America at war! (1941--) -- Part 2

Memphis Belle pilot, fiancé call it quits

No wedding, but they’ll remain good friends, Miss Polk says

The bouncing bureaucrat –
Monodrama of the dance developed by Bovingdon

Far East ‘economist’ interpreted ‘portraits of changing world’ in series of rhythmic rituals

War expenses drop $1 billion

Figure bears out warning of production loss


Lehman gives 4 reasons for post-war aid

Harlem quiet; 500 arrested

Property damage estimated at $5 million

New York (UP) –
Harlem was quiet today as authorities investigated yesterday’s riot which resulted in five deaths, more than 500 injured, 500 arrests and an estimated $5 million in property damage.

Police stood guard over the thickly-populated Negro district to prevent recurrence of fighting, looting, arson and robbery.

Backing up police were 8,000 New York State Guardsmen who assembled at their armories last night in readiness to enter the debris-littered area should the disturbances break out again.

Volunteers on duty

A volunteer civilian patrol of 1,500 residents, mostly Negroes, helped keep the peace. City patrol units, military police and air-raid wardens were on guard.

A 10:30 p.m. curfew imposed by Mayor F. H. La Guardia kept virtually all of the district’s 300,000 Negro residents indoors all night.

And for the first time in months, lights in Harlem shone brightly as the Army permitted suspension of dimout regulations to help police keep order.

Five arrested

Only one incident has reported during the night. Five Negro youths were arrested for throwing a stone through a store window.

Police reported that seven Negroes were injured last night and early today in scattered fistfights and stabbings.

Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine said police were investigating reports that hoodlums from southern cities had been sent into Harlem to cause trouble. Police have not been able to confirm these reports, he said.

Victory at hand –
Yanks at edge of Munda Field

Offensive at Jap base in final phase
By Brydon Taves, United Press staff writer

Yanks capture key hill from Nazis in Sicily

Americans forced to rout German soldiers individually
By Richard Mowrer

Northern Sicily, Italy –
The Americans late yesterday took another hill. It was a hard one to take, a long ridge nearly 1,000 feet high that drops sharply to the sea on Sicily’s northern coast.

Our fellows call it Lucky Ridge because in the seesaw fighting of control of the heights preceding our final attack yesterday, our artillery observation post up there had to clear out five different times and never lost a man in the process.

Yesterday’s attack, though, was different. The Americans were up against Germans and had to climb a steep hill under fire. Fortunately, our artillery gave them good support and now we hold Lucky Ridge, which had given the Germans a wonderful view of our territory along the coast and which now gives us a view of still more hills that we are going to have to take.

Ferret out Nazis

This is mountain warfare. The fighting consists of sniping with every arm from pistols to big 155s. The Germans have to be ferreted out almost individually from caves and rocks.

The only good road is the coast road from Palermo to Messina and, as the Germans retreat, they blow up bridges, cause rockslides to block the road, or blow up the road where it winds along the steep cliff’s edge to the sea.

This morning, we climbed Lucky Ridge. It is stony and steep, even if you follow a rocky mile trail part of the way up, but at least we did not have to crawl to the top under enemy fire the way our fellows did yesterday.

Find trouser leg

Getting on toward the town, we came upon somebody’s trouser leg with somebody’s leg was that of an American drab uniform. It had been cut off, presumably in order to bandage a leg wound.

A few yards farther up, we saw what had happened. An American rifle was leaning against an olive tree. Another one was on the ground at the foot of a steep sort of bluff about eight feet high. At the foot of the bluff, we found the remnants of an American first-aid kit. Near the remnants of the first-aid kit was an empty container for American hand grenades.

We climbed up to the top of a six-foot high bluff and saw the rest of the story – a dead German. Apparently, the hand grenade had got him.

Come upon grave

Farther up Lucky Ridge, we found a shallow hole, dug under an olive tree. In the hole were a bloodstained German-Italian dictionary and a Mauser rifle and ammunition but no German. But then, five yards off, we found his grave: A mound of earth with stones on top of it, and a piece of shingle marked “German soldier.”

Nearby, in the shade, some of our fellows were getting ready to move forward. Then we saw the German prisoner. He was stripped to the waist and bareheaded. He had been burying the German dead of Lucky Ridge. He said he was 18 and had been in the German Army since the age of 16, in the Polish, French and Romanian campaigns and at Stalingrad.

This was worse than Stalingrad, he said.

Tokyo’s radio propaganda provides laughs for Yanks

Marines in Pacific listen with scorn to Japs’ efforts to discourage them
By Gilbert Cant

Convoy blocks sub wolfpack

Two, possibly three, of 25 U-boats destroyed

Freshman in Congress joins fight for streamlining

By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Italians kiss U.S. ground –
Nazi colonel sells medal from Hitler for cigarettes

War prisoners are surprised to find New York ‘rebuilt so quickly after bombing blitz’

Huh? When was new york bombed?

1 Like

Never. It was Axis propaganda.

1 Like

Britain getting up to 200 ships from America

Roosevelt says U.S. has taken role of builder for England

Editorial: Hitting Hitler’s gas tank

Background of news –
Eisenhower’s task in Italy

By Col. Frederick Palmer, North American Newspaper Alliance

El Jeepo roars out of sun and Nazis trick hits back

By Nat A. Barrows

Yank LCTs deliver the goods, right at the front

By B. J. McQuaid

U.S. is model for builders of free Italy

Sicilian leader of party hopes to unite all factions
By John Gunther, North American Newspaper Alliance

Millett: Be kind to soldier’s wife and you’ll make him happy

Fellow who knows friends and neighbors think of his mate will be more content
By Ruth Millett

Ernie Pyle V Norman

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Somewhere in Sicily, Italy – (by wireless)
Our first few days aboard ship after the Sicilian landings were broken by many things besides air raids.

A few wounded soldiers were brought from shore for our doctors to treat before the hospital ships arrived. Important generals came to confer on our ship. We had fresh tomatoes and watermelon at the same meal. We took little trips up and down the coast. Repair parties back from the beaches brought souvenir Fascist banners, and stories of how poor the Sicilians were and how glad they were that the war was over for them. The weather remained perfect. Our waters and beaches were forever changing.

I think it was at daylight on the third morning when we awoke to find the Mediterranean absolutely devoid of ships, except for scattered naval vessels. The vast convoys that brought us over had unloaded to the last one and slipped out during the night. For a few hours the water was empty, the shore seemed lifeless, and all the airplanes had disappeared. You couldn’t believe that we were really at war.

Crawling with ships

And then after lunch you looked out again and here the sea was veritably crawling with new ships – hundreds of them, big and little. Every one was coated at the top with a brown layer like icing on a cake, which turned out when we drew closer to be decks crammed solid with Army vehicles and khaki-clad men.

We kept pouring men and machines into Sicily as though it were a giant hopper. The schedule had all been worked out ahead of time: On D-Day Plus 3, Such-and-such Division would arrive. A few hours later another convoy bringing tanks was due. Ships unloaded and started right back for new cargoes.

The whole thing went so fast that in at least one instance I know of, the Army couldn’t pour its men and equipment into the African embarkation ports as fast as the returning ships arrived.

Unloading these ceaseless convoys in Sicily was a saga. The Navy sent salvage parties of Seabees ashore right behind the assault troops and began reclaiming harbors and fixing up beaches for unloading. The Army worked so smoothly that material never piled up on the beaches but got immediately on its way to the front. The number of vehicles that had to be landed to take care of this was almost beyond conception.

We have stevedoring regiments made up of New York professional stevedores. We have naval captains who in civil life ran worldwide ship-salvaging concerns and made enormous salaries.

Days reduced to hours

We run some ships up to the beaches, we unload others at ports, we empty big freighters by lightering their cargoes to shore in hundreds of assault barges and amphibious trucks. Great ships loaded with tanks have been known to beach and unload in the fantastic time of half an hour.

Big freighters anchored a mile from shore have been emptied into hordes of swarming, clammering small boats in 18 hours, when the same unloading with all modern facilities at a New York pier would take four days.

Convoys arrive, empty, and slip away for another load. Men work like slaves on the beaches. Bosses shout and rush as no construction boss ever did in peacetime. Speed, speed, speed!

You walk gingerly on big steel pontoon piers, and you can’t tell a naval lieutenant commander in coveralls from an Army sergeant in a sun helmet. Sometimes it seems as if half the men of America must be there, all working madly together.

Power of production

And do you realize what it is? It is America’s long-awaited power of production finally rolling into the far places where it must be to end the war.

It sounds trite when it is put into words, but if you could be here and see, you would understand how the might of material can overwhelm everything before it. We saw that in the last days of Tunisia. We are seeing it here. We can picture it in inklings of the enemy collapse that inevitably lies ahead.

The point was that we on the scene know for sure that you can substitute machines for lives and that if we can plague and smother the enemy with an unbearable weight of machinery in these next few months, hundreds of thousands of our young men whose expectancy was small can someday walk again through their own front doors.