Edson: Costly errors in U.S. war effort reach pretty sum
By Peter Edson
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In Washington –
Congressmen carol ‘home for Christmas’
Optimists hope to finish today, but Tuesday or Wednesday appears to be soonest
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Hoover urges careful study of air rights
Former President doubts if others will let down bars
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Disease takes lives of 1,555 in Jap prisons
300 other Yanks die of wounds; 14,000 held as captives
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Bogart’s in a tight spot – in Algiers without gat
Arab urchin calls him gangster and Army loses baggage of movie ‘killer’
By James E. Roper, United Press staff writer
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Millett: Are U.S. women patriotic? Not enough, facts disclose
Disappointing results in WAC enlistment campaign forced revision of Army requirements
By Ruth Millett
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
At the frontlines in Italy – (by wireless)
I’ve been living with a gun crew that has fought through four big Mediterranean campaigns. These men have been away from America for nearly 17 months.
It has been more than a year since any of them has slept in a bed. When they turned in their old gun a few weeks ago for a new one, it had fired more than 6,000 rounds.
Originally the whole crew was from South Carolina and they were a closely knit bunch, but transfers and illnesses over the months have whittled the Carolinians down to five. People from such strange and unorthodox places as California and Missouri have infiltrated.
But Carolina still sets the pace, and a year of rassling with French and Italian hasn’t changed their accent a bit. Practically everybody has a nickname. You hear such odd ones as “Rabbit” and “Wartime” and “Tamper” and “Mote.” I’ve noticed that most of the crew call their gun “howzer” instead of “howitzer,” and they say “far” instead of “fire.”
The officers are mostly Southern too, and I must say this outfit comes the nearest to being a real democracy of any I’ve seen in the Army. The battery officers work, live and play with their men. It is a team, rather than a case of somebody above giving orders and somebody below taking them.
They bow to the infantry
Most of the men are from small towns or farms. They are mostly hill people. As I wrote of them more than a year ago in England, there is something fundamentally fine and sound about their character that must have been put there by a closeness to their hills and their trees and their soil.
They are natively courteous. Most of them have little education, and their grammar is atrocious, but their thinking is clear and they seem to have a friendliness toward all people that much of America doesn’t have. They have an acceptance of their miserable fate and a sense of gaiety and good humor, despite their hardships, that you seldom find in other Army outfits.
The artillery lives tough, but it, too, like nearly every other branch of the Army, bows in sympathy and admiration to the infantry. One day we were sitting on our steel hats, planted in the mud around a bonfire made of empty pasteboard powder cases, when one member of the gun crew said:
We live like kings in comparison to the infantry.
“What’s that you say?” burst in another cannoneer. The sentence was repeated.
The questioner said:
Oh, I thought you said we live like kings. I thought you must be crazy in the head. But if you compare us with the infantry, that’s all right. Those poor guys really have to take it.
The average artilleryman’s outlook on life, I think, can be summed up by saying he’s uncompromisingly proud of his battery, he’s thankful and appreciate of being in the artillery, and he wants to go home so bad he talks about it nearly 20% of the time.
The artillery doesn’t live in as great danger as the infantry. For example, not a single officer out of this regiment has been lost in more than a year of combat. They always try to lay in their guns behind a hill where the enemy’s long-range guns can’t reach. Also, they are heavily protected by anti-aircraft concentrations to drive off German bombers.
Tragedy strikes twice
But casualties are bound to happen regardless. Tragedy has struck twice in my battery of four guns since it came to Italy only a few weeks ago. No. 2 gun blew up from a premature explosion as they were putting in a shell. Three men were killed and half a dozen wounded.
Not long before that some German raiders did get through and a bomb explosion killed three men and wounded nearly a dozen others. I was told over and over the story of one of the three who died. His legs were blown off clear up to his body. He stayed conscious, but couldn’t possibly live long.
When the medical men went to help him, he raised what we left of himself up on his elbows and said:
I’m done for, so don’t waste time on me. Go help the other boys.
He lived seven minutes, conscious all the time.
Things like that knock the boys down for a few days. But if they don’t come too often, they can take it without serious damage to their fighting spirit.
It’s when casualties become so great that those who remain feel they have no chance to live, if they must go on and on, that morale in an Army gets low.
The morale is excellent in this battery I’ve been living with. They gripe, of course, but they are never grim or even mad about the toughness of their life. The only thing is they’re important for movement – they’d fire all day and move all night every day and every night if they could only keep going forward swiftly.
Because everywhere in our army “forward,” no matter what direction, is toward home.
Maj. de Seversky: Wright entitled to clear conscience on aircraft’s role as weapon of war
By Maj. Alexander P. de Seversky
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Poll: Kentucky GOP puts Willkie before Dewey
Key state in 1944 campaign to split solid South is surveyed
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
Last month’s Republican victories in Kentucky bring up the question as to how GOP voters in that border state feel about Presidential candidates for 1944.
Kentucky will send 22 delegates to the GOP convention and, with the party hoping to split up the solid South, their judgment will carry considerable weight.
A survey of the state shows that, so far as the rank and file of Kentucky Republican voters are concerned, Wendell L. Willkie is the top choice today for President, with Governor Dewey of New York a fairly close second.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur stands third in the survey, with Senator Taft of Ohio close behind him. Senator Taft does better in Kentucky than his fellow Ohioan and avowed presidential candidate, Governor Bricker.
The results follow:
Interviewing Date 11/25 – 12/1/43 Survey #307-K Question #6cKentucky Republicans were asked: Which one of the following would you like to see nominated for President by the Republican Party next year?
| Willkie | 31% |
| Dewey | 26% |
| MacArthur | 20% |
| Taft | 13% |
| Bricker | 8% |
| Warren | 1% |
| Stassen | 1% |
| Others | <1% |
Surveys in the past have found that Republicans voters throughout the whole South are more partial to Willkie than to any other Republican.
Völkischer Beobachter (December 19, 1943)
Wall Street zeigt die neue Außenpolitik –
Amerikanische Heilsbotschaft: ‚Freiheit unter Druck‘
Drahtbericht unseres Lissaboner Berichterstatters
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U.S. Navy Department (December 19, 1943)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 202
Army fighters and light bombers of the 7th Army Air Force which attacked Mille during the morning of December 18 (West Longitude Date) destroyed six Zeroes on the ground and damaged three others.
Our planes encountered no air opposition. Two of our planes suffered minor damage from anti-aircraft fire.
On December 16, Navy search Liberators of Fleet Air Wing Two strafed a small vessel southeast of Kwajalein and attacked a ship and shore installations at Ebon Atoll. On December 17, a Navy Liberator while on a search mission bombed three small transports near Jaluit, two of which were possibly sunk.
The Pittsburgh Press (December 19, 1943)
Yanks advance on New Britain
6th Army takes village; Japs lose heavily in air attacks
By Brydon C. Taves, United Press staff writer
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Rail talks set by President
Union and road chiefs to meet Sunday
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U.S. will send tax notices after Jan. 1
900,000 Western Pennsylvanians will have to pay on income
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‘Provide for future now’ –
Kaiser wants servicemen polled on jobs they want
Industrialist suggests creation of ‘great risk credit pool’ for peacetime economy
By Frank H. Bartholomew
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Move to speed news is taken by Roosevelt
Action follows ‘premature’ releases by foreign Allied agencies
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Landon blasts Latin spending
Says waste can’t aid Good Neighbors or us
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