Newspaper boys sell 9% of war stamps
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Gas shortage may spread to rest of U.S., Ickes says
Warning comes as PDT establishes priority system for extra commercial fuel
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Wartime strikes reach new high
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Adverse court rulings halt labor ‘kickback’ hearings
Federal men investigating extortion of workers are denied access to union records
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
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Congress sighs with relief as Galbraith quits
Professor was ‘fly in the OPA ointment,’ Patman says
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Americans kill 400 more Japs in Attu mopup
Three U.S. columns join on shores of Aleutian Island harbor
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Wealthy Maharajah in Reno to divorce American nurse
Indian prince living at Dude Ranch, silent on separation
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Mrs. Dempsey granted delay in divorce suit
Adjournment won on plea of ‘nervous collapse;’ fighter objects
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Greater aid to families of servicemen is sought
Senator Davis urges dependency allotments to wives and children be increased 100%
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Simms: United Nations to blame for Italy’s tragic plight
Had cards been played right, Rome might have been on our side against Germany
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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Gen. Clark indicates Allied invasion aims
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Yanks set nine records in May raids on Europe
U.S. fliers drop 3,000 tons of bombs, RAF 13,500 tons; Nazi planes over London again
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, North Africa – (by wireless)
The nicest American camp I’ve ever seen in the fighting area of North Africa is one inhabited by about a hundred men who run the smokescreen department around a big port to help confuse German air-raiders.
I happened upon the thing wholly by accident. Another correspondent and I were driving through country that was strange to us. We came to a town late one afternoon, and were told by a bored billeting clerk that there was no place in town for us to stop and that’s that. So, we just said phooey on you, friend, we haven’t slept under a roof in months anyhow, we carry our own beds with us, and we hate cities to boot.
Whereupon we drove right out of town again and started looking for some spot under a tree where we could camp for the night.
It was during this search that we passed a very neat-looking American camp by the roadside. On an impulse we drove in and asked the first officer we saw if we could just throw our bedrolls down on the ground and stay all night with them.
He said:
What do you want to throw them on the ground for?
We said:
Well, we don’t want to put you to any trouble, and we’re accustomed…
He said:
Nonsense! We’ll make room for you in our cabins. Have you had supper yet?
No, but we’ve got our own rations with us.
He said:
Nonsense! Come and eat first, and then we’ll find you a place to stay.
What an outfit!
The officer was Lt. Sam Kesner, of Dallas, Texas. He was wearing coveralls and a field cap and you couldn’t tell him from a private except for his bars. He went to Texas A&M and got his chemical engineering degree and his Army commission both on the same day.
Lt. Kesner’s boss is Capt. J. Paul Todd, of Clinton, South Carolina. He was a schoolteacher before the war. He taught mathematics at Rock Hill, South Carolina, and at Atlanta, Georgia. Their outfit is a part of the Chemical Warfare Service, but instead of dealing out poisonous gases they deal out harmless smoke that covers up everything when raiders come over.
By the nature of their business, they work all night and sleep all day. They take their various stations in little groups in a big semicircle around the city, just before dusk, and stay there on the alert till after daylight. At midnight a truck makes the rounds with sandwiches and hot coffee. Capt. Todd himself also makes a four-hour tour of the little groups each night, ending about 2 a.m.
Their assignment has been permanent enough to justify their fixing up their camp in a homelike way. They have taken old boards from the dock area and built about three dozen small cabins, sort of like tourist-camp cabins back home. They have board floors, board side walls, and canvas roofs.
Cabins have been named
They have built bunks for their bedrolls, hung up mosquito nets, hammered boards together for chairs, made tables, and put little steps and porches in front of their cabin doors. They’ve named their cabins such things as “Iron Mike’s Tavern,” “African Lovers,” “The Village Barn,” “The Opium Den.”
Lt. Kesner has a sign hanging outside his door that says, “Sixty-Five Hundred Miles from Deep in the Heart of Texas.” The heart is drawn instead of spelled out.
Capt. Todd has a wife back home named Marigene and a daughter named Paulagene. He left when his daughter was four weeks old. Now she’s a year and a half. But he keeps himself well reminded of them, for tacked on the wall of his cabin are 34 pictures of his wife and baby. He’s the picture-takingest man I ever ran onto.
The hundred men in this camp are just like a clan. They have all been together a long time and they have almost a family pride in what they’re doing and the machinery they’re doing it with.
One of the boys in the kitchen said he’d read this column in The Cleveland Press for years. He is Cpl. Edward Dudek, of 8322 Vineyard Ave., Cleveland. I asked him what he did before the war besides read this column, and he said he was a chemical worker. The Army clicked long enough to put him into the Chemical Service, but then a cog slipped somewhere and now he’s a cook instead of a chemical worker. But I suppose he can make his own fumes when he gets homesick by spilling a little grease on the stove.
We spent a comfortable night with this outfit and tarried around a couple of hours the next morning, just chatting, because everybody was so friendly. Then, they gassed us up without our even asking, and we finally left feeling that we’d visited the nearest thing to home since hitting Africa.