Katharine Hepburn remains rugged individualist
Nothing Hollywood can do can tame the gal who can’t abide publicity
By Ernest Foster
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Mary Beard: Keep an accurate record of patient for doctor
Ask physician to write instructions to eliminate misunderstandings
By Mary Beard, Director, Nursing Service, American Red Cross
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
A junior and miniature edition of W. C. Fields is what Sgt. Gilford Muncy is. You should hear his story of the night he fell into the abandoned gun pit and couldn’t get out because he couldn’t think where he was.
Sgt. Muncy can’t be much over five feet, and he is sort of pudgy and has very narrow shoulders, and his face has a wise, devilish, old look like one of the Seven Dwarfs.
Sgt. Muncy is 29. He comes from Hyden, Kentucky, up in the hills, and he wouldn’t mind at all if you called him a hillbilly. In fact, he sort of trades on it. He talks just like the mountaineers in the cartoons. I think it sort of hurts his pride that he can’t claim to have been a moonshiner.
Everybody laughs at Sgt. Muncy and with him, and everybody thinks he’s great. He likes people, and is uncommonly generous and kind. It’s a poor day when he doesn’t survive at least one escapade that is slightly out of this world.
The gunners’ tent which Sgt. Muncy dominates is a sight to behold. It is often the scene of rioting and deviltry. It is probably the most tired-out tent in Italy.
The top is full of holes. That’s caused by their gasoline stove blowing up frequently. One wall has big adhesive patches on it. That’s where a happy guest tried to carve his initials in the canvas. The back wall bears the marks of a nervous visitor who went right through it one night during an air raid.
Fabulous tent stove
The two outstanding features of Sgt. Muncy’s tent are the late evening meals cooked there and the fabulous stove, which has been known to blow up seven times in one day. Once it exploded just as a guest entered, and blew him clear out into the grapevines.
The other boys had told me all about Sgt. Muncy’s stove, so one morning, just as he was starting on a mission (he’s an aerial gunner), I introduced myself, and said I’d like to drop past that evening and see his stove blow up. Sgt. Muncy said:
We’d sure like to have you, but the stove’s liable to get contrary and not blow up tonight. Lots of times when we have company, it don’t blow up at all.
So I went over that night. The tent has a dirt floor which is swept out whenever they figure inspection is about due.
Sgt. Muncy once had a fastidious streak in him, and decided to levy a 50¢ fine on anybody who threw anything on the floor, such as cigarette butts, apple cores, walnut shells, etc. Before the first evening was over, he had fined himself $11.50.
They have great feasts in the Sgt. Muncy tent. Fried chicken is their special dish. They buy chickens from the village at $5 per chicken. Sgt. Muncy said:
I represent $300 worth of chickens cooked on that old stove there.
One night, Sgt. Jack Bohn of Scranton, Pennsylvania, made chicken soup while Sgt. Muncy did the rest. All the guests, who weren’t tasting very well anyhow, thought the soup was wonderful. But Jack couldn’t quite get it down. Eventually, he discovered the reason – he had put half a cake of G.I. soap in it, thinking it was butter.
Now and then they have steak. One night Sgt. Muncy was in bed when one of his soldier friends came in from town feeling fine. He had with him three or four big steaks.
The friend asked:
Where’s your sledgehammer?
“Over there in that pile of stuff, I reckon,” Sgt. Muncy said, and went back to sleep.
Rocks, mud and steak
Pretty soon he was awakened and here was this guy with all the steaks lying on the dirt floor, and just beating hell out of them with an eight-pound sledge. Then he threw them in the skillet, and Muncy had to get up and help share the feast.
Sgt. Muncy says:
I’ve still got rocks and mud in my teeth.
To Sgt. Muncy and his tentmates, all Italians are “gooks.” They don’t remember how they started that. It’s not a term of contempt at all, for Sgt. Muncy loves them and they love him.
Sgt. Muncy says:
I don’t care where I go it, people like me. Why, when we moved from our last place, all them gooks around there cried when I left.
He dressed up and played Santa for them at Christmas, and he is always giving them stuff.
We sat and talked and laughed until almost lights-out, and finally I said:
Well, if the stove isn’t going to blow up, I guess I have to go.
So, Sgt. Muncy jumped up and said, “Wait a minute.” He turned off the gasoline, let the fire in the tin-bellied stove die out and cool, then turned the gas on again. They let it sit that way a little while, and all the rest got behind boxes and things and Sgt. Bohn got off as far as he could and threw a lighted match at the stove door.
But as Sgt. Muncy had feared, the stove was contrary and wouldn’t blow up that night. They were all very humiliated.
Stokes: Real draft
By Thomas L. Stokes
Washington –
A subtle change has occurred in regard to the fourth term question and President Roosevelt’s relation to it which is important in developing political events.
The fact is that it is not now a matter of whether President Roosevelt want to run or not. That is largely out of his hands. Party leaders have decided that he will have to run again, since there’s nobody else who could win. The decision is theirs, not Mr. Roosevelt’s.
If he shows any reluctance, feels later like balking, they are in a position to say to him, in effect:
We have stood by you, have followed you, worked for you, three times. Now it’s your turn to stand by us. No other candidate has been permitted to build himself up, which could be done only with your consent and help. You’ll have to be ‘it,’ like it or not.
Democrats would like to retain the Presidency, but the politicians, state and local, are interested equally in holding their machines together, and for this they need the strongest candidate, whether he can win nationally or not.
Strategy is obvious
The strategy of the politicians was obvious at the January meeting here of the Democratic National Committee which adopted that unprecedented resolution asking the President to run again. The phrases were sweet and generous, but the purpose was stern. It was sponsored by his friends, but endorsed by some not so friendly – not out of love, but necessity. That was the start of the “draft” and it will be a real “draft” this time, with none of the synthetic aspects of the third term draft with its vaudeville atmosphere.
So, it does not really matter how cryptically President Roosevelt replies to the “picayune” inquiries at press conferences, nor what Mr. Roosevelt said in his Nov. 3, 1940, speech in Cleveland about there being “another President” in the White House four years later, nor what he said in a speech to the homefolks at Hyde Park in 1940 about that being the last time he would appear before them as a candidate.
The politicians in the party are deciding this one.
This looks like a year of Democratic desperation and the politicians have taken over with Mr. Roosevelt’s acquiescence, which is apparent not only as regards the fourth term, but as regards practical political operations.
Purge plans purged
There will be, for example, no “purge” this year, no choice by the White House between Democrats in primaries, though this is the year when those Senators whom President Roosevelt sought to purge in 1938 are up again – George of Georgia, Smith of South Carolina, Tydings of Maryland, McCarran of Nevada, Clark of Missouri, among others.
Support of the Supreme Court “packing bill” was the test applied that year. Mr. Roosevelt would have even more tests to apply this year, if he were choosing to do so. Senator George bucked him on the tax bill. “Cotton Ed” Smith talked brashly about a third party. Senator Clark of Missouri was one of the “isolationist” leaders. Senator Gillette who has just announced he would run again and with the blessing of National Democratic Chairman Hannegan, said bluntly that he would “oppose my own father if he ran for a fourth term.”
Senator O’Mahoney of Wyoming fought the Supreme Court “packing” bill and Mr. Roosevelt would like to have achieved his defeat in 1938. But Joe O’Mahoney is now chairman of the Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Things are changed, for Democrats are going to need everything to win. Nobody is going to pry behind the party label this year to see the cut of a fellow’s thinking, or whether he combs his hair on the right or the left side.
Mr. Hannegan has decreed that. And Mr. Hannegan is a big boy who means business. It looks like he’s going to have free rein to run the show.
$25 million gift probed –
Big three-power sea base linked to Arabian oil deal
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Experts say –
Oil resources are sufficient for 1,000 years
Heat Institute denies warnings of shortage
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Scrap scarcity by mid-year is expected
Larger civilian steel use held unlikely
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U.S. Navy Department (March 14, 1944)
Communiqué No. 509
The U.S. submarine CORVINA (SS-226) is overdue from patrol and must be presumed to be lost.
The next of kin of personnel in the CORVINA have been so informed.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 308
For Immediate Release
March 14, 1944
Seventh Army Air Force Mitchells bombed Kusaie on March 12 (West Longitude Date), starting several fires.
On the same day, Army Liberators and Marine Dauntless dive bombers attacked four bases in the Eastern Marshall Islands. At one base, bombs hit the cantonment area and the radio station; at another, an ammunition dump was blown up and gun emplacements damaged.
Search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two bombed two enemy‑held Marshall Island bases, and damaged two enemy fighters in the air near Ponape.
Our planes returned safely from all of these operations.
The Pittsburgh Press (March 14, 1944)
IRELAND WARNED BY CHURCHILL
‘Quarantine’ to protect invasion
New moves hinted against Irish
By Robert Dowson, United Press staff writer
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Suicidal Bougainville drive costs the Japs 1,000 men
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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New U.S. sub presumed lost
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Senate passes soldier vote bill
House expected to okay compromise
Washington (UP) –
The Senate today approved the compromise soldier vote bill 47–31, despite the opposition of Democratic Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY). Twenty-three Democrats joined with 24 Republicans to pass the bill. Twenty-four Democrats, six Republicans and one Progressive opposed it.
The vote came after two days of debate on the controversial measure. House approval of the bill was considered assured. It then would go to President Roosevelt for veto or signature.
Denounced by Barkley
Just before the veto, Mr. Barkley denounced the measure as a restrictive bill which would deny the vote to many servicemen.
Mr. Barkley said the bill would repeal, “not directly but by implication and necessary interpretation.” The waiver in the 1942 law of poll taxes and registration for servicemen voting in federal elections.
He said:
Under this conference report, no serviceman or woman would be allowed to vote unless registered according to the requirements of state law and unless he or she had paid a poll tax if state law requires.
Obligation cited
He added that he thought Congress has an obligation as well as the power to make it easy for members of the Armed Forces to vote for President, Vice President and members of Congress despite the challenges of states’ rights advocates.
Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) said that if President Roosevelt vetoes the bill:
He and he alone must assume full responsibility for the disfranchisement of millions of our soldiers, sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen.
The approved bill provides that a federal war ballot will be sent only to servicemen overseas whose state legislatures and governors have certified by July 15 that they will accept the federal ballots for counting. The servicemen would also be required to certify that by Sept. 1 they had applied for a state absentee ballot, but by Oct. 1 had not received it.
To name commission
Servicemen within the country would be required to use state absentee ballots.
A War Ballot Commission composed of the Secretary of War, Secretary of the Navy and War Shipping Administrator would distribute the federal ballots overseas, collect them and send them to the states.
The President “cannot shirk his responsibility,” Mr. Bridges said.
The boys in the foxholes of Italy, in the swamps of the South Pacific, on the ships plowing the seven seas, in planes in the air, will demand an accounting – and get one!
Senator Bridges claimed the pending bill “will enable every member of the Armed Forces, who is otherwise eligible, to cast a ballot in the November elections.” He added:
A barrage of misrepresentation has been leveled at opponents of the federal ballot.
Fourth term fear
Administration supporters such as Chairman Theodore F. Green (D-RI) of the Senate Elections Committee, and Senators Carl A. Hatch (D-NM), Scott Lucas (D-IL) and Joseph f. Guffey (D-PA) shared the belief the new measure would reduce the soldier vote.
Senator Guffey, the Senate’s most outspoken advocate of a fourth term for President Roosevelt, declared that fear of a fourth term and opposition to Negro voting were behind much of the opposition to a simplified federal ballot proposal.
Guffey calls it steal
Senator Guffey said:
Between those who are afraid to let our colored citizens and poor white citizens vote at all, and those who are afraid to let the soldiers vote for fear they will vote for Roosevelt, the Congress, if this bill becomes a law, is perpetrating the greatest organized election steal since 1876, when the Republican Party were the beneficiaries of the presidential election which was stolen from Samuel J. Tilden.
In the 1876 election, Tilden apparently had won, but the electoral votes of South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana and Oregon were contested. An electoral commission of five Senators, five House members and five Supreme Court justices decided, 8–7, that the electoral votes of these states should go to Rutherford B. Hayes, and Hayes was elected.
Senator Guffey said members of the Armed Forces would be entitled to:
…resent strongly and to combat the policies which may be adopted as a result of this outrageous fraud and deliberate betrayal of democracy.
Another march on Washington
Recalling the 1932 Bonus March on Washington, Senator Guffey predicted that veterans of World War II:
…may come to Washington and demand an accounting from a Congress which refused to allow them to exercise the right to vote and denied them a voice in the selection of federal officers who will adopt the policies which will govern the veterans of this war on their return to civil life.
He said:
This measure is not a service voting bill. It is a bill to disenfranchise 12 million American citizens in the Armed Forces.
Weekly gas supply –
OPA puts nation on 2-gallon limit
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Bond seller, 11, rewarded with ride in Fortress
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Drive is started for fourth term
County organization hears war pleas
Urging the reelection of President Roosevelt for a fourth term, the Allegheny County Democratic organization formally launched its Congressional campaign last night at a dinner rally in the Alpine Hotel, East McKeesport.
The keynote of the rally was sounded by Auditor General F. Clair Moss, candidate for Superior Court, who declared that the progress of the war hinges on November’s election.
Bitter campaign deplored
Mr. Ross said in part:
The election next November will determine whether the progress of this war will continue or whether there will be an interruption. It will also determine if a lasting peace will be written. A lasting peace can be written only under the guidance of President Roosevelt.
Rep. Francis J. Myers, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, told his audience that Nazi and Jap warlords are encouraged by bitter political campaigns and disputes in this country.
Other speakers were State Chairman David L. Lawrence, G. Harold Wagner (candidate for Auditor General), Ramsay S. Black (candidate for State Treasurer), and Mayor Frank Buchanan of McKeesport County Commissioner John J. Kane was toastmaster.
Soldier is guest
Congressman Samuel A. Weiss, who represents the 33rd district where the rally was held, had as guest a wounded soldier, Stephen Timco of Duquesne. Mr. Weiss urged proper provisions for disabled soldiers. He also declared that servicemen should be given a federal ballot so that they may vote in this year’s elections.
The 33rd district, created by the last session of the Legislature, comprises the three third-class cities, McKeesport, Clairton and Duquesne, plus 21 boroughs and eight townships. Republicans are expected to wage an intensive campaign to unseat Mr. Weiss.