Acquittal plea lost by officers
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Mistakes blamed for war’s lag
Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
Former Massachusetts Governor Joseph B. Ely, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, charged last night that mistakes of the “Communist-CIO-New Deal combination” have prolonged the war and cost the lives of American soldiers.
Mr. Ely told a Jeffersonian Democrats’ meeting:
The morale of the German people is sustained by the faults and inadequacies of the Roosevelt administration which will be the cause of sacrificing our sons, brothers, husbands and sweethearts.
Urging defeat of a fourth term, Mr. Ely asked:
Who are the fourth-term proponents? There is Earl Browder, the Communist; Sidney Hillman, the CIO revolutionary, and David Niles and John McCormack of the palace guard. What a strange conglomeration of bedfellows are lying down to sleep in the bed of Thomas Jefferson.
Mr. Ely will head an anti-Roosevelt slate on the April 25 Massachusetts presidential primaries.
Editorial: The MacArthur letters
Gen. MacArthur is the victim of careless letter-writing and of a friend who made public two of the general’s answers to fan mail. That seems to be the net of the incident caused by Rep. A. L. Miller’s publication of his correspondence with the general last fall and two months ago.
Why the freshman Nebraska Congressman, a leader in the Draft-MacArthur-for-President movement, should thus embarrass the general is not clear.
Since the general did not publicly request withdrawal of his name from primaries in which he was entered without authorization, he is in the position of an inactive though receptive candidate. But he has not publicly admitted that much, as has LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen.
Presumably the general’s unwillingness to fight for the nomination, or to participate in public debate, results from his feeling that a man cannot conduct a military campaign and a personal political campaign at the same time. Certainly Gen. MacArthur’s friends and backers – of all people – should respect this.
The private MacArthur statements in the letters are of three kinds:
First, in his October reply to Mr. Miller’s September statement that he could get the presidential nomination and carry every state, the general said: “I do not anticipate in any way your flattering predictions.”
Second, in the same letter, the general told Mr. Miller, “I do unreservedly agree with the complete wisdom and statesmanship of your comments.” This was an apparent reference to Mr. Miller’s assertion that “unless this New Deal can be stopped this time, our American way of life is forever doomed.”
When Mr. Miller in January deplored “this monarchy which is being established in America.” Gen. MacArthur replied to his “scholarly letter” that “we must not inadvertently slip into the same condition internally as the one which we fight externally.”
This, of course, was an extreme partisan implication, as unworthy of the general as Vice President Wallace’s loose “Fascist” name-calling is unworthy of him.
Third, when Mr. Miller criticized the allocation of war supplies to the Pacific, the general replied: “Out here we are doing what we can with what we have. I will be glad, however, when more substantial forces are placed at my disposal.” Like all commanders, Gen. MacArthur naturally would like stronger forces. But that is a decision for the General Staff to make in line with global strategy, not a subject for a subordinate commander to discuss with a civilian.
It is regrettable that Gen. MacArthur wrote these letters, even if they might have been written in confidence. The Allies need great generals, and Gen. MacArthur is one of them. To permit a political indiscretion to detract from his military prestige is seriously unfortunate.
Pipeline plans shift to suit Egyptian King
Farouk first said no; then he says maybe
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Wanton waste of funds charged
$65-million plant now idle
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Poll: Rank and file in the West back Dewey
New York Governor reached new high
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
One night I stayed in an officers’ dugout with Maj. Asbury Lee of Clearfield, Pennsylvania, and Capt. Charles H. Hollis of Clemson, South Carolina.
Maj. Lee is commander of a tank battalion. His nickname is “Az,” and his father-in-law owns the “Lee-Hoffman’s Famous Foods” restaurant in Cresson, Pennsylvania. Maj. Lee has a boy named Asbury Lee IV and a baby named Robert E. Lee.
Capt. Hollis is Maj. Lee’s executive, and was a good friend of the late correspondent Ben Robertson, who came from his hometown.
It was very dark in the dugout when Capt. Hollis got up to start the fire in the stove next morning. He fumbled around on the dirt floor for papers to use as kindling, threw in a handful, and finally got the fire going.
A little later he discovered that he had burned up three rolls of film that Maj. Lee had taken in the last few days. Later on, he discovered that he hadn’t burned up the film after all. Life at the front is very confusing.
After breakfast, Maj. Lee and I got in a jeep and drove a couple of miles up to where two companies of his tanks were bivouacked just back of the infantry.
On the way up we were sailing along across a rise when, “Bang,” an 88 shell landed 20 yards to the side of us. Aren’t you getting tired of hearing about shells landing 20 yards from me? In case you’re not, I sure am.
German fliers downed
Two minutes after this small episode we heard noises in the sky and looked up, and here came two planes falling earthward with smoke swirling behind them. Both hit just over the rise from us, close together and only a few seconds apart.
Only one parachute came down. It took it a long time, and the aviator lay very still when he hit the earth. Our medics ran out with a stretcher and got him. He was a German. A 20mm bullet had hit him from behind and lodged in his stomach. An ambulance came and took him away.
The boys cut up his parachute to make scarves, and cut one off for me. But I told them I already had two – one American and one German – and to give it to somebody else.
Hats off to infantry
After this exciting beginning of a new day, I went around picking up tank lore.
I found that tankers, like everybody else, take their hats off to the infantry.
The average doughfoot or airman says you’d never get him shut up in a tank. Once in a while you do get a tankman who has a feeling of claustrophobia about being cooped up in there, but it’s very seldom.
The boys say that more than half of them get safely out of damaged tanks, even the ones that catch fire. They tell funny stories about how four and five men come out of a burning tank all at once, when it isn’t actually possible for more than two to get through the door at the same time.
They hate snipers worse than anything else. That is because visibility is pretty poor in a tank and the commander usually rides with his door open and his head sticking out. Unseen snipers are always shooting at them.
Improvements on tanks
The boys showed me all the little improvements that have come out on recent tanks. And they also wondered why tank designers haven’t thought of some of the simplest things for making tank life more practical – such as putting racks for water cans on the rear, and a bracket where you could tie your bedding roll.
The men have welded on these necessary racks for their gear.
An armored unit’s fighting usually comes in spurts, with long intervals between.
When the tank boys are in a lull, they are used for emergency jobs. This is very unusual, but here on the beachhead everybody has to do a little of everything.
Nearly every day the men of the tank crews back in bivouac have a detail starting just at dawn. They carry mines and barbed wire up to the front for the engineers to put in place. They pack the stuff on their backs, and they don’t like it, but they do it without grumbling.