War surplus disposal splits steel plants
Variety of plans offered Senate
By Roger W. Stuart, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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More civilian gas seen after V-E Day
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Food termed peace maker or breaker
Bromfield decries U.S. policies
By Robert Seltzer, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Before he was killed on Ie Shima, Ernie Pyle, as was his habit, had written a number of columns ahead. He did this so there would be no interruptions in the column while he was getting material for more. several more are expected.
OKINAWA (by Navy radio) – One morning after breakfast, about a dozen of us were sitting on the mat covered floor of a little Okinawan house talking things over while sipping our coffee.
Our First Division Marine company had just moved in the night before and several days’ accumulation of grime covered everybody. Suddenly Lt. Bones Carstens stood up and said: “I cleaned my fingernails this morning and it sure does feel good.”
And then my friend Bird Dog Clayton held his own begrimed hands out in front of him, looked at them a long time and said: “If I was to go to dinner in Dallas and lay them things up on a white tablecloth I wonder what would happen?”
A good many of the Okinawan civilians, while Wandering along the roadside, bow low to every American they meet. Whether this is from fear or native courtesy I do not know, but anyhow they do it. And the Americans being Americans usually bow right back.
One of the Marines I know got mixed up in one of these little bowing incidents the other day. He is Pfc. Roy Sellers, a machine gunner from Amelia, Ohio.
Bowing ‘contest’
Roy is married and has a little girl two years old. He used to be a machinist at the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company. He played semi-pro ball too.
When Roy has a beard, he looks just like a tramp in a stage play. He is only 27, but looks much older. In fact, he goes by the nickname of “Old Man.”
Well one day Old Man was trying to ride a Jap bicycle along the bank of a little river where he camped. The ground was rough and the bicycle had only one pedal and Roy was having a struggle to keep his bike upright. Just then an old Okinawan, bareheaded and dressed in a black kimono and carrying a dirty sack, walked through our little camp. He wasn’t supposed to be at large but it was none of our business and we didn’t molest him.
He was bowing to everybody, night and left, as he passed. Then he met Machine Gunner Sellers on his one-pedaled bicycle. Roy was already having his troubles.
As he came abreast of the Okinawan, Roy bowed deeply over the handle bars, hit a rut, lost his balance and over he went. The Okinawan, with Oriental inscrutability, returned the bow and never looked back.
We all laughed our heads off. “Who’s bowing to whom around here?” we asked. Roy denied he had bowed first. But we knew better. After that he decided to give his old bicycle away to somebody less polite than himself.
Reminded of Italy
As our company was moving forward one day and I looked down the line of closely packed Marines I thought for a moment I was back in Italy.
There for sure was Bill Mauldin’s cartoon character of G.I. Joe – the solemn, bearded, dirty, drooping weary old man of the infantry.
This character was Pfc. Urban Vachon of French-Canadian extraction, who comes from Laconia, New Hampshire. He has a brother, William, fighting in Germany.
Urban is such a perfect ringer for Mauldin’s soldier that I asked the regimental photographer to take a picture of him and it has been sent back to the States. Maybe you’ve seen it. If you have, you can prove to any dissenters that soldiers do look like Mauldin makes them look.
All skepticism vanishes –
Nazi brutalities numb the imagination
Heart of Reich vast concentration camp – slaughter ends idea only few are guilty
By Victor O. Jones, North American Newspaper Alliance
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The life of Harry Truman –
Wisdom and honesty shown in his first public office
Sponsorship of good roads campaign is cited as one of good deeds
By Frances Burns
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Pyle memorial program on air
KDKA to carry national tribute
NEW YORK (SHS) – A program dedicated to the memory of Ernie Pyle will be broadcast by NBC tonight at 11:30 EWT.
KDKA will transcribe the program and rebroadcast it at 12:15 a.m. tonight and again at 11 a.m. tomorrow.
The program will include a dramatization of Mr. Pyle’s book, Brave Men, and a number of American ballads and marching songs.
A cast of nine players under Gerald Holland, producer, will be heard on stations as far west as the Rocky Mountains and north into Canada. The same program was originally broadcast last February 17 in a series of presentations for the Treasury Department and the sale of War Bonds.
Mrs. Pyle to get $100 a week for life
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (UP) – Ernie Pyle’s widow will receive $100 per week for the rest of her life under terms of the war correspondent’s will which was filed for probate here yesterday.
Ernie, who was killed while covering the invasion of Ie Shima, named Roy F. Johnson of Stillwater, Minnesota, trustee of his estate.
In addition to Mrs. Pyle, who will receive the family home ion Albuquerque and a trust fund paying $100 per week, Ernie left $2,500 to Eugene Uebelhardt of Los Angeles. Upon agreement of Mrs. Pyle and Trustee Johnson, the will provides $5,000 each to be paid to Ernie’s father and his aunt, Mrs. Mary E. Bales, both of Dana, Indiana; Mrs. Pyle’s mother, Mrs. Myrta Siebolds of Afton, Minnesota, and Ernie’s secretary Rosamond Goodman of Washington, D.C.
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
I think it’s reassuring that President Truman gets up at 6:30, because there probably isn’t anyone in Washington able to get up early enough to put anything over on him.
Mr. Truman is used to early rising, having lived on a farm, where the alarm clocks are running around all over the place – grunting, crowing, cackling and neighing, making the same kind of noises human beings do in nightclubs or in Congress.
I see that when Mr. Truman was walking to work early in the morning he was greeted by a taxi driver. So that’s when taxi drivers are around!
Anyway, I think our new President is setting a splendid example. Benjamin Franklin said, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
I’m glad he didn’t say “a woman.” I can still sleep late.
Major league conference –
Baseball moguls expected to defer naming new leader
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Far corners of world offer Yank soldiers trout fishing
By Johnny Mock
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Ernie Pyle story featured twice on KDKA
Ernie’s book to be dramatized
By Si Steinhauser
So that everyone may hear NBC’s dramatization of Ernie Pyle’s last book, Brave Men, KDKA will carry the broadcast at 12:15 tonight and repeat it via recording at 11 o’clock Wednesday morning.
Dick McDonagh, head of the network script department, has adapted Ernie’s story for a Words at War broadcast, featuring the column Ernie wrote about the death of Capt. Waskow on an Italian mountainside and how his men brought their dead leader’s body from the precipice and bade him goodbye. It was one of Ernie’s greatest stories.
Tonight’s – and tomorrow’s – story is in fact a repeat. It was first heard on NBC’s These Are Our Men in February. The network felt, and Manager Joe Baudino of KDKA agrees, that Ernie and his writings meant so much to America that everyone will want to hear the story again. And those who missed it will appreciate the broadcast all the more.
Tonight, from 10 to 11 o’clock, WJAS will present Memo to the Future, an expression of the common man’s hopes in the San Francisco World Conference. A Wyoming serviceman, Marine Sgt. Harry Jackson, will act as “traffic cop to the world” and direct 40 pickups from six continents. Army, Navy and Marine Corps assisted in selecting Jackson for the job. He is just back from the Pacific.
Servicemen, farmers, workmen, statesmen, scientists, entertainers will be heard. Names of many are familiar: Bette Davis, Thomas Mann, Carl Van Doren, Paul Robeson, Elmo Roper. Also heard will be a Cuban newspaperman, a housewife, a Russian soldier, a Yank in Germany, airmen, exiles, a Jap-American and spokesmen and women from Allied lands.
Don Prindle told his radio partner, Wen Niles, “I’m writing a ‘joke.’” Wen looked at him and said, “Give her my regards.”
If they can tell them that bad on the air, we can write them.
One of those “once-in-a-lifetime” impromptu programs was given at the Variety Club Sunday night. A group from the Ladies Theatrical Club gave a private dinner party for the Oklahoma cast to thank the actors for entertaining at Deshon Hospital. The group retired to the club rooms after dinner and a singfest began. A “stranger” with a fine baritone “cut in” and everyone was wondering who he was. He was Ross Graham, one of NBC’s finest singers, who was also at Deshon with a USO unit.
Fred Waring signed an unusual contract with NBC today. He will go on the air as a half-hour morning feature, 11 to 11:30 starting June 4. The return of Waring to NBC is a personal idea of President Niles Trammell of the network. He wants Fred back where he started in radio. The contract is one of the biggest any network ever signed with a dance band and most unusual in that it is being used in the morning when soap operas are under fire.
Joan Brooks’ favorite story is about her trip to Camp Croft to sing for the convalescents there. She contracted pneumonia, they put her to bed and the G.I.’s sang for her.
A Kansas City columnist, tired of hearing Harry Von Zell trying to be a comedian, cracked, “Whoever told that guy Von Zell he’s funny? Why don’t he stick to straight commercials at which he’s good?”
That’s perfect comment in our book, but Harry resents it, so this summer he’ll spend his vacation “proving I’m funny by doing comedy roles in movies.”
There are two unfunny things about that: One is a strike in Hollywood which won’t permit Harry or anyone else to make pictures. The other is the possibility that Harry will flop as an actor, and if he does, will radio still want him?
One Man’s Family will celebrate its fourteenth radio birthday with tonight’s broadcast. Author Carleton E. Morse thinks he has written the equivalent of 54 novel-length books for the program.
Tonight’s American Forum will present questions the people are asking as the San Francisco World Conference is about to start. Members of the American delegation will be asked to answer them for the radio audience.
Gabby Hayes, who wears a beard, collects shaving mugs as a hobby.
Andre Kostelanetz and his wife, Lily Pons, can sign anyone of a number of radio contracts and “write their own ticket.” A most deserved situation.
Lawrence Tibbett is writing a popular song.
Fibber and Molly McGee (the Tim Jordans) are trying to build up faith in “staying married” in Hollywood. They have been happily wed for 27 years. They’re spreading the news of other long married couples, among them the Cantors, Bennys, Burns and Allen, Fred Allens, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson.
Following the Yank who boasted that he had dropped “everything but the kitchen sink” on Tokyo, then got a sink and dropped it, a radio giveaway program will give away a kitchen sink one of these nights. They’ve given everything else away.
Veterans of Pacific duty emphasize need for plasma
Army engineer says Ernie Pyle Week ‘is a great tribute to a great man’
Tuesday, April 24, 1945
Capt. and Mrs. Robert Newsome know the value of blood plasma.
As an Army nurse for 21 months in New Guinea, Mrs. Isabel Newsome saw plasma used in the treatment of diseases and burns, as well as shock.
And her husband, an engineer who has just returned from 38 months’ service in the Pacific, says: “I saw it save the lives of three of my men when our ship was attacked by a Jap suicide pilot during the invasion of Luzon.”
Could have used more
“We had enough, but we could have used more I can’t urge too strongly the need for civilians to give their blood to the Red Cross,” he continued.
Capt. Newsome, who went to the Blood Bank yesterday while visiting his wife’s family at 343 Vistaview St., Kennywood, thinks Ernie Pyle Week at the Wash Building Blood Bank is a great tribute to “a great man.”
And if people think plasma isn’t needed because the war is over, I can tell them that most of us out in the Pacific think we’ve just started to fight the Japs.
Anyway, the mopping-up operations are the worst. That’s when Ernie Pyle got killed.
Veteran of 4 campaigns
The South Dakota captain fought in the East Indies, Papua, New Guinea and Philippines campaigns and met his future bride in the summer of 1942, shortly after she had landed on New Guinea with the 171st Station Hospital.
They had their first date at a “New Year’s Eve” party January 2, 1943, and he proposed during a bombing raid.
Both win citations
I’d just spent 10 minutes telling her why she should say no when the planes came over. The ack-ack was pretty heavy and I thought we’d better crawl under the car.
But Isabel didn’t want to – she had on a white blouse, and was afraid she’d get it dirty!
They were married September 8, 1943 and have a son, Robert Jr., seven months old. Both were awarded the Presidential Citation for their work in New Guinea.
Mrs. Newsome, who took her training at Homestead Hospital, also made a plea for more Army nurses.
We had 30 nurses for 700 men, and perhaps two or three would themselves be ill with malaria. We needed more help then, and the girls who have been overseas several years should be relieved.
Words At War: ‘Brave Men’ (NBC), April 24, 11:30 p.m. EWT:
Oberdonau-Zeitung (April 25, 1945)
Schöne Abwehrerfolge im Osten und Westen
oz. Berlin, 24. April – Die gesamtmilitärische Lage ist gekennzeichnet durch erfreuliche Abwehrerfolge unserer Stoßdivisionen gegen die vorgeprellten Panzerkeile der Feinde im Süden der Ostfront und im bayrischen Raum und durch unsere Angriffserfolge am Semmering einerseits, durch eine Verschärfung der Lage um Berlin und den Vorstoß der Gegner im südlichsten Teil der Westfront.
Die Anwesenheit des Führers in der Reichshauptstadt auf dem Höhepunkt des Abwehrkampfes gibt der fanatischen Entschlossenheit der deutschen Truppen und der Berliner Bevölkerung einen unvergleichlichen Schwung. Berichte aus Berlin schildern die Härte der Kampfe, die geführt werden von Verbänden der Wehrmacht, der Waffen-SS, Alarmeinheiten, Panzer-Jagdverbänden der Hitler-Jugend und der Einwohnerschaft. Die Bolschewisten versuchten, Ihren nördlichen Offensivflügel weiter vorzutreiben mit dem Ziel der Umfassung der Reichshauptstadt. Sie drücken am ostwärtigen Havel-Ufer nach Süden und wurden von unseren Truppen abgestoppt. Bolschewistisches Artilleriefeuer liegt auf dem Spandauerforst. Der Feind versuchte weiter, unseren Sperrriegel durch einen Flankenangriff über die Havel zu durchbrechen, wurde aber durch unsere tapfere Verteidigung abgewehrt. Daraufhin stellten sie ihre Angriffsversuche wieder ein. Mit Unterstützung von Schlachtfliegern gingen sie zum Angriff auf das Gebiet von Tegel-Neuendorf und Hakenfelde-Schönewalde über. Diese Angriffe wurden von unserer Artillerie niedergeschlagen, bevor der feindliche Ansturm zum Einsatz kam. Im südlichen Vorfeld gehen die Kämpfe um die Linie Luckenwalde und Ransdorf. Der Schwerpunkt der Kämpfe lag bei Luckenwalde und an der von Zossen nach Norden Verlaufenden Reichsstraße 96. Im Südosten Berlins verteidigte unsere tapfere Abwehr den Raum bei Köpenick und im Spreeabschnitt bei Oberschöneweide.
Im Brennpunkt der Abwehrschlacht zwischen Donau und Thaya haben die deutschen Verbände den Sowjets in den letzten Tagen hohe Verluste zugefügt und den Durchbruch des Feindes in Richtung auf Znaim und das Protektorat verhindert. Innerhalb weniger Tage büßten die Sowjets 150 Panzer ein. Während die Sowjets südlich des Wienerwaldes von Nordosten und Süden Vordringen, kam der deutsche Gegenangriff südlich des Semmering weiter voran. Der Kampf ging dort in den letzten Tagen um die Ortschaften Waldbach, Mönichwald und das durch den Sitz einer nationalpolitischen Erziehungsanstalt bekannte Vorau.
Die deutschen Soldaten an der Westfront leisten nicht nur auf einer Frontlänge von 1.000 Kilometer, sondern auch in einer Fronttiefe von 1.000 Kilometer einen fanatischen und erbitterten Widerstand. Eine besondere Charakteristik unserer Kampfführung bildet der Widerstand weit hinter den feindlichen Linien. Die Ruinen-Verteidigung kostet dem Gegner viel Blut. Unsere Kampfgruppen fügen dem Feind einen Schaden zu, dessen Verhältnis zu unseren Verlusten als sehr groß zu bezeichnen ist. In Nürnberg z.B. vernichteten unsere Soldaten in den letzten Tagen noch 24 schwere nordamerikanische Panzerwagen. In Fürth, Erlangen und Magdeburg war es ebenso. Aber auch in anderen Gebieten, wie z.B. dem Harz, bewähren und bewährten sie sich als Wellenbrecher gegen die feindlichen Angriffsspitzen. Als hervorragendes Merkmal der deutschen Abwehrtaktik an der Westfront ist die Kühnheit und Schnelligkeit, mit der die deutschen Jagdkommandos ihre Angriffe gegen die Flanken des Gegners führen, hervorzuheben. Die deutschen Panzerjagdverbände tragen Ihren Namen zu Recht, denn sie, sind es, die die feindlichen Panzerrudel, die in das deutsche Hinterland vorzustoßen versuchen, regelrecht jagen und zur Strecke bringen. Die Panzerfaust, das kleine Wunderwerk der Panzervernichtung, ist die Waffe, mit der sie hart und unerbittlich zuschlagen. Immer wieder erlebt man in den verschiedenen Abschnitten der Front, dass auch die jüngsten Freiwilligen, 16- und 17-jährige, sich zu den Panzerjagdkommandos gemeldet haben, deren Taten erst später gewürdigt werden, können. In der augenblicklichen Stunde der Gefahr kennen sie nur eine Aufgabe, die Spitzen der feindlichen Panzerkeile zu zerschlagen und ihre Flanken schwer zu verwunden. Diese Aufgabe aber bildet für die Führung einen Faktor von operativer Bedeutung.