OWI perfects plan to speed invasion news
‘Preparation’ of Europe is also mapped
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Danish underground helps Fortress crew to escape
Nine uninjured Americans rest in Stockholm, waiting for trip to England – and more raids
By Nat A. Barrows
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Aluminum foil cuts losses of Allied raiders
Strips draw fire of Nazi radar guns
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Top ace treats reporter to ‘piggyback’ ride in P-38
‘Hang onto teeth,’ Bong tells writer
By Francis L. McCarthy, United Press staff writer
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Foster: Teen years big handicap, says Gloria de Haven
Will be glad when she’s old enough to be ‘an actress’
By Ernest Foster
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$6,540 sting for each WASP –
Army drops male pilots, but trains ‘green’ women
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Army to release ‘human guineas’
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Editorial: Wallace’s junket
The President seems to have a dual purpose in shipping the Vice President off to China. He wants to take the heat off Henry here at home in the pre-convention period. And he wants to counteract, with a few kind words to the Chinese, the British reverses in Burma and India. But we wouldn’t put much money on the line that this junket will succeed.
It is not hard to figure why the President would like to get Mr. Wallace out of the country for a while. Though the Senate has a heavy schedule ahead, he is not particularly needed there as a presiding officer – in fact some are unkind enough to suggest that things will go better without him. He is unpopular with the Southern and conservative groups of the party, which the President is trying to butter up in a campaign year.
If the President decides to force him as a vice-presidential candidate on the next Democratic convention as in 1940, will that task be easier if Mr. Wallace remains out of sight and sound for two or three months? Our guess is that the President has not yet made up his mind whether he will run again, or if so, made his choice for second place on the ticket.
But since left-wing help will be needed in the campaign, he apparently intends to use Mr. Wallace in some capacity. We doubt, however, that Mr. Wallace’s absence will have made the party heart grow any fonder by the time he returns for the convention.
The Chinese situation is more important than the political fortunes of Mr. Wallace, and even less likely to be changed by the President’s simple device of sending him on a trip. Chinese morale is low, because they have fought a long time without appreciable help. Repeated promises have grown dangerously thin. Words, however eloquent and sincere, will not serve for weapons – the weapons required to stand off the Japs, much less lick them.
Why expect Mr. Wallace, a year later, to impress the Chinese with American good intentions if that was not achieved by Congress and the President personally when Mme. Chiang Kai-shek came here asking aid? Americans, for selfish as well as for humanitarian reasons, know that China must be liberated before Japan can be defeated. But it is now a matter of performance.
Our real ambassadors of goodwill to China are Adm. Nimitz, Gen. MacArthur, Gen. Stilwell and Gen. Chennault. Messengers of regret to Chungking, with alibis for the failure of the over-advertised Mountbatten offensive to get started before the rainy season, can accomplish nothing. If Mr. Wallace has powers of persuasion, he had better spend them in London and New Delhi.
Bricker: Great era near
Los Angeles, California (UP) –
Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio will arrive today for a 36-hour visit to wind up the West Coast lap of a swing around the country to spur his nomination as Republican candidate for President.
He will deliver three major addresses and confer with Republican leaders before returning to Columbus, making a brief stopover in Phoenix, Arizona, to attend a special session of the Arizona Legislature.
Mr. Bricker, speaking before the California Republican Assembly at San Jose last night, said he was convinced that America “is at the threshold of its greatest era.”
He said:
Let us have faith that in the period ahead, America may help bring a better life and greater freedom to the peoples of the world, that the wounds of war and bitter hatreds which follow may be healed.
Earlier, in a press conference at Sacramento, Mr. Bricker said he was “shooting at the top” and would not be satisfied with being Vice President.
Washington opinion –
MacArthur puts self on ‘available’ list
Vandenberg, leading supporter, silent
Washington (UP) –
Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s statement on American political affairs was interpreted here today as indicating his availability for a draft to the Republican presidential nomination despite his decision not to press active candidacy.
Political observers counted it significant that Gen. MacArthur did not specifically eliminate himself for consideration as the GOP’s 1944 standard-bearer, although his statement could have been a vehicle for such an elimination.
With ‘availables’
The statement thus appeared to place Gen. MacArthur alongside New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey and LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen as “available” for the Republican nomination. Of the leading GOP possibilities, only Ohio Governor John W. Bricker is an announced candidate.
Gen. MacArthur’s statement was issued primarily to clear up his part in the publication of correspondence between him and Rep. A. L. Miller (R-NE), an active MacArthur-for-President supporter who released the letters last week.
Gen. MacArthur said the letters were neither intended for publication nor politically inspired, strongly implying that Mr. Miller had violated confidence by revealing them to the press.
Vandenberg silent
Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg (R-MI), a leading MacArthur supporter, declined to comment on the general’s statement.
Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-NY) said:
It bears out Gen. MacArthur’s earlier assertions that he is not a candidate for office. He might accept it if were offered to him – as anyone would.
Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) said he thought the letters made public by Mr. Miller:
…indicated MacArthur’s availability but his statement that he is interested solely in winning the war must be taken at face value because of the magnificent and courageous job that he has done.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
Here on the Anzio beachhead, nobody is immune.
It’s not only a standing joke, but a standing fact, that a lot of frontline people would not voluntarily come back into the hot Anzio-Nettuno area for a small fortune.
People whose jobs through all the wars of history have been safe ones up here are as vulnerable as the fighting man. Bakers and typewriter repairmen and clerks are not absolved from shells and bombs. Table waiters are in the same boat.
When I’m back in the harbor area writing, I eat at a mess for staff officers. Twice within 10 days, big shells have demolished buildings on either side of this mess.
The four boys who serve us here asked if I would mention them in the paper. I said I certainly would, not only because they’re doing a dangerous job but also because they are four of the most courteous and best-dispositioned men I’ve ever met. They are:
Cpl. Harold Gibson of Booth Bay Harbor, Maine; Pvt. Lloyd Farlee of Pierce, Nebraska; Pvt. Herb Wullschleger of Wichita, Kansas, and Pvt. Charles Roderick of Salem, Massachusetts.
The girl he left behind
Here is a sad story. It concerns a tank driver named Cpl. Donald Vore, a farm boy from Auxvasse, Missouri.
The corporal had a girl back home he was crazy about. After he came to Italy, she sent a beautiful, new, big photograph of herself. Like more tankmen, he carried it with him in his tank.
The other day, a shell hit the tank. It caught fire, and the whole crew piled out and ran as far as they could. Cpl. Vore had gone a little way when he suddenly stopped, turned, and went dashing back to the tank.
Flames were shooting out of it, and its heavy ammunition was beginning to go off. But he went right into the flaming tank, disappeared a moment, and came climbing out – with his girl’s picture safely in his hand.
A few hours later, the crew came trudging back to home base. Mail had arrived during their absence. There was a letter for Cpl. Vore from his girl. He tore it open. The letter was merely to tell him she had married somebody else.
They said that if it hadn’t been such a long walk back, and he hadn’t been so tired. Cpl. Vore would have returned to his tank and deposited the picture in the flames.
About a year ago, I wrote an item about the numerous uses we had found for the brushless shaving cream issued to frontline troops.
Its virtues are legion. It is perfect for sun and windburn, nurses shampoo their hair in it, it soothes fleabites and softens chapped hands and cracked fingers. And now the soldiers have discovered that if they’ll massage their feet with it once a day, it goes a long way toward preventing the dreaded trench foot.
It’s a shame somebody doesn’t shave with it once in a while.
The relaxation of death
Some soldiers were telling me the other day about running onto another soldier stretched out in the back seat of a jeep, way up front, almost in No-Man’s-Land.
His helmet was down over his eyes, and he had a half-smoked cigar in his mouth. They were in dangerous territory, and they went to take a closer look at a soldier so nonchalant.
He was dead. A sniper had shot him through the back of the helmet. He was just lying there, looking perfectly relaxed, the cigar still in his mouth. He had been dead two days.
The other day, I ran onto Maj. Henry Frankel of Brooklyn.
I’ve been crossing his trail ever since July of 1942 in Ireland, and every time I see him, he has gone up a notch in rank. When I first knew him, he was a lieutenant.
Maj. Frankel speaks about eight languages, but as far as I can see, a man with his luck doesn’t need to speak anything. Listen to this –
The other day, he was digging a dugout in the backyard of a place he had picked out for billeting, and he dug up a case and a half of fine cognac, numerous bottles of Benedictine, anisette and old wines, a box of silverware, and a gallon of olive oil.
Being an honest man, Maj. Frankel hunted up the Italian owner who had buried it, and gave him back everything except the 18 bottles of cognac. These he kept as a reminder of his own meticulous honesty, and shared them with other patched and deserving Americans.
It ain’t all marching –
Infantry trained to meet ‘first team’ of enemy
By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Bravery cited by Pyle –
Officer who tried to take tank with pistol escapes
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War expansion peak passed, bureau says
Prospects for output gain held slight
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End of price control urged at war’s end
Economist asks U.S. to reassure business
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