Women urged by First Lady to stay on job
Mrs. Roosevelt speaks to aircraft factory workers
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Professor Harper credited with McNutt’s directives
Former Indiana University Law School dignitary issues the orders, escapes the blame
By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Yanks win just in time to save life of general
French delay trial of officer who helped U.S. landing in Africa, pending result of battle
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Most movie stars call college dean’s ban on ‘fat-back’ slacks too drastic
Miss Goddard, Tierney say Louisiana teacher has right idea
By Frederick C. Othman, United Press staff writer
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Yanks blast Kiska, 2 Solomons bases
Washington (UP) –
American fliers, continuing their stepped-up aerial offensive against the Japs, again attacked Kiska in the Aleutians and three enemy bases in the Solomons, the Navy announced today.
The Kiska raid was made on Tuesday by fighter-escorted bombers, but clouds prevented determination of results.
The Solomons raids on Thursday (local time) were directed against Vila on Kolombangara Island, where fires were started, and against Kahili and Faisi in the Shortland Island area.
Senate approves bill for $22 million
Washington (UP) –
The Senate today approved by voice vote an urgent deficiency bill carrying appropriations totaling $22,410,000 for government agencies which ran out of funds because of unforeseen conditions.
The major item in the bill was $21,600,000 for the Selective Service System, in addition to the allotment of $34,745,000 provided for that agency in the budget for the 1943 fiscal year.
Use of copper reduced
Washington –
The Armed Forces will reduce the use of copper for insignia and apparel so that servicemen cited for bravery or efficiency will be certain to get their bronze medals, the War Production Board announced today.
Senate halts bill to defer farm labor
Plans for 4,750,000 men overseas by 1944 are produced
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Parity limits are released by House group
Action quickly follows 78–2 passage in Senate
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Novelist seen making love in Army stockade
Ursula Parrott was with private who escape, officer testifies
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Study post-war program, Allies urged by Welles
Must start now or plans will be as numerous as governments, he warns
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Red Cross to open fund drive Sunday
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt will inaugurate the 1943 war fund drive of the American Red Cross with a radio address over all major networks Sunday at 4:15 p.m. EWT.
Also participating will be Red Cross Chairman Norman Davis, from Washington; Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower from Allied General Headquarters in North Africa, and Adm. Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, from “a Pacific war theater.”
An address by Wendell Willkie before 20,000 persons at a Red Cross rally in St. Louis will be broadcast at 9:45 p.m. EWT, over the Blue Network.
Churches throughout the nation will join in observing “Red Cross Sunday.” Solicitors will work to collect a minimum of $125 million in March, which the President has proclaimed “Red Cross Month.”
Air crash victims sought at Lisbon
Lisbon, Portugal (UP) –
Authorities continued dragging the Tagus River today for the bodies of 18 passengers and crewmen still missing after the crash of the Pan American Airways’ Yankee Clipper Monday night.
The six bodies already recovered were burned in the British cemetery of the Clipper and more of the fuselage were raised from the river during the day.
Yanks on African boar hunt eat more than they catch
Watch native girls dance while dining on turkey, pigeon pie, almond paste and mint tea
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
The Tunisian front – (Feb. 25)
On the morning of the Germans’ surprise breakthrough out of Faid Pass, I was up in the Ousseltia Valley with another contingent of our troops.
Word came to us about noon that the Germans were advancing upon Sbeitla from Faid. So, I packed into my jeep and started alone on the familiar 85-mile drive south to Sbeitla. It was a bright day and everything seemed peaceful. I expected to see German planes as I neared Sbeitla, but there was none, and I drove into my cactus-patch destination about an hour before sundown.
I hadn’t been there 15 minutes when the dive bombers came, but that’s another story, which will come later.
I checked in at the intelligence tent to see what was going on, and found that things were dying down with the coming of dusk. So, I pitched my tent and went to bed right after supper.
Back to the cactus
Next morning, I got up before daylight and caught a ride, just after sunrise, with two officers going up to the new position of our forward command post. We drove very slowly, and all kept a keen eye on the sky. I didn’t have a gun, as correspondents are not supposed to carry arms. Occasionally we stopped the jeep and got far off the road behind some cactus hedges, but the German dive bombers were interested only in our troop concentrations far ahead.
Finally, we spotted a small cactus patch about half a mile off the road. We figured this was the new home of the forward command post, and it was. They had straggled in during the night and were still straggling in.
Along a one-way road
The cactus patch covered about two acres. In it were hidden half a dozen half-tracks, a couple of jeeps, three light tanks, and a couple of motorcycles – all that was left of the impressive array of the traveling headquarters that had fled Sidi Bouzid 18 hours before.
The commanding general had already gone forward again, in a tank, to participate in the day’s coming battle. The others of the command post were just sitting around on the ground. Half their comrades were missing. There was nothing left for them to work with, nothing to do.
When I came into this cactus patch the officers that I knew, and had left only four days before, jumped up and shook hands as though we hadn’t seen each other in years. Enlisted men did the same thing. I thought this was odd, at first, but now I know how they felt. They had been away – far along on the road that doesn’t come back – and now that they were still miraculously alive it was like returning from a voyage of many years, and naturally we shook hands.
A familiar pattern
During the next few hours there in the cactus patch I listened to dozens of personal escape stories. Every time I would get within earshot of another officer or enlisted man, he’d begin telling what had happened to him the day before. Talk about having to pull stories out of people – you couldn’t keep these guys from talking. There was something pathetic and terribly touching about it. Not one of them had ever thought he’d see the dawn, and now that he had seen it, his emotions had to pour out. And since I was the only newcomer to show up since their escape, I made a perfect sounding board.
The minute a man started talking he’d begin drawing lines on the ground with his shoe or a stick, to show the roads and how he came. I’ll bet I had that battleground scratched in the sand for me 50 times during the forenoon. It got so I could hardly keep from laughing at the consistency of their patterns.
Soothed by the sun
By all rights, that morning should have been a newspaperman’s dream. There were fantastic stories of escape, intimate recountings of fear and elation. Any one of them would have made a first-page feature story in any newspaper. Yet I was defeated by the flood of experiences. I listened until the stories finally became merged, overlapping and paralleling and contradicting, until the whole adventure became a composite, and today it is in my mind as in theirs a sort of generalized blur.
The sun came out warmly as though to soothe their jagged feelings, and one by one the men in the cactus patch stretched on the ground and fell wearily asleep at midday. And I, satiated with the adventures of the day, lay down and slept too, waiting for the new day’s battle to begin.
Millett: Soldier date is big break
Single civilians are scarce partners
By Ruth Millett
Hasn’t there been enough stuff and nonsense written about how fine and wonderful and patriotic it is for girls to spend their evenings dancing with soldiers at USO parties?
It sometimes sounds as though the girl who spends her evenings dancing with men in uniform is doing as much as they are to win the war.
Actually, the girls are having the tome of their lives. It is heaven for any girl to go to a dance where the men outnumber the women five to one.
And especially now, when there aren’t many single civilian men for a girl to date, it is pure luck to be able to meet a lot of soldiers.
So, the girls are having fun. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. It’s nice that there are some gay evenings for them, with plenty of men around to make them feel glamorous.
But why try to make heroines of them? Why build up dancing with men to the point where it seems as though if she goes to a couple of USO dances each week, a girl is doing her part to help win the war?
The buildup is silly. And it certainly isn’t necessary, because girls don’t have to be sold on entertaining soldiers.
Uniforms sell themselves. These girls, who are fortunate enough to go to dances when there are plenty of handsome men in uniform, have been described as “unselfish, patriotic, and deserving of high praise.”
Forget it. The truth is they’re just plain lucky, as any lonely girl who doesn’t live near an Army camp will tell you.
House to vote soon on salary ceiling
Washington (UP) –
Congressional leaders today forecast early approval by the House of legislation to repeal the President’s $25,000 net salary limitation order and replace it with statutory provision permitting salaries above $25,000 net to remain at Pearl Harbor.
Early consideration of the proposal, sponsored by Wesley E. Disney (D-OK), is assured by the administration’s desire to obtain passage of the bill raising the national debt limit from $125 billion to $210 billion before April 1. The Disney plan is an amendment to that bill.
Mr. Disney submitted the Ways and Means Committee’s report on the legislation to the House yesterday. It said the President had no authority to order a $25,000 net ceiling on salaries.
Missing plane found by Army; 2 of crew dead
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (UP) –
U.S. Army officers have announced here that one of two transport planes which vanished on Feb. 6 had been located by a searching aircraft.
Of the four men aboard, the U.S. Army reported that the pilot and co-pilot had been killed in the crash. The two passengers were injured but managed to escape from the wreckage.