Millett: Soldier has right to wed
Mother shouldn’t hold him back
By Ruth Millett
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Sicily, Italy – (by wireless)
Outside of the occasional peaks of bitter fighting and heavy casualties that highlight military operations, I believe the outstanding trait in any campaign is the terrible weariness that gradually comes over everybody.
Soldiers become exhausted in mind and in soul as well as physically. They acquire a weariness that is mixed up with boredom and lack of all gaiety. To lump them all together, you just get damn sick of it all.
The infantry reaches a stage of exhaustion that is incomprehensible to you folks back home. The men in the 1st Division, for instance, were in the lines 28 days – walking and fighting all that time, day and night.
After a few days of such activity, soldiers pass the point of known human weariness. From then on, they go into a sort of second-wind daze. They keep going largely because the other fellow does and because you can’t really do anything else.
Dazed by weariness
Have you ever in your life worked so hard and so long that you didn’t remember how many days it was since you ate last or didn’t recognize your friends when you saw them? I never have either, but in the 1st Division, during that long, hard fight around Troina, a company runner one day came slogging up to a certain captain and said excitedly:
I’ve got to find Capt. Blank right away. Important message.
The captain said:
But I am Capt. Blank. Don’t you recognize me?
And the runner said, “I’ve got to find Capt. Blank right away.” And he went dashing off. They had to run to catch him.
Men in battle reach that stage and still go on and on. As for the rest of the Army – supply troops, truck drivers, hospital men, engineers – they too become exhausted, but not so inhumanly. With them and with us correspondents, it’s the ceaselessness, the endlessness of everything that finally worms its way through you and gradually starts to devour you.
It’s the perpetual dust choking you, the hard ground wracking your muscles, the snatched food sitting ill on your stomach, the heat and the flies and dirty feet and the constant roar of engines and the perpetual moving and the never settling down and the go, go, go, night and day, and on through the night again. Eventually it all works itself into an emotional tapestry of one dull, dead pattern – yesterday is tomorrow and Troina is Randazzo and when will we ever stop and, God, I’m so tired.
I’ve noticed this feeling has begun to overtake the war correspondents themselves. It is true we don’t fight on and on like the infantry, that we are usually under fire only briefly and that, indeed, we live better than the average soldier. Yet our lives are strangely consuming in that we do live primitively and at the same time must delve into ourselves and do creative writing.
That statement may lay me open to wisecracks, but however it may seem to you, writing is an exhausting and tearing thing. Most of the correspondents actually work like slaves. Especially is this true of the press-association men. A great part of the time they go from dawn till midnight or 2 a.m.
Grimy mentally and physically
I’m sure they turn in as much toil in a week as any newspaperman at home does in two weeks. We travel continuously, move camp every few days, eat out, sleep out, write wherever we can and just never catch up on sleep, rest, cleanliness, or anything else normal.
The result is that all of us who have been with the thing for more than a year have finally grown befogged. We are grimy, mentally as well as physically. We’ve drained our emotions until they cringe from being called out from hiding. We look at bravery and death and battlefield waste and new countries almost as blind men, seeing only faintly and not really wanting to see at all.
Just in the past month, the old-timers among the correspondents have been talking for the first time about wanting to go home for a while. They want a change, something to freshen their outlook. They feel they have lost their perspective by being too close for too long.
I am not writing this to make heroes of the correspondents, because only a few look upon themselves in any dramatic light whatever. I am writing it merely to let you know that correspondents, too, can get sick of war – and deadly tired.
Kelly-Moran combination battles Japs in Solomons
Former Boise skipper teams up with ‘expendable’ veteran in torpedo boat operations
By George Jones, United Press staff writer
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30th anniversary celebrated –
VAdm. McCain: U.S. Navy fliers and arms hailed ‘second to none’
Exhaustive training of men and procurement of best planes make naval aviation ready for big task ahead
By VAdm. John S. McCain, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air
Washington (UP) –
As naval aviation this week celebrates the 30th anniversary of the formal founding of a naval aeronautical organization, huge task forces, spearheaded by carrier-based aircraft, are poising for new piledriver blows against the enemy.
Because naval aviation was founded and has been built on a bedrock of exhaustive training, design and procurement of the finest fighting aircraft, and an operational plan of thoroughgoing coordination with all other Navy weapons, these impending offensives will succeed.
This is no boastful statement. The performance of naval aviation during the 21 months of war which have passed is proof that it can pass any test with flying colors. Current evidence of the fighting superiority of the naval airman is copiously found in the continuing Central Solomons offensive. There, naval air conclusively demonstrated its ability to carry on a sustained offensive over a long period. Previously, in Guadalcanal and elsewhere, it has shown its ability to smash the enemy from defensive positions.
Sensational growth
Beginning on June 30, after Allied forces had landed on Rendova in the opening step of the current offensive, the Navy’s fighter pilots, teaming with the Army’s splendid air forces, flew long distances to beat off repeated Jap aerial counterattacks until the airfield at Munda could be taken and put into operation as an Allied base.
At the same time, dive and glide bombers daily dumped devastating loads of explosives on enemy objectives – 166,000 pounds in three days alone – thus contributing materially to the fall to the allies of that strategic installation. During the first nine days of that offensive, nearly 200 enemy planes were destroyed at a loss of less than 40 American aircraft.
Naval aviation has enjoyed a sensational growth.
From the 38 officers and 54 planes it had at the outbreak of World War I, it has been built into a force comprising a third of the Navy. It will have over 27,000 planes within four months.
Born in Pensacola
The first naval air station in Pensacola, Florida, could have been bought for what it costs to train a handful of naval aviators today.
It is this regard and painstaking effort to make certain the output of the finest combat aviator, that assures the American public that when the Navy pilot goes into battle, he knows how to fight. He is also equipped with invaluable knowledge of ships and seamanship, of navigation and recognition, of coordinated attack on enemy warships. In short, he is a well-rounded naval aviator.
Largely responsible for the excellence of the naval aviator is the policy of assigning outstanding combat aviators to direct the training of our fledging fliers.
A high degree of correlation between all branches of the Navy is necessary to achieve the coordination of attack without which enemy ship targets cannot be satisfactorily assaulted. That the U.S. Navy has been able to correlate its work is evident in the record.
To achieve an even higher degree of correlation and coordination, the post of Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air has been created. I have the high honor of occupying this post, and can say that naval aviation is integrated in all Navy planning, policies and logistics.
Army, Navy cooperate
I can further state on the basis of personal experience in the combat area, that no higher degree of coordination and cooperation could be found anywhere than that existing between the air forces of the Army and the Navy.
For the high state of efficiency in which naval aviation finds itself today immeasurable credit is due to the pioneering founders. These officers, often faced with opposition from within and without the Navy, gladly made any, and all, sacrifices to achieve a proper place for airpower, at a time when the airplane was viewed either as a toy, or an infernal machine, its exponents as exhibitionists or not too stable.
The late Capt. Washington Irving Chambers, USN; Lt. T. G. “Spuds” Ellyson, USN; and the present Commander, Air Force, Pacific Fleet VAdm. John H. Towers, USN; RAdm. DeWitt C. Ramsey, the present Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and the late Capt. Ken Whiting, USN, who was responsible more than any other for the adoption and development of the aircraft carrier, were but a few of these pioneers whose efforts have resulted in giving to our country a first line second to none.
Völkischer Beobachter (August 31, 1943)
Mr. Knox ist vorsichtig geworden –
‚Wir stehen am Anfang unserer großen Opfer‘
Roosevelts Marineminister warnt vor Deutschlands und Japans ungebrochener Schlagkraft
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The Pittsburgh Press (August 31, 1943)
Allied meeting with Russia urgent, Churchill
Promises second front in Europe when military plans dictate it
By Charles B. Lynch, United Press staff writer
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RAF bombers rip 2 cities in Rhineland
Americans follow up with daylight assault on northern France
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
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‘Honor plan’ returns for U.S. autoists
Pleasure driving ban ends tonight; appeal made to patriotism
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Mrs. Durocher asks divorce from ‘Lippy Leo’
Brooklyn Dodgers manager accused of ‘indulging in unbecoming conduct’
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Hull expected to get support of Roosevelt
President may also ‘announce’ Sumner Welles’ resignation
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‘On sick leave’ –
Nurse home to lose weight gained in African campaign
Air-raid warden’s warning saves New Brighton girl from death in blitzed English town
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Labor won’t like it –
Stronger anti-strike law to be sought in Congress
Measure to affect all industry engaged in war work is goal of proponents
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Allied fliers hit railroads in Naples area
17 enemy aircraft shot down, at cost of 15 of Allies
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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