Airmen attend church often
Civilians take back seat
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Poll: Public to fall short of war garden goal
Million fewer plots to be planted in 1944
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Federal probe urged by Bricker
Birmingham, Alabama (UP) –
Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, making a bid for the support of Alabama Republicans in his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, last night proposed an investigation of the “entire governmental structure” of this country and the immediate liquidation of all agencies not performing “an essential function.”
Mr. Bricker charged that the “New Deal’s ineptitude in administering even the ordinary affairs of government” had resulted in a “labyrinth” of agencies and bureaus, making coordination:
…hopeless and impossible to attain in the face of duplication, confusion, inefficiency and the totally unwarranted waste of manpower and money.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With the Allied beachhead forces in Italy – (by wireless)
The sailors aboard an LST (landing ship tank) have the same outlook on life that the average soldier overseas has. That is, they devote a good part of their conversation to home, and to when they may get there.
They are pretty veteran by now, and have been under fire a lot. They’ve served the hot beaches of Sicily, Salerno and Anzio. They know a gun fired in anger when they hear one.
On the whole, although the boys who man these beachhead supply ships are frequently in great danger, they do live fairly comfortably. Their food is good, their quarters are fair, and they have such facilities as hot baths, new magazines, candy, hot meals and warmth.
The sailors sleep in folding, bunks with springs and mattresses. The officers sleep in cabins, two or so to a cabin, the same as on bigger ships.
An LST isn’t such a glorious ship to look at – it is neither sleek nor fast not impressively big – and yet it is a good ship and the crews aboard LSTs are proud of them.
LSTs roll and twist
The LSTs are great rollers – the sailors say “They’ll even roll in drydock.” They have flat bottoms and consequently they roll when there is no sea at all. They roll fast, too. Their usual tempo is a roundtrip roll every six seconds. The boys say that in a really heavy sea you can stand on the bridge and actually see the bow of the ship twist, like a monster turning its head. It isn’t an optical illusion either, but a result of the “give” in these ships.
The sailors say that when they run across a sandbar, the ship seems to work its way across like an inchworm, proceeding forward section by section.
The LST has handled every conceivable type of wartime cargo. It has carried a whole shipload of fused shells, the most dangerous kind. Among the soldiers of many nationalities that my LST has carried, the crew found the Indian troops of Jahore the most interesting. The Indians were friendly, and as curious as children. The Americans liked them. In fact, I’ve found that Americans like practically anybody who is halfway friendly.
Toilet-seat tragedy
The Indian soldiers base practically every action on their religion. They brought their own food, and it had to be cooked by certain of their own people.
They made a sort of pancake out of flour that was full of weevils and worms. But it was sacred, and if an American cook tried to help out and touched the pan, the whole panful had to be thrown away.
Even going to the toilet was a religious ritual with them. They carried special toilet-seat covers previously cleansed by some proper person, and would no more think of using an unflushed toilet then you would think of committing murder.
Capt. Joseph Kahrs told me of one touching incident that happened when the Indian troops were put ashore. One of them had fallen ill and had to be taken back to Africa.
He was the only Indian left on the ship. The tragedy of his pitiful case was that the poor unfortunate was caught without a sacred toilet seat, and he had dysentery.
“What did he do?” I inquired.
Capt. Kahrs said:
I never did ask. I couldn’t bear to know. To me, it is the most frightful incident of the war.
Stokes: MacArthur
By Thomas L. Stokes
Milwaukee, Wisconsin –
The word here is that Gen. Douglas MacArthur is a receptive candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
“It has been indicated to prominent Republicans that he won’t do anything to get the nomination, but if he gets it, he will accept it,” was the way it was put by Lansing Hoyt, manager of the MacArthur campaign for convention delegates in the April 4 primary in which the general has three rivals – Wendell L. Willkie, Governor Dewey and LtCdr. Harold Stassen, ex-Governor of Minnesota.
Mr. Hoyt added mysteriously:
I can’t tell you how I found that out.
He is hopeful that Gen. MacArthur will roll up such an impressive vote in this state, where he spent his youthful years, that it will set off a national movement that will sweep into the Chicago convention next June. He has so contrived it that the general will have every opportunity for a popular demonstration.
Gen. MacArthur is the only candidate of either party in the primary who is entered also for the presidential preference vote as distinct from the vote for delegates. The popular preferential vote has no relation to the selection of delegates, but a heavy popular vote might make an impression.
Mr. Hoyt was chairman of the America First Committee of Wisconsin and the whole tenor of the MacArthur campaign is to appeal to the isolationist sentiment once so predominant in this state. There still seems to be some latent isolationism.
MacArthur an ‘all-American’
Why are the isolationists supporting Gen. MacArthur?
Mr. Hoyt replied:
Because they think he is all-American. Anybody who’s been out all over the world realizes that the other nations are trying to put it over America. Gen. MacArthur feels the same way, we think. We feel that the United States has to assert its own rights.
Mr. Hoyt, a tall, slender, amiable gentleman with thinning gray hair, a dabbler in Wisconsin politics for years and an engineer by profession, has traveled widely, particularly in the Orient. He has developed a strong anti-British attitude.
With a twinkle in his eye, he related that he was in charge of Wendell Willkie’s 1940 campaign meeting in Milwaukee.
He is directing the MacArthur campaign from three small, sparely furnished rooms in an old office building here. He has no paid staff. The movement is entirely voluntary, he said.
The “native son” angle is being stressed in the campaign. Gen. MacArthur went to grade school and high school here. From here he was appointed to West Point. His grandfather moved to Wisconsin in 1837 and was fifth governor of the state. His father was raised here.
The general is hailed in a campaign dodger widely distributed as a representative of “American interests,” for “his ability to make friends of labor” and as a military man and an administrator. A studied effort is made to meet the argument that the general should remain in command in the Pacific, which Mr. Hoyt labels as “that old New Deal propaganda,” by the counterargument that he should sit in Washington where, as President, he could direct the whole war.
Points to 1940 primary
Mr. Hoyt claims victory for Gen. MacArthur on the basis of the 1940 presidential primary here in which Governor Dewey got 60% of the votes – and all the delegates – and Senator Vandenberg of Michigan got 40%. He expects Gen. MacArthur, he said, to get the Vandenberg 40%, with the other 60% divided among the governor, Wendell Willkie and LtCdr. Stassen.
The former Dewey support, he contends, will be split with Messrs. Willkie and Stassen because Governor Dewey is classed as an “internationalist” on account of his advocacy of a British-American alliance at the Mackinac Conference last September.
With some pride, Mr. Hoyt related how President Roosevelt’s name was withdrawn from the popular preference vote – though a full slate of Roosevelt delegates are entered in the Democratic primary – just an hour after he had filed Gen. MacArthur’s name for the preference vote on the Republican ticket.
“They didn’t want a contrast,” he said.
Democrats are the third party in this state.
Willkie warns of invasion tie-up
Beloit, Wisconsin (UP) –
Although the Allied invasion of Europe will have a profound effect upon the thinking of the American people at election time, the crisis will not necessitate the reelection of President Roosevelt because the country never again will live in a placid hour, Wendell Willkie said yesterday.
Mr. Willkie, making a 13-day statewide pre-primary speaking tour on behalf of his slate of Republican delegate-candidates, predicted the western invasion would begin the next “two or three months.”
He said:
If the present administration is reelected on the basis that this will be a critical moment, it will be reelected again and again, and again because no one in this country who didn’t live before World War I will know what it is to live in a placid hour.
Mr. Willkie called upon the Republican Party to stand for “greater, more effective” contributions and sacrifice for the war.
He denied that a new President would “dismember” America’s fighting units, and said a new Chief Executive would “enliven the Army and give it new power and inspiration.”
Earlier in the day, in an address at Burlington, Wisconsin, Mr. Willkie said he was wholeheartedly behind the administration’s dealing with Éire, and didn’t believe Irish-American Democrats would swing over to the GOP because of the President’s stand.
Völkischer Beobachter (March 26, 1944)
Starke feindliche Durchbruchsversuche bei Cassino zusammengebrochen
Südliche Ostfront weiter in Brennpunkt der Kämpfe
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U.S. Navy Department (March 26, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 326
For Immediate Release
March 26, 1944
Before dawn on March 25 (West Longitude Date) Liberator bombers of the Eleventh Army Air Force bombed Paramushiru and Onekotan Islands in the Kuriles, and a Ventura search plane of Fleet Air Wing Four bombed Shimushu Island. One of our planes was lost.
On March 24 (West Longitude Date) a Coronado search plane of Fleet Air Wing Two bombed and sank two small cargo vessels near Ponape, and Mitchell medium bombers of the Seventh Army Air Force bombed the Ponape air strip and adjacent buildings. On the same day Dauntless dive bombers and Corsair fighters of the Fourth Marine Aircraft Wing, Mitchell bombers of the Seventh Army Air Force and Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two bombed and strafed three enemy positions in the Marshall Islands. All of our planes returned from these operations.
The Pittsburgh Press (March 26, 1944)
DEATH BLOW NEAR FOR RUINED BERLIN
Yank bombers to follow up record attack
RAF hits capital with 2,800 tons
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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Nazis regaining hold in Cassino
Germans reinforced through tunnels
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Japanese stab deeper into central India
Yanks and Chinese outflank enemy
By Darrell Berrigan, United Press staff writer
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Army bombers hit Wake Island
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