The Pittsburgh Press (April 21, 1945)
3 ARMIES DRIVE ON ALPINE REDOUBT
British storm into suburbs of Hamburg
U.S. 1st, 3rd, French peril Nazi fortress
…
3 ARMIES DRIVE ON ALPINE REDOUBT
Allies take Bologna, big gateway city to Nazi-held Po Plain
Hundreds of tanks spill out into valley for drive north – German escape road cut
…
B-29s batter Kyushu bases of Japs’ suicide planes
Yanks on Okinawa gain in drive on Naha – 15 U.S. war vessels lost off island
GUAM (UP) – Upwards of 300 Superfortresses today blasted the Kyushu bases of Jap suicide planes blamed for the sinking of some of the 15 American war vessels lost in the Battle of Okinawa and Japan during the past month.
On Okinawa itself, three U.S. divisions thrust deeper into the enemy’s last-ditch defense line less than 3½ miles north of Naha, capital of the island, on the third day of the greatest ground offensive of the Pacific war.
Advances of up to a mile were reported all along the four-mile line extending across the southern end of the island yesterday. Swarms of planes and the big guns of warships joined massed land artillery in an unprecedented supporting bombardment.
The big fleet of Superfortresses bombed nine airfields on Kyushu, southernmost of the Jap home islands. The raid was the third in five days on the suicide-plane bases, but two of the airfields – Usa, near the northeast coast, and Kushira, in the south – were hit for the first time.
A XXI Bomber Command announcement said the attacks covered the “length and breadth” of Kyushu.
There was no mention of opposition and it was indicated that both fighter and anti-aircraft reaction by the Japs was negligible.
A Jap broadcast said approximately 200 B-29s had raided airfields on Kyushu for four hours this morning.
Japs lose 100 ships
A Pacific Fleet communiqué listed for the first time American naval losses in operations off Okinawa and Japan between March 18 and April 18. Against 15 Americans ship sunk, the Americans destroyed at least 100 Jap vessels during the period, all previously announced.
American losses were:
- Five destroyers: Halligan, Bush, Colhoun, N. L. Abele, Pringle.
- Two minecraft: Emmons, Skylark.
- One destroyer transport: Dickerson.
- Five smaller warships: One gunboat, one LST, one LCI, one LCS, one LCT.
- Two ammunition ships: Hobbs Victory, Logan Victory.
It is standard Navy policy to notify all next of kin of casualties before using the names of subs sunk or damaged.
The 100 Jap ships sunk included a Yamato-class battleship, two light cruisers, five destroyers, five destroyer escorts, four large cargo ships, 18 medium cargo ships and 28 smaller cargo ships. In addition, 2,569 Jap aircraft were destroyed.
The communiqué said the American losses constituted the “complete list of ships sunk by enemy action” in the month-long period – thus giving the lie to Jap claims that upwards of 100 American vessels had been sunk.
Gain 1,400 yards
American gains in southern Okinawa yesterday averaged 1,000 yards, but the 7th Infantry Division penetrated the maze of enemy defenses on the east coast to a depth of at least 1,400 yards.
The 7th Infantry Division was just north of Yonabaru Airfield and Yonabaru town, the main port on Nakagusuku Bay.
Fortresses blast Munich railyards
RAF pounds Berlin six times in night
LONDON, England (UP) – Over 300 Flying Fortresses smashed rail and airfield targets in the Munich area today following a night-long RAF assault on besieged Berlin.
A U.S. communiqué said the heavy bombers were escorted by about 400 P-51 Mustangs and P-47 Thunderbolts in attacks on railyard facilities at Munich and Ingolstadt and the airfield at Landsberg 30 miles west of Munich.
British Mosquitoes raided Berlin six times during the night, dropping block-busters and other bombs into the fires raging through the Nazi capital.
German airfields also were attacked by British planes during the night. All planes returned safely.
An American announcement revealed that U.S. bombers had dropped 25,693 tons of explosives on Berlin since the opening of the daylight air offensive against the capital March 4, 1944.
A secret source with access to details of damage to aircraft industry plants in Berlin reported to the Allies that by April 25, 1944, alone, the Eighth Air Force and RAF had reduced overall production by at least 40 percent.
Three survivors of six in Iwo flag-raising visit Truman, then draw ovation in Senate
Painting of scene given to President
…
Mrs. Roosevelt weeps on leaving White House
…
Pyle and 5 G.I.’s buried together
Evergreen and wheat used for wreath
By Mac R. Johnson, United Press staff writer
ABOARD ADM. TURNER’S FLAGSHIP, Okinawa – A white cross today marked the grave of Ernie Pyle in a small cemetery 600 yards inland from “Red Beach” on embattled Ie Shima.
The white-haired little man, who rose from obscurity to become the greatest champion of little-known but important G.I.’s, was buried yesterday with five enlisted men who died as he did, in action.
Enlisted men of the Army’s 77th Infantry Division built a crude wooden coffin of boards ripped from K-ration boxes and on it they placed a wreath of Japanese evergreen and a sheaf of ripe golden wheat.
Led by general
The funeral party was led by Maj. Gen. Andrew D. Bruce, commanding general of the 77th Infantry Division. It was halted at the beach when the enemy dropped 100 rounds of mortar fire in the area.
There were no salutes. Taps was not blown. This was a cemetery for combat men in a combat zone and the ceremony was simple. It lasted 35 minutes.
A trench had been bulldozed in the brown soil of an open field. Individual graves had been dug in the bottom of the trench. The bodies of the five enlisted men and Mr. Pyle were placed in the common grave.
Chaplain officiates
Capt. Nathaniel B. Saucier of Coffeeville, Mississippi, a regimental chaplain, read the burial service for all six.
Mr. Pyle’s body was wrapped in a blanket like any officer or G.I. and a dog tag wired around his body.
Five hundred yards away, on the spot where Ernie was killed by Jap machine gun bullets, soldiers erected a sign which reads:
AT THIS SPOT THE 77TH INFANTRY DIVISION LOST A BUDDY
ERNIE PYLE
18 APRIL, 1945
Editorial: Tribute to Ernie
Greenwich, Connecticut, is not a metropolis, like New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh or Washington. It’s a city of the size that Ernie Pyle would have liked as his home.
It is interesting therefore that from Greenwich came the first editorial written about Ernie Pyle’s death. Within an hour and a half after the death was reported, the following was sent to Scripps-Howard offices in New York by Niver W. Beaman, editor of The Greenwich Times:
Ernie Pyle, war correspondent, is dead, killed by a Jap machine gunner, and the greatest tribute that can be paid him is the sense of personal loss felt by millions of Americans who never even saw this hard-working little man.
When President Roosevelt died suddenly last week, the comment most often heard was “It is just as though someone in my own family had died.” Although Ernie Pyle held no public office, his death has brought the same stunned exclamations.
Ernie Pyle was not the typical war correspondent. He wrote not of tactics and strategy. He went into the lines with the fighting men and wrote of them as individuals, naming them by name and city. He described his reporting as a “worm’s eye view of the war.” He could have lived with the generals. He preferred the enlisted men.
He wrote homely little pieces about his friends – and every man in uniform was his friend, because he shared their dangers, asked no special privileges, talked their language. And he wrote their language.
Often the reader of Pyle’s column in Scripps-Howard newspapers and other newspapers in which it was syndicated, knew personally the men of whom he wrote because Ernie met thousands of fighting men, and named them, described them, made them live in print.
If the reader didn’t actually know one of the men whom Ernie met, the reader knew somebody almost like him. If it wasn’t your brother, Joe, or your son, Junior, or the kid that lived next door to you, and often it was, it was a G.I. so much like your own that you had the feeling of being with your very flesh and blood. That was Ernie Pyle’s great talent – the ability to take you with him. He was a great reporter but more than that he was a grand, modest, scared, brave little guy.
Ferguson: Ernie Pyle
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
My last letter from Ernie Pyle came from Albuquerque:
I haven’t written you in a long time. Your piece which I was reading last night gave me the chance. One sentence struck me as so thoughtful, so true (men who have slept in foxholes and endured the hardships of actual war, develop a profound pity for the misfortunes of humanity) at least that’s the way I feel. I’m not sure all soldiers do.
My vacation hasn’t been much of a vacation. The public pressure has been unbelievable I’m taking of for the Pacific in a few days, I certainly Mrs. Ferguson don’t itch to go, but feel I must. I don’t suppose any of us will be the same by the time this whole thing is over.
He went to the Pacific and will not come back, dear, shy, lovable Ernie. To his personal friends and millions of devoted readers, the world will not be the same without him.
But Ernie wouldn’t have wanted eulogies. He gladly shared a soldier’s life; he did not try to avoid a soldier’s death. It seems a fitting climax to his great career as interpreter of American fighting men, that he should walk into the valley of shadows with those who went that way. They were his comrades in arms, his pals, and in death they are not divided.
His last dispatches are accounts of their valor, fellowship and mirth under stress of war. He leaves life with his genius at its full flower. He went at high tide – and all who do are blessed.
Let there be no lamentations for Ernie Pyle, although we who are bereft of him may sorrow for ourselves. He has found peace.
Millett: G.I. Joe’s girl understands smallest of attentions
French think Yanks make too little of love and that’s okay at home
By Ruth Millett
…
‘Rip’ stops ‘Nick,’ Bucs lead series
Preacher Roe and Derringer to pitch today
By Chester L. Smith, sports editor
…
White Sox win first three, talk pennant
By the United Press
…
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In addition to today’s column, we will print several others which we have received from Ernie on Okinawa. We believe he would have wanted it this way.
OKINAWA (by Navy radio) – Now I’ve seen my first Jap soldiers in their native state – that is, before capture. But not for long, because the boys of my company captured them quicker than a wink.
It was mid-forenoon and we had just reached our new bivouac area after a march of an hour and a half. The boys threw off their packs, sat down on the ground, and took off their helmets to mop their perspiring foreheads.
We were in a small grassy spot at the foot of a hill. Most of these hillsides have caves with household stuff hidden in them. They are a rich field for souvenir hunters. And all Marines are souvenir hunters.
So immediately two of our boys, instead of resting, started up through the brush, looking for caves and souvenirs. They had gone about fifty yards when one of them yelled: “There’s a Jap soldier under this bush.”
We didn’t get too excited for most of us figured he meant a dead Jap. But three or four of the boys got up and went up the hill. A few moments later somebody yelled again: “Hey, here’s another one. They’re alive and they’ve got rifles.”
So, the boys went at them in earnest. The Japs were lying under two bushes. They had their hands up over their ears and were pretending to be asleep.
Too scared to move
The Marines surrounded the bushes and, with guns pointing, they ordered the Japs out. But the Japs were too scared to move. They just lay there, blinking.
The average Jap soldier would have come out shooting. But, thank goodness, these were of a different stripe. They were so petrified the Marines had to go into the bushes, lift them by the shoulders, and throw them out in the open,
My contribution to the capture consisted of standing to one side and looking as mean as I could.
One Jap was small, and about 30 years old. The other was just a kid of 16 or 17, but good-sized and well-built. The kid had the rank of superior private and the other was a corporal. They were real Japanese from Japan, not the Okinawan home guard.
They were both trembling all over. The kid’s face turned a sickly white. Their hands shook. The muscles in the corporal’s jaw were twitching. The kid was so paralyzed he couldn’t even understand sign language.
We don’t know why those two Japs didn’t fight. They had good rifles and potatomasher hand grenades. They could have stood behind their bushes and heaved grenades into our tightly packed group and got themselves two dozen casualties, easily.
The Marines took their arms. One Marine tried to direct the corporal in handbook Japanese, but the fellow couldn’t understand.
The scared kid just stood there, sweating like an ox. I guess he thought he was dead. Finally, we sent them back to the regiment.
The two Marines who flushed these Japs were Cpl. Jack Ossege of Silver Grove, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati, and Pfc. Lawrence Bennett of Port Huron, Michigan.
His first blitz
Okinawa was the first blitz for Pvt. Bennett and this was the first Jap soldier he’d ever seen. He is 30 years old, married, and has a baby girl. Back home he was a freight dispatcher.
The Jap corporal had a metal photo holder like a cigarette case. In it were photos which we took to be of three Japanese movie stars. They were good-looking, and everybody had to have a look.
Cpl. Ossege had been through one Pacific blitz, but this was the first Jap he ever took alive. As an old hand at souvenir hunting, he made sure to get the Jap’s rifle.
That rifle was the envy of everybody. Later when we were sitting around, discussing the capture, the other boys tried to buy or trade him out of it. “Pop” Taylor, the black-whiskered corporal from Jackson, Michigan, offered Ossege $100 for the rifle.
The answer was no. Then Taylor offered four quarts of whiskey. The answer still was no. Then he offered eight quarts. Ossege weakened a little. He said, “Where would you get eight quarts of whiskey?” Pop said he had no idea. So, Ossege kept the rifle.
So, there you have my first two Japs. And I hope my future Japs will all be as tame as these two. But I doubt it.