7,500,000 Army goal to stand, says Roosevelt
1943 figure decided last August, he asserts – was never changed
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Fireman killed in new threat Seattle wreck
5 rescuers overcome while hunting bodies – 28 feared dead
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City plans big parade for French sailors
Mayor conferring on move to welcome crews at City Hall reception Tuesday
By Jack Ramsay
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Editorial: Mme. Chiang Kai-shek’s plea for aid will find response in hearts of U.S.
The plea for China made by Mme. Chiang Kai-shek before the Houses of Congress is sure to find a sympathetic hearing with the American public. American friendship for China goes deep and is long-standing. Nothing would please American hearts more than to extend to China all the aid that brave country needs to turn the tables on our common enemy.
It is true, as Mme. Chiang Kai-shek says, that too many Americans think Japan will be beaten easily after Hitler is defeated, but that erroneous belief in nowise will prevent those Americans from pressing the war against Japan to a victorious end. For better or worse, we are committed to defeat Hitler first. Until then we must hold Japan in check.
To allow China to slip into demoralization in the meantime would of course be tragic and is not to be thought of. The American people are not disposed to allow it to happen. Some people say it is impossible to render effective aid to China while we also aid Russia and Britain, and at the same time build up our own forces in many quarters of the globe. The only answer to that is that wars are won by those who accomplish the impossible. And that is what we must do. We must do more than the possible.
Editorial: Jefferson in 1943
A great deal of attention is just now being centered on Thomas Jefferson because the 200th anniversary of his birth will be celebrated this spring on April 13. We can think of no great American whose life and whose ideas fit so appropriately into these days of crisis through which the United States is now passing.
So, it is highly fitting that Americans of today have his life brought more vividly to their attention. And one of the most useful contributions to this end is the fine new play of Sgt. Sidney Kingsley, The Patriots.
It serves many useful purposes. It brings home to us that Jefferson’s ideas are deathless; that the freedoms for which we are contending are the very ones first enunciated by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and later and constantly reiterated by him. The play brings alive some of the burning issues of those most difficult days after we had won our Independence and were finding it so difficult to retain.
Possibly the most important truth hammered home by The Patriots is that freedom is no magic state that, once won, remains ours forever. It must be fought for constantly. That was Jefferson’s great mission.
Thank God that Americans of today came to realize that our freedoms and our democratic way of life were again in peril and have nobly met the crisis by fighting for their preservation in the same spirit as was shown by Americans of earlier generations.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 19, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
At the front in Tunisia – (Feb. 18)
The jeep in which I was riding was almost at the tail end of our immense armored convoy when we started, but before many hours and passed we had overtaken so many slow-moving vehicles that we worked our way well up into the convoy. As we droned along through the night it was hard to realize that we were part of such a fabulously long string of war machines. Vehicles stretched ahead of us for scores of miles, but of course we couldn’t see them, and our only companionship was five or six red taillights ahead of us. We all drove without headlights, but did have taillights so we could see when the fellow ahead was stopping.
Occasionally we would smoke, and I would light cigarettes for the others. We didn’t try to hide the flare of the match, for it was only a flash and then quickly gone. Once in a while we would overtake a truck with a dead engine, or a big wrecker towing a half-track. But our American machines are good ones, and of the hundreds of vehicles in that great convoy, only a handful had trouble during the long journey.
Our convoy was as complete as a circus. There were ammunition trucks, kitchens, repair shops, trucks carrying telephone switchboards and generators for camp lighting, trucks carrying bombs. There were jeeps carrying generals, and there were great wreckers capable of picking up a whole tank. It was quite a contrast to the Arabs we’d pass in the night, with their heavily loaded camels and burros.
The moon gave us enough light to drive by, but how the bulk of the convoy, which started long before the moon came up, ever got over the mountain range is beyond me. They had to drive in total blackness. Guides would go ahead to study the road. They spotted all the sharp turns and steep banks, and they would indicate the direction of traffic with their hooded flashlights.
About every hour and a half, we would stop for the truck driver’s traditional stretch. At one of these stops the drivers checked their mileage. We had been on the road three hours and come exactly 27 miles. Snaking a huge convoy over a mountain range in the dead of night is slow business.
But open country was ahead, and when we reached that we stepped up to 35 and 40 miles an hour. The night wind cut more cruelly now. We didn’t talk much, for it was too cold. My goggles kept steaming inside, and I would have to lift them off and wipe them. Finally, all of us except the drivers pulled blankets over our heads and dozed a little. But not much, for holes in the gravel roads were hard to see and often the jeep would do a backbreaking hurdle.
At the stops, the soldiers would get out and run up and down the road, or stand in one spot jitterbugging in an effort to warm their feet. The ones I felt sorriest for were the infantrymen, packed like sardines in open trucks with no protection from the bitter cold. It seems as if the infantry always gets it in the neck.
Several hours after midnight the convoy got itself into a ridiculous snarl. During a rest stop apparently some driver far ahead had gone to sleep and forgotten to start on again. We waited for half an hour. Then impatient drivers pulled out and started passing. That was fatal. The first thing we knew two lines of traffic choked the road. At every gully and every turn they would snarl up and one line would have to stop. Eventually it got just like those awful holiday jams at home where you move a few feet at a time.
I said to Capt. Riddleberger:
I’m amazed that such a thing could be allowed to happen. This strikes me as being the perfect way not to win the war.
He agreed, but I was sorry for my remarks later, for in an hour or so, everything straightened itself out. We were clear of the mountains now. We passed through silent little Arab villages, and drove across treeless prairies.
About 4 a.m., Riddleberger and I changed places with two soldiers riding in the back end of the truck ahead. We lay down on barracks bags and pulled blankets over us, thinking we’d snatch a little sleep. Pretty soon Riddleberger said:
These blankets smell so bad I can’t sleep.
Mine didn’t smell exactly like perfume either.
The captain said:
Well, hell. The poor guys never have a chance to take a bath.
Apparently, it didn’t occur to him that he and I never took baths either, I wonder how we smell to others.
My feet were so cold and achy that at last I took off my overshoes and shoes and held my cold toes in my hands, trying to warm them. After half an hour or so they quit hurting. Eventually I went to sleep. When I came to there was a faint light in the sky. It was just 7 o’clock. I had been dead to the world for two hours. It was hard to believe, for the truck had been jolting and bouncing and stopping and starting all that time. Weariness is a great cure for insomnia, or maybe I had been anesthetized by those blankets, who knows?
Völkischer Beobachter (February 20, 1943)
Kämpfe in Tunis weiter erfolgreich –
Angriffe starker Feindkräfte abgewiesen
dnb. Aus dem Führer-Hauptquartier, 19 Februar –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Im Westkaukasus und am unteren Kuban fanden bei einsetzendem Tauwetter nur Kampfhandlungen von örtlicher Bedeutung statt. Dabei machte ein eigener Angriff südlich Noworossijsk weitere Fortschritte. An der Donezfront und im Raum von Charkow griff der Feind wieder mit starken Kräften an. Er wurde in teilweise schweren Kämpfen abgewiesen. Zahlreiche feindliche Vorstöße südöstlich von Orel scheiterten. Der Gegner wurde durch Gegenangriff geworfen und hiebei mehrere Panzer vernichtet. Die Luftwaffe griff Panzeransammlungen, Artilleriestellungen und Marschkolonnen des Feindes an und brachte den Verbänden des Heeres dadurch fühlbare Entlastung.
Bei Fortführung der starken Angriffe südöstlich des Ilmensees erlitt der Feind erneut schwerste Verluste an Menschen und Material. Trotz stärkster Unterstützung durch Panzer und Schlachtflieger wurde der Gegner vor den deutschen Hauptkampflinien überall abgewiesen. Auch die fortgesetzten Versuche der Sowjets, unsere Front südlich des Ladogasees und vor Leningrad zu durchstoßen, brachen blutig zusammen, im Gegenangriff wurde dabei eine feindliche Kräftegruppe eingeschlossen und vernichtet. Die spanische Freiwilligendivision hatte erfolgreichen Anteil an der Abwehr der sowjetischen Angriffe. Ein Nachtangriff von Kampfflugzeugen auf Stadt und Hafen Murmansk hatte gute Wirkung.
In Tunesien schreiten die Kampfhandlungen weiter erfolgreich fort. Im Seegebiet von Algier erzielten deutsch-italienische Fliegerkräfte bei der Bekämpfung eines stark gesicherten feindlichen Nachschubgeleites weitere Erfolge. Ein leichter Kreuzer und drei große Transporter erhielten Torpedotreffer. Mit der Vernichtung eines der Handelsschiffe kann gerechnet werden.
In den späten Abendstunden des gestrigen Tages griff ein Verband feindlicher Kampfflugzeuge Nordwestdeutschland an und warf Spreng- und Brandbomben auf das Gebiet von Wilhelmshaven. Die Bevölkerung, vor allem in den umliegenden Ortschaften, hatte Verluste. Neun der angreifenden Bomber wurden abgeschossen.
Unverblümte Bekenntnisse aus USA. –
„Kein Platz für das Empire in einer neuen Welt“
Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“
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USA.-Armee in Verwirrung
Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“
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U.S. Navy Department (February 20, 1943)
Communiqué No. 287
North Pacific.
On February 18:
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U.S. surface forces bombarded Japanese positions at Holtz Bay and at Chichagof Harbor on Attu Island. Results were not observed.
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U.S. aircraft shot down two Japanese float planes which attempted to attack U.S. positions in the western Aleutians. No damage or casualties were suffered.
South Pacific.
On February 19, U.S. aircraft bombed Japanese positions at Vila, on the southern coast of Kolombangara Island and at Munda, on New Georgia Island. All U.S. planes returned.