California bills provide for G.I.’s
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Ohio Valley fears new rise in river
By the United Press
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Nurses treated as civilians in Jap camp
Victims only of reduced rations
By Earl Richert, Scripps-Howard staff writer
WASHINGTON – An Army nurse freed in Manila after nearly three years internment said here that, as far as she knew, none of the captured nurses had been assaulted or harmed by the Japs.
The nurse, 28-year-old Lt. Phyllis Arnold of Minneapolis, was taken prisoner on Corregidor and held in the Santo Tomas prison camp in Manila until February 3, 1945, when she and 67 other Army nurses were liberated.
She said:
We were fortunate enough to be treated as civilians.
But please don’t think that the prisoners of war were treated the same. The stories told about the atrocities committed upon them are true.
Life was “not so bad as prison camps go” until the Japs cut their rations last fall.
The nurses’ rations were cut to about 800 calories a day (About 200 calories are needed daily for the average person).
The nurses lost weight steadily. Lt. Arnold dropped from her normal 125 pounds to 100.
She said the thing she noticed most in flying back from Luzon was that the farther away from the front lines one got, the more optimistic the people were about the war being over quickly.
“In the front lines,” she said, “the boys all say that the war is a long way from being over.”
Vise clamped on Japanese in North Luzon
Filipino guerrillas capture province
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Devil’s cauldron seethes on Iwo
Sulfur fumes stem from crevices
By Lisle Shoemaker, United Press staff writer
WITH U.S. MARINE ASSAULT TROOPS ON IWO (March 3, delayed) – This volcanic terrain in Iwo’s mining district is the most horrible, grotesque and devilish ever imagined. It is what one would think the entrance to Hell looked like.
White clouds of sulfur fumes steam up from every crevice in the twisted crags and depressions of the nightmarish landscape.
Setting for ‘Macbeth’
This northern end of Iwo would make a perfect setting for the witches’ scene in Macbeth. It makes you think that all the witches in the world are crouched over a pot of devil’s brew on the other side of the next hill.
Half-obscured figures of Marines creeping through the evil-smelling clouds of sulfur fumes look like weird figures in a bad dream.
There are many dead Japs scattered around this fantastic spot just past captured airfield No. 2. Only a few sticks of charred, shattered wood mark the site of the house and sulfur mines of Motoyama.
Earth is warm
The earth is warm because of the sulfur boiling and bubbling underground. The troops who fight here merely dig down a little deeper when they are cold during the night.
There are a few dead Marines in sight, too. It takes only a glance at their bodies to realize that this hellhole is real and not a ghastly nightmare.
Stark tragedy left in path of Hitlerism
Rehabilitation may take years
By L. S. B. Shapiro, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Wrecked bridges check Allies at banks of Rhine
Large force will be needed to attempt difficult crossing, McQuaid says
By B. J. McQuaid
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Might impresses Nazi civilians
Yanks screen people in captured town
By Gault MacGowan, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Two patrols cross Rhine under heavy shellfire
Yanks forced back before Nazis blow up spans, receive Silver Star awards
By Ann Stringer, United Press staff writer
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Grave for every mile of new road to China
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Chicago cafes ask Petrillo to shorten workweek
Association cites curfew losses, wants musicians’ contract cut from 48 to 30 hours
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Mark Sandrich, director, dies
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
IN THE MARIANAS ISLANDS (delayed) – There are five officers and six enlisted men on the crew of a B-29. All the enlisted men of a crew stay in the same hut, because that’s the way the boys want it. Thus, there are usually three crews of six men each in a Quonset hut.
The enlisted men’s huts are more crowded than the officers’. Outside of that there is no difference. They have a few more duties than the officers when not on missions, but they still have plenty of spare time.
“My” crew is a grand bunch of boys, as I suppose most of them are. They have trouble sleeping the night before a mission, and they’re tense before the takeoff. As one of them laughingly said at the plane just before takeoff one morning, “How do you get rid of that empty feeling in your chest?”
But they relax and expand and practically float away with good feeling once they get back and have another one safely under their belts.
The six enlisted men of “my” crew are Sgts. Joe Corcoran of Woodhaven, Long Island; Fauad Smith of Des Moines, New Mexico; Joe McQuade of Gallup, New Mexico; John Devaney of Columbus, Ohio; Norbert Springman of Wilmont, Minnesota, and Eugene Floric of Chicago.
Sgts. Springman and Floric are radio men, and all the others are gunners.
Sgt. Corcoran is the oldest of the crew. The first time I walked into their hut he called from his cot, “Hi, Eric, the last time I saw you was in the Stork Club.”
“But I’ve never been in the Stork Club in my life,” I said.
Two other guys
So, we puzzled over that a while, and finally decided it must have been two other guys, or else I’m living a double life which I don’t know about.
Sgt. Corcoran was a chiropractor before the war, and still gives the boys treatments. He practiced for three years at Jamaica, Long Island, and had a fine business worked up. I asked him how a chiropractor ever wound up to be a side-gunner on a B-29, but he had no explanation.
It’s unusual to find two men from thinly populated New Mexico on the same crew. Sgt. Smith and Sgt. McQuade never knew each other until they met on this crew, and then it turned out they had joined the Army the very same day. Now they are great buddies.
Sgt. McQuade was a fireman on the Santa Fe, and Sgt. Smith owned a grocery store, but finally had to sell it. They’d just had letters saying it was below zero back home, and they were at least thankful to be away from that.
Experienced combat men
Both the boys have had experiences. Sgt. McQuade made two trips to the Aleutians as a gunner on a ship. And Sgt. Smith is serving his second tour of aerial combat overseas.
Sgt. Smith was in the South Pacific in the early days, and flew 53 missions as gunner on B-17s. He has all his missions painted on the back of his leather flying-jacket – yellow bombs for the South Pacific, and red ones for Japan. He says he’s only got room for 27 more missions on his jacket, and then he’ll just have to quit.
I asked Sgt. Smith if he hated to come back overseas as badly as I did.
“Twice as bad,” he said.
“You couldn’t.”
“Well, as bad then,” he said. “But I haven’t griped so much about it since we got here. It’s not near as bad as I expected. In fact, we’re living as good here as we did in America.”
Experiment with mice
Sgt. Smith’s odd first name – Fauad – is Syrian. He is growing a funny little rectangular goatee, black as coal. I asked him how long he was going to keep it. He said, “probably only until the colonel happens to notice it.”
Sgts. Smith and Corcoran are the only two sergeants on the crew who are married. Both their wives are living temporarily in California.
We were all gathered around Corcoran’s and Smith’s cots one day, when Corky reached under his cot and pulled out a huge rat trap to show me.
It seems they have a mouse in the hut, who eats their candy and soap and is a general nuisance. They couldn’t find a mouse trap, so they set this big rat trap.
But every night Mr. Mouse eats all the cheese, even licks the plunger clean, but the trap is so strong it won’t go off. So now the Sergeant has strung thread through the cheese, hoping the mouse will get his teeth caught in the thread and thus yank the trap off. We’re waiting with bated breath to see how this noble experiment turns out.