G-men peer into carburetors of some Hollywood stars
…
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
Our artillery up here is terrific. The beachhead being as small as it is, we can, whenever we wish, train every gun in the 5th Army forces on a single German target.
In my wartime life, I’ve had a good many stray shells in my vicinity, but not until I came to the beachhead was I ever under an actual artillery barrage.
The Germans shell us at intervals throughout the day and night, but usually there are just one or two shells at a time, with long quiet periods in between.
The other night, however, they threw a real barrage at us. It was short, but boy, it was hot. Shells were coming faster than you could count them. One guess is as good as another, but I’d estimate that in two minutes they put 150 shells in our area.
I was in bed, in a stone house, when it started, and I stayed in bed, too, simply because I was afraid to get up. I just reached out and put my steel helmet on, and covered my head with a quilt, and lay there all drawn up in a knot.
Shells came past the corner of the house so close their mere passage would shake the windows. A shell that close doesn’t whine or whistle. It just goes “Whish-bang!” The whole house was rattling and trembling from constant nearby explosions. The noise under a barrage is muddling and terrifying. Of course, we had casualties, but our own house came through unscathed.
That little barrage seemed awful to us and it was awful, but just think – we had maybe 150 shells around us in two minutes, but I know of cases where our guns have fired incessantly hour after hour until we have put 30,000 shells in a single German area.
We have had reports that the Germans were burying their dead with bulldozers, there were so many of them.
Visitors are ones who get hit
I had lunch with one of our artillery batteries which shoots the big Long Toms. They’ve been in the thick of the fighting since a year ago December – three phases of Tunisia, then Sicily, then through the Salerno-Cassino push. Yet they’ve fired more rounds since they’ve been sitting here in one spot on the Anzio beachhead than they did in the entire year before that. And they told me of another battery which fired more in four hours one night than in the previous eight months.
The Germans throw so much stuff back at them that the fields around them are gradually being plowed up. Yet this battery has had nobody killed, and only a few wounded.
They told of one soldier who was standing in a ditch the other day with one foot up on the bank. An 88 shell went right between his legs, bored into the bottom of the ditch, blew an artillery rangefinder all to pieces, and never scratched the fellow. But after it was over, he was so scared he was sick for two days.
The men of this battery say that people who come to visit them, such as nearby ack-ack crews, road patrols and ammunition truckers, are always the ones who get hit. Being in the visitor category myself, I said a quick goodbye and was last seen going rapidly around an Italian straw stack.
Won’t chalk any more shells
One gun of this battery, incidentally, has a funny little superstition. It seems that on the very first shell they ever fired when they hit Africa, in 1942, they chalked a message – the kind you’ve seen in photographs – saying “Christmas Greetings to Hitler,” and all put their names on it.
They sent the shell over, and immediately the Germans sent one back which exploded so close to the gun pit it wounded seven of the 12 men who had chalked their names on the American shell. From that day to this, that crew won’t chalk anything on a shell.
One day an Army photographer came around to take some pictures of this gun crew firing. He asked them to chalk one of those Hitler messages on the shell.
The crew obliged and he took the picture. But what the photographer doesn’t know is that the shell was never fired. After the photographer left, they carried it up the hillside, dug a hole and buried it.
Kite Doctors – India
Former clerks and salesmen are now crack mechanics
By Sgt. Charles M. Sievert
…
Unfit for fighting –
Army’s NP dischargees make excellent workers in war jobs
Consideration of employers and care in placing of men are needed
By Marjorie Van de Water
Men discharged from the Army for neuropsychiatric disability are employable. In fact, most of them will make excellent workers in essential war jobs. But they needed consideration on the part of employers and care in placement.
As a rule, these men feel badly at being out of the Army. They don’t want to go back into combat – they have had a little more of that than their nervous systems could tolerate. But neither do they want to be left out of things. They are eager to do whatever they can to hasten victory.
Some will not want to take a job right away. They want a little time to get reacquainted with their families, to hunt up old friends, to take a look at the old familiar places. If they feel this way, they shouldn’t be rushed into a job. Let them take it easy a while.
It is well for the employer to remember that the type of person who cracks up in military life is nearly always an overconscientious sort of person. The “goldbricker” manages to escape strain; it is the man who won’t shirk and who faces the music who is the one to break. When such a man wants a day or an hour off, you can be sure he really needs it.
Advice from psychiatrists
Here is some advice for employers, gathered from psychiatrists who have been caring for these men:
Don’t heap lots of responsibility on them. Work it in gradually as they grow more used to civilian life and feel stronger. Remember that it may take a year or two before the discharged soldier has recovered completely from what he has gone through.
If the man has come away from the Army oversensitive to noise, be careful not to employ him where he will be exposed to sudden, crashing noise. The hum of machinery may not bother him much, but clanging steel, the noise of riveting, sudden loud bells or whistles may be unbearable.
*Lonely jobs taboo
Don’t give him a job as night watchman in the mistaken but well-meaning notion that it will be light work for him. Loneliness and time for thought are just the things these men do not need. Give him a job where he will be active and pleasantly occupied every minute.
Most of these men do poorly on sedentary work. After an active life in the Army, don’t expect them to sit still at a desk all day long. If you give a man a desk job, plan frequent breaks that will give him a little leg-stretching exercise. Hard work out-of-doors such as farm work is the best possible sort for most of them. It gives them little time to think during the day and makes it easier for them to sleep at night.
Consult his work record
The worst possible type of work for the soldier discharged for neuropsychiatric reasons is that which entails long dull periods of slack work punctuated by peaks of exciting bustle and rush. This, after all, is what he could not stand up under in the Army. Waiting gives time for thinking and brooding. Thinking and brooding lead to depression and the blues. Then the brief spurt of rush work puts the man under acute strain for which he is not fit.
In deciding how the discharged soldier would fit into a particular business or manufacturing organization, the employer should be guided more by the man’s work record before he went into the Army than by any account of his illness or experience in service. If he has a record of failures, tardiness, absenteeism, illness, and temperamental differences with employers and fellow employees, the chances are not good that he will make a model employee now. But if his work records shows he was a steady, reliable worker before the war, you can count on him to be an asset to your company now, once the training and adjustment period is past.
NEXT: Family can help soldier back to health.
Steel company buys first of U.S. properties
Bethlehem exercises option on equipment
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
…
Vince DiMaggio signs Buc contract
Last holdout in fold at club’s terms
…
Durocher admits temporary return as infield support
…
Williams: It’s derby, not darby, on good old U.S. parlance
By Joe Williams
…
Radio hospital guest –
Army sets time for network sports hour
Athlete stars to call on soldiers
By Si Steinhauser
…
U.S. State Department (April 6, 1944)
740.0011 European War 1939/33870a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Switzerland
Washington, April 6, 1944 — 9 p.m.
1176
I. To the end of implementing our 1147, April 5, please place at the disposal of the Swiss Government at once one million dollars and say under instructions that these funds are for the use of the Swiss Government to begin immediately compensation to the victims of the accident in such manner and amounts as in the opinion of the Swiss Government will be most equitable and efficient in relieving the victims’ distress. Please also say that such additional funds as may be required in the opinion of the Swiss Government will be made available immediately upon receipt from it of information as to the amounts required.
You may say orally that for our part, we plan no publicity whatsoever regarding this action.
II. For your guidance: It is the desire of the War Department that we meet without question such bills in this matter as the Swiss Government may present to us hence please do not give the Swiss the impression that we expect any accounting as such of the funds we make available. You may in fact state that all we desire from them is a statement of the amounts required for the full monetary reparation of the damages by our bombers in this instance.
III. Daymont is authorized to draw draft in this exceptional case on Secretary of State and against this instruction for one million dollars to effect payment. Render separate account.
HULL
Völkischer Beobachter (April 7, 1944)
‚Weltbeglückung‘ und Wirklichkeit –
Elend und Not für die ‚befreiten‘ Völker
Hunger in Süditalien, Klagen englischer Soldatenfrauen – Kapital- und Dividendensorgen der Plutokraten
…
5-Uhr-Tee in Washington
„So werden einsehen, Mister Halifax, mehr brauchen Palästina für die armen Juden. Was sollen mehr hier in USA mit die vielen Schnorrer!“
U.S. Navy Department (April 7, 1944)
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 42
Supplementing Pacific Ocean Areas Communiqué No. 41, the following information is now available concerning operations of USPACFLT forces under the tactical command of Adm. R. A. Spruance, USN, against enemy installations and forces in the Western Carolines. The Palau Islands were attacked on March 29‑30 (West Longitude Date); Yap and Ulithi Islands on March 30 and Woleai Island on March 31 by planes from carrier task forces commanded by VAdm. Marc A. Mitscher, USN. Damage to enemy surface ships at Palau included:
SUNK: Two destroyers, one unidentified combat ship, two large cargo vessels, six medium cargo vessels, eight small cargo vessels, three large oilers, one medium oiler, one small oiler, one patrol vessel.
DAMAGED: One destroyer.
BEACHED AND BURNING: One large repair ship, one medium oiler, two small oilers, one small cargo vessel.
BURNING: Two small cargo vessels.
BEACHED AND DAMAGED: One large cargo vessel, two medium cargo vessels, five small cargo vessels.
BEACHED: One small cargo vessel.
GROUND INSTALLATIONS DESTROYED AT PALAU: Forty buildings at Arakabesan; at seaplane base four hangars and small buildings; at Malakal, more than twenty warehouses destroyed and extensive damage to docks and numerous large fires; at Koror, warehouses, dumps and hangars destroyed; at Angaur, phosphate plant damaged including docks and storage buildings; at Babelthuap, ore dock damaged.
ENEMY AIRCRAFT CASUALTIES AT PALAU: Destroyed airborne, 93; destroyed ground or water, 39. Probably destroyed or damaged airborne, 29; probably destroyed or damaged on ground or water, 20.
At Ulithi, several small vessels were sunk, the dock, radio station and other buildings damaged.
At Yap, airdrome facilities and buildings in the settlement were damaged.
At Woleai, seven planes were destroyed and five probably destroyed and extensive ground installations were damaged on Mariaon and Woleai Islands, including stores, dumps, buildings, and small craft.
During the night preceding and following our attacks on Palau, our carrier aircraft shot down 17 attacking enemy planes and four were shot down by ships’ anti-aircraft batteries. Three small enemy ships were also sunk at sea by ships’ gunfire.
During the night of March 28 (West Longitude Date), one of our submarines torpedoed an enemy battleship of unidentified class departing Palau under escort. Although she suffered considerable damage, she was able to escape at moderate speed under protection of her destroyer escort.
Our combat losses in these operations were 25 planes and 18 aircraft personnel. There was no damage to our surface ships.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 342
For Immediate Release
April 7, 1944
Forty‑four tons of bombs were dropped on Wake Island by Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force on the night of April 5‑6 (West Longitude Date). Large explosions were observed in storage areas and in an area devoted to repair and maintenance of aircraft.
On the same day, Mitchell bombers of the 7th Army Air Force bombed Ponape Island starting a large fire on one of the airfields.
Four enemy positions in the Marshall Islands were bombed and strafed by Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two, Dauntless dive bombers and Corsair fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, Mitchell bombers of the 7th Army Air Force, and Navy Hellcat fighters. Runways were hit and gun positions strafed. All of our planes returned from all of these operations.