were in dear old Flatbush.