U.S. admiral asks beer for sailors aboard ships
…
‘Fella belong American’ he strong
Big boom-boom tells natives Japs are gone; Cape Gloucester fellas forsake their caves
By Staff Sgt. Gerald A. Waindel, USMC combat writer
…
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
London, England – (by wireless)
This will give you a rough idea of how big we have got over here:
In London’s West End there is a mess for American officers. They believe it to be the biggest Army-officers’ mess in the world. Sometimes they serve 6,000 meals a day.
Transients in town on leave do eat at this mess, but the bulk of the diners are officers from our headquarters staffs in London – and not all our staffs are in London, by any means.
This vast dining room seats nearly a thousand people, and sometimes it will be emptied and refilled in one continuous operation during one meal. The mass of humanity flows through so smoothly that the mess is affectionately known as “Willow Run.”
This mess is in Grosvenor House, one of London’s biggest hotels. The dining room is just one vast space, with no pillars in it. It is two stories high, with a balcony running around it. On one side of the balcony is a bar.
Willow Run is operated cafeteria style, but you eat at tables seating four, on white linen and with everything very civilized. Every meal costs the same – 50 cents. Everybody says it’s the best food in London. A flossy hotel would charge you $3 for less.
The food is about what you have back home – porkchops, mashed potatoes, sometimes fried chicken, once in a whole steak. I’ve had enlisted men tell me the Army messes in London are better than in America. All the food, except vegetables, is from America.
Willow Run believes it has the lowest wastage rate in the world. They make a fetish of your eating every bite you take. They aren’t joking about it, either. Three officers work up and down the dining room constantly. If they catch somebody leaving something on his tray, they take his name and turn him in. He gets a warning letter.
If a man’s name is turned in twice, he has to explain formally why he left food on his tray. And if it should happen a third time, well, the lieutenant showing me around shook his head gravely and said, “I hate to think what they’d do to him.” It hasn’t happened three times yet to anybody.
Ernie’s afraid to eat at Willow Run
The general who commands all these Army messes really means business on this food wastage. He comes around every day or so and inspects the throwaways. If there have been complaints from the diners that a certain item wasn’t good the general will say, “The hell it isn’t,” and pick up something from the discard and eat it himself.
I seldom eat in Willow Run, because they’ve got me scared to death. I’m such a small eater I can never get the girls behind the counter to put little enough on my tray. The result is I eat till I’m bulging and sick.
This vast Willow Run is operated by three Army officers, a WAC dietitian, seven sergeants and about 500 British employees, men and women both.
The boss is Maj. Walter Stansbury, who was vice president of the Hotel Goldsboro, in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He is assisted by Capt. Francis Madden, who was executive assistant at the Kenmore in Boston for 12 years, and Lt. Truett Gore, assistant manager of the Hilton Hotel in El Paso. The dietitian is Lt. Ethel Boelts of Archer, Nebraska.
I didn’t get to meet all the sergeants, but was shown around by three of them. They are executives over their special departments and have dozens of people working under them.
Sgt. Carroll Chipps runs the bakeshop, where they bake around 10,000 rolls and cakes per meal. He formerly managed the soda fountain at Rand’s Drugstore in Morgantown, West Virginia.
Another sergeant has charge of preparing all the food for cooking. You go into his department and you’ll see 20 women in one room peeling potatoes, a roomful of butchers cutting up meat, and three women who do nothing all day long but roll butter into little round balls between two wooden paddles for serving on individual bread plates.
This man is Sgt. Joseph Julian of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He has run restaurants all over America, following fairs and expositions. He has made seven world’s fairs. He used to run the Taproom in Dallas and the Silver Rail on Market Street in San Francisco.
National anthem
Sgt. Milburn Palmer has charge of the kitchen. He has been in the Army seven years, but he, too, is a restaurant man. He has the Chicken Shack at Sabinal, Texas, his hometown.
Odd things happen in an establishment this big. One day, Lt. Gore saw two captains, very rough and dirty-looking, being refused service by the girl in charge of the cafeteria counter. He went over to investigate and found they’d just flown in from Italy. He ordered them served despite their unconventional (for London) appearance.
When Willow Run first opened, it broadcast phonograph music, which has since been stopped. One day, the British boy who flipped off the records went to sleep or something, and “The Star-Spangled Banner” got on the machine. Everybody in the huge dining room stood up while it played. They had no sooner sat down than it started again, and everybody hopped up and stood at attention. This up-and-down business went on till the record had played four times.
Finally, somebody got the boy back on the job and something else on the machine.
Völkischer Beobachter (May 16, 1944)
Spekulation mit dem Kriegsgeschehen –
Blutrausch der Börsenhyänen
…
U.S. Navy Department (May 16, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 404
For Immediate Release
May 16, 1944
Two hundred and forty tons of bombs were dropped on Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands during daylight on May 14 (West Longitude Date) and during the night of May 14‑15 in a coordinated aerial assault by aircraft of the 7th Army Air Force, Fleet Air Wing Two, and the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing. Two hundred and eighty‑four sorties were flown by Liberator and Mitchell bombers, Dauntless dive bombers, and Corsair and Hellcat fighters. Targets were cannoned by Mitchell bombers and strafed by Hellcat fighters. Attacks were made at altitudes ranging from 50 feet to 10,000 feet. Anti-aircraft fire ranged from moderate to meager. Eight of our aircraft received minor damage but all returned safely.
Other objectives in the Marshalls were harassed on May 14 and until dawn on May 15 by 7th Army Air Force Liberators, Dauntless dive bombers of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, and Ventura and Catalina search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two.
A single search plane of Fleet Air Wing Four bombed Shimushu in the Kurils on the night of May 14 (West Longitude Date). No opposition was encountered.
A search plane of Fleet Air Wing Two dropped four 1,000‑pound bombs on a medium size cargo vessel at anchor in Truk Lagoon before dawn on May 14. Another Fleet Air Wing Two search plane bombed and strafed the airstrip at Puluwat Island on May 14. Anti-aircraft fire was moderate.
The Pittsburgh Press (May 16, 1944)
GUSTAV LINE FLANK COLLAPSING
6 more towns, 1,000 prisoners taken in Italy
Nazis withdrawing to ‘Hitler front’
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
…
Transmission history made –
Invasion news will be flashed direct from London to Pittsburgh
Test message from United Press sets new record for split-second coverage
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
…
Chinese speed toward Burma
Advance under strong U.S. aerial support
…
240 tons hit Marshalls
Washington –
The Navy announced today that U.S. airmen dumped 240 tons of bomb on Jaluit and blasted other holdout Jap bases in the Marshalls Sunday night and Monday in a fierce night-long aerial assault.
Invasion facing setback –
Foremen strike leaders called to hearing
Penalties hinted in WLB’s latest order
…
WLB upholds the dismissal of 41 ‘fast work’ foes
…
Sedition jury finally chosen
Defendant sues prosecuting lawyer
…
Harry Hopkins rests at Army hospital
…