Editorial: The President should report
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
At the frontlines in Italy – (by wireless)
We will call it “Battery E” that I’ve been living with. Within the limits of security, I’ll try to tell you in these next few columns how we work, live and play so you can have some idea of how American artillery operates in this war.
Our artillery has played a huge part all through the Mediterranean fighting. It was good even last spring, and it has grown better all the time. The Germans fear it almost more than anything we have.
We’ve got plenty of it, and plenty of ammunition too. The artillery is usually a few miles back of the frontline infantry, although there have been cases right here in Italy where artillerymen have actually been under machine-gun fire.
One hill after another
In 99 cases out of 100, an artilleryman never sees what he’s shooting at, and in nine cases out of 10 he never knows what he’s shooting at. Somebody just gives him a set of figures over his telephone. He sets his gun by those figures, rams in a shell, pulls the lanyard and gets ready for the next one.
He usually shoots over a hill, and here in Italy the men say they’re getting sick of going around one hill and always finding another one just like it ahead of them. They sure wish they could get out in the open country and shoot at something just once that didn’t have a hill in front of it.
This country where we are fighting now is fertile in the valleys and is farmed up on the lower slopes of the hills, but is wild and rocky on the upper ridges. The valleys are wide, very flat, well populated and well farmed. You never saw more beautiful country. I had no idea southern Italy was so beautiful.
Cows and cannon
It rains almost constantly and everything is vivid green. When you look out across our valley rimmed all around in the distance by cloud-bound mountains, all so green in the center and lovely, even the least imaginative soldier is struck by the uncommon beauty of the scene. Little stores, farmhouses and sheds dot the valley and the hillsides.
Refugee Italians return to their homes as soon as the fighting moves on beyond them, and resume their normal business right under the noses of the big guns. Women drive huge gray hogs past the gun pits, and the crews have to yell at them when they are about to fire.
Small news of gray cows that look like Brahmans, except that they have no humps, wander up and down the trails. Little children stand in line at the battery kitchen with tin pails to get what is left over.
Italian men in old ragged uniforms mosey through the arbors. Now and then, we stop one and question him, but mostly they just come and go and nobody pays any attention.
Like the Arabs, they seem unconscious and unafraid of the warfare about them. That is, all except the planes. When German planes come over, they run and hide and quiver with absolute terror. It was that way in Sicily too. They remember what our bombers did.
His sleep is fitful
These lovely valleys and mountains are filled throughout the day and night with the roar of heavy shooting. Sometimes there are uncanny silent spells of an hour or more. Then it starts up again across the country with violent fury.
On my first night at the front, I slept only fitfully – never very wide awake, never deeply asleep. It seemed almost impossible to make the transition from a place like America to the depth of war-strewn Italy. All night long the valley beside us, and the mountains and the valleys over the hill, were dotted and punctured with the great blasts of the guns.
You could hear the shells chase each other through the sky across the mountains ahead, making a sound like cold wind through the leaves on a winter night. Then the concussion of the blasts of a dozen guns firing at once would strike the far mountains across the valley and rebound in a great mass sound that was prolonged with the immensity and the fury of an approaching sandstorm.
Between day and the dreaming
Then the nearer guns would fire and the ground under your bedroll would tremble and you could feel the awful breath of the blast push the tent walls and nudge your whole body ever so slightly. And through the darkened hodgepodge of noise, you could occasionally pick out, through experience, the slightly different tone of German shells bursting in our valley.
It didn’t really seem true. Three weeks ago, I was in Miami, eating fried chicken, sleeping in deep beds with white sheets, taking hot baths and hearing no sound more vicious than the laughing ocean waves and the laughter of friends. One world was a beautiful dream and the other a horrible nightmare, and I was still a little bit in each of them.
As I lay on the straw in the darkness, they became mixed up and I was confused and not quite sure which was which.
Maj. de Seversky: Airpower’s potential ‘skim bombs’ will have battleships at mercy
By Maj. Alexander P. de Seversky
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‘Dare to fight’ is turned down by Japs’ fleet
Visit of U.S. force ‘close to Truk’ emphasizes Allied strength
By Sandor S. Klein, United Press staff writer
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Tales of heroism –
Hit by sword, Yank takes it and kills Jap
By H. D. Quigg, United Press staff writer
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Völkischer Beobachter (December 17, 1943)
Vansittarts neueste Haßträume –
Englisches Programm zur Vernichtung Deutschlands
Stalins Henker sollen für den Kirchhof frieden auf dem Kontinent sorgen
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U.S. Navy Department (December 17, 1943)
Communiqué No. 490
Pacific and Far East.
U.S. submarines have reported the sinking of eight enemy vessels in operations against the enemy in waters of these areas, as follows:
SUNK:
- 2 large transports
- 2 large tankers
- 3 medium freighters
- 1 small freighter
These actions have not been announced in any previous Navy Department Communiqué.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 198
For Immediate Release
December 17, 1943
Army Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force raided Wotje at dusk on December 15 (West Longitude Date) scoring numerous hits on airdrome installations.
The Pittsburgh Press (December 17, 1943)
Yanks gain in New Britain
Ground guns, planes beat off heavy Jap raids on beachhead
By Brydon C. Taves, United Press staff writer
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524 bagged thus far –
U.S. subs sink 8 more ships
Two big Jap transports among latest victims
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Yanks begin heavy smash toward highway to Rome
Hand-to-hand fighting rages in village only mile from road; Fortresses blast Padua
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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Roosevelt back in capital, postpones a formal report
He’s ‘fine,’ he says to jovial crowd in White House
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Train wreck toll of death mounts to 80
Victims are 47 service personnel, 23 civilians, 10 unidentified
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More WACs reach Africa
Washington –
The War Department announced yesterday that 102 enlisted women and three officers of the Women’s Army Corps have arrived at Allied headquarters in North Africa to supplement the several WAC companies already serving in that theater.