Yank bayonets shatter Japs on Attu ridge
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Tunisian wounded flown 1,200 miles to hospitals
Surgeon General declares blood plasma, surgery, sulfa drugs saved many lives in Africa
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Industry priority ratings for allocation of gas
AA-1, most critical category, given for movements designed for export by services
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
NOTE: The Press today begins a new series of columns by Ernie Pyle, the report of a 13,000-mile trip into the heart of Africa. The trip was made before the heavy fighting in Tunisia and until now Ernie hasn’t had time to tell about it.
Somewhere in Africa –
During a lull in the Tunisian fighting, I let the old wanderlust get the better of me as usual, and took myself a trip.
It was just a little trip – only 13,000 miles. If I’d thought to go in a different direction, I could have traveled from Tunisia to California and back to Tunisia again in the same direction. Yet all I did was fly around Africa.
The reason for the trip was twofold – to get a breathing spell from the front, and to try to get warm. I hadn’t been warm in nearly nine months, and one way to get warm is to go south.
So, I went down to the tropics. I slept under mosquito netting, swam in the Gold Coast surf, bought ivory carvings in the Congo, watched native jungle dances, took after-lunch siestas, had my own houseboy, and really lived the life of Reilly on my small world tour.
It wasn’t entirely a vacation trip, for I wrote columns as I went along. So now I’ll be telling you about the trip, and also how some of our American soldiers live in the other half of this vast and strange continent.
Our trip took us over mountains, ocean, jungle and desert. It was a sort of pioneer version of peacetime traveling with Pan American Airways, except that it was all by Army plane. We’d fly all day, go to bed early, and get up anywhere from 3:30 on for another early start.
You almost always take off before daylight, for distances are vast in Africa and you cover a lot in one day. Rolling out of bed at inhuman hours gets to be almost normal for you after a while.
I remember one morning at a little jungle camp down in the Congo. We were sitting at a mess-hall bench eating breakfast. Our pilot, Capt. Johnnie Warren of Columbia, South Carolina, was sitting next to me. We were both half-asleep.
Daylight spoils the ‘fun’
A faint dawn began to show in the sky. I said:
Look, it’s getting daylight.
Whereupon Capt. Warren looked out the window, threw down his spoon, and said:
Aw shucks, that takes all the fun out of his takeoff. Now we can see where we’re going.
We flew across the Sahara. We landed at little pinpoints populated by a lonely dozen or two Americans in khaki shorts, holding these far outposts that must be held by somebody.
The desert was stifling when we came down upon it, and each time we pitied the fellows stationed there, and were glad to leave and climb back into the cooler skies.
The Sahara is hard to see from the air, because the wind keeps a constant haze of sand hanging above it. After you’ve risen a couple of thousand feet, you don’t see anything.
For a long time, I forced myself to stay awake and keep looking out the window, for fear I’d miss something interesting. But finally, I gave up hope of seeing anything, and plunked myself upon an inviting stack of gray sacks piled along one side of the cabin.
And thus, cuddled down into a nice form-fitting nest, I slept most of the way across the Sahara Desert upon the United States mail.
I should have abandoned my long underwear and heavy uniform the day after starting. But I figured on the coolness of flying at high altitudes the following days, and left them on.
Long live Liberia!
On the third day, we were deep in the tropics. We stopped at a jungle field for lunch. It was hotter than hell. Most of the black natives were semi-naked. The whites were sitting around in a sort of boiling stupor. The sweat poured off us newcomers, and that woolen underwear began to wriggle. I felt as though somebody had poured hot gravy down my back.
And then the pilot decided to stay there overnight. We were assigned to barracks, and carried our luggage about a quarter of a mile to them through the blasting sun.
I flopped on my cot a few moments and shut my eyes, just long enough to roll over in my mind the delightful anticipation of the bath I was going to have,
In the tropics, bathwater is never heated. It’s just right without heating. The water came pouring out of the showers over me, and water has never felt so good. Baths had been few and unsatisfactory for me during the past winter. But there in the tropics I washed and washed until I was weak from over-cleansing.
And then I put on summer underwear and thin khaki, abandoning long heavy underwear for the first time since last July. For a couple of hours, I felt the way one feels after fever – light and floating and strange. But I felt good.
That transition from heavies to lights, from months of cringing against the cold, to the sudden freedom of true warmth, is an experience that sticks in your mind for weeks above the ordinary happenings of the days.
Liberia is where I became a sanitary human being again. Long live Liberia!
White House statement warning the Axis against using poison gas
June 8, 1943
From time to time since the present war began there have been reports that one or more of the Axis powers were seriously contemplating use of poisonous or noxious gases or other inhumane devices of warfare.
I have been loath to believe that any nation, even our present enemies, could or would be willing to loose upon mankind such terrible and inhumane weapons. However, evidence that the Axis powers are making significant preparations indicative of such an intention is being reported with increasing frequency from a variety of sources.
Use of such weapons has been outlawed by the general opinion of civilized mankind. This country has not used them, and I hope that we never will be compelled to use them. I state categorically that we shall under no circumstances resort to the use of such weapons unless they are first used by our enemies.
As President of the United States and as Commander-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces, I want to make clear beyond all doubt to any of our enemies contemplating a resort to such desperate and barbarous methods that acts of this nature committed against any one of the United Nations will be regarded as having been committed against the United States itself and will be treated accordingly. We promise to any perpetrators of such crimes full and swift retaliation in kind and I feel obliged now to warn the Axis armies and the Axis peoples, in Europe and in Asia, that the terrible consequences of any use of these inhumane methods on their part will be brought down swiftly and surely upon their own heads. Any use of gas by any Axis power, therefore, will immediately be followed by the fullest possible retaliation upon munition centers, seaports, and other military objectives throughout the whole extent of the territory of such Axis country.
The Pittsburgh Press (June 9, 1943)
Italians given ultimatum to surrender Pantelleria
Allies announce demand; garrison will battle landing, Rome says
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer
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‘Glad plaid’ youths go khaki-wacky!
Los Angeles zoot suit hoodlums try to kill policeman with auto
Bulletin
Los Angeles, California (UP) –
Rioting between servicemen and young zoot-suited hoodlums spread to suburban communities today in a series of bloody fights.A crowd of nearly 400 sailors roamed the Pike, amusement home in Long Beach, in search for Mexican and Negro youths sporting the neat pleats. Before police and Navy Shore Patrols dispersed them, the sailors had chased one zoot-suiter onto the stage of a theater and ripped off his baggy pants while spectators roared their approval.
Hot and heavy action has been the byword in Los Angeles for several days as “zoot suit” youths and servicemen tangle in riots. This picture shows special agents and military police arresting a soldier after a brawl with a “zoot-suiter.”
Los Angeles, California (UP) –
An attempt to kill a policeman by running him down with an auto heightened the drive against young Negro and Mexican hoodlums clad in zoot suits today.
Patrolman C. D. Medley, of Vernon, was near death with a broken back after being lured into a “zoot suit trap.” Mr. Medley said he stepped into the street to investigate when he saw a man lying there. As he stepped from the curb, he said, an auto parked at the curb suddenly started up and ran him down. The man lying in the street apparently got up and ran away.
Vernon, where the patrolman was injured, is an industrial suburb of Los Angeles which the Navy has declared “out of bounds” because of the rioting between sailors and young hoodlum wearers of the zoot suit. By its order, the Navy hoped to end the fistfights, knifings and stonings which have raged for five days and caused the Mexican Consulate to report to the Washington Embassy and the Foreign Office at Mexico City.
The Army declared the east side of the city, including the notorious Skid Row district, out of bounds to soldiers.
Mexican Consul Alfredo Calles, son of the former Mexican President, distributed circulars throughout the Mexican district last night advising all Mexican nationals to stay indoors after dark.
The circulars, printed in Spanish, said:
Remain at home after dark to avoid unpleasant happenings. Stay at home during these days of unrest. We are confident that civil and military authorities will soon remedy this unpleasant situation.
The text of the reports to Washington and Mexico City were not disclosed.
Streetcars stoned
Three streetcars were stoned late last night. Several passengers were cut when windows of two interurban cars carrying sailors were smashed.
A gang of zoot-suiters waylaid the cars en route to the harbor, hurling rocks through the windows as the cars stopped to unload passengers. The gang fled when a police riot squad raced up with screaming sirens. A Navy nurse was cut by flying glass.
Extra cops work
Every available policeman and auxiliary policeman was on duty on the fifth night of battling between servicemen and the gaudily garbed youths who frequent dark streets and amusement areas.
Sailors and soldiers, beaten and victimized by many of the overdressed gangsters, formed their own “police” squads to clean out the areas. The zoot-suiters, ordinarily occupied with gang rivalry, banded together to battle the servicemen.
Arrests of long-haired hoodlums with ankle-choker pants were running more than 100 a day, and several voluntarily appeared at Central Jail asking to be locked up to protect themselves.
Sailors are stabbed
Nearly all were Mexicans and Negroes. Sailors and soldiers made no attempt to identify their quarry. Anyone in a zoot suit was stripped of it. If he resisted, he was beaten.
Carrying knives and clubs, several gangs of zoot-suiters waylaid sailors during the day, sending three to hospitals with cuts and contusions.
Seaman Donald Jackson, stabbed by zoot-suit gangster.
Four and five policemen covered every downtown street intersection. Roving “Black Marias” and two-way radio patrol cars cruised through the area breaking up wandering gangs of servicemen in whatever part of the city they were found; all juveniles were hustled from the streets and zoot-suiters spotted by police before servicemen arrived were taken to jail for questioning and their own protection.
Mayor hits order
RAdm. D. W. Bagley, commanding officer of the 11th Naval District, who closed the city to naval personnel, said he did so as a precaution for the men “acting in self-defense against this rowdy element.”
Mayor Fletcher Bowron said he thought the out-of-bounds order was “a little severe.” He promised every police effort to stamp out for good the hoodlum element.
Zoot-suit gangs have been growing in size and audacity for the past two years, affecting the amply-cut suits with their advent and finally adopting them almost as uniforms.
‘Feminine auxiliaries’
The gangs first contented themselves with rock-throwing at each other, then graduated to clubs and knives, several deaths resulted. Policemen attempting to intervene were assaulted and their patrol cars overturned. Girls in the “feminine auxiliaries” of the gangs are as tough as the youths themselves.
One auxiliary, the “Black Widows,” requires its members to have committed theft, arson, and have had at least one illicit affair.
The girls, however, have stayed out of the military battling.
State corrective institutions are overcrowded, and military organizations refuse to take many otherwise-eligible zoot-suiters on grounds they would foment trouble or are morally unfit.
Open hearing on coal wage is set by WLB
Deadline action follows report of stalemate in negotiation
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