3,000 planes sent to Russia in year
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Ex-Congressman dies
Boston, Massachusetts –
Only three days after being tendered a reception on his 70th birthday, former U.S. Rep. Joseph F. O’Connell (D-MA) collapsed and died of heart disease last night while visiting with friends in a Boston hotel.
Nightclub fire toll officially put at 487
Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
The Cocoanut Grove holocaust took 487 lives, according to revised official figures released today by the Boston Public Safety Committee
Duplications discovered during a week-long checkup by the committee reduced the death list to the new figure from the earlier “official” total of 495.
The committee’s final check showed that 171 persons were injured. Of this number, more than 100 are still hospitalized with some in critical condition.
Reporter-flier hits cruiser, brings riddled plane back
By Lt. (jg.) Fred Mears, as told to Charles Arnot, United Press staff writer
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Smoke tell Tripoli story when U.S. Army bombers made their first raid on that important supply port for the Germans and Italians remaining in Libya. The objective was the Spanish mole of the upper left. The bombers were not interested in the ships in the harbor. The successful aim of the American bombardiers is attested by the clouds of smoke.
Americans learn tricks of jungle war in Guinea
Japs are masters of camouflage and have ‘telegraphic’ fence that tips off machine-gunners
By George Weller
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
WITH U.S. FORCES IN ALGERIA (by wireless) – At the end of the first day of the Battle of Oran, Sgt. Norman Harrington and Pvt. Ned Modica, Army photographers, sprawled on the floor of a country schoolhouse near the little Algerian town of Arzew. Other soldiers lay all around them.
Both were dead tired. Their clothes were still wet, and they were cold. They had come ashore without blankets or overcoats. Instead of one musette bag, they carried three over their shoulders. These weren’t filled with food or ammunition. They were filled with extra film for their cameras.
And of cameras they had aplenty. Of personal things they carried only toothbrushes.
Norman Harrington’s father is a preacher. He was gassed in the last war. Today he is living in retirement in Florida, a sick man from the holocaust of 25 years ago.
The other war was an old thing by the time Norman grew to adult consciousness.
Norman wasn’t much interested in wars anyway. He was a civic leader back home in Easton, Maryland – an odd thing for a boy of 16 just out of high school. He was chairman of the March of Dimes for the President’s birthday. He belonged to clubs. He had an uncanny head for business, and he was wedded to photography.
Filmed landing action
Norman and Ned, in their first 12 hectic hours on African soil, had filmed wounded Americans and wounded Frenchmen, filmed the actual capture of a seaplane base, and had a weird experience filming their first wartime corpse, the body of a sniper who had shot at them and missed.
The soldiers in the schoolroom were nervous all night. In the darkness, they could hear the click of cartridge clips in revolvers. Just before dawn, one touchy doughboy heaved a hand grenade out the window at an imagined shadow.
Ned Modica was used to nicer things in life. As a youth, he went to the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts. Then he had two years of study in Paris. His Long Island home is white brick, and his studio was in fashionable Madison Ave.
At dawn, the two photographers luckily found a jeep, and they drove forward to where the fighting for Saint-Cloud was going on. Eventually they left the jeep and worked their way up to the frontline. In the infantry, you learn to walk a little, then to lie down and wait for a mortar shell to burst. Your head jerks down involuntarily when you hear the zing of a passing bullet. These two boys learned all that.
Ned Modica found an American machine-gun crew, and ground away at them with his camera. It was good action stuff.
Yanks get dramatic welcome
Then they went on into Oran and filmed the dramatic welcome given the American troops by the French and Arab people. Finally, they boxed up their film, scouted around till they found an accommodating RAF pilot to fly it to London, and called it a day on their first venture into war.
Today, they are bivouacked a score of miles out in the country living in tiny shelter tents in an olive grove, waiting for the next campaign. That’s where I found them.
“Here in Africa is the first place I ever picked an orange off a tree,” says Modica. “After our film is edited and censored, it should still be enough for a 30-minute newsreel, most of it in Technicolor,” says Harrington. “It should be beautiful.”
“When we get to Italy, we can get us some wonderful things to eat,” says Modica. “At least we can ask for them, for I can speak Italian.”
“If we live that long,” says Harrington.