Editorial: Hatch Act under fire
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
London, England – (by wireless)
On the way across Africa I struck up an acquaintance with two British officers – Lt. Col. Colin Linton and Lt. Col. Jack Donaldson.
Linton is a Scot, a Sandhurst graduate and a Regular Army officer. He is not quite 30.
Donaldson did social work before the war. He is in his late 30s. His wife has turned farmer since the war and has written a book about it.
The viewpoints of the two colonels are very dissimilar – a social worker contrasted to a professional soldier – but they are both the kind of people you like. During those long days of waiting in Casablanca we would load around for hours whole those two argued good-naturedly and I pay on the bed and grinned.
We had hoped we might continue to England together, and we did. we flew in a converted bomber with old-fashioned seats.
I had got a big box lunch the night before for us to take along, but this time lunch was provided. We had a conglomeration of passengers, all military, running through four nationalities. Most of them were English, but we also had French, American and German. Yes, I said German. There were three prisoners, from a captured U-boat crew, with a British captain in charge. They sat just ahead of us.
What knowledge justified priority?
We all wondered what knowledge the Germans could possess that would justify flying them with high priority all the way to England, but we didn’t ask questions.
The three were very young, strong of body and good-looking too, and yet with sort of brutal faces. They talked very little among themselves. In fact, they slept most of the trip. The British captain spoke German, but he talked with them only in giving instructions.
Our cabin windows were blacked out during the night. The whole interior of the cabin was sheathed with heavy, padded cloth. But when dawn came the pads were taken down so we could see the sunrise.
The cabin was heated and we were not uncomfortable, except that we were not allowed to smoke. But soon after the takeoff, most of the passengers were asleep in their chairs.
Most everybody has some little quirk about traveling, and mine takes the form of airplane motors playing tunes. It’s just as clear as though there were an orchestra in the cabin. And to me they always play “You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine.”
And so out there over the ocean the motors of our big plane droned on and on with “You Are My Sunshine,” and I couldn’t go to sleep. I think I was the only one awake when, long past midnight, I could sense that we were getting terribly high, for it was getting chilly and hard to breathe.
Motors stop playing tune
Then one of the crew came back to the cabin with a flashlight. He seemed worried, seeing me awake. He flashed his light and said with alarm in his voice, “Do you feel all right?”
I said I did. Then he said, “You sure you fell all right?” I said, “Sure, I feel all right.” Then he said, “If you are feeling faint, let me know.” I said, “All right,” and asked how high we were.
“Fifteen thousand,” he said, and then he added in a tone as though taking me into a horrible confidence: “And we are icing bad.”
Being the worrier type, I immediately expected the plane to fall out of control and plunge into the ocean three miles below us. Suddenly the motors stopped playing my tune, and it seemed to me they were all out of rhythm and vibrating badly.
For an hour I was as tense as piano wire, expecting the worst any moment. But nothing happened, and at last the sandman got the best of me and I slept till daylight.
Col. Donaldson woke me up to look at the sunrise. It was a majestic thing. We were above an ocean of mountainous clouds and the sun came up violently red over the snow-white horizon. Everybody was awake looking, but grogginess got the better of men and after one look I went back to sleep.
Wonderful to be safely in England
Finally after many hours we landed, and we climbed out stiffly. The first cigarette almost knocked us over. The air was snappy, but the sun was shining and it felt wonderful to be safely in England, for I had sort of dreaded the trip.
RAF and USAAF people saw us through the formalities. We ate breakfast in an RAF dining room. In an hour we were in another plane on the way to London. By noon we had landed at an airdrome near London where I had been many times before, and a big bus was waiting to take us into the city.
The British colonels were very happy. They had been away from England for years, and by suppertime they would see their wives. We gave each other our addresses.
I had left London for Africa one dark and mysterious night a year and a half ago. Many times since then I had never expected to see England again. But here it was, fresh and green and pretty.
And although I was still far from home and family, it was a wonderful thing to be returning, for I have loved London ever since first seeing it in the Blitz and it has become sort of my overseas home.
What’s going on behind the German defenses?
Nazi ‘expendables’ on Channel to seek to delay the invasion
Axis wants time to ‘dope’ attack
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 second, 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 –
Waiting there inside the Nazi Atlantic Wall, they think they have posts of honor – 200,000 German troops and their mixture of satellites, tensely and nervously alert along the coast of France, unaware that their casemates and pillboxes may soon become sacrificial altars.
They are entbehrlich – write-offs and expendables, sacrifices for time.
By their crushed and lifeless bodies, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel hopes to gain enough time to concentrate mobile striking forces behind the wall at the area threatened with the breakthrough.
They have to die so that the real fighting men of Germany, based well inside the wall, may know where to strike back.
The men behind the wall, the very flower of Germany, must be overwhelmed before Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower can drive his invasion wedge into France and turn it toward Germany. Battlewise, grim and fanatical, they comprise Waffen-SS, panzer troops, motorized infantry and grenadiers such as the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Division, seasoned on the Eastern Front, and remnants of Rommel’s old Afrika Korps.
Hard and ruthless
They are hard and they are ruthless. They will fight as they have never fought before, fully confident that they are going to throw us back through the Atlantic Wall and into the English Channel.
In France, Rommel’s Channel coast commander, Field Marshal Karl Gerd von Rundstedt, has 600,000 men ready for the invasion, carefully trained in all three phases around which the Germans have based their plans to meet attack.
The defensive blueprint for the 52 divisions in France and the 14 in Belgium is effectively the same as the basic plan for other troops along the Atlantic Wall: eight divisions for Holland, six for Denmark, eight for Norway and 12 highly trained, handpicked divisions stationed inside Germany as the Nazis’ last strategic reserve.
Phase of operation
As a result of a long, thorough investigation of sources from inside Germany, this correspondent submits that Rommel’s anti-invasion blueprint is broken down into the following German phases of operation:
- PHASE I: The Allies still at sea
In this phase, Rommel plans to utilize radio-steered bombs, fighter-bomber planes, 750-ton submarines and the new 30-foot, two-man midget submarines, all attacking in coordination with destroyers of the 2,000-ton Narvik class and the 1,100-ton Elbing class.
E-boats based at Rotterdam, IJmuiden, Antwerp and Saint-Malo, and smaller motor torpedo boats, will converge into the Channel with destroyers racing out from their Brest anchorage.
Electrically exploded minefields will point 12-inch, 13-inch and even 15-inch naval coastal guns in smashing hot lead among the Allied landing barges. As the invaders draw near their selected beachheads, land-based torpedo tubes will open up, firing both at surface level and underwater.
In the countryside behind the Atlantic Wall, an armored “parachaser” unit will begin scouring for allied paratroopers and airborne soldiers the minute the “Fourth of July” rocket bursts – the signal of the invasion.
- PHASE II: The battle for the Atlantic Wall
The Germans in this phase intend to inflict the greatest number of losses to the invading shock troops in order to delay to the last possible moment the Allied breaking of the wall and the plunge into the open country behind the wall.
This is the stage where the 200,000 “write-offs” in the French sector of the wall must fight – and die to the last man, if necessary, German officers must have time to find out where Gen. Eisenhower is really making his drive and where he is only attempting a diversionary landing.
It is clear from authentic information reaching Stockholm that the Germans no longer think their Atlantic Wall impregnable. Rather, they conceive the Atlantic Wall as a series of spaced fortifications, an obstacle for delaying the breakthrough, thus allowing them time to concentrate mobile troops behind the breach.
- PHASE III: The battle behind the wall itself
Here the Luftwaffe finally must take flight with every possible machine, no longer able to conserve its strength by refusing combat except for the most vital targets. D-Day will be the Luftwaffe’s greatest battle… and its final chance to dispute Allied air might.
In addition to fighting unending hordes of Allied planes, the Luftwaffe will have the problem of trying to guard its own supply lines and to give some kind of support to German ground troops.
It is more than likely that the first defensive unit to crack will be the Luftwaffe, subjected as it will be to the most formidable air attack in history.
TOMORROW: The above is one part of the picture of how the Germans see the Atlantic Wall and D-Day. What weapons will they use against our soldiers? What are the weaknesses in the wall? The answers will be given tomorrow in another article of this series, telling how Germany is prepared to meet the invasion.
Meat will get tougher as grains go to war
‘Good old days’ of corn-fed beef are gone for duration; everything’s range fare now
By S. Burton Heath
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King matches Army’s plan for unification
Forrestal’s coldness offset by new order
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Steel output hits high for 30-day month
7.5 million net tons produced in April
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Court orders dissolution of Pullman group
‘Final decree’ ends car monopoly
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Travelers face tests –
Majors swing into East-West tilts tomorrow
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Williams: Can it be Cubs’ plan to recover McCarthy?
By Joe Williams
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Here’s Petrillo again –
Non-musician disc jockeys must join union
Maybe they’ll have to quit talking
By Si Steinhauser
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Democrats train their big guns on Governor Dewey
New Yorker’s statements on Russian and American production are cited
New York (UP) –
Robert E. Hannegan, chairman of the Femocratic National Committee, intimated last night that the party’s high command believes the Republicans will nominate Governor Thomas E. Dewey to oppose President Roosevelt, but asserted that the President would be reelected “to complete the assignment which destiny has given him.”
In his first public prediction linking the President with a fourth term candidacy, the Democratic National Chairman told a Thomas Jefferson dinner that he had not discussed the coming convention and campaign with Mr. Roosevelt, but added:
The people of the United States are determined that Franklin D. Roosevelt shall complete the assignment which destiny has given him.
Barkley raps Dewey
Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley (D-KY) credited “a Democratic administration, headed by a Democratic President,” with the success of organizing the nation for war.
Mr. Hannegan, while criticizing the Republican Party as a whole, mentioned no other possible GOP nominee than Mr. Dewey, and he devoted part of his speech to a resume of the New York Governor’s utterances in recent years on Russian recognition and American production for war.
Mr. Hannegan said:
There is among our people a firm conviction that the Republican Party… cannot be given another opportunity to destroy or confuse the hope of mankind that we will have both victory and peace in the great war that is now reaching its climax.
Experience cited
It is my personal opinion that the mothers and fathers, the wives and sweethearts of the men serving in the Armed Forces, the workers in our factories and shipyards, the owners of farms and the enlightened leaders of our great industries, alike are coming to a single great realization: That the future, not only of their own private interests but of their country, is at stake, and that the stakes are too large, the penalty of inexperience too heavy, to shift the tasks that lie ahead to an unpracticed hand.
‘Most unfortunate’
Discussing Republican leaders who he said “run with the hares and bark with the hounds,” Mr. Hannegan recalled a statement by Mr. Dewey in January 1940 deploring the New Deal administration’s recognition of Russia.
Mr. Hannegan commented:
It was “most unfortunate,” said the Governor of New York, that our President recognized Soviet Russia.
Of course, he said that four years ago. And at that time, unless a person was gifted with a rare insight into the play of great forces in the world, unless he had in him the quality of statesmanship which would enable him to judge accurately of the pull and direction of those forces, he could not have known, could not have realized the great peril in which our country stood in 1940, he could not have recognized the heroic roles which the people of Great Britain, the people of China and the people of Russia were to play, he could not have foreseen how, in fulfilling their own destinies, they were to halt the menace that threatened us.
‘Has shown insight’
Our President, by his actions before and since that time… has shown that insight, that quality of statesmanship. And those characteristics go far toward explaining today the steady march of the United Nations toward final victory.
Mr. Hannegan continued:
A few days ago, speaking his piece this time after the answers had been given out and the examination was all over, Governor Dewey said:
No initial measures against Germany and Japan, however drastic, will have permanent value unless they fall within the setting of a durable cohesion between Great Britain and ourselves, together, I hope, with Russia and China.
…the government of Russia with which Governor Dewey wanted to have no truck in 1940 is the same government with which he hopes we shall have a durable cohesion in 1944. The only major change pertinent to this question that has taken place inside Russia since that time is the elimination of somewhere around eight million Germans.
Another statement recalled
Mr. Hannegan recalled that Mr. Dewey four years ago said American industry could not produce 50,000 airplanes.
The Democratic leader said:
He had all the figures to show how and why it could not be done.
He said Mr. Dewey had pointed out that an air force of 750,000 men would be necessary and that “these are sobering facts.”
Four years later, Mr. Hannegan said, American industry has produced 184,000 planes and has built an air force of 2,385,000 men.