CANDIDLY SPEAKING —
Say it isn’t so!
By Maxine Garrison
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Ready money on the loose again –
Miamians don’t want a second land boom, but they’re getting it
Beach hotels are changing hands, and prices on large and small homes have gone up 25% in three months
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
When I joined “X” Company, it was in one of those lulls that sometimes come in war. The company was still “in the lines,” as you say, but not actually fighting.
They had taken a town a few days before, and since then had been waiting for the next attack. We moved forward twice while I was with them, always in night marches, and on the last move the company went into battle again.
These intervals give the soldiers time to restore their gear and recuperate their spirits. Usually, they come weeks apart.
In areas recently passed over by battles, the towns have been largely evacuated – in fact, practically all of them are mere heaps of rubble from bombing and shelling – and no stores are open. There is little chance of buying wine.
But this regiment had gone sniffing into cellars in a depopulated town and turned up with all kinds of exotic liquors which they dug out of the rubble.
The result was that you could make a tour on foot of a dozen company and battalion command posts around the perimeter of the town and in nearly every one discover a shelf full of the finest stuff imaginable.
A drinker’s delight
It was ironic to walk into a half-demolished building and find a command post set up in the remaining rooms, with soldiers sitting in front of a crackling fireplace, and at 10 o’clock in the morning
Our company command post consisted of one table, one chair and one telephone, in a second-story room of a stone farmhouse. In most of these two-story farmhouses, the stairway goes up the outside. You hang blankets at the door for blackout, and burn candles.
Five platoons of the company were bivouacked in olive orchards in a circle around the farmhouse, the farthest foxhole being not more than 200 yards away.
I’ve always been struck by the works some men will put into a home as temporary as a foxhole. I’ve been with men in this company who would arrive at a new bivouac at midnight, dig a hole just big enough to sleep in the rest of the night, then work all the next day in a deep, elaborate, roofed-over foxhole, even though they knew they had to leave the same evening and never see that hole again.
Bullet-pocked trees
In the olive groves throughout this bitter Cassino area, there are pitiful testimonials to closeup warfare. In our grove, I don’t believe there was a single one of the thousands of old trees that hadn’t at least one bullet scar in it. Knocked-off branches littered the ground. Some trees were cut clear down by shells. The stone walls had shell gaps every so often, and every standing thing was bullet-pocked.
You couldn’t walk 50 feet without hitting a shell or bomb crater. Every house and shed had at least a corner knocked off.
Some soldiers were sleeping in the haymow of a stone barn. They had to get up into it via a stepladder they had pieced together, because the steps had been blown away. Between the house and the barn ran a footpath on a sort of ledge. Our men had been caught there that first night by a tank in the valley below firing at them point-blank. One soldier had been killed instantly, and as we walked along the path a few days later his steel helmet was still lying there, bloody and riddled with holes. Another soldier had a leg blown off, but lived.
The men were telling me of a replacement – a green soldier – who joined the company the day after, when this soldier’s leg was still lying in the path. The new soldier stopped and stared at it and kept on staring.
The other boys watched him from a distance. They say that when anyone came along the path the new man would move off to one side so as not to be seen. But as soon as they would pass, he would come back and star, sort of hypnotized. He never said anything about it afterwards, and nobody said anything to him. Somebody buried the leg the next day.
Clapper: The skipper
By Raymond Clapper
The following, written by Mr. Clapper before the battle of the Marshall Islands in which he lost his life, has been forwarded by the Navy.
Aboard an aircraft carrier, somewhere in the Pacific –
It was from some of the youngsters on the forward guns that I learned about the captain of this carrier, and incidentally about the youngsters.
It was still dark. We had just put off the dawn patrol, and I had had someone point out to me the Southern Cross, which below the Equator is to amateur astronomers what the Big Dipper is north of the Equator. We were at general quarters, with all hands at battle stations. I had been on the flag bridge watching the operation, and then I went over to the forward gun platform to talk with these youngsters.
One of them, who has a wife and two children in Massachusetts, plays in the ship’s band. He and a partner had a garage until the draft took their help, whereupon they closed up and our friend joined the Navy. With him was a blond youngster who also plays in the band. He grew up in New Jersey, but has a wife and baby in Tennessee.
I asked:
How old is the baby?
“Two months and three days,” he said, which shows what kind of new father he is. He has never seen his baby. He studied music at the Juilliard School in New York.
Boys bring up subject
I didn’t bring up the matter of the skipper. They did.
I was saying how glad I was to be aboard.
One of the boys said:
We think we have the best skipper in the Navy.
The other said:
His talks to us before we go into battle are wonderful. You should have heard the talk he made to us when the ship was commissioned. He said this ship would take us right into Tokyo.
Some of these boys think it is the skill of the captain that has brought the carrier through six tough fights without a scratch.
One of them said:
You should have seen the near misses dropping around us on the Rabaul strike! They were coming down right close on one side and then on the other side, but the skipper just swung her around and we got through between them.
When I asked the captain about it, he said God was with the ship. He said you can have the best crew in the Navy, and the best ship, but you still need some luck to get through.
Skipper spurns sadism
He has had luck, and not the least of it is to have a friendly, straight-shooting personality to go with his skill. He does not go in for the bellowing, sadistic explosions affected by old-time seadogs. He commands not only the confidence of the entire personnel but its affection, to a degree I have not observed elsewhere in this war, and which officers aboard say is exceptional.
I emphasize this because the Gen. Patton incident has shaken the confidence of some parents in the way their boys are being treated by officers.
Any number of bluejackets have volunteered to me some remark or other about the skipper of this happy ship. Recently he got orders for a promotion which involves his leaving this ship, and a number of the men have gone to him to say how much they regret his leaving. Several of them have remarked to me that they are glad he is staying on through the next action with them, for they are almost superstitious about their luck with him. It is a phenomenon which gives a lift to a civilian guest aboard this ship, especially one coming out of the atmosphere of Washington.
I don’t know what the explanation is. In fact, we seldom know what makes leadership. But you always know when it is there, as every last man on this ship knows it.
Roper: Catholic soldiers support raids on monastery
By James E. Roper, United Press staff writer
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Roosevelt places blame on Germany
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Völkischer Beobachter (February 17, 1944)
Dr. Dietrich entlarvt freche Feindlügen –
Die Wahrheit über Monte Cassino
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Das ‚Inselhüpfen‘ freut ihn nicht mehr –
MacArthur fühlt sich auf falschem Weg
Von unserem Berichterstatter in der Schweiz
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U.S. Navy Department (February 17, 1944)
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 34
At daylight yesterday morning, February 16, (West Longitude Date), powerful naval task forces of the U.S. Pacific Fleet commenced an attack on the Japanese naval base at Truk with several hundred of our planes participating. No further details available.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 17, 1944)
BEACHHEAD BATTLE RAGES
Allies halt troop, tank charges
German increase attacks over field littered with own dead
By Robert V. Vermillion, United Press staff writer
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Vatican denies Papal villa shelters Germans in Italy
Shelling or bombing of Castel Gandolfo ‘uncalled for,’ Pope’s aide charges
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Yanks batter Truk outpost
Bombing range extended nearer to Japan
By William F. Tyree, United Press staff writer
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Yank takes on 14 Zeros, and gets 3
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713 Jap planes smashed against Allied loss of 146
Adm. Halsey’s HQ, South Pacific (UP) –
An official compilation today showed that the South Pacific Air Force has destroyed definitely 713 Jap planes since the start of the campaign to neutralize Rabaul, Dec. 17 to Feb. 13, against loss of 146 Allied planes, a ratio of 4.9 to 1 in favor of Allied fliers.
House sends subsidy ban to President
Measure approved by vote of 249–188; veto is believed certain
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