The latter, though it would be funny to imagine FDR’s Congress on drugs
U.S. Navy Department (November 15, 1943)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 169
Army 7th Air Force Liberators raided enemy installations on Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert Islands, during the night of November 13, West Longitude date.
Several large fires were started near the runways. No enemy interception was attempted. Our planes encountered intense anti-aircraft fire over the target without damage or personnel casualties.
On November 14, Army Liberators from this force made further raids on Betio and on Mille Atoll, Marshall Islands. No air opposition was encountered in either raid. Our planes and personnel suffered no damage from anti-aircraft fire.
The Pittsburgh Press (November 15, 1943)
U.S. FLIERS RAID BULGARIA
Bombers set rail yards at Sofia aflame
Mitchells and Lightning escorts down nine Nazi planes
By James E. Roper, United Press staff writer
…
Aid for Aussies –
200 planes hit Japs on Guinea
Madang blasted in second heaviest Pacific raid
By Brydon C. Taves, United Press staff writer
…
Yanks repulse Nazi attacks
Panzer thrusts smashed by 5th Army
By Harrison Salisbury, United Press staff writer
…
Come and get it!
Distillery allots supply of liquor to stockholders
Purchaser may reap large profit from reselling shares of whisky inventory to public
…
Faking charge hurled at U.S. in Jap uprising
California Congressman demands probe of segregation center
…
In Washington –
Hull discloses campaign for foreign policy unity
Secretary says he has urged all parties to reach agreement, calls Moscow Pact reception promising
…
Simms: Revolts brewing against regimes of Allied nations
Unless ‘Big Three’ act, U.S. and British soldiers may be fired on by people they are fighting to liberate
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
…
Surgeon helps to defend hospital as Japs attack
Marine platoon then comes to rescue of wounded men on Bougainville beach
…
Sharp criticism caused by slow progress in Italy
London asks why, but Algiers quarters cite handicaps and point to Allied strategy
…
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle is writing a short series of columns on his experiences at home, prior to showing off for another assignment to a war zone.
Dana, Indiana –
Mrs. Howard Goforth, one of our farm neighbors down the road, is recovering from an impact with a corncrib.
The other day she and Howard drove over to Nellie Hendricks’ after something. Howard doesn’t drive. Mrs. Goforth has been doing all the driving for 20 years and never had an accident.
But this day she swung around in the Hendricks’ barn lot, and then something unexplainable happened, and she couldn’t get the car stopped, and rammed head-on into the corncrib.
It smashed the front end of the car, shattered the windshield, broke the steering wheel into three pieces against Mrs. Goforth’s chest, and almost cut one of Howard’s fingers off.
And, incidentally, it moved the big corncrib nine inches off its concrete foundation.
Farmers do have the finniest auto accidents. Things like barns and corncribs and wagons are always getting in the way. And if nothing’s in the way, they have accidents anyhow.
Nary a tree nor a bush
I remember years ago when Bill Satterlee was trying to switch from a Model-T to a brand-new gearshift Ford. He took it out in a 20-acre open pasture with not a tree nor a bush in it, and without ever hitting a thing he wrecked that new Ford so badly they couldn’t even trade it in. It seems he just kept turning it over and over.
This country drivin’ ain’t safe.
They’re telling a joke around Dana in which my name figures.
Last spring, The Indianapolis Times had a big statewide collection going on, to raise money to send cigarettes to our troops throughout the world. The fund was promoted in my name, since I was overseas writing about the boys.
Newsdealers and drugstores all over the state put up collection boxes. In the drugstore at Dana, they had a mason jar on the glass counter, with a penciled pasteboard sign saying “Ernie Pyle’s Cigarette Fund.”
One day a woman came in, looked at it in astonishment for a long time, and finally said to the druggist:
Why, I always supposed he had enough money to buy his own cigarettes.
Iva Jordan, who was my first schoolteacher nearly 40 years ago, had a stroke while I was out west. Berthas and Iva Jordan live all alone on the farm, just a mile from us across the fields, but two miles if you go around the road.
Will Jordan, Bertha’s husband, died a long time ago, and Bertha and Iva have done it alone on the farm ever since then.
Iva’s left side is paralyzed. She can just wiggle the fingers on her hand, that’s all. They have a hospital bed for her in the west room, and she is quite comfortable.
They’ll manage somehow
All these years Bertha and Iva had a hired hand or two, but now they are in a predicament, because everybody has gone to the Army and they can’t get a man anywhere. Bertha has to do everything herself, as well as look after Iva. They don’t know how they’ll get through the winter, but I suppose they’ll manage somehow.
The stroke didn’t affect Iva’s face, nor her speech. She says maybe it would be a good thing if it had, for she just talks everybody to death. She says twice visitors have just got up and left after about ten minutes with her, because she wouldn’t let them get a word in. But, as she says, what’s the use of having visitors if they won’t listen to you?
I can’t see that the war has affected our farming neighborhood very much at all, except that none of the young men are left.
Farmers set groaning boards almost the way they used to, and I don’t know of any serious shortage of anything. In the country stores you can still find things that have long been extinct in the city. The crops are good, and nearly everybody is getting things fixed up around the farm and getting a little ahead.
Nobody from our neighborhood has been killed in action yet, although two have died in camp of ordinary illness. In a vacant lot on Main Street, where a store burned down nearly 30 years ago and nothing was ever built in its place, they have a huge signboard bearing and names of everybody in our township who is serving with the Armed Forces.
Oddly enough, my name is on it, although technically I’m not in the Armed Forces at all. But I’m proud that they waived the technicality and included me. And oddly enough again, although I’m a civilian and also older than all the others, I guess I’ve seen more action so far than anyone else on the list.
Here at home, I see the veterans of the last war, most of them my contemporaries, and for some strange reason I feel more easy and at home with the boys of this war than my old cronies.
I suppose that’s because some mysterious fate has merely delayed for a year or two the arrival of my inevitable rheumatics. But I carry my liniment all the time anyhow, just in case. Nobody’s pulling any of this youth-stuff wool over my eyes.