We can cut down clothes, Mrs. Roosevelt thinks
First Lady tells press hoarding is ‘just too stupid’
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Join Red Cross ‘mercy’ drive, President asks
Eisenhower, Nimitz laud ‘morale bulwark,’ goal is $125 million
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False ration rumors serve Axis purposes
FBI tracks down spreaders of yarns about special privileges for loser of sugar book, and secret clothing grants
By Ann France Wilson
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
The Tunisian front –
This and the next few columns will be an attempt to describe what a tank battle looks like.
Words will be poor instruments for it. Neither can isolated camera shots tell you the story. Probably only Hollywood with its machinery of many dimensions is capable of transferring to your sense a clear impression of a tank battle.
The fight in question was the American counterattack on the second day of the battle at Sidi Bouzid which eventually resulted in our withdrawal.
It was the biggest tank battle fought so far in this part of the world. On that morning I had a talk with the commanding general some 10 miles behind the frontlines before starting for the battle scene.
He took me into his tent and showed me just what the battle plan was for the day. He picked out a point close to the expected battle area and said that would be a good place for me to watch from.
The only danger, he said, would be one of being encircled and cut off if the battle should go against us.
He said:
But it won’t, for we are going to kick hell out of them today and we’ve got the stuff to do it with.
Unfortunately, we didn’t kick hell out of them. In fact, the boot was on the other foot.
Americans in desert ‘pie’
I spent the forenoon in the newly picked, badly shattered forward command post. All morning I tried to get on up where the tanks were but there was no transportation left around the post and their communications were cut off at noontime.
We sat on the ground and ate some British crackers with jam and drank some hot tea. The day was bright and mellow. Shortly after lunch a young lieutenant dug up a spare jeep and said he’d take me on up to the front.
We drove a couple of miles east along a highway to a crossroads which was the very heart center of our troops’ bivouacs. German airmen had been after this crossroads all morning. They had hit it again just a few minutes before we got there. In the road was a large crater and a few yards away a tank was off to one side, burning.
The roads at that point were high and we could see a long way. In every direction was a huge semi-irrigated desert valley. It looked very much like the valley at Phoenix, Arizona – no trees but patches of wild growth, shoulder-high cactus of the prickly-pear variety. In other parts of the valley were spotted cultivated fields and the tiny square stucco houses of Arab farmers. The whole vast scene was treeless, with slightly rolling big mountains in the distance.
As far as you could see out across the rolling desert, in all four sections of the “pie” formed by the intersecting roads, was American equipment – tanks, half-tracks, artillery, infantry – hundreds, yes, thousands of vehicles extending miles and miles and everything standing still. We were in time; the battle had not yet started.
We put our jeep in super low gear and drove out across the sands among the tanks. Ten miles or so east and southeast were the Germans but there was no activity anywhere, no smoke on the horizon, no planes in the sky.
It all had the appearance of an after-lunch siesta, but no one was asleep.
Tanks charge forward
As we drove past tank after tank we found each one’s crew at its post inside – the driver at his control, the commander standing with head sticking out of the open turret door, standing there silent and motionless, just looking ahead like the Indian on the calendars.
We stopped and inquired of several what they were doing. They said they didn’t know what the plan was – they were merely ready in place and waiting for orders. Somehow it seemed like the cars lined up at Indianapolis just before the race starts – their weeks of training over, everything mechanically perfect, just a few quiet minutes of immobility before the great struggle for which they had waited so long.
Suddenly out of this siesta-like doze the order came. We didn’t hear it for it came to the tanks over their radios but we knew it quickly for all over the desert tanks began roaring and pouring out blue smoke from the cylinders. Then they started off, kicking up dust and clanking in that peculiar “tank sound” we have all come to know so well.
They poured around us, charging forward. They weren’t close together – probably a couple of hundred yards apart. There weren’t lines or any specific formation. They were just everywhere. They covered the desert to the right and left, ahead and behind as far as we could see, trailing their eager dust tails behind. It was almost as though some official starter had fired his blank pistol. The battle was on.
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U.S. Navy Department (March 2, 1943)
Communiqué No. 296
South Pacific.
On March 1, Dauntless dive bombers (Douglas), with Wildcat (Grumman F4F) escort, bombed and started fires in the Japanese-held area at Munda on New Georgia Island. All U.S. planes returned.
Communiqué No. 297
Pacific and Far East.
U.S. submarines have reported the following results of operations against the enemy in the waters of these areas:
- Three medium-sized cargo ships sunk.
- One medium-sized tanker sunk.
- One small schooner sunk.
- One medium-sized transport damaged.
- One medium-sized tanker damaged.
These actions have not been announced in any previous Navy Department communiqué.
What is a schooner?
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A sailing ship with two or more masts, fore-and aft rigged (the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast).
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The Pittsburgh Press (March 2, 1943)
Berlin quakes and blazes under heaviest RAF blow
Flames visible 200 miles; invasion talk grows; 19 bombers lost
By Sidney J. Williams, United Press staff writer
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27 Axis planes downed –
Rommel loses town to Yanks
Sbeitla recaptured after 20-mile advance
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
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Helped by bad weather –
Jap convoy nears Guinea; Allies prepare to attack
14 ships sighted as MacArthur warns of big enemy concentration north of Australia
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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