Ferguson: Home front patriotism
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
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U.S. bureaucracy –
51 agencies hold the final say-so over $32 billion
Government corporations lack uniform audit, investigators learn in survey of uncontrolled spending
By Marshal McNeil, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Nation faces open split –
Simms: Ideologists start fight with Roosevelt and Hull
Active minority group seeks American invention in Europe with its ‘new order’
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Sicily, Italy – (Sept. 2, by wireless)
The other day I promised to tell you something about maps. You may have never seen it mentioned, but a map is as common a piece of equipment among frontline officers as a steel helmet. A combat officer would be perfectly useless without his map.
It is the job of the engineers to handle the maps for each division. Just as soon as a division advances to the edge of the territory covered by its maps, the map officer has to dig into his portable warehouse and fish out thousands of new maps.
The immensity of the map program would amaze you. When it came from America, the 45th Division brought with it 83 tons of Sicilian maps! I forgot to ask how many individual maps that would be, but it would surely run close to half a million.
The 45th’s maps were far superior to any we’d been using and here’s the reason: Our maps were fundamentally based on old Italian maps. Then for months ahead of the invasion our reconnaissance planes flew over Sicily taking photographs. These photos were immediately flown across the Atlantic to Washington. There, if anything new was discovered in the photographs, it was superimposed on the maps.
They kept this process of correction open right up to the last minute. The 45th sailed from America only a short time before we invaded Sicily, and in the last week before it sailed the Map Section in Washington printed, placed in waterproofed cases, and delivered to the boats those 83 tons of maps, hot off the presses.
Help from Ancient Romans
The 120th Engineers went back into antiquity for one of their jobs. They were scouting for a bypass around a blown bridge when they stumbled onto a Roman stone road, centuries old and now unused and nearly covered with sand grass. They cleaned up the old highway, and used it for a mile and a half. If it hadn’t been for this antique road, it would have taken 400 men 12 hours to build a bypass. By using it, the job was done in four hours by 150 men.
The engineers were very careful throughout the campaign about tearing up native property. They used much extra labor and time to avoid damaging orchards, buildings or vineyards. Sometimes they’d build a road clear around an orchard rather than through it.
This consideration helped make us many friends here.
Bulldozer’s adventure
I met a bulldozer driver who operates his huge, clumsy machine with such utter skill that it is like watching a magician do card tricks. The driver is Joseph Campagnone, of 14 Middle St., Newton, Massachusetts. An Italian who came to America seven years ago, when he was 16, he has a brother in the Italian Army who was captured by the British in Egypt.
His mother and sisters live near Naples. I asked Joe if he had a funny feeling about fighting his own people and he said:
No, I guess we’ve got to fight somebody and it might as well be them as anybody else.
Campagnone has been a “cat” driver ever since he started working. He is so astonishingly adept at manipulating the big machine that groups of soldiers gather at the crater’s edge to admire and comment.
Joe has had one close shave. He was bulldozing a bypass around a blown bridge when the blade of his machine hit a mine. The explosion blew him off and stunned him, but he was not wounded. The driverless dozer continued to run and drove itself over a 50-foot cliff, and turned a somersault as it fell. It landed right side up with the engine still going.
Bathing not for Ernie
Our troops along the coast occasionally got a chance to bathe in the Mediterranean. Up in the mountains you’d see hundreds of soldiers, stark-naked, bathing in Sicilian horse troughs, or out of their steel helmets. The American soldier has a fundamental phobia about bodily cleanliness which is considered all nonsense by us philosophers of the Great Unwashed, which includes Arabs, Sicilians and me.
Bullet-dented Japanese sword tells story of Congressional Medal of Honor
Marine lieutenant held attackers at bay in Solomons
By Ana Atwater
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Marching – and dancing – ‘gets’ the feet so doctors team, the soldiers to treat
Free services given men in nation’s USO centers
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U.S. State Department (September 6, 1943)
740.00119 European War 1939/1642
The President’s Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State
Washington, September 6, 1943
Secret
My Dear Mr. Secretary: Replying to your letter NE of September 4, 1943, transmitting copy of a note dated August 13, 1943, from the Greek Embassy, I have taken up with the President the questions presented in your note and am authorized to give you the following information.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The question of our informing General Eisenhower that the Government of Greece has authorized him to sign for the Royal Hellenic Government the proposed terms of surrender of Italy is now under discussion by the President and the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Sincerely yours,
WILLIAM D. LEAHY
Völkischer Beobachter (September 7, 1943)
37 Feindbomber bei Terrorangriffen abgeschossen –
Weiter schwere Abwehrkämpfe im Osten
dnb. Aus dem Führer-Hauptquartier, 6. September –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Die starken Angriffe der Sowjets im Donezbecken, Im Raum von Charkow sowie südwestlich und westlich Wjasma halten unvermindert an.
Die Luftwaffe unterstützte wirksam die in schwerem Abwehrkampf stehenden Verbände des Heeres. In der Zeit vom 2. bis 5. September verlor der Feind 166 Flugzeuge.
Auf der kalabrischen Halbinsel gingen die gelandeten britischen Kräfte gegen die schwachen deutsch-italienischen Sicherungskräfte nur zögernd vor. Nur an einigen Stellen kam es zu Gefechten.
In der vergangenen Nacht führten feindliche Bomberverbände Terrorangriffe gegen das Gebiet der Städte Mannheim und Ludwigshafen. Die Bevölkerung hatte Verluste. In einigen Stadtteilen entstanden erhebliche Zerstörungen, vorwiegend durch ausgedehnte Brände.
Nachtjäger und Flakartillerie schossen, soweit bisher festgestellt wurde, 37 der angreifenden Bomber ab.
Eisenhower befiehlt Nachrichtensperre –
Ausnahmezustand über Nordafrika verhängt
Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachten“
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U.S. State Department (September 7, 1943)
Roosevelt-Churchill meeting, 10:50 a.m.
| Present | ||
|---|---|---|
| United States | United Kingdom | |
| President Roosevelt | Prime Minister Churchill | |
| Mr. Davis | Minister of Information Bracken |
The Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet to the President
Washington, 7 September 1943.
Secret
FF1/A1–1
SERIAL: 001900
SUBJECT: EXAMINATION OF SPECIAL HABBAKUKS AS DIRECTED ON FRIDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER 1943.
I transmit herewith – as Enclosures – the report of the ad hoc committee appointed on Friday, 3 September 1943, at a meeting in the White House with the President and Mr. Churchill.
A copy is enclosed for your reference to Mr. Churchill.
I concur in the recommendations of the Committee.
E. J. KING
[Enclosure]
Report of an ad hoc committee concerning HABBAKUKs
Memorandum for Admiral King
SUBJECT: HABBAKUK – REPORT OF AD HOC COMMITTEE
The report of the ad hoc committee appointed to investigate into the practicability and feasibility of providing floating seadromes or the equivalent thereof for certain operations in southeast Asia, is submitted herewith.
Recommendations of this committee are:
a. That the British provide by target date, 1 February 1944, the CVEs necessary for this operation.
b. That, in case the British are unable to provide and man the necessary number of CVEs by the target date, 1 February 1944, an overriding priority be assigned to eight British escort carriers scheduled for completion prior to 15 December 1943, and that these be manned, and equipped with necessary air squadrons, by the United States.
c. That, in the latter case, and after the operation immediately contemplated, these carriers be employed, United States manned, to support operations in the Pacific scheduled for the late spring 1944, upon completion of which they would be taken over, manned, and operated by the British.
d. That, to determine the practicability and effectiveness of the use of HABBAKUKs, one concrete barge HABBAKUK be constructed by the British in India or elsewhere for trial.
JOHN S. MCCAIN
BEN MOREELL
O. C. BADGER
Prime Minister Churchill’s Assistant Private Secretary to the President’s Naval Aide
Washington, September 7, 1943.
Admiral Wilson Brown: Tonight, September 7, the President and the Prime Minister together signed the draft declaration about the use of poison gas against the Italians and the President asked that I should send you the original of this for your records. This is attached.
T L ROWAN
7. 9. 43.
[Attachment]
Declaration on Gas Warfare
Draft Declaration
In the name of the U.S. and British Governments, I wish to make it plain that the use of poison gas against the Italians will call forth immediate retaliation upon Germany with gas, using the Allied air superiority to the full.
ROOSEVELT
CHURCHILL
Marshal Stalin to President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill
Moscow, September 7, 1943.
Secret
[TRANSLATION]
Personal and secret message from Premier J. V. Stalin to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
I have received your message of September 4th. The question raised in your message as to whether the Soviet Government agrees to authorize General Eisenhower to sign the brief terms of the armistice with Italy in its behalf is answered by the letter of September 2nd of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Mr. V. M. Molotov addressed to Mr. Kerr, British Ambassador.
This letter said that the authority given by the Soviet Government to General Eisenhower covers also the signing of the brief terms of the Armistice.
The Commander-in-Chief, AFHQ to the Combined Chiefs of Staff
Algiers, 7 September 1943.
Secret
Urgent
W 9332. The following announcement will be made by General Eisenhower at 1830B hours D minus 1 day. To AGWar for Combined Chiefs of Staff signed Eisenhower. This is Naf 360. BIGOT AVALANCHE.
This is General Dwight D Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces. The Italian Government has surrendered its armed forces unconditionally. As Allied Commander in Chief, I have granted a military armistice, the terms of which have been approved by the Governments of the United Kingdom, the United States of[and] the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics acting in the interests of the United Nations. The Italian Government has bound itself to abide by these terms without reservation. The Armistice was signed by my representative and the representative of Marshal Badoglio and becomes effective this instant. Hostilities between the armed forces of the United Nations and those of Italy terminate at once. All Italians who now act to help eject the German aggressor from Italian soil will have the assistance and support of the United Nations.
Marshal Badoglio’s announcement of the Armistice and his message to the Italian Armed Forces and people will be issued simultaneously with the above.
The Combined Chiefs of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief, AFHQ
Washington, September 7, 1943.
Secret
7133.
Some of the Allied nations may object to the wording of the third sentence in your announcement which begins “As Allied Commander-in-Chief etc.” as set forth in your Naf 360. For Eisenhower Freedom Algiers, Fan 219, from the Combined Chiefs of Staff. The Combined Chiefs of Staff desire that this sentence should end with the word “Republics” and that the next sentence should read “I am thus acting in the interests of the United Nations.”