Editorial: Not unexpected
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The Pittsburgh Press (June 24, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Africa –
We came down one noontime upon a heat-baked desert airdrome in the center of Africa. It was just about as far away from anywhere as I can conceive.
At first, all their gasoline had to be brought a hundred miles by camel train. Even now it is brought across a long desert only by truck, and so sandy and wasted are the trails that it takes nearly as long as by camel.
There are only three dozen American soldiers there to run the airdrome. Were it not for the planes that stop daily for gas, their isolation would be unbearable.
We were on the ground just an hour, and during that hour I discovered that in this fantastically remote spot, two copies of this column arrive every day. One set is passed around among the enlisted men to read, and one among the officers. I suppose it’s the only place in the world where I can say the column is read by 100% of the population. We will table the motion just heard that when you’re that far away from home, you’ll read anything.
And of course, I found a Hoosier there also. Not one but two of them. One was right from the banks of the Wabash. This was Pfc. George Richardson, who gets his mail either through Covington or Gessie, Indiana, just up the road a few miles from my town of Dana. George was a pipefitter’s helper before the war. Now he’s a mechanic.
The other one wore a natty sun helmet and high leather boots, and had a pointed mustache. I thought at first he was an Englishman, but no, he was just Capt. Harold Lawler, of Indianapolis. He had been in this devastating spot six months already, and he didn’t think it was so bad.
We flew nearly all day down the Nile. In my mental pictures of the great river, it had always been dotted with those little Egyptian sailboats with their white sails puffed out, and sure enough, on our very first glimpse – where the White and Blue Nile run together near Khartoum – there were the little sailboats.
It is wretched, tortured and forbidding country on either side of the Nile, but the river creates for itself a sheathing of green loveliness, and for a thousand miles it makes a vivid tracing through its background of gray waste.
I had heard so much about the vast and fertile Nile Valley that I had supposed it was a hundred miles across. Actually, all the way south from Cairo, it is hardly more than 10 miles wide – just a narrow strip of green on each side of the river and then you are suddenly out in the desert again.
At last, I have been to Cairo. To see Cairo and to sit on the terrace of Shepheard’s Hotel at the crossroads of the world and see somebody I knew walk by had been among my minor ambitions for years. Now they have both been realized. The familiar face that passed on Shepheard’s terrace was that of Cliff Henderson, of National Air Races fame.
But there was something about Cairo that made me unhappy. Perhaps it was Cairo’s horn of plenty. I have lived so long now with austerity that austerity has come to seem more honorable than luxury.
Cairo was once frightened, but now all the war danger has receded and the city thrums and throbs as though it had never been afraid at all. The spirit of Cairo is trade, and trade is flourishing. Soldiers are better spenders than the tourists ever were. And you can still buy anything in the world in Cairo, I believe, provided you have enough money. You can get silk stockings ($4 a pair), Bourbon whisky, razor blades (90¢ for a tiny pack), or precious star rubies and emeralds. And you can get fine food.
I went to see the Pyramids in a jeep and found they were too steep for me to climb. The Sphinx did not speak to me, and I decided he was silent because he probably had nothing to say. At Shepheard’s, I shooed away the gully-gully boys, and in Khalili, I was set upon by droves of aspiring merchants who persisted like desert fliers. The spirit that flowed through Cairo irritated and frightened me. Maybe I was all wrong, but I was glad to get out of there.
U.S. Navy Department (June 25, 1943)
Press Release
For Immediate Release
June 25, 1943
U.S. submarine R‑12 (SS-89) lost
The U.S. submarine R‑12 (SS-89), while engaged in training exercises, was lost recently off the East Coast of the United States.
A number of officers and men were unable to escape from the vessel before it sank. The depth of water makes it impossible to salvage the submarine, and hope has been abandoned for recovery of the bodies of the missing personnel. The next of kin have been informed.
Information obtained from survivors indicates that the loss was probably due to accident and not enemy action, and an investigation is now in progress to determine the available facts of the case.
Announcement of this incident was withheld until attempts to locate and raise the R‑12 were discontinued, in order that enemy submarines might not be given information that would enable them to attack the salvage vessels.
Völkischer Beobachter (June 24, 1943)
Nach Davies auch Standley –
Neue Verbeugung vor Moskau
dnb. Stockholm, 24. Juni –
Der USA.-Botschafter in Moskau, Admiral Standley, sprach bei der Überreichung nordamerikanischer Auszeichnungen an Soldaten der Sowjetunion im Kreml die Hoffnung aus, daß die Zusammenarbeit zwischen der Sowjetunion und den USA. auch nach dem Kriege fortdauern werde.
Er prägte dabei einen Satz, der verzeichnet sein soll:
Außer unserem Haß gegen den Feind haben wir noch viel Gemeinsames.
Standley ist einer der Beauftragten Roosevelts, der wie der USA.-Botschafter Davies vom Präsidenten den Auftrag hatte, die Interessen der USA.-Juden mit denen der Kremljuden gleichzuschalten. Ob das USA.-Volk mit der Unterwerfung Washingtons unter die Kremldiktatur einverstanden ist, bleibt abzuwarten.
Kohlenmagnaten gegen Roosevelt
tc. Lissabon, 24. Juni –
Die Vereinigung der nordamerikanischen Kohlengrubenbesitzer erhob in einem Schreiben an den Kriegsarbeitsausschuß Protest dagegen, daß ihre Gruben unter Regierungskontrolle gestellt wurden. Sie fordern Aufhebung dieser Maßnahmen und Wiederherstellung der vollen Verfügungsberechtigung über ihr Eigentum.
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