Editorial: Still the babies starve
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
Taking over a wrecked port and making it work is, like everything in war, first of all a matter of thorough organization.
At Anzio, the British Navy and the American Army have the thing organized down to a “t.” Soldier executives and clerks, sitting at regular desks in regular offices, do paperwork and make telephone calls and keep charts and make decisions just as they would in a shipping office in New York.
Seldom do three hours pass without shells or bombs shaking the town around then, and everywhere there is wreckage. Yet they have fixed up their offices and quarters in a fairly business-as-usual way.
When I walked into the Port Commander’s Office, who should it be but the same man I rode into Licata with on the morning of D-Day of the invasion of Sicily last July. He was a major then, but is now Lt. Col. Charles Monnier of Dixon and Tremont, Illinois. As an engineer, he has been helping capture ports and then turning them from chaos into usefulness ever since he hit Africa a year and a half ago.
In their wisdom built up through actual practice, such men as Col. Monnier know exactly what to look for, what to do and how to do it when they come in to work on the wreckage of a place like Anzio.
There is no guesswork about their progress. On the walls of the shipping room are big blackboards and charts and graphs. Hour by hour the total of the day’s supplies brought ashore is chalked up on the blackboard.
The big graph is brought up to date every evening. You can look back over it, and translate the activities of the past three months day by day, and see what happened and why.
Fuel dump innovation
Up here the Quartermaster Corps, which handles supplies after they are put ashore, has had to improvise and innovate. One of their main problems is how to keep gasoline fires from spreading when shells hit the dumps, which they do constantly.
So, Lt. Col. Cornelius Holcomb of Seattle had a brain throb. He had the gasoline dumps broken up into small caches, each bunch about as big as a room and about two cans high.
Then he had bulldozers dig up a thick-walled ditch around every cache. This shuts off the air that seeps in from the bottom and makes gasoline fires so bad. Since then they’ve had dozens of hits, but seldom a fire.
I was riding through the wreckage of Anzio and saw a big bulldozer in a vacant lot. On it was the name “Ernie,” spelled out in big blue metal letters wired to the radiator. So, I stopped to look into this phenomenon. The displayer of this proud name was Pvt. Ernie Dygert of Red Lodge, Montana. His father owns a big ranch there.
Young Dygert has driven trucks, ducks and bulldozers in the Army. His main job here is filling up shell craters. He doesn’t seem to mind living in Anzio (the same can’t be said for his namesake).
It’s the spirit that counts
Maj. John C. Strickland of Oklahoma City is the area quartermaster. On his desk is a unique paperweight – a small can of Vienna sausage.
His wife sent it to him. He keeps it as an ironic souvenir. He wrote her that as an Army quartermaster he handles millions of cans of it, and eats it in various forms a dozen times a week, but thanks anyway.
You’ve never seen a shell hit the water? Well, a dud makes a little white splash only a few feet high. A medium-sized shell makes a waterspout about a hundred feet high.
And one of the big shells makes a white geyser a couple of hundred feet in the air. A tall, thin, beautiful thing, like a real geyser, and out from it a quarter of a mile go little corollary white splashes as shrapnel gouges the surface.
Sometimes you hear the shell whine, see the geyser, hear the explosion and feel the concussion, all at once. That’s when they’re landing only 50 yards or so from you. And you’d just as soon they wouldn’t.
Biggest air battle in history –
U.S. airman marks 21st birthday in heavy Fortress raid over Berlin
Day marred by loss of dear friend
By Ira Wolfert, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Rosy post-war picture painted for airlines
Official says 1,000 planes will be bought
By Dale McFeatters, Press business editor
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Pitching puts Reds in line for pennant
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Williams: ‘Ever-loving’ simply can’t see our way
By Joe Williams
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Foreign policy to get test in Senate
Bipartisan showdown may affect campaign
By Jay G. Hayden, North American Newspaper Alliance
Washington –
A bipartisan showdown with regard to American foreign policy, which is bound to affect vitally the approaching presidential campaign and may determine this country’s international relationship for years to come, will get underway in a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee this week.
This is the committee asked by Secretary of State Cordell Hull “to secure as great unanimity among the American people and Congress as possible with respect to the basic post-war security program.”
Its membership consists of Democrats Chairman Tom Connally (D-TX), Walter F. George (D-GA), Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) and Guy M. Gillette (D-IA), Republicans Arthur H. Vandenberg (R-MI), Wallace White (R-ME) and Warren R. Austin (R-VT) and Progressive Robert M. La Follette (PR-WI).
La Follette opposed
A degree of friction entered into the formulation of the roster. The administration did not want Senator La Follette included in it, and when Senator Vandenberg, who had nominated Mr. La Follette as one of the three minority members, refused to proceed without him, one additional member was added each to the Democratic and Republican sides.
The obvious intention of this maneuver was to strengthen the administration hand, since Senator Austin has never varied even so much as a hair’s breadth from support of President Roosevelt’s foreign policies.
Senator Vandenberg’s position is understood to have been that Mr. La Follette was entitled to the place from the standpoints both of seniority and ability, and, in any event, there can be no real solidarity of American foreign policy unless it takes account of the Midwestern nationalism, for which Mr. La Follette speaks.
Full cooperation demanded
While nobody so far has been able to put their hands on it, there is rumored to have been a significant correspondence between the Republican and Democratic Senate wings.
The crux of the position of Senator Vandenberg, personally, is that he is willing to go the limit in bipartisan cooperation, even to the point of devoting all his time to the effort from now on and abstaining from any part in the approaching presidential campaign.
But, Mr. Vandenberg insists, this sort of cooperation is practicable only if it proceeds on the basis of a completely equal Democratic-Republican partnership in formulation of foreign policies and an equal Democratic abstinence from their use for electioneering purposes.
Electioneering fought
Particularly, Senator Vandenberg is said to have insisted that Mr. Roosevelt, no less than the State Department, must be completely tied into any interparty harmony arrangement that may be affected.
Reduced to its most blunt political implication, the Republicans intend to see to it that, if a bipartisan foreign policy entente is entered into, Mr. Roosevelt is foreclosed from going out in the weeks immediately before election and saying, “See how effectively I have brought the Republicans to heel.”
Post-war peace agency, arms pact urged by Governor Bricker
New York (UP) –
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker last night advocated an early agreement between the United Nations on post-war military strength and objectives, followed by establishment of a cooperative world peace agency when governments have been restored, as the first steps toward averting another world war.
Mr. Bricker said other essential steps include a joint study of the problems of international trade, tariffs and monetary stabilization, and the adoption of a strong, decisive policy by the United States.
At the same time, he charged that the New Deal failed to exercise “ordinary prudence” for national security before the war.
World police opposed
The American people, he said in an address at the Ohio Society of New York dinner, want no international police force and no super-government or dictatorial world state, but feel that the United States must take her place in a cooperative order of sovereign states supported by the will of the people.
Joint responsibility for world order until economic and political stability has been regained by individual nations must be assumed by the United States, Great Britain, Russia and China, he recommended.
Mr. Bricker said:
This means that these four great powers should agree now to maintain adequate military, naval and airpower in the immediate post-war period.
‘Mutual understanding’
This does not mean an international police force, or a military alliance… it does contemplate a mutual understanding as to their respective military establishments and that they shall express that understanding in a temporary and transitional compact to be entered into as soon as possible.
Assailing U.S. foreign policy of the past decade as an unwise “course of day-to-day diplomacy,” Mr. Bricker said the State Department must again be permitted to exercise the responsibility vested in it. This country has the “know-how” in international relations, he said, “and a Republican administration will use it.”
He charged the Roosevelt administration with too often exhibiting indecision in dealings with other nations, and asserted that the nation’s ideals must not go by default in this war.
Must guard principles
He said:
America’s cooperation with other nations must not be at the expense of her principles, her honor, her ideals or her form of government. But I believe we can have international cooperation with justice and with honor, and that America must play her full part and do her full share.
Promises to do more than can be performed will breed ill will and hate, he said, adding:
There must be open and frank consideration of our responsibilities. There must be no secret international agreements affecting the post-war world. International goodwill can be developed by open and honest dealing with other nations and by keeping our commitments.
Lack of prudence shown
In his attack on Roosevelt’s pre-war policies, Mr. Bricker said that the New Deal failed to fulfill its obligation to protect the Philippines “in the face of Japan’s growing power” and sought to appease Japan despite the warnings of Ambassador Joseph C. Grew.
He added that after Hitler seized the power in Germany, the government did not exercise “ordinary prudence” for national security and took no heed of gathering clouds of war.
Völkischer Beobachter (April 27, 1944)
Die Kriegslage in Pazifik –
USA zieht die Flugzeugträger zurück
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U.S. Navy Department (April 27, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 379
For Immediate Release
April 27, 1944
Gen. Douglas MacArthur (CINCSWPA) and Adm. C. W. Nimitz (CINCPACFLTPOA) recently conferred regarding the future operations in the Pacific of their two commands.
Plans were completely integrated so that a maximum of cooperative effort might be executed against the enemy.
The Pittsburgh Press (April 27, 1944)
Yank fliers rake France
Thousands of bombers step up offensive on its 11th straight day
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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