Big percentage of 4-Fs turned down as ‘psychoneurotics,’ House committee is told
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Women traffic officers might present a problem
By Maxine Garrison
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By Ernie Pyle
He couldn’t even talk about his operation!
From a letter sent to Ernie Pyle by a newsreel cameraman, hospitalized in Italy:
Dear Ernie:
When they wheeled me in here, I felt like a slow-motion tennis ball going over the net at Forest Hills. Everybody’s head moved from left to right, and vice versa on the other side of the ward.
You see, the hospital grapevine or village tom-toms had given out the news that a war correspondent was being wheeled in. I understand the tension was terrific until I came out of the morphia. The first question all and sundry asked me was not how I felt or what was wrong with me but – did I know Ernie Pyle.
When I said I knew him slightly, I became quite popular, and questions flew right and left.
This note is to ask you to come over for a few minutes and say hello to some of these broken lads. It would please them beyond description, and there are many things and incidents here that would interest you as well.
Considering the cubic content of suffering within the four walls, it really is a very happy dump.
In Italy – (by wireless)
For several days, I’ve been living with an infantry company of the 34th Division. The 34th is the oldest division on this side of the Atlantic. It has been away from home two full years.
Two years is a long time overseas, even if you do nothing but travel around and work hard. But when, in addition, you fill two years with campaign after bitter campaign, a division of men eventually becomes wise and worn and old, like a much-read book or a cottage that wears its aging stone stoutly, ignoring the patchwork of new concrete that holds it together.
Today, in any frontline rifle company of around 200 men in the 34th, you find usually fewer than a dozen men who came overseas with the division originally. In one battalion, not a single one of the original officers is left.
That doesn’t mean they’ve all been killed, but it does mean that through casualties of all sorts, plus sickness and transfer and some small rotation back to the States, a division has almost a complete turnover in two years of fighting. Only its number remains the same. But even a number can come to have character and life, to those who are intimate with its heritage. I was with the 34th as long as June of 1942, in Ireland, and I have a feeling about it.
Remarkable Lt. Jack Sheehy
I came to the regimental command post in a jeep after dark one night.
Regimental handed me down to battalion, and battalion on down to the company I was to stay with. They were bivouacked for the moment in an olive grove, with their company command post in a stone Italian farmhouse – the first time their CP had been inside walls since they hit Italy five months ago.
The company commander is Lt. John J. Sheehy of New York City. The division was originally all Iowa and Minnesota men, but now you’ll find men from everywhere. The Iowans are the veterans, however, and they still stand out.
Jack Sheehy is tall and thin, and quite young, and of course he’s Irish. In the regiment, he is considered pretty remarkable. Any time you mention him among higher officers, they nod and say:
Yes, Sheehy is a case.
I don’t know exactly what causes this, but I gather from innuendo that he is addicted to using his noggin in spectacular ways in the pinches, and that he fears neither German soldiers nor American brass hats. He is an extremely likable and respected company commander.
Proud of men, and vice versa
Lt. Sheehy used to be a clerk for American Airlines in New York. He says that after the war he’s going into salesmanship of some kind, because he figures his gift of gab will carry him through – which surprised me, because during all the time I was with him, he was far from garrulous, but actually very kind and reserved.
I’ve never seen a man prouder of his company than Lt. Sheehy, and the men in it are proud, too. I’ve been around war long enough to know that nine-tenths of morale is pride in your outfit and confidence in your leader and fellow fighters.
A lot of people have morale confused with the desire to fight. I don’t know of one soldier in 10,000 who wants to fight. They certainly don’t in my company. The old-timers are sick to death of battle, and the new replacements are scared to death of it. And yet the company goes on into battle, and it is a proud company.
By Raymond Clapper
This is another of the final group of dispatches from Mr. Clapper, who was killed in the battle of the Marshalls.
Aboard an aircraft carrier, in the Marshall Islands – (by wireless)
The first task of our aircraft carrier force in the invasion of the Marshalls was to move in ahead of the landings and pound Kwajalein and Ebeye Islands, with the special object of knocking out the Japs’ planes and making their airfields unusable.
After that, we raced out to Eniwetok Island to destroy the airplanes and airfield there and to block any attempt by the Japs to reinforce the Marshalls from Truk.
Our carrier force pushed farther westward into the Central Pacific than any American forces had advanced across this route, which is rapidly becoming the most active area in the whole Pacific and certainly the scene of the largest naval forces.
The powerful carrier force with which I have traveled during the battle of the Marshalls is only one of several of similar size, hitting from various directions in intricate coordination. It is doubtful if the Japs have been able to determine which carrier force has been doing what.
Jap deception suspected
Our large force and others cruised for days without being detected, without seeing an enemy plane, without any submarine coming up.
At times it was uncanny. You wondered whether the Japs were up to some clever deception. It was hard to believe they were so weak that they were compelled to let this whole area go by default so far as airpower was concerned. Yet that seems to be exactly what happened.
The morning after we hit Eniwetok Island and wrecked its airfield, including 17 large Japanese bombers, the ruins of burned planes were still on the runway untouched. We achieved complete surprise, although we had not dreamed that this would be possible.
When our planes first struck Kwajalein in the early-morning darkness, the island was sound asleep. There was no sign of searchlights, or of detection devices having picked us up. There was no anti-aircraft fire until after our first wave of planes had hit the airfield, waking up the garrison. Then it became fairly hot. Several of our planes returned with flak holes, and one fighter was shot down.
“We sound reveille for them,” said Adm. F. C. Sherman as he received reports on his flag bridge from the bomber pilots.
Adm. Sherman achieved fame as the skipper of the old Lexington when she went down in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and also for the No. 1 rule he enforces among his pilots:
Kill the **** scientifically.
Campaign carefully organized
Aircraft carriers have served as real capital ships in the battle of the Marshalls, while the battleships, although present in large numbers, have served in a secondary or supporting function. Each carrier force has usually been accompanied by one or more big battleships, giving them an enormously powerful escort.
The original conception of the battleship was that it would stand up with enemy battleships and slug it out toe to toe. We have plenty of them here, so that any attempt by the Japs to come out and fight with their fleet would have found us able to outgun them by far.
We went into the battle of the Marshalls with a most impressive force. We took no chances. It has been a cautious, carefully organized campaign. It was delayed until abundantly sufficient forces could be assembled, and then these were put into battle on a plan of operations that was designed to avoid some of the difficulties encountered at Tarawa.
The key to the whole thing, however, was the elimination of Japanese airpower, and the prevention of the Japs from ferrying planes in over their stepping-stone route, which reaches back to their homeland in short hops that any fighter plane can make.
At Eniwetok, our particular carrier force broke that link in the Japanese air chain. Looking back now in the light of what did not show up, it seems the Japs must have decided not to risk heavy destruction of their limited number of supply planes in a defensive air battle that they would have been certain to lose.
By Maj. Alexander P. de Seversky
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Fashion world’s greatest shopping names return to cash in on newest boom and to glamorize the old man
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Völkischer Beobachter (February 16, 1944)
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Von unserer Stockholmer Schriftleitung
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Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“
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Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“
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U.S. Navy Department (February 16, 1944)
For Immediate Release
February 16, 1944
Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force attacked Ponape in considerable force at noon February 14 (West Longitude Date). More than 55 tons of bombs were dropped, principally on shore installations. A small cargo ship was sunk in the harbor. There was no fighter opposition and all of our planes returned to base.
Liberators, Mitchells, Dauntless dive bombers and Warhawk fighters of the 7th Army Air Force and search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two continued attacks on enemy‑held bases in the Marshall Islands during February 14‑15, bombing installations on five atolls.
Gjit Island, in the eastern Marshall Islands, was attacked by a Navy search plane on February 14.
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 16, 1944
By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes, including the First War Powers Act 1941, as President of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:
The War Relocation Authority in the Office for Emergency Management of the Executive Office of the President and its functions, together with its records, property personnel, and unexpended balances of appropriations, allocations, and other funds, are transferred to the Department of the Interior and shall be administered as an organizational entity within the said Department. The functions of the Director of the War Relocation Authority are transferred to the Secretary of the Interior. The War Relocation Authority and the functions transferred by this order shall be administered by the said Secretary or under his supervision and direction through such officers, agents, and employees, of the War Relocation Authority, as he shall designate. All prior executive orders in conflict with this order are amended accordingly. This order shall take effect immediately.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
THE WHITE HOUSE,
February 16, 1944
The Pittsburgh Press (February 16, 1944)
Yanks mass for attack on monastery atop Mount Cassino
By Robert V. Vermillion, United Press staff writer
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RAF rains 2,800 tons in record raid, also rips Frankfurt-on-Oder
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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Those Germans who won’t are convinced (fatally) by Pvt. Bachenheimer’s rifle
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Allies take Green Islands, cutting off all Japs to the south
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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