The Pittsburgh Press (February 12, 1944)
Clapper: The meek
By Raymond Clapper
This is another of the dispatches Mr. Clapper wrote during the battle of the Marshall Islands, in which he was killed.
With the Pacific Fleet, in the Marshall Islands – (by wireless)
A few days before we went into the battle of the Marshalls, I attended Sunday services aboard one of the several big aircraft carriers in this huge fleet. The chaplain, the Rev. J. F. Dreith, took as his text the Sermon on the Mount.
Sitting among the bluejackets on the forecastle, I was gazing out at several battleships around our horizon as the chaplain read to us, from Matthew, about how the meek would inherit the earth. I wondered whether we had not confused meekness with weakness. To be meek and humble in spirit is not necessarily to be weak physically, although we have distorted the idea into that. Scorn of force became a national policy with us. We believed that if we renounced aggression, and disarmed – in pother words, if we bowed in meekness and weakness before the world – it would encourage world peace and certainly would bring peace to America. But that policy did neither. It encouraged aggressors, and they finally attacked us.
We have discovered our error. The fleet in the midst of which I have been riding for some days seems to me to be the beginning of wisdom on our part. With the world as it is, we must hold the islands out here which are useful for airfields. We must use them to protect ourselves.
Work of Americans
I have seen island after island out here in the Pacific where, except for some coconut trees and the British flag, everything is the work of Americans – airfields, soldiers, great dumps of military supplies, docks and ships.
Meek and humble in spirit, yes. Encouragement and help to other peoples, yes. The spirit of the Sermon on the Mount is the essence of democracy. But, like the Pilgrims at Plymouth, we must carry our muskets to church.
As I looked around the horizon during the services that Sunday, it seemed to me that we were carrying some very large muskets with us.
The brother-in-law of an old friend of mine is the skipper of one of the biggest and most famous battleships that went with us into the battle of the Marshalls. He invited me to visit him aboard his ship, which gave me an opportunity to see this vessel at sea. I had been aboard her in the States some time ago, when she was in for repairs.
Battleships are quite different now from what they were a few years ago, when I was aboard the old Arizona during the trio Herbert Hoover made to the Virgin Islands. Now the once-spacious decks are covered with anti-aircraft guns. They poke out from every spare bit of space. You can’t walk around the ship at night without bumping into guns. Gun barrels are everywhere. When all of the long, thin, anti-aircraft guns are pointed up to an approaching plane, the big battlewagon looks like a bristling porcupine.
Not pampered now
The battleship today has become something of an escort and general utility ship, as against the pampered days of the last war when they were run up into the York River and tied up for safety. Now they go along to protect the aircraft carriers, because it is possible to carry so many anti-aircraft guns on them and they can take punishment.
Although it was once a naval principle that ships should not be used against shore batteries, now big battleships go in to bombard a coast in preparation for landings. Those tactics were tried out successfully in Sicily and are now standard practice. Hence the old controversy between battleships and airpower dissolves in the face of the fact that they are complementary.
Dozens of times aboard his carrier, I have heard crew members say, as they looked out at several of the biggest battlewagons, how comfortable it made them feel. And I heard the same thing on the battleship, about the carriers with their decks covered with planes.
But there is still some rivalry between gunners and air crews. The gunners refer derisively to the men who handle the planes on the carriers as “airdales.” But they all stand together for their ship.
As one of the crew of my carrier said to me when bragging about his ship:
When torpedoes come up and find out it’s this ship, they turn right around and go back.