WAVE does stuff; leap year, you know
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State Department crowds into labor agency field
New setup designed to keep government informed of developments in other countries
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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300 fliers honor Bataan hero at fete he planned
Hollywood, California (UP) –
Lt. Col. William E. Dyess, who survived “the march of death” as a Jap captive in the Philippines only to die in the flaming crash of his plane here months later rather than endanger the life of a motorist, was acclaimed a hero at a party he planned three days before his death.
‘Exploits are legend’
The Hollywood Masquers Club staged the party, for 300 officers and men from March Field Air Base, as Lt. Col. Dyess had planned, but instead of a greeting from their host, the guests heard Lt. Col. Dyess’ widow read the following letter from Gen. H. H. Arnold, head of the Army Air Forces:
His exploits are legend. Courage like his helped this country face extreme adversity in the Philippines campaign. We will never forget his heroism, which with his splendid character and personality won him a high place in the Air Forces.
He was decorated many times, in comparison with which words seem of little consequence. We are proud of have had him in our organization.
Accompanied by Capt. Samuel C. Grashio, who only last night related the horrible tortures, he and Lt. Col. Dyess were subjected to before the Jap prison camp, Mrs. Dyess told how the party came to be.
Go on with party
She said:
Col. Dyess and I were guests of the Masquers one Saturday night last fall soon after he came back to this country. It was the most memorable event in his life in more than a year. He wanted some of the other boys in the Air Corps to share in his enjoyment and arranged this party. The following Tuesday, he was killed. We decided to go on with the party as he had wished.
Movie actor Edward Arnold, president of the Masquers, who with Charles Coburn delivered a eulogy at funeral services for Col. Dyess, presided at the memorial.
Connally: Punish all Japs
Washington (UP) –
Chairman Tom Connally (D-TX) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said today that all Jap elements, “from the Emperor to the soldier,” must be made to pay for the treachery at Pearl Harbor and the mass murder of war prisoners in the Philippines.
Deploring what he called a tendency in Washington to say, “oh, well, the Emperor’s all right – it’s the military clique that’s to blame,” Mr. Connally asserted that Hirohito “must bear his responsibility for the cruelties and outrages and the war itself.”
Aroused over the Army-Navy disclosure of Jap prison camp atrocities, which have already cost the lives of more than 7,700 American and 14,000 Filipino heroes of Bataan and Corregidor, Mr. Connally continued:
The Emperor, the military group and the people of Japan are all our enemies. They are all fighting us savagely with instruments of death and torture.
We can’t discriminate among internal groups. Our sword is drawn and every one from the Emperor to the soldier shall feel its edge.
Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) said Americans must translate their anger over the Jap atrocities into “redoubled effort on the home front.”
He said:
No more strikes – striking at this time is unthinkable, unforgivable, and un-American. Supplies, equipment and men must go forward to Adm. William E. Halsey Jr., Gen. Douglas MacArthur and their associates to speed them on their way to Tokyo.
Writers go to work on ‘March of Death’ film
Hollywood, California (UP) –
The writing staff at Republic Studio has started work on a script based upon the “March of Death” inflicted upon the defenders of Bataan by the Japanese, a spokesman reported today.
The picture probably will be ready for production in about three weeks and “will pull no punches,” the spokesman said.
In Washington –
Soldier-vote state ballot veto is hinted
President concerned over measure, calls leaders to conference
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt, concerned over the fate of legislation to provide for federal soldier-vote ballots, conferred with Democratic Congressional leaders today as the Senate approached a showdown vote on the issue.
House Democratic Leader John W. McCormack (D-MA), one of those to see Mr. Roosevelt, said the President had expressed “considerable concern” lest soldiers not be given a chance to cast their ballots.
Asked if the President might veto a “state-ballot” bill if Congress passes such as administration-opposed plan, Mr. McCormack said only: “What do you think?”
Senate approval predicted
Senator Scott W. Lucas (D-IL), co-author of the Lucas-Green federal ballot bill, stood by his prediction that the measure would receive Senate approval, but conceded the showdown might be delayed by promised Republican amendments.
The federal bill was intended as a substitute for the state vote measure which the Senate passed on to the House in December.
Senator Lucas again accused his Republican opponents of injecting their fourth-term fears into the dispute after Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) proposed an amendment under which the federal ballot would carry the full names of presidential and vice-presidential nominees, instead of mere blank write-in spaces. This would mean the ballots could not be shipped to overseas servicemen until after the Democratic nomination convention to be held sometime in July. The Republicans will name their candidate in June.
Bridges answers Roosevelt
Senator Bridges said the Democrats could make sure the ballots reached servicemen in ample time if they would agree to hold their convention in June. Replying to President Roosevelt’s charge that the opposition was blocking the passage of an adequate soldier-vote bill, Senator Bridges said:
If the President thinks we are stalling, this is one way he can prove that he isn’t.
Ferguson: Time fighters
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
“Keep that Middle-Aged Look at Bay,” says a headline on my favorite woman’s page today, and I admire the timeliness of the military phraseology. Just the same, it put me in the dumps. For sometimes, in morbid moments, it seems to me too much is expected of the American woman.
She is now engaged in a fight against fascism, yet there is no letup in her eternal fight against gray hair and wrinkles.
Middle age must also be kept at bay. Hitler is on one side, the Japs on the other; our security, the lives of our children, everything is threatened. But the big battle with Father Time continues as usual on every feminine front.
Youth as well as Australia is to be held. Let us not become discouraged over minor military setbacks, say the authorities, yet, according to the beauticians, any victory of age over youth is a major and final defeat.
Moreover, the housewife is now ordered to toil in machine shops and fields and government offices; to volunteer for nursing, Motor Corps, target practice, air-raid warden duty and what have you. She must stretch her budget to cover doubled expenditures. And as for national morale – well, she is its chief custodian.
Religion, the home, the welfare of the community, the character of the young are in her hands. Yet, with all that, if she knows what’s good for her, she will remain a perennial 35 in appearance.
Now and then it strikes me that women past 40 may have to decide which job is the more important – winning a war against the Axis or a war against time. The day may come when we can’t do both – when we shall be forced to choose between beauty and democracy.
Background of news –
German air strength fading
By E. C. Shepherd, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Monahan: Gung Ho! thrilling exploit of Marines
Attack on Makin Island by Carlson’s Raiders on Fulton screen
By Kaspar Monahan
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Wickard: Food shortage hits Nazis hard
Situation similar to 1918 but not as serious; many Russians starving
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
One evening, Sgt. James E. Knight, a flight chief from McAlester, Oklahoma, took me in tow and we spent the evening gabbing with about 50 mechanics at this dive-bomber airdrome.
The men at this base live in the same big apartment building as the officers. Their quarters were exactly the same, except that the men have their places fixed up more comfortably and keep them neater than the officers.
You’ll find that true in almost any Air Force group in the combat area, because the men, being craftsmen, can make things the average officer doesn’t know how to make. They fix up stoves and lights and shelves, and make little gadgets that give a homey touch to their quarters.
Sgt. Charlie Bennett, a youngster on the maintenance crew from York, South Carolina, has made a beautiful ashtray from the base of a German 88mm shell, with American machine-gun bullets sticking out of it. It’s too heavy to lug around for a year or more of war, so Charlie thinks he’ll sent it home.
One of Charlie’s roommates is Sgt. Mintford Blair of Spokane, a crew chief in the dive-bomber squadron. In the same group is Blair’s uncle, Sgt. Ted Chapman, an electrical specialist. Uncle and nephew are about the same age. They enlisted together two years ago, and have been lucky enough to stay together ever since.
Superstitious about 7 planes
Sgt. Knight, being a flight chief, has charge of about six planes. Another flight chief is Sgt. Orville Reeves of Fittstown, Oklahoma. Sgt. Reeves is one of the few people I’ve run unto in the Air Forces who have superstitions. Superstitiousness is rare even among the pilots. The last war’s phobia against three-on-a-match is almost unheard of now.
Sgt. Reeves normally has six planes in his charge, but sometimes he will have more. His idiosyncrasy is that he won’t accept seven. he doesn’t mind the work, and he’ll accept two extra planes, but not one.
The reason is that three different times since they’ve come overseas, he has had an extra plane shoved onto him – making a total of seven – and every time his flight has lost a plane the following day. So he’ll have none of it anymore, and you can’t blame him.
Sgt. Knight carries a whole walletful of pictures of his wife and year-old baby. He saw his son only once, when he was a week old. Knight says he’s now “sweating out” a picture of his youngster in the Italian colonel’s suit he sent him for Christmas. Most of the boys have sent home shawls or cameos or lace or something.
A word about the 4-Fs
Sgt. Knight is one of the many mechanics who feel they are not personally doing enough to help win the war. For instance, Knight says all the men under him are now so well trained that he has almost nothing to do, and that he could go back and take flight warning and would hardly be missed around here.
You would think that after seeing what the combat pilots go through, the mechanics would be content to stay on the ground. Yet when applications for flight training were reopened, 10% of the squadron applied.
Always in the combat area you’ll hear soldiers on ground jobs talking earnestly along this line: Why couldn’t well-trained 4-Fs do their jobs and release them for combat?
They know that a guy doesn’t have to be a Samson to stand ordinary Army life, and they point out cases such as that of the soldier who was discharged from the Army on physical grounds; yet was capable of playing swell football when he got back to civil life.
Constantly, also, the Air Force boys pay tribute to the infantry. In two weeks around the airfield. I think I heard the subject brought up 200 times. Pilots and mechanics both feel the same way – their hats are off to the infantry.
One pilot said to me:
What must you think of us, anyhow, knowing as you do what the infantry goes through and then finding that all we talk about is when we can get our missions in and go home?
I told him I thought they were acting like very normal human beings, and that, furthermore, bad as infantry life is, I believed the average infantryman looked on the combat pilot’s job as too dangerous to be envied.