Navy reveals names of 11 U.S. warships sunk in Solomons; reporter describes actions in which Japs lost 25 vessels, 125 planes
By Charles P. Arnot, United Press staff writer
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Author of pay-as-you-go bill says 27 million now in debt to U.S.
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Senators feel Roosevelt gave juicy political issue to GOP
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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By Florence Fisher Parry
She said to me:
So many people tell me about their having known my father. They tell me this and that about him, and it always seems so unreal, hearing about someone I cannot remember at all. It seems so queer. A phantom father. Someone who had everything to do with my life and nothing to do with its living. There ought to be a way that children could remember!
And as she spoke, the picture came to me of the millions and millions of phantom fathers, the unremembered, destined by this war to remain myths to their children… never, never to win a place in their memories.
We are not told – yet – of the casualties. We will not be asked to bear the burden of these awful facts for a long time. Not until long after the war’s end will the grim statistics begin to amass. And then – because the peace will have been returned to us – it will not matter so much, except to those who find themselves bereft. Who of us remembers that one out of 10 of the AEF who were transported to France was a casualty in the last war? At the time, it did not register, or was it even told?
Now we know that that war was but a little prelude to this one; that its casualties, compared with those to come, will seem infinitesimally small. Oh, lives have been lost fast in past wars! The Marne and Gettysburg and the gaunt horror of Verdun still provide history awful records. But the deaths of this war will forever remain incomputable. The millions purged and starved, the millions dead of broken hearts and mangled dreams, the millions turned to zombies, living dead.
No compromise
The millions of unremembered fathers, their progeny disinherited of all memory of them! I pity them above all others. The young, the older, fathers, denied the gift of all remembrance, from those to whom they gave the breath of life!
Now the question arises all the time shell these young soldiers marry knowing they are to leave their brides? Shall they risk – or more, encourage – leaving behind them pregnant wives? It is not a question for which there is a wholesale answer; sometimes such action amounts almost to desertion, sometimes creates social problems almost insoluble.
But if solution can be found; if a way can be reasonably provided, I would say: YES! If a fine man is to be cut down before his time by war, far better that he leave behind some progeny! Far better that his wife be given another life to replace his!
There is no more bleak nor sterile premise than that upon which I see all too, too many war marriage built; the premise that because of the uncertainty of the man’s life, in war, pregnancy should be avoided at any cost.
Nothing could be more destructive to “that far-off divine event toward which the whole creation moves.” For a man to go into this war with the idea of saving the world, only to himself deny to its future his own progeny, is an
Of course, there are exceptions. Of course, there are hasty and inept war marriages which would do well to provide against the contingency of offspring. All over the country there is a surge of war marriages. Many of these should not be. They have in them a transitory urgency that bodes no hope of their endurance. Many of these marriages will dissolve after the war, by legal or other means.
It would be folly to turn our minds away from the countless artful marriages that are being contrived by wily parents and chiseling girls. It would be silly to accept as a sacred and unalterable vow the pledges which thousands of callow girls and confused boys are making at improvised altars and “justice” offices.
Parents too
But I say: When two responsible young persons, supported in their intention by their families, decide that in thew face of war and separation they are resolved to become man and wife, it is the duty not only of the young wedded pair but of their families as well to accept the full responsibility of that marriage, and all that normal marriage brings – including children.
I would no more consider that my son were fulfilling his obligation to the country he now serves, if he married now and then deliberately refused to have a child for the duration, than I would consider my daughter a fit member of society were she to undertake marriage now, fully cognizant of the separation and risk it entailed, only to plead exemption from its normal, full expectancies.
If young people who are to be torn apart by this war still insist upon marriage, let them enter it ready to take its most solemn consequences. And it is the duty of the parents of these young couples to stand ready to assume whatever is to be their share of those consequences.
I am shocked at the scurry of otherwise intelligent women to have their daughters “married off” hurriedly, to men in our Armed Forces, yet who profess unwillingness for their daughters to enter into any of the basic obligations of marriage.
If our daughters can’t have babies while their husbands are away at war, and mothers aren’t willing to help them through with them, then they’d better give up the idea of there being as war marriage.
Newspaper publisher shot down on 5th Avenue
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Readjustments of new freedom may take many years
By A. T. Steele
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Junction with Japanese in Near East is Germany’s lone hope of relieving pressure on home front, ex-President Hoover says
By Herbert Hoover, distributed by the United Press
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Big warship wrecked by MacArthur’s fliers
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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By Ernie Pyle
With U.S. forces in Algeria –
Back in England, I spent some time with the Army’s Medical Corps, intending to write about our preparations for tending wounded soldiers. But I never wrote the columns. The sight of surgeons being taught to operate at the front, of huge warehouses filled to the roofs with bandages, of scores of hospitals built for men then healthy who would soon be cripples – it was shocking and too morbid, and I couldn’t write about it.
But now all that preparation is being put to use. Our doctors and nurses and medical aides have had their first battle experience. The hospitals are going full blast, and it doesn’t seem morbid in actuality, as it did in contemplation.
In the Oran area, where our heaviest casualties occurred, the wounded are in five big hospitals. Three were French hospitals taken over by the Army, one is an abandoned French barracks turned into a hospital, and one is a huge tent hospital out in an oatfield. It is the most amazing thing I have seen., and I’ll write about it later.
So far, the doctors can be, and are, proud of their work. The nurses have already covered themselves with glory. The wounded have only praise for those who pulled them through.
Our only deaths in the original occupation were those killed outright and those so badly wounded that nothing could have saved them. In other words, we lost almost nobody from infection or from medical shortcomings in the hurly-burly of battle.
Sulfanilamide saves hundreds
You’ve already read of the miracles wrought by sulfanilamide in the first battles of Africa. Doctors and men both still talk about it constantly, almost with awe. Doctors knew it was practically a miracle drug, but they hadn’t realized quite how miraculous.
Every soldier was issued a sulfanilamide packet before he left England, some even before they left America. It consisted of 12 tablets for swallowing, and a small sack of the same stuff in powdered form for sprinkling on wounds. The soldiers used it as instructed, and the result was an almost complete lack of infection. Hundreds are alive today who would have been dead without it. Men lay out for 24 hours and more before they could be taken in, and the sulfanilamide saved them.
It’s amusing to hear the soldiers talk about it. Sulfanilamide is a pretty big word for many of them. They call it everything from snuffalide to sulphermillanoid.
There’s one interesting sidelight on it – some of the wounded soldiers didn’t have any sulfanilamide left, because they had surreptitiously taken it all to cure venereal diseases. They say you can knock a venereal case in four or five days with it, and thus don’t have to report in sick.
One doctor told me that most American wounds were in the legs, while most of the French wounds were in the head. The explanation seemed to be that we were advancing and thus out in the open, while the French were behind barracks with just their heads showing. Both sides treated the wounded of the other side all during the battle, and our soldiers are full of gratitude for the way they were treated in the French hospitals. They say the French nurses would even steal cigarettes for them.
Morale of wounded is high
The mixup of French emotions that showed itself during the fighting was fantastic. One French motor launch went about Oran Harbor firing with a machine gun at wounded Americans, while other Frenchmen in rowboats were facing the bullets trying to rescue them.
I know of one landing party sent ashore with the special mission of capturing four merchant ships. They took them all without firing a shot. The captain of one ship greeted the party with “What was the matter? We expected you last night,” and the skipper of another met the party at the gangway with a bottle of gin.
There was much fraternization. In one town where fighting was heavy, the bodies of five men were found in a burned truck. Three were Americans and two were French.
Morphine was a great lifesaver. Pure shock is the cause of many deaths; but if morphine can be given to deaden the pain, shock, cases often pull through. Many officers carried morphine and gave injections right on the field. My friend Lt. Col. Louis Plain of the Marine Corps, who had never given an injection in his life, gave six on the beach at Arzew.
Many of our wounded men already had returned to duty. Those permanently disabled would be sent home as soon as they were able. Those still recovering were anxious to return to their outfits. I inquired especially among the wounded soldiers about this, and it was a fact that they were busting to get back into the fray again. Morale was never higher.