Where will the Allies strike?
This is the question troubling the Axis and puzzling the world as the time for invasion draws near. The map shows some of the potential invasion routes the Allies may use in attacking Hitler’s European fortress.
Simms: Indians urging U.S. envoy and Gandhi parley
Roosevelt’s ‘ear’ reported coming home without seeing Mahatma
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
Washington –
Reports are that William Phillips, former Ambassador to Italy, now President Roosevelt’s envoy to India, is coming home without seeing Mohandas K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, or other Congress Party leaders presently in prison for stirring up revolt against Britain.
In this country, the influential India League of America, through its president, Sirdar J. J. Singh, and others, both Indian and American, is doing what it can to induce President Roosevelt to appeal directly to Prime Minister Churchill to make possible a meeting between Mr. Phillips and Mr. Gandhi.
Unquestionably, both the President and Mr. Phillips are strictly within diplomatic usage in steering clear of revolutionary elements with the realm of a friendly country. However, in the case of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Gandhi, many feel that an exception might be made.
Wants whole story
The ties between Britain and America are particularly close. Mr. Phillips is the eyes and ears of the President. And doubtless the President would very much like to hear from Mr. Phillips, upon his return, not an incomplete and more or less one-sided recital but the whole story of the Anglo-Indian quarrel.
True, Mr. Gandhi has spoken and written a great deal on his side of the controversy. He said he saw “no difference” between the Axis and the Allies, and objected to American aid.
Nevertheless, there are reports that Mr. Gandhi may have something new to offer. But Congress Party circles say the British will not allow the Mahatma to receive visitors.
British have good reasons
It is not difficult, however, to understand the British position. They are fighting for their lives. The Japs are still at the gates of India. Gandhi tried to work a squeeze-play on them to force them out of India at a time when, had it succeeded, it might have spelled disaster for the United Nations as a whole, including India.
Gandhi lost that play and the British do not feel called upon to give him another chance now by permitting conferences between and his lieutenants in prison, for he could run a revolt from jail as well.
But Mr. Phillips is merely Mr. Roosevelt’s reporter. And India is bound to be one of the most important post-war issues with which not only Britain but the world will have to contend.
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Food meeting curb on news may be eased
Differences will be ironed out, Hull says of Hot Springs parley
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Tunisia –
American tent hospitals in the battle area seem to be favorite hangouts for correspondents. The presence of American nurses is alleged to have nothing whatever to do with it.
At one hospital, three correspondents just moved in and made it their headquarters for a couple of weeks. They’d roam the country in their jeeps during the day, then return to the hospital at night just as though it were a hotel.
There are two favorite hospitals where I drop in now and then for a meal or a night. One is an evacuation hospital – the same one where the other boys stay – which is always kept some 80 miles or more back of the fighting. That is the one staffed largely from Roosevelt Hospital in New York. The other is a mobile surgical hospital, which is usually only about an hour’s drive back of the fighting. This is the hospital that landed at Arzew on the day of the North African occupation, and whose nurses were the first ashore in North Africa.
Just like soldiers at front
This gang is kept pretty much on the move. They don’t dare be too close to the lines, and yet they can’t be very far away. So as the war swings back and forth, they swing with it. The nurses of this outfit are the most veteran of any in Africa.
There are nearly 60 of them, and they’re living just like the soldiers at the front. They have run out of nearly everything feminine. They wear heavy issue shoes, and even men’s GI underwear. Most of the time, they wear Army coveralls instead of dresses.
I asked them what to put in the column that they’d like sent from home, and here is what they want – cleansing creams and tissues, fountain pens, shampoos and underwear. That’s all they ask. They don’t want slips, for they don’t wear them.
These girls can really take it. They eat out of mess kits when they’re on the move. They do their own washing. They stand regular duty hours all the time, and in emergencies they work without thought of the hours.
During battles, they are swamped. Then between battles they have little to do, for a frontline hospital must always be kept pretty free of patients to make room for a sudden influx. A surgical hospital seldom keeps a patient more than three days.
Life is a social blank
During these lax periods, the nurses fill in their time by rolling bandages, sewing sheets and generally getting everything ready for the next storm.
They had a miserably blank social life. There is absolutely no town life in central Tunisia, even if they could get to a town. Occasionally an officer will take them for a jeep ride, but usually they’re not even permitted to walk up and down the road. They just work, and sleep, and sit, and write letters. War is no fun for them.
They make $186 a month, and pay $21 of it for mess. There’s nothing to buy over here, so nearly all of them send money home.
Like the soldiers, they have learned what a valuable implement the steel helmet is. They use it as a foot bath, as a wastebasket, as a dirty-clothes hamper, to carry water in, as a cooking utensil, as a chair, as a candle-holder, as a rain-hat, and for all sorts of other emergencies.
Being nurses and accustomed to physical misery, they have not been shocked or upset by the badly wounded men they care for. The thing that has impressed them most is the way the wounded men act. They say they’ve worked with wounded men lying knee-deep outside the operating rooms, and never does one whimper or complain. They say it’s remarkable.
The girls sleep on cots, under Army blankets. Very few have sleeping bags. They use outdoor toilets. At one place, they’ve rigged up canvas walls for taking sunbaths.
They wouldn’t go home if they could
Mary Ann Sullivan, of Boston, whom I wrote about last winter, is in this outfit. Some of the other girls I know are Mildred Keelin, of 929 Ellison Ave., Louisville, Kentucky; Amy Nichols, of Blythe, Georgia; Mary Francis of Waynesville, North Carolina; Eva Sacks, of 1821 North 33rd St., Philadelphia; Kate Rodgers, of 2932 Wroxton Ave., Houston, Texas.
Like the soldiers, they think and talk constantly of home, and would like to be home. Yet it’s just as Amy Nichols says – she wouldn’t go home if they told her she could. All the others feel the same way, practically 100%.
They’re terrifically proud of having been the first nurses to land in Africa, and of being continually the closest ones to the fighting lines, and they intend to stay. They are actually in little danger, except from deliberate or accidental bombing. They haven’t had any yet.