WLB tells Lewis that Army may halt Celanese pickets
Board threatens to intervene unless UMW withdraw demonstrators rom Celanese plant
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Northern Tunisia – (by wireless)
I was away from the frontlines for a while this spring, living with other troops, and considerable fighting took place while I was gone. When I got ready to return to my old friends at the front, I wondered if I would sense any change in them.
I did, and definitely.
The most vivid change is the casual and workshop manner in which they now talk about killing. They have made the psychological transition from the normal belief that taking human life is sinful, over to a new professional outlook where killing is a craft. To them now, there is nothing morally wrong about killing. In fact, it is an admirable thing.
I think I am so impressed by this new attitude because it hasn’t been necessary for me to make this change along with them. As a non-combatant, my own life is in danger only by occasional chance or circumstance. Consequently, I need not think of killing in personal terms, and killing to me is still murder.
Even after a winter of living with wholesale death and vile destruction, it is only spasmodically that I seem capable of realizing how real and how awful this war is. My emotions seem dead and crusty when presented with the tangibles of war. I find I can look on rows of fresh graves without a lump in my throat. Somehow, I can look on mutilated bodies without flinching or feeling deeply.
It is only when I sit alone away from it all, or lie at night in my bedroll recreating with closed eyes what I have seen, thinking and thinking and thinking, that at last the enormity of all these newly dead strikes like a living nightmare. And there are times when I feel that I can’t stand it and will have to leave.
Fighting soldier’s blood is up
But to the fighting soldier that phase of the war is behind. It was left behind after his first battle. His blood is up. He is fighting for his life, and killing now for him is as much a profession as writing is for me.
He wants to kill individually or in vast numbers. He wants to see the Germans overrun, mangled, butchered in the Tunisian trap. He speaks excitedly of seeing great heaps of dead, of our bombers sinking whole shiploads of fleeing men, of Germans by the thousands dying miserably in a final Tunisian holocaust of his own creation.
In this one respect the frontline soldier differs from all the rest of us. All the rest of us – you and me and even the thousands of soldiers behind the lines in Africa – we want terribly yet only academically for the war to get over. The front-line soldier wants it to be got over by the physical process of his destroying enough Germans to end it. He is truly at war. The rest of us, no matter how hard we work, are not.
Britisher honors American heroes
Say what you will, nothing can make a complete soldier except battle experience.
In the semifinals of this campaign – the cleaning out of central Tunisia – we had large units in battle for the first time. Frankly, they didn’t all excel. Their own commanders admit it, and admirably they don’t try to alibi. The British had to help us out a few times, but neither American nor British commanders are worried about that, for there was no lack of bravery. There was only lack of experience. They all know we will do better next time.
The 1st Infantry Division is an example of what our American units can be after they have gone through the mill of experience. Those boys did themselves proud in the semifinals. Everybody speaks about it. Our casualties included few taken prisoners. All the other casualties were wounded or died fighting.
A general says:
They never gave an inch. They died right in their foxholes.
I heard of a high British officer who went over this battlefield just after the action was over. American boys were still lying dead in their foxholes, their rifles still grasped in firing position in their dead hands. And the veteran English soldier remarked time and again, in a sort of hushed eulogy spoken only to himself:
Brave men. Brave men.
Good Neighbors well pleased by their visits
Mexican President returns after viewing planes at their best
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Völkischer Beobachter (April 23, 1943)
Roosevelts heuchlerische Entrüstung kommt zu spät –
Japan richtete die USA.-Mordbrenner
Die gerechte Sühne für die sadistischen Überfälle auf die Zivilbevölkerung Tokios
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U.S. Navy Department (April 23, 1943)
Communiqué No. 353
South Pacific.
On April 21:
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A group of U.S. fighter planes strafed Japanese Positions in the Bougainville Strait area. Enemy installations near Cape Alexander, on Choiseul Island, were also bombed.
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During the night, Flying Fortress (Boeing B‑17) and Liberator (Consolidated B‑24) heavy bombers, supported by Avenger (Grumman TBF) torpedo bombers, attacked Poporang Island in the Shortland Island area. Two of the many fires which were started were visible for 40 miles.
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During the same night, Avenger torpedo bombers attacked an enemy cargo ship near Buin in the Shortland Island area. Enemy lighter interception prevented observation of results, but it is believed hits were scored on the ship. All U.S. planes returned.
On April 22: During the early morning, a group of enemy bombers raided Funafuti, U.S.-occupied position in the Ellice Island Group. Light casualties to personnel were suffered and minor damage was inflicted.
The Pittsburgh Press (April 23, 1943)
U.S. SEIZES JAP-HELD ISLAND NEAR GILBERTS
Navy occupation revealed as foe bombs new base
Capture of position in Ellice group puts Americans within bomber range enemy strongholds
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Allies smash 20 mammoth Nazi planes
Air convoy destroyed as British 1st Army batters Rommel
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
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Gen. Doolittle: Japanese will be bombed to defeat
Tokyo raid leader expresses ‘deep loathing’ at execution of captured fliers
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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3 Ford plants shut down in Canadian row
UMW ignores WLB order to end Celanese strike in New Jersey
By the United Press
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Flier writes letter to his unborn child
‘Have faith,’ is his fervent plea to the son he wants, as he tells of the dreams he’s had
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Simms: Hush-hush over food parley hints of hash-hash topic
Neutrals suspect that something besides food is cooking on the backburners
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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Allies reject pleas to lift food blockade
Explosive problems to be aired at refugee conference
Hamilton, Bermuda (UP) –
Delegates to the Anglo-American Refugee Conference were understood today to have rejected all proposals for an easing of the Allied blockade to permit the feeding of millions of Europeans starving under Axis occupation.
The initial series of meetings was also reported to resulted in decisions to:
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Veto suggestions to exchange Jews now in German hands for war prisoners.
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Eliminate any consideration of the possibility of arranging with Adolf Hitler for an orderly exodus of Jews from Nazi-controlled countries.
As the conference went into its fifth day, the delegates were believed turning from preliminaries to delicate concreate problems said to be of an explosive nature.
Because of possible political and racial repercussions, the conferees have become uncommunicative.
The attitude of Richard K. Law and Dr. Harold W. Dodds, respectively chairmen of the British and American delegations, in their contacts with newspapermen intimated that at least one possible crisis has been overcome, however.
It was understood that the British presented one proposal which required a recess to permit the Americans to consult among themselves. Regular session have since been resumed.