Government to lift corn freeze order
…
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
London, England – (by wireless)
You pick up a lot of funny stories as you wander around London. Maybe these little yarns have been printed before. If so, you’ll just have to excuse me on the grounds that I’ve been in another world for a long time.
One story has to do with Lt. Gen. Carl Spaatz, head of the American Army Air Forces here. One night he was standing on a balcony, watching a German raid on London. Their aim was very bad that night and they were dropping bombs miles from any target. Gen. Spaatz was furious. He turned to one of his fellow watchers and blurted out, “The damn fools. They’re setting bombing back 20 years.”
Another one has to do with the way Americans have flooded this island and nearly crowded the English off. Actually, the Americans aren’t bad and the English reception is good. Little stories like this help to keep us from getting on each other’s nerves. Americans tell it themselves, so it’s all night. the story is simply that one American said to another, “These English are beginning to act as if this country belonged to them.”
Meets friend’s sister
A year ago, I was with an infantry company of the 1st Division in those bitter mountain battles west of Mateur, in Tunisia. For three days I had been living in a tent with a British captain attached to us as a liaison officer. The night before an attack, he and I marched up to the lines with separate battalions of the same regiment.
Some of you may remember my writing about him at the time. Just after dawn the next day I saw a British officer being carried on a stretcher. When I ran over, sure enough it was my friend, Capt. Jack Morris Enfield. He was badly wounded in the back and arm. Our stretcher bearers carried him to the rear and I never saw him again.
Yesterday I was having lunch in an officer’s club when an American colonel I had known in Tunisia came over. He said he had a British girl at his table he’d like to me to meet. And when he introduced us, it was Capt. Enfield’s sister.
She said her brother had recovered. He still had some pain in his back, but she guessed he was all right as he was now in the paratroops. I had missed him in London by only 24 hours.
I suppose to give this story the proper ending Miss Enfield and I should get married and live happily ever after. That occurred to me too, but when I asked her, she said no. Oh well, lackaday.
Pyle sleeps through raid
You’ve probably heard what a frightful noise the new rocket guns in London make. At least I’d heard about it before coming up here.
Well, we’ve had a few minor raids since I arrived. On the first one I found I was so scared after our Anzio escape that all I could do was just lie there trying to get my breath. A fellow has a kind of cumulative fright after he has had a real close one.
I think also that I was so afraid to hear the awful noise of those rocket guns that I was practically paralyzed. Finally they did go off. I guess I had expected too much, for they didn’t horrify me half as much as I had thought they would. The noise itself isn’t so bad – it’s what it sounds like that terrifies you. For a rocket going up sounds like a bomb coming down. After you’ve learned that and adjusted yourself to it, rocket guns aren’t bad.
P.S.: A few nights later, we had the noisiest raid of my stay here and I slept through the whole thing. When the waiter came to the room next morning, he started talking about the raid and I said, “What raid?” He said, “Quit joking. Why, every gun in London was going last night.” But I didn’t wake up. I wish I could arrange it that way for all raids.
Americans fare well
We Americans in London fare very well on post-exchange rations. We are allowed seven packs of cigarettes a week, two bars of chocolate, two razorblades and a can of fruit juice.
In addition, we can buy such needs as soap, toothpaste, shaving cream, handkerchiefs, fountain pens and dozens of other little things. We aren’t suffering, I assure you.
And along that line, many readers at home are good enough to send me boxes. I appreciate them, but right now I would like to urge you not to send me any more. First, it needlessly takes up shipping space, and second, there isn’t a thing I need.
My family has begged me to ask them for something, but truthfully there’s nothing I want. Nothing, that is, except a dog and a sport roadster and a fireplace and my own easy chair and a dozen new books and lots of spare time. But of course, they all weigh over eight ounces, so never mind.
What’s going on behind the German defenses?
Tired and forlorn German people are kept gagged by Gestapo
Defeatism or bitterness talk brings hangings
By Nat A. Barrows
How tough an opposition will our invading forces encounter when they land in Western Europe? What is really going on behind Hitler’s Atlantic Wall? From his observation post in neighboring Sweden, Nat Barrows has been collecting closely guarded information about Germany’s ability and willingness to cope with the titanic forces assembled in England for Allied victory. In a most important series of articles, of which the following is the sixth, Mr. Barrows reveals many hitherto unknown facts about the men directing the German war effort, Germany’s heavy industry, and other hitherto undisclosed information about the German war machine.
Stockholm, Sweden –
A nation of sleepwalkers, apathetically groping through the darkness of the Gestapo inquisition, bleakly concerned with such basic facts of life as food, clothing, shelter and self-preservation; determined to fight the Allies to death rather than face what the Nazis have made them believe will be the terrible consequences of defeat – that is how Germany’s 80 million people today await the Allied invasion.
They are a people tired and overworked and haunted always by the fear of more Allied bombing raids.
They dare not even whisper of their discouragement and their bitterness. For defeatist talk, 10,000 Germans have perished before Gestapo firing squads or on Gestapo nooses in the past 12 months.
They hardly talk anymore, at least in public, about the war on the Russian front. And the Balkan campaign is in another world. They only shrug their shoulders when the retreat from Leningrad toward the Baltic States is mentioned.
‘Sword of Damocles’
It is the Allied blitz that the average German carries before him day and night. It hangs over every German like “The Sword of Damocles.” No one factor stabs more deeply into the consciousness of the German citizen unless it is Goebbels’ fiendishly successful propaganda campaign that defeat means extermination for every German.
The bomb warfare, in one way or another, is affecting the life of every single German. If he remains in Berlin or in other cities, he is never able to enjoy his sleep unbroken by the fear of another attack. Half of his life after dark is spent in crowded shelters.
If he lives in the country, he must share his quarters with evacuees from the cities.
Earlier in the raids evacuation from the cities brought many quarrels between hosts and evacuees, but such outbursts of torn nerves now are overshadowed by nationwide appreciation of the calamity.
Live in nightmare
Every report reaching Sweden from non-German sources relates how the Germans today seem to be in a nightmare, apathetic and hardly energetic enough for hatred.
What hatred they do express openly these days is directly largely against the Americans.
I have heard repeatedly how German crowds vent their anti-American spit against captured airmen by throwing stones at them, spitting at them and calling them vulgar names. One American airman, parachuting away from his wrecked Flying Fortress is reported to have escaped mob violence by quickly announcing that he was British, not American.
A partial explanation for this anti-American feeling is psychological: Germans often see American bombing raids. Forts and Liberators and their fighter escorts are there in the sky above them, visible and tangible. RAF night raids are shrouded in darkness.
Part of this explanation is an old story – Goebbels’ insidious propaganda against America.
Germans expect worst
Two outstanding characteristics of the German people must be appreciated by the Allies if we are going to understand the Nazi home front today. One is their sentiment, the other their toughness.
The Germans can take about as much suffering and hardship as any people in the world, and what is more, they are so constructed mentally that they always expect the worst.
This combination of sentiment and toughness, which often overflows into brutality, is enabling the Germans to withstand Allied bombing raids.
Thus, it is a fair deduction, viewing the picture factually and not wishfully, that it is practically impossible to bomb the German nation into moral collapse, at least on the present raiding scale. More to the point is the fact that RAF and USAAF raids are gradually destroying the Nazi administrative system. That is having an infinitely more serious action on the Nazi war effort than the effect of raids on civilian nerves.
TOMORROW: Germans exchange grim jokes but they cannot hide the fact that they’re suffering from irritation, overstrain and lack of nourishing food.
Dies Committee due to fade as leader quits
Texan not to stand for another term
…
Guard secrets, public urged
People warned again as invasion nears
…
Inductees should apply for 2 allowances
Dependents eligible for allotments
…
Clark returns to U.S. secretly
…
Völkischer Beobachter (May 14, 1944)
Beginn einer feindlichen Offensive –
Neue Schlacht bei Cassino entbrannt
…
U.S. Navy Department (May 14, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 401
For Immediate Release
May 14, 1944
Mitchell bombers of the 7th Army Air Force attacked Nauru Island on the morning of May 12 (West Longitude Date). Bombs were dropped on shore installations including an ammunition dump, phosphate works, and the airfield.
Enemy‑held positions in the Marshall Islands were attacked on May 12 by Corsairs and Dauntless dive bombers of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, Venturas and Catalinas of Fleet Air Wing Two, and Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force.
The Pittsburgh Press (May 14, 1944)
TANKS SMASH INTO ITALIAN BASE
Americans in anchor of German defenses; nine hills captured
Four other towns taken as Allies crack foe’s outer positions on 25-mile front
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
…
YANKS ROCK NAZI BALTIC PLANTS
Bombers raid plane factory, oil refinery
63 German planes are shot down
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
…