Ferguson: Unscramble us, please!
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
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Monahan: Barroom battles enliven Frisco Sal
Susanna Foster in title role finds romance with Turhan Bey
By Kaspar Monahan
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC (delayed) – One of the first friends I made aboard our aircraft carrier was a tall, well-built, mustached sailor named Jerry Ryan.
He wears dungarees, smokes a pipe sometimes, and always wears his sleeves rolled up, He’s from Davenport, Iowa, but his wife is living in Indianapolis. He is a boilermaker first class.
Jerry had served one hitch in the Navy before the war. He knows all the little ins and outs of how to get along. Everybody likes him. He isn’t especially talkative, yet it’s safe to say he knows more people than anybody else on the ship.
Ryan is what is known in be the Navy as “a good man.” He’s skilled in his work, he’s dependable, and he’s very smart. Hed die before he’d curry favor with anybody.
He’s the kind an officer can depend on utterly – if that officer plays square with Ryan. But he gets a pretender so quickly it would make your head swim.
Ryan’s concept of right and wrong is very sharply drawn, and the Irish in him doesn’t hesitate when a crisis comes. The other boys were telling me of an incident–
It was one of the days when Jap bombs hit this ship, off the Philippines. A great hole was torn in the deck. Several men were killed, and many wounded. Bodies of their comrades were still lying mangled on the deck.
A sailor came up to look at the damage, and said almost exultingly, “Oh boy, this’s great. Now at last they’ll have to send us back to America for repairs.”
Without saying a word, Ryan turned and knocked him down.
Oil shack is a social center
Ryan runs what is known as the “oil shack.” From this little domain the condensers are regulated. He has dials and gauges and a phone and a clipboard on which are kept hourly records of oil pressures and water levels and all that stuff.
The “shack” is a little room about the size of an apartment kitchenette, with a metal workbench and drawers full of tools, and one folding canvas stool.
Ryan’s oil shack is a social center. There is always somebody hanging around. You can get a cup of coffee there, look at sea shell collections, see card tricks, or find out the latest rumors that started on the bridge five minutes ago.
Jerry brews coffee for his guests in a nickel-plated pot over an electric grill. The pot has a red hash mark for a hitch of service in the Navy. And soon he is going to award it the Purple Heart. It got dented in the Philippines typhoon.
Some nights we pop corn in the “oil shack.” The boys’ folks send them corn in cans, and they beg butter from the galley, and pop ‘er up in a skillet on the grill.
Lucky Ryan good friend of cook
One of Ryan’s, friends who comes to eat popcorn is a Negro – a tall, athletic fellow from his hometown of Davenport. They were on the ship together for a year before they found out they were from the same place.
The colored boy’s name is Wesley Cooper. He is a cook. He was a star athlete back home. He’s the best basketball player in the whole crew. When he gets done with the war, he has a scholarship waiting for him at the University of Iowa.
Wesley comes down to the shack almost every night after supper. He smokes a curved stem pipe, and holds one hand up to it, and listens and grins and doesn’t say much.
We were popping corn one night. One of the boys said, “Wes, how about getting us some more butter?” And another one said, “Wes, bring some salt, will you?” And a third said, “And bring me a sandwich when you come down, will you, Wes?”
And Wes grins and his white teeth flash and he said, “I suppose you’d like for me to go up and cook you a whole meal?” And he never made a move.
Ups and downs of war
Another of my best friends is Howard Wilson, a bosn’s mate second class. Like Lt. Jimmy Van Fleet, the fighter pilot we wrote about, he is from Findlay, Ohio. In fact they are good friends.
Wilson is a low-spoken, handsome and highly intelligent man of 35. He has a beautiful home and a good business back in Findlay. He is part owner and general manager of three movie theaters. His wife is running them while he is away.
In those bygone years back in the old hometown, Jimmy Van Fleet used to go to Howard Wilson and borrow money when he got hard up. Now the younger Jimmy dwells in the comparative luxury of officers’ quarters, and the older Howard lives the lowlier life of a sailor, sleeping on a rack in a crowded compartment, and wearing dungarees.
That’s the way things go in wartime. Howard is old and wise enough that it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. He accepts the war and his own lot calmly.
The other pilots know of this friendship, and ask Jimmy if he’s keeping on the good side of Howard to insure he’ll have a job when the war is over. He says he is.
They’re going back for revenge —
Freed French women recite nightmare of German camp
Forced to hack gold teeth from murdered comrades, operate crematorium
By Sam Souki, United Press staff writer
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Steady jobs, steady pay –
Guarantee of work pays wartime dividend to Procter & Gamble
Workers protected in earlier, lean years remain faithful to soap company
By Allan L. Swim, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
Well, War Mobilization Director Byrnes is worrying about the manpower shortage, and there are fourteen – count ‘em – fourteen people running for Mayor of Los Angeles. The candidates include everyone from an unhappy restaurant owner to a lady who used to run an escort bureau, and who wants the city jail cleaned up for personal reasons.
Anyway, the whole thing started off as one of the most delirious political campaigns in history. So far, the voters have witnessed cowboy bands, radio singing commercials, parades, fan dancers and medicine-show barkers, with trained seals rumored to be on the way. Abbott and Costello could run on the conservative ticket here, believe me.
If you think Mayor La Guardia is going to steal the spotlight from our boys and girls, you’re sadly mistaken. The New York Mayor has extended the curfew to one o’clock, but our candidates never stop performing.
Bucs enthused by manpower ruling
Early return expected of hesitant players – Dahlgren, Handley join
By Chester L. Smith, Press sports editor
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‘Best official news’ –
Baseball men regard ruling as big uplift
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Yeah I want to learn about the Civilian Diet in 1945.
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