Army shifts all fit men into combat service
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Adm. Land: Third of Axis ships should go to U.S.
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The Pittsburgh Press (May 25, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
A B-26 base, England –
Sgt. Phil Scheier is a radio gunner. That is, he operates the radio of his B-26 bomber when it needs operating, and when over enemy territory he switches to one of the plane’s machine guns.
It’s hard to think of Sgt. Scheier as a tough gunner. In fact, it’s hard to think of him as an enlisted man. He is what you would call the “officer type” – he would seem more natural with a major’s leaves on his shoulders than a sergeant’s stripes on his arms. But he doesn’t feel that way about it.
He says:
I’m the only satisfied soldier in the Army. I’ve found a home in the Army. I like what I’m doing, and I wouldn’t trade my job for any other in the Army.
Not that he intends to stay in after the war. He’s 28, but he intends to go to college as soon as he gets out of uniform. He has been a radio scriptwriter for several years, but he wants to go to Columbia School of Journalism and learn how to be a big fascinating newspaperman like me.
Sgt. Scheier’s home is at Richmond, Staten Island. Like the others, he has a DFC and an Air Medal with clusters.
He says:
When I won a Boy Scout medal once, they got out the band and had a big celebration. But when you get the DFC, you just sign a paper and a guy hands it to you as though it was nothing.
Later, when I mentioned that I would like to put that remark in the column, Sgt. Scheler laughed and said: “Oh, I just made that up. I never was a Boy Scout.”
Sgt. Kenneth Brown of Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, is one of two men in my barracks who have the Purple Heart. He was hit in the back and arm by flak several months ago. He is a good-natured guy, and he has the next war figured out.
He isn’t going to go hide in a cave or on a desert island, as so many jokingly threaten to do. He thinks he has a better way. The minute the war starts, he’s going to get a sand table and start making humps and valleys and drawing lines in the sand. He figures that will automatically makes him a general and then he’ll be all right.
Sgt. Kenneth Hackett used to work at the Martin plant near Baltimore, which makes these B-26 bombers. He is 34, and he had supposed that if he ever got into the Army, he would be put in some backwash job far removed from combat.
“I sure never figured when I was helping build these planes that someday I’d be flying over France in one of them as a radio gunner,” he says. But here he is, with half his allotted missions run off.
Sgt. Hackett’s home is at North Miami. In fact, his father is chief of police in that section. But the sergeant’s wife and daughter are in Baltimore.
Hackett showed me a snapshot of his daughter Theda sitting on the fender of their automobile. He said she was 12, and I thought he was kidding. She seemed so grownup that I thought she must be his sweetheart instead of his daughter. But I was convinced when the other boys chimed in and said, “Tell him about the lipstick.”
So here is the lipstick story. It seems Theda wrote her daddy that all the other girls her age were using rouge and lipstick and was it all right if she did too.
Well, it wasn’t all right. Sgt. Hackett says maybe he’s old-fashioned but he sent word back to Theda that if she started using lipstick now, he’d skin her alive when he got back, or words to that effect. And he didn’t take time to write it in a letter. He sent it by full-rate cablegram.
Sgt. Howard Hanson is acting first sergeant of this squadron. He’s the guy that runs the show and routs people out of bed and hands out demerits and bawls people out. In addition to that, he is an engineer-gunner. He has long ago flown his allotted number of combat missions, and he is still flying.
Sgt. Hanson is 37 and therefore is automatically known in the Army as Pappy. Any soldier over 35 is almost always called Pop or Pappy. Sgt. Hanson doesn’t care. He likes his work and has a job to do and wants to get it done.
“I know what I’m fighting for,” he says. “Here’s what.” And he hands you a snapshot of his family – wife, girl and boy. The girl is almost grown and the boy is in the uniform of a prep school. Hanson’s home is at Topeka, Kansas.
Pappy used to be in the motor freight business before the war. I suppose in a way you could say he’s still in the motor freight business. Kind of ticklish freight, though.
Völkischer Beobachter (May 26, 1944)
Neue deutsche Abwehrfront in den Volsker Bergen
Die jüngste Entwicklung der Fesselungs- und Ablenkungsoffensive in Italien
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Luftschlacht gleichzeitig über Wien und Berlin
Von den 139 insgesamt über dem Reichsgebiet vernichteten Feindflugzeugen sind allein in der Doppelschlacht 103 Maschinen abgeschossen worden
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Krise im Schatzamt von Washington –
Der Goldnimbus der USA verblaßt
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Chikago-Methoden in Schweden –
USA stiften zu Weltspionage an
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U.S. Navy Department (May 26, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 417
For Immediate Release
May 26, 1944
Shimushu in the Kuril Islands was bombed by Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Four before dawn on May 24 (West Longitude Date). Several fires were started. Anti-aircraft fire was moderate. All of our planes returned.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 419
For Immediate Release
May 26, 1944
A single search plane of Fleet Air Wing Two bombed Kusaie Island during daylight on May 25 (West Longitude Date). Medium anti-aircraft fire was encountered.
Ponape Island was attacked by 7th Army Air Force Mitchells on May 24. An airfield and dock areas were hit. Anti-aircraft fire was meager. One of our aircraft was damaged.
Enemy positions in the Marshalls were bombed and strafed on May 24 by Mitchell bombers of the 7th Army Air Force, Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two, Corsair fighters and Dauntless dive bombers of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, and Navy Hellcat fighters. Numerous fires were observed. Anti-aircraft fire was moderate. Hits were obtained on antiaircraft batteries and buildings.
The Brooklyn Eagle (May 26, 1944)
U.S. troops seize Cisterna, slash 6 miles toward Rome
Direct threat posed to Via Casilina, Nazi escape road
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South France hit by bombers based in Italy
Yanks blast half-dozen rail targets from Lyon to Riviera
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Senators hit Biddle, WLB in Ward case
Subcommittee says the Attorney General misled Roosevelt
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Thinks Corrigan should face trial
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U.S. naval task forces seen hitting Jap mainland soon
Cite weak opposition at Marcus
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Yanks cut off retreat at New Guinea airfield
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CIO political group plans June meeting
Washington (UP) –
The CIO Political Action Committee, which has already endorsed President Roosevelt for a fourth term, plans to call a national conference in Washington in mid-June to chart his program for the 1944 political campaign, it was disclosed today.
A CIO spokesman said more than 300 delegates – the committee’s regional and state directors and field officers, as well as Political Action representatives of CIO affiliates – were expected to attend the conference on the eve of the Republican and Democratic national conventions.
The defeat or retirement of three of its foes on the Dies Committee has focused attention on the CIO committee, and its activities were blamed by Senator Rufus C. Holman (R-OR) yesterday for his recent defeat in the Oregon Republican primaries.
The CIO committee and New Dealers employed unlimited financial resources to wage an “effective smear campaign” to throttle his bid for renomination, Holman told the Senate.
The committee said the June meeting would “outline labor views on issues which will decide 1944’s crucial elections” and would prepare a platform calling for full production and full employment the post-war period.
The conference is also expected to give further attention to the organizational problem of getting workers to register and to vote – a problem which has been given heavy emphasis during the early stages of the committee’s work. CIO leaders have blamed the political lethargy of labor for what they interpreted as an anti-labor trend in the 1942 and 1943 elections. They have been cheerful over the result of recent primaries.
Spokesmen for the Political Action Committee have looked upon those results as evidence that their drive to mobilize the labor vote was being successful.