The last columns of Raymond Clapper

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 3, 1944)

Clapper: Hospital

By Raymond Clapper

This is one of the last columns written by Raymond Clapper.

Somewhere in New Guinea – (by wireless)
I hope it will give comfort to many parents, wives and sweethearts at home to know that, bad as conditions are where the fighting must be done, the wounded and ill in New Guinea are in the more serious cases evacuated back to station hospitals which are the opposite of what I had imagined jungle conditions here to be.

I visited the 171st Station Hospital, near Port Moresby. It consists of a large group of tents out in an open valley, overlooking the sparkling waters of the Coral Sea and fringed around with hillsides of brilliant flame trees in luxurious blossom.

Lt. Col. C. T. Wilkinson, formerly a physician at Wake Forest, North Carolina:

Four days after we were given this real estate, which was covered with high kunai grass, we had 500 patients.

They had to bring in water from miles away. there were Jap air raids every night. Doctors did the carpentry work for the operating room, and nurses painted the interior. In 14 months, they have handled 1,174 patients, including a considerable number of psychoneurosis cases, most of whom have returned to duty. Some of these are boys who have been spoiled by easy luxury at home and find it hard to adjust to Army life, some are suffering from plain homesickness, some from fear.

White sheets and women

The big thing about the hospital is the bright, open, cheerful atmosphere. When one group of patients came in after a long stretch in the jungle at the front, under severe conditions, one of them said to a nurse:

Gosh! White sheets, and women!

Bright flowers are planted in little gardens all around the hospital tents. Many of the boys are sent seeds from home. I saw zinnias in bloom, and marigolds, and poppies, and native poinsettias, and morning-glory vines over the nurses’ tents. Everything possible is done to help the men forget the gruesome sights of the front.

Patients work a five-acre garden. Col. Wilkinson picked a 15-pound watermelon outside his tent the day before I was there. Palms provide shade over the tents.

I was walking along with Col. Wilkinson when suddenly we came upon a big open ward tent full of kneeling men. I could see the back of a priest, in white vestments, at an altar, and suddenly I realized it was Sunday. You can’t tell one day from another out here, because everything goes on just the same. The hospital has Catholic and Protestant services on Sundays, Jewish services on Fridays, Mormon services on Wednesdays.

Gardening heals soul

The Red Cross helps instruct patients in manual therapy, using old airplane metal and other scraps. The patients have just made 200 screen-wire fly traps. They convert shell packing cases into sinks, and so other improvised work. But it is gardening that seems most of all to heal the soul.

They have a rolling Army kitchen which they say is the only one used by any hospital. It is in the charge of one of the nurses, Lt. Clara Palau of Northfield, Minnesota, who told me the food was always cold when it had to be carried on trays to wards as far as a quarter of a mile from the kitchen. So, they wangled this mobile kitchen from the Australian Army, and now they bring piping hot food to every patient.

The hospital streets are named after nurses. There is a baseball field, and there are movies five nights a week.

They have just used the new drug penicillin for the first time. Tail gunner Patrick Missita of Glens Falls, New York, had an internal abscess and they couldn’t operate. Penicillin saved him. He told me he was leaving the next day to go back to his gunning.

The last thing I saw on leaving the mess hall was a large poster: “Buy War Bonds.”

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 4, 1944)

Clapper: Battle eve

By Raymond Clapper

The following dispatch from Mr. Clapper, written on the eve of the Marshall Islands battle in which he lost his life, was received a few hours after word of his death.

Aboard an aircraft carrier, somewhere in the Pacific – (by wireless)
On the night before a battle everybody gets a big holiday dinner. For breakfast on the morning of a battle beefsteak is served.

Everybody aboard knows when the time of battle is approaching. You begin to count the days as “D minus four,” “D minus three,” meaning four days or three days before the action is to begin. Sometimes, instead of calling it “D-Day,” they call it “Dog Day.” And for some time after a battle begins, the days are known as “D plus one day,” or “D plus two days,” instead of by the days of the week or month. The calendar is forgotten, and all time is counted as before or after the beginning of the battle.

A slow, almost imperceptible rise of tension takes place as D-Day approaches. But it is nothing very marked. Men begin to think more about their steel helmets, and to place them where they can be picked up quickly. At night you begin to have your red waterproof flashlight always within reach, and always in your pocket when you are moving about the ship. Some men keep heavy leather gloves in their pockets, because these are good to out on if you have to slide down a rope going overboard.

Always study landmarks

You are always studying the location of ladders, hatches and bulkheads, and making mental notes of little landmarks around the ship so that you can find your way in a hurry in the dark with only a dim red flash to guide you. It is surprising how different ship passageways seem when you try to find your way around them with the lights out, and when many of the openings are closed.

Some 3,000 men are aboard this ship, and when the call to battle stations is sounded, they must get to their places within seconds, or minutes at the most. Some of them must go the whole length of the ship, which is as far as a golf ball is ordinarily driven. Men are rushing both up and down narrow ladders. Hatches are being slammed. There is intense activity everywhere, with the general-quarters gong clanging its unmistakable warning of approaching danger.

Formerly ships would throw huge quantities of things overboard before going into action – all the mattresses, bedding, and other inflammable material. Now, with the vast improvement in fireproofing materials, and with greater fireproof construction and firefighting equipment, seldom is anything thrown overboard. there is very little around to burn.

Precautions at sea

Before I left Washington, one of the survivors of the carrier Wasp, LtCdr. William C. Chambliss, gave me a copy of his article, “Recipe for Survival,” which has been issued by the training division of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics. I find that many of his suggestions are being commonly adopted aboard this carrier, such as waterproof flashlights, heavy gloves, a large steel knife in a scabbard hitched to the belt – which is useful, as Cdr. Chambliss says, in cutting yourself clear of lines or other impediments with which you may become involved in the water, and also for discouraging sharks or for opening emergency ration cans.

Those are the kind of normal little preparations everyone makes, although the conversation seldom touches on the possibilities of action. The laughing and joking go on as usual at mess and around the ship, with boys scuffling on the flight deck and the hangar deck, or playing cards, or sleeping under the planes, during slack times.

You always snatch a nap if you can, because in a combat area you are up long before dawn and until late at night, and there is considerable tension, at least subconsciously.

During battle, when the men are held at their stations for long hours, mess attendants carry sandwiches and coffee to them frequently, also hot soup, lemonade, fruitcakes, and various small items they can put into their pockets and nibble at while beside their guns.

The briefing lectures

For several days before an action, the pilots spend hours listening to briefing lectures concerning the impending battle. They are told what they need to know in order to carry out their part of the battle. Especially they are given lectures about the territory they are to bomb or strafe. They are told about the history of the locality, the characteristics of the natives, the estimated strength of the enemy, and they make a careful study of aerial photographs and maps to mark the location of enemy airfields and other installations that may be targets.

But there is not the high tension that you might expect. Sometimes, when a report of exceptionally heavy enemy strength is given, there will be raucous shouts of “Wow!” Once when the briefing showed our own forces to be far in excess of what the enemy would have, somebody shouted from the rear of the room:

Let’s go on to Tokyo while we’re at it!

But mostly the pilots are slouched down in their chairs, their favorite position being with both feet up on top of the high back of the chair in front. They act much like a bored classroom taking in a lecture with as little effort as possible, instead of fighting men some of whom will not come back from the missions under discussion.

You have a sense of living in a world apart from what you knew at home, and there is almost no talk of life back in the States now. You live only minute by minute through the routine that carries you smoothly, as if drifting down a river, toward the day of battle.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 5, 1944)

Clapper: A hard war

By Raymond Clapper

Raymond Clapper knew that when he set out with our naval striking force, he might be unable to send any dispatches for many days. So he wirelessed a few columns in advance – from New Guinea, from Munda, from Guadalcanal, and from aboard an aircraft carrier. Other manuscripts may have been found among his effects aboard the ship from which he flew to his death.

Before leaving the country, Mr. Clapper wrote that “some people in Washington feel there is no sufficient awareness at home of how much our men are doing and in what a living hell they must sometimes do it.” His mission was to help increase that awareness. Hence, we feel sure that he would want us to print, posthumously, the columns that will appear during the next few days.

Munda, Solomon Islands – (by wireless)
It is already a long, hard war for most of the men out here.

Some of the outfits that were among the first to hit the beach at Guadalcanal are now over here. They have been through two hard campaigns. And the Marine airmen are still at it in the rain, mud, jungle. It is rugged living. There are no women, and men go around naked.

I have just spent an evening in barracks with the pilots of one of the most famous Marine torpedo-plane squadrons in the South Pacific. It is the second oldest in the Marine Corps, and was the first squadron on Henderson Field at Guadalcanal, where it brought down 15 Jap planes in the first 10 days.

Listen to some of their stories and you know it not only will be a long, hard war, but has already been one, so far as they are concerned.

It was land or else–

One skinny little guy over in the corner had not said anything, but after an hour somebody asked:

Did you hear what happened to him?

The finger was pointed at Lt. Garth B. Thomas of Dallas, Texas, who brought in his torpedo bomber a few days ago with a live bomb stuck in the bomb bay and ready to go off at the slightest jolt.

Lt. Thomas, who is 24, ordered his two gunners to jump, and they parachuted into coconut trees without a scratch. Thomas then tried to figure and swing out onto the wings, which are midway of the fuselage. Each time he gave it up, as he couldn’t figure out how to jump and clear the elevators.

His hydraulic system had been knocked out, so he could not use his flaps, or brakes. Also, one wheel was stuck.

I asked him what he thought as he went through 15 minutes of landing preparation, suspended between the ground and eternity. He replied:

I kept thinking I would land easy or else.

He shook for a day

At that point, Lt. G. C. Stamets, also of Dallas, interrupted to say:

You should have seen GB next day. His hand was still shaking so hard he rattled a sack of lemons he was carrying.

Anyway, he finally got his wheels down and came in to a landing. Then to his horror a slight ground loop began, but fortunately the plane went into a taxiway and stopped without smashing.

Lt. Thomas jumped out and started to run, warning others away. A bomb disposal man came and found that the bomb fuse was only four inches from striking the bomb-bay doors, which would have meant the end.

I asked the lieutenant what he did after that. He said he went to Rabaul on a bombing mission the next day. That is the kind of life led by this young fellow, who was an adding machine salesman until he enlisted in the Navy in January 1941. He began flight training in April 1942, after having been up in a plane just once in his life. He has six weeks more out here, after which he gets to return home.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 7, 1944)

Clapper: Munda

By Raymond Clapper

Raymond Clapper, before setting out with a naval striking force which took him to his death, wirelessed a few columns in advance. Last Jan. 1, upon leaving the country for the Pacific, he had written that “some people in Washington feel there is no sufficient awareness at home of how much our men are doing and in what a living hell they must sometimes do it.” His mission was to help increase that awareness. Hence we feel that he would want us to print, posthumously, these columns written some days ago.

Munda, Solomon Islands – (by wireless)
I had read a good deal about the Munda campaign, but not until I went over the ground where we suffered more than 25% casualties did the story come to life in all its grimness.

Adm. Nimitz was understating it when he said this was the worst terrain he had ever seen. It is surely the worst he ever will see. One Marine colonel said the jungle was so dense he never saw the sun for days at a time.

We got in here early last August. Three days later, the Seabees moved in with bulldozers and dynamite to remove coconut groves and saw off the top of a hill, and in 56 hours we were using an airstrip. The Japs’ strip here, as everywhere else, was too small. It was 3,700 feet long. We built one 8,000 feet long and three times as wide as the Japs’.

Now, after five months, Munda has a huge coral-surfaced airfield and hard-surfaced roads, and the hills are covered with installations and supplies, making a strong forward base out of this place.

Japs primitive but effective

The Japs had hastily occupied Munda for their meager fighter strip at the climax of the nearby battle of Guadalcanal, when they were about to lose Henderson Field to us. The Japs are primitive but effective. I went through one of their dugouts, running into tunnels 30 feet back into the coral rock. It was blasted and chopped out by hand, and had coconut logs as supporting timbers. In fact, it was so large and strong we used it temporarily for our air-control plotting room.

We had to dynamite the Japs out of there. This and other dugouts stood up under direct bomb hits.

The Japs were clever in that they built their airstrip under coconut trees, which camouflaged it until they were finished. Then they cut down the trees and suddenly the airstrip appeared, ready for use. They planted sprouting coconuts on pillboxes for camouflage.

The Japs had only narrow roads or trails. All their work was done by hand; they had no heavy road-building machinery such as we bring in everywhere out here. We went into jungle this way – patrols first, bulldozers next, followed by jeeps and artillery.

To go seven miles took one month. The Japs were vicious snipers. We ordered our men into foxholes at 3 of an afternoon with orders to stay there and shoot anything that moved. Then we laid down an artillery barrage that dropped only a hundred yards from these men. Yet the Japs crawled through it and dropped grenades into our foxholes, or struck with knives in the dark.

Many invalided home

No American troops ever went through anything more severe. Many of them have been invalided home, but many are still here. The 43rd Division, a New England National Guard outfit, went through a living hell out here. One regiment, the 172nd Infantry, is the descendant of the Green Mountain Boys. Many of these men are still here, and just a couple of nights before I arrived, one of their units was shot up in an air raid, losing one killed and 23 injured.

Another division that has found this to be a long hard war is the 37th, mostly Ohio men. After Munda, they went in at Bougainville.

We are using some of the Jap landing barges captured in battle. Also, for a while we used some Ford and Chevrolet trucks which the Japs had left, and we found an Indian motorcycle of the three-wheeled type which the Japs had converted into a light ammunition carrier. We found oxygen bottles marked “Made in USA,” and two coastal batteries of 47 Armstrong-Vickers guns which are believed to have been captured at Hong Kong.

But it is all quiet around here now except for air raids and the fight against jungle scourges. Lt. John R. Dexheimer of Louisville, Kentucky, said the greatest danger was from coconut trees, with shrapnel-weakened trunks, falling down on tents.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 8, 1944)

Clapper: Guadalcanal

By Raymond Clapper

Raymond Clapper, before setting out with a naval striking force which took him to his death, wirelessed a few columns in advance. Last Jan. 1, upon leaving the country for the Pacific, he had written that “some people in Washington feel there is no sufficient awareness at home of how much our men are doing and in what a living hell they must sometimes do it.” His mission was to help increase that awareness. Hence we feel that he would want us to print, posthumously, these columns written some days ago.

Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands – (by wireless)
In the evening after dinner, I sat on a wet front porch with Maj. Gen. Maxwell Murray, commander of the South Pacific forward area, right on the spot where the first Marines landed on Guadalcanal.

No longer is there any war here, for this is far to the rear. Guadalcanal is just a big supply dump. Yet it is not quite as peaceful and serene as most battlefields become when the war moves on and nature smiles again. This was a stormy night, and the wind lashed the surf up onto the little plot in front of Gen. Murray’s quarters. The rain blew in through the screened sides of his native thatched hut.

I wondered how the Marines ever landed here, but that was in August, in the dry season. Now it has rained every day since Christmas, as the first sailor I walked with said. I have found it depressing even in the short time I have been on the island.

Pacific War shrine

Guadalcanal has become a kind of shrine for the Pacific War in the minds of the American people as it was here we won the long jungle struggle with the Japs that stopped their advance and marked the beginning of our slow march toward Tokyo.

Nobody will ever live happily on this place. It is not unpleasant to the eye along the coast. Some spots in our military developments, which stretch for 30 or more miles along the north coast, are as neat and attractive as an outdoor summer colony, with little huts under neatly cleared coconut groves, and little white coral walks edged with stones or small tree trunks. But it is wet. The rain, or what a Californian might call the Guadalcanal mist, drips as it did on the stage for Somerset Maugham’s play, Rain.

The high surf broke two barges loose and they washed up on our beach. The tents were never dry. Everything becomes as wet as the outside of a beer bottle on a warm day.

RAdm. Theodore Wilkinson and I talked for a couple of hours in his office tent with the rain washing in onto the floor. But there is no use bothering about wet floors, nor about the mud that is carried in large cakes on everybody’s shoes.

Your foxhole will be complete full of water unless you cover it with canvas – in which case it will be only half full – although that is not so important here as at Munda, where two nights before I was there 20 men were injured because they stayed in bed instead of diving for their wet foxholes.

Mosquitoes dangerous foe

And when friendly little lizards run up your screen wire walls, you pay no attention. It’s the mosquitoes you must watch out for.

A heroic anti-malaria fight has worked wonders since the days when a high percentage of our men got the disease – and one admiral got it from spending just one night on the island.

Here, as at Munda, among the most conspicuous things you see when approaching by air are the white crosses in the cemeteries. Our vast airfields tell you at once that enormous developments have taken place under American occupation.

That always impresses me – the six of what we do – just as any downtown American business section is on a physical scale unapproached in any other country. Anything we do, we do it big. Great piles of ammunition, rations, and every other article of war are to be found all over the Pacific up to our frontlines. That is now true of Guadalcanal.

This is not an ideal base, for there is not protected anchorage, but it was the only place available at the time. And as Gen. Murray said, once you get your work table set up, with big repair shops and vast accumulations of reserve supplies, it is difficult to move very often. You wait until the line moves a long way up before making another jump.

Guadal isn’t anything like what it was when Dick Tregaskis was living through his Diary out here. For a while they called it a rest camp. But now the men are just as anxious to get away as they ever were. Gen. MacArthur is putting in an 18-month rotation scheme for some of his troops who have been in combat areas longest, and it is working out similarly in this South Pacific area.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 9, 1944)

Clapper: Flat top

By Raymond Clapper

This is another of the dispatches written by Mr. Clapper before his death in a collision of airplanes during the battle of the Marshalls.

Aboard an aircraft carrier, somewhere in the Pacific –
After a couple of weeks with the Army and the Marines in the jungles of South Pacific islands, I cam aboard this big, new, and most modern airplane carrier last night. I feel like a country boy going to the city, as I shift from the mud and the dirt to come aboard this floating community of some 3,000 persons.

As far as personal living is concerned, it is like a big hotel with an airfield on the roof.

My Army gear, which had been knocked around through the mud with the Marines at Cape Gloucester and Munda and Guadalcanal, suddenly looked filthy and out of place when I saw it in my cabin with its neatly-made bed and white sheets, its fresh-painted walls – and its modern bathroom instead of those ladders out over the water that we were using a few days ago.

‘Everything’s up to date’

I feel like the country boy in Oklahoma! who sings my favorite song, “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City.” For here they have “gone about as far as they can go.” You turn a knob over your bed and you hear the radio from San Francisco. But our colored mess attendant tells me confidentially that although it sounds as if the music is coming from San Francisco:

You know they take it down and play it on records right here on the ship. You ain’t listenin’ to San Francisco. You just thinks you is.

This boy’s name is Charles, and from Charles I have learned about city life again. My one pair of shows had worn through walking on the coral rock of the islands. Charles said he could have my shores resoled at the ship’s shoe shop. I asked how long it would take. He said:

Oh, they can have them back this afternoon.

This is not only city life, it’s a darn sight better city life than you can get in most places at home right now.

Of course there isn’t a man on this ship who wouldn’t rather take life at home, but if you have to be away the Navy has it over the Army in many things. As one sailor said:

Why should anybody want to live in the mud when he can live on a ship? Of course, you might get hit, but you can also get it in the Army, and it’s better to have it happen in a place like this than out in a foxhole full of mud and water.

Seven barbers aboard

Every day the ship’s canteen sells 80 gallons of ice cream to the sailors, and 24 gallons of Coca-Cola. On my first night aboard I had filet mignon, although that was probably very special. For lunch today we had hamburger and black-eyed peas – and two helpings.

They have seven barbers aboard. I got a much-needed haircut from a young fellow who learned barbering in a small town in Tennessee.

He said:

I didn’t want to do barbering in the Navy. I just wanted to be a sailor. But they caught up with me, and so I’m barbering again.

He works mostly on officers. He said:

They don’t like Navy G.I. haircuts, so I have to do it a little more fancy. They all want hair tonic. I only have one kind, but I’ve got their backs to the mirror so I just give them anything they ask for out of this one bottle. They can’t tell the difference.

He hopes to have his own shop when he gets out of the Navy.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 10, 1944)

Clapper: Premonition

By Raymond Clapper

The poignant story below, written by Mr. Clapper shortly before his death in the battle of the Marshall Islands, seems almost to indicate a premonition of his own fate.

Aboard an aircraft carrier, somewhere in the Pacific –
To the men aboard a warship in a combat zone, religion becomes a far more important thing than you might suppose if you judged by civilian standards at home. You can get some idea of the reason why from the story of a flier who became afraid. I have his name, but I shall not use it now.

One of the chaplains was telling about it because it was a strange and puzzling experience. Chaplains have many unusual experiences with the men, because, as this one said, bluejackets are not as irreligious as they seem or want to appear.

This particular chaplain, a young man, has been with the Navy seven years. Before that, he was pastor of a Lutheran church at a West Coast port. There is also a priest aboard. And the gunnery officer, who once studied to be a rabbi, conducts Jewish services each Friday night, with a usual attendance of about 30. The several Mormons aboard attend the Protestant services.

Masses held daily

Sixty percent of the crew are Catholic. Mass is held daily. Protestants and Catholics each have a devotional service every evening. There are two masses on Sundays. Christian Science readings are given by a lay reader for a group of about 15.

That suggests the religious activity and interest among the 3,000 men aboard this carrier out here in the Pacific, where they are facing some pretty serious business for men of their years, or for men of any years for that matter. They want communion service before they go into combat. Before each action, prayers are always said over the loudspeaker system.

It was on Christmas Eve that the young man who was afraid, a radio gunner, came to the Protestant chaplain after communion and asked to see him privately. They were going to strike at Kavieng on Christmas morning, and this was the communion service the night before the dangerous mission.

We will just call this young man the unknown flier, for I suppose he was something like all of these men and like all the rest of us. Formerly he had been doing quiet patrol work in the Caribbean, and he asked for more active duty aboard a carrier. He was transferred to Norfolk for carrier training. There he met a girl and they were married, and some months later he came out here. Their baby is to be born this month, or it may have come into the world by now.

The young airman had been on five attacks during the softening up of Tarawa, on two against Nauru, and on the first very tough blow at Rabaul. So he had been through some of it.

Afraid to go up

On Christmas Eve, the chaplain sat down with him. The boy said his baby was to be born soon and he was afraid to go up the next day. The chaplain asked if he had ever been scared before. He said he had, but never like this. He said:

I have been sick to my stomach. I am so scared.

The chaplain said he thought he could get the boy excused from the Christmas Day raid. The boy wouldn’t hear of that. He said:

I am not yellow. I have to fly tomorrow. If I don’t, I will never fly again. I want you to help me.

The chaplain was silent for a moment before he went on. He told me:

I tried to assure him of the Lord’s care and that He would watch over him.

He said the boy was more afraid of being afraid than he was afraid of flying.

Early Christmas morning, the planes went out. When they came back, the young airman was dead in the rear cockpit. He was the only one hit among those who came back. There were only two small machine-gun bullet holes on the underside of the plane. Both these bullets hit him.

Because this carrier was operating under battle conditions, no regular services could be held Christmas Day. All hands were at battle stations all day. But a few minutes were taken out to hold services for burial at sea.

Three of us were in the room talking, and it was a long time before we looked up at each other.

The chaplain said at last:

I have heard of such things. But that was my first contact with it. It is one of those mysteries for which I can find no explanation. I don’t suppose anyone has found an explanation.

I don’t know exactly why I should feel the story of this young man so far down in my throat even now as I write it.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 11, 1944)

Clapper: Striking force

By Raymond Clapper

A series of dispatches written by Mr. Clapper during the battle of the Marshall Islands, where he lost his life, has just arrived from the Pacific by wireless. The first follows.

With the Pacific Fleet, in the Marshall Islands – (by wireless)
We hit the Marshalls with so much that I hope the Navy at Washington breaks down and lets us tell all about it.

I hope the Navy tells how many battleships are in this fleet, because it’s more than you probably thought we had out here, I hope they tell you how many carriers are involved, because it’s more than you thought we had out here. And how many cruisers and destroyers – running into a list like a page out of the telephone book, and more than Japan has in her whole navy.

I hope the Navy for once breaks down and gives out the news, because I think that when the people of Japan and of Germany know what we are hitting with out here – just with one hand, while we haul back with our big haymaker in Europe – they will begin to sober up and think about where they are coming out of this war.

No kidding, this is the biggest amount of force that was ever assembled to strike on the seas of the earth. It makes the Battle of Jutland seem like a small exercise.

Too big for mind to grasp

I have been living with the fleet at sea for days now. But no one person can take it in. There are things that the human mind cannot really grasp. They say the human mind can just about comprehend the fact that the speed of light is seven and a half times around the earth in one second. But you can’t grasp the size of a star which is 200 times the diameter of our sun. Likewise, if the Navy gave you the statistics on this battle of the Marshalls, it might not mean much to you or me.

One of the gun turrets on one of the many battleships in this fight weighs almost as much as a whole destroyer. The tonnage of metal and explosives that this great fleet throws is something that can be expressed in figures but not really grasped.

This battle of the Marshall Islands is important not alone because we need the islands. This battle also tells Japan and Germany that America is now in there swinging as a heavyweight. Probably there is more Navy out here in the Marshalls than we had altogether before Pearl Harbor.

Japan may have been master of the Pacific for a time after our opening disaster. But she knows now that domination of the Pacific is being taken into our hands. It was no idle boast when Secretary of the Navy Knox said recently that he hoped the Japanese fleet would come out for a showdown. All of our Navy men out here have hoped for that, although none of them have expected Japan to take the risk.

Weapon for victory

The sea and airpower that we have sent into the Marshalls is the weapon by which we shall spearhead across the Pacific. It is the weapon by which we shall drive the aggressors back into complete defeat. And this fleet should be the means of making known that we are ready and able to take the responsibility for keeping peace and security in the Pacific – peace for all nations, and security for ourselves.

We need no territory, in the sense of real estate, for expansion. Yet we must retain these islands for which American blood has been shed. We must retain all the islands necessary for the security of the Pacific, which means islands close enough together to provide land-based air cover all around and across, such as Japan has maintained as far east as the Marshalls.

That is just a thought I throw in at this time for future development.

This is our first big battle. This is the first territory we have taken out of the Japanese Empire; previous victories were only recoveries of points seized by Japan in this war. Now we are biting into Japanese territory, breaking through Japan’s east wall.

[NormanStewart]

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.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 14, 1944)

Clapper: Plane down

By Raymond Clapper

This is one of a series of dispatches found among Mr. Clapper’s effects after his death in the battle of the Marshalls, and delivered to us by wireless from the Pacific.

Aboard an aircraft carrier in the Marshall Islands –
As was said to me by Cdr. R. E. Dixon, who was a pilot on the old Lexington and is now on Adm. Sherman’s staff aboard this carrier, every flier naturally thinks about his chances of coming back, and all of them would rather be shot down over German than over Japanese territory.

Cdr. Dixon, incidentally, is the pilot who, after sinking a Japanese carrier, sent the message back to the Lexington: “Scratch one flattop!”

He won the Navy Cross. He said that if he had known his remark would be printed in the newspapers, he would have tried to think up something better.

Anyway, he knows what the fliers in this part of the war think.

In their briefings before the invasion of the Marshalls, pilots were instructed about forced landings and warned of poisonous fruit and fish. They were told the natives were fond of dog and cat meat, and that if they were forced down and reached a native village they might expect to dine on cat.

Rescues at sea

Great care is taken to rescue downed pilots, a fact that has an enormous effect on morale, as the lieutenant who is executive officer of our torpedo-bombing squadron says. He is reading Eve Curie’s book, Journey Among Warriors, and he thinks she took chances as a war correspondent that would scare him.

From the flight deck of our carrier, I have seen two of our planes crash in the water within sight of the ship. In each case a plane circled overhead while one of the escorting destroyers rushed up to save the men. Each time the men were hauled aboard a destroyer within 15 minutes.

One of our destroyers unexpectedly fell into the star role of our task force because of a rescue mission during the attack on Kwajalein. The lieutenant commander commanding out torpedo-plane squadron was in the midst of a dive on Kwajalein when word came over his radio that one of his planes was making a forced landing. He came out of his dive and called his flight officer to circle over the three men, who were in a rubber boat, while he obtained a destroyer. He radioed the carrier, and under orders of Adm. Sherman a destroyer was taken out of the escort and sent 90 miles away to rescue the crew.

Two-in-one errand

Fighter cover was given the destroyer, and the pilot guided it to the rubber boat. The men were taken aboard after three or four hours in the water.

That is the kind of work destroyers must do – running errands. But this hard-working little destroyer had the break that night which every big ship in our task force was hoping to get.

On the way back to our task force, the destroyer overtook a small Jap convoy of four ships – a tanker, a medium-sized cargo ship and two smaller ones. He sank all four. Next morning, he messaged Adm. Sherman, aboard the carrier, that he had sunk four ships. And he added, “enjoyed picnic.”

Adm. Sherman sent back congratulations to the destroyer’s skipper, LtCdr. D. T. Eller, and added:

When I sent you on a rescue, I didn’t know I was also going to give you monkey meat for a picnic.

Adm. Sherman is bitter over some of the Japanese incidents of brutality to his pilots. He says one Jap fighter pilot, out of ammunition, deliberately ran his propeller into one of our parachuting fliers.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 15, 1944)

Clapper: Carriers

By Raymond Clapper

This is another of the final group of dispatches from Mr. Clapper, who was killed in the battle of the Marshalls.

Aboard an aircraft carrier, in the Marshall Islands – (by wireless)
The first task of our aircraft carrier force in the invasion of the Marshalls was to move in ahead of the landings and pound Kwajalein and Ebeye Islands, with the special object of knocking out the Japs’ planes and making their airfields unusable.

After that, we raced out to Eniwetok Island to destroy the airplanes and airfield there and to block any attempt by the Japs to reinforce the Marshalls from Truk.

Our carrier force pushed farther westward into the Central Pacific than any American forces had advanced across this route, which is rapidly becoming the most active area in the whole Pacific and certainly the scene of the largest naval forces.

The powerful carrier force with which I have traveled during the battle of the Marshalls is only one of several of similar size, hitting from various directions in intricate coordination. It is doubtful if the Japs have been able to determine which carrier force has been doing what.

Jap deception suspected

Our large force and others cruised for days without being detected, without seeing an enemy plane, without any submarine coming up.

At times it was uncanny. You wondered whether the Japs were up to some clever deception. It was hard to believe they were so weak that they were compelled to let this whole area go by default so far as airpower was concerned. Yet that seems to be exactly what happened.

The morning after we hit Eniwetok Island and wrecked its airfield, including 17 large Japanese bombers, the ruins of burned planes were still on the runway untouched. We achieved complete surprise, although we had not dreamed that this would be possible.

When our planes first struck Kwajalein in the early-morning darkness, the island was sound asleep. There was no sign of searchlights, or of detection devices having picked us up. There was no anti-aircraft fire until after our first wave of planes had hit the airfield, waking up the garrison. Then it became fairly hot. Several of our planes returned with flak holes, and one fighter was shot down.

“We sound reveille for them,” said Adm. F. C. Sherman as he received reports on his flag bridge from the bomber pilots.

Adm. Sherman achieved fame as the skipper of the old Lexington when she went down in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and also for the No. 1 rule he enforces among his pilots:

Kill the **** scientifically.

Campaign carefully organized

Aircraft carriers have served as real capital ships in the battle of the Marshalls, while the battleships, although present in large numbers, have served in a secondary or supporting function. Each carrier force has usually been accompanied by one or more big battleships, giving them an enormously powerful escort.

The original conception of the battleship was that it would stand up with enemy battleships and slug it out toe to toe. We have plenty of them here, so that any attempt by the Japs to come out and fight with their fleet would have found us able to outgun them by far.

We went into the battle of the Marshalls with a most impressive force. We took no chances. It has been a cautious, carefully organized campaign. It was delayed until abundantly sufficient forces could be assembled, and then these were put into battle on a plan of operations that was designed to avoid some of the difficulties encountered at Tarawa.

The key to the whole thing, however, was the elimination of Japanese airpower, and the prevention of the Japs from ferrying planes in over their stepping-stone route, which reaches back to their homeland in short hops that any fighter plane can make.

At Eniwetok, our particular carrier force broke that link in the Japanese air chain. Looking back now in the light of what did not show up, it seems the Japs must have decided not to risk heavy destruction of their limited number of supply planes in a defensive air battle that they would have been certain to lose.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 16, 1944)

Clapper: The skipper

By Raymond Clapper

The following, written by Mr. Clapper before the battle of the Marshall Islands in which he lost his life, has been forwarded by the Navy.

Aboard an aircraft carrier, somewhere in the Pacific –
It was from some of the youngsters on the forward guns that I learned about the captain of this carrier, and incidentally about the youngsters.

It was still dark. We had just put off the dawn patrol, and I had had someone point out to me the Southern Cross, which below the Equator is to amateur astronomers what the Big Dipper is north of the Equator. We were at general quarters, with all hands at battle stations. I had been on the flag bridge watching the operation, and then I went over to the forward gun platform to talk with these youngsters.

One of them, who has a wife and two children in Massachusetts, plays in the ship’s band. He and a partner had a garage until the draft took their help, whereupon they closed up and our friend joined the Navy. With him was a blond youngster who also plays in the band. He grew up in New Jersey, but has a wife and baby in Tennessee.

I asked:

How old is the baby?

“Two months and three days,” he said, which shows what kind of new father he is. He has never seen his baby. He studied music at the Juilliard School in New York.

Boys bring up subject

I didn’t bring up the matter of the skipper. They did.

I was saying how glad I was to be aboard.

One of the boys said:

We think we have the best skipper in the Navy.

The other said:

His talks to us before we go into battle are wonderful. You should have heard the talk he made to us when the ship was commissioned. He said this ship would take us right into Tokyo.

Some of these boys think it is the skill of the captain that has brought the carrier through six tough fights without a scratch.

One of them said:

You should have seen the near misses dropping around us on the Rabaul strike! They were coming down right close on one side and then on the other side, but the skipper just swung her around and we got through between them.

When I asked the captain about it, he said God was with the ship. He said you can have the best crew in the Navy, and the best ship, but you still need some luck to get through.

Skipper spurns sadism

He has had luck, and not the least of it is to have a friendly, straight-shooting personality to go with his skill. He does not go in for the bellowing, sadistic explosions affected by old-time seadogs. He commands not only the confidence of the entire personnel but its affection, to a degree I have not observed elsewhere in this war, and which officers aboard say is exceptional.

I emphasize this because the Gen. Patton incident has shaken the confidence of some parents in the way their boys are being treated by officers.

Any number of bluejackets have volunteered to me some remark or other about the skipper of this happy ship. Recently he got orders for a promotion which involves his leaving this ship, and a number of the men have gone to him to say how much they regret his leaving. Several of them have remarked to me that they are glad he is staying on through the next action with them, for they are almost superstitious about their luck with him. It is a phenomenon which gives a lift to a civilian guest aboard this ship, especially one coming out of the atmosphere of Washington.

I don’t know what the explanation is. In fact, we seldom know what makes leadership. But you always know when it is there, as every last man on this ship knows it.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 17, 1944)

Clapper: Ship’s birth

By Raymond Clapper

The following, written by Mr. Clapper before the battle of the Marshalls in which he lost his life, has been forwarded by the Navy.

Aboard an aircraft carrier, somewhere in the Pacific –
Few aside from professional Navy people know what is involved in being the skipper of a capital ship, especially of a new carrier such as this one.

A month after this ship was launched, the captain set up office ashore at the shipyard. From then until the middle of last year, he and his staff worked at outfitting the ship. When the outfitting was finished, they marched the crew aboard, and a month was spent in drilling, putting stores aboard testing equipment. It took one week just to load the ammunition, with the crew working until midnight or 2:00 a.m.

When the ship was transferred to the Pacific, she was used on one run as a transport, and carried not only extra planes, but 2,600 Navy personnel, which with the crew meant a total of more than 5,000 men aboard. It meant sleeping in passageways and on deck, and running the mess at double capacity.

This ship had its first action on Armistice Day at Rabaul. It was in action on Christmas Day and on New Year’s Day. As one of the gun crew pointed out, “We hit on holidays.”

We’ll make own holidays

I said the next holiday was Lincoln’s Birthday. The gunner said:

We won’t wait for that. We’ll make our own holidays.

The question of leadership was discussed by a chaplain the other day when he was telling me the poignant story of an airman who had become afraid. The chaplain said a majority of the men on this ship had never been to sea before they set out last summer, and that an even larger proportion had never been aboard a carrier. He said few of those aboard were aware of the change that was taking place, as the green crew shook baptism of fire at Rabaul – when 150 Japanese planes, including many dreaded “Bettys,” or low bombers, were fought off with heavy losses to the Japs, and not one man pulled away from his post during the engagement.

Lean, bold and humorous

The skipper who has been the subject of these observations volunteered to me from all over the ship is not an impressive-looking man. He is lean, like most fliers, and very bald. He has humorous, blinking eyes, and a rather slow, drawling speech.

Perhaps a part of his success is due to his exceptional experience in this war with carriers. The captain was executive officer of a carrier operating in the Atlantic. Then he was given command of the first carrier to be converted from a cargo vessel. Then he was chief of staff to an air command, and most of this tour of duty was spent at sea. Under that particular command, air cover was provided for the Casablanca phase of the North African invasion.

Thus at 47, after 24 years of flying, he has had experience in this war on both big and small carriers and as a chief of staff.

He is prouder of this ship than of anything else that will ever come to him. Last summer he was able to anchor it in a river almost in front of his home.

He said:

I couldn’t help showing my ship off for the family.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 18, 1944)

Clapper: How big

By Raymond Clapper

This is another of the dispatches written by Mr. Clapper before his death in the battle of the Marshalls, and forwarded to us by the Navy. His last article will appear tomorrow.

With the Pacific Fleet, in the Marshall Islands – (by wireless)
By now I hope the Navy will have told the world, especially the enemy peoples, how many big battleships we put into the battle of the Marshall Islands, because then you could multiply some of the things, I want to report about just one of these big battlewagons, and sense for yourself how we have recovered and grown since Pearl Harbor.

One big gun barrel weighs about 100 tons – and you know how big a pile of 100 tons of coal would be. Each of these battleships has nine such 16-inch guns, and in addition 20 guns of 5-inch caliber. It would take a good-sized truck to haul one shell for one of the bigger guns. Some 150 men are needed to operate one turret.

Battleships are rather crowded now, because in the last few years many anti-aircraft guns have been added. Not only do the guns themselves occupy much of the previously available space, but also the extra men necessary to man and maintain the guns are the equivalent of a village. Large as a battleship is, its personnel are packed into a kind of sardine community, lacking the great spaces of a big carrier where the men will rig a volleyball court on an airplane elevator, play baseball on the flight deck, and drive several jeeps around as on a city street.

Heroes hear it straight

The day I went aboard the battleship, the captain addressed all hands on what we are fighting for. The men of this famous ship were already heroes, as a result they were just a bit inclined to throw their weight around among new men coning aboard. So, the new skipper is welding his crew together with frequent talks about war aims.

He told his men they were about to go into a big battle. He said he hoped they would keep in mind why it was worthwhile. He said we must take these islands, and must hold them after the war. He said we were fighting with our Allies to free the world from aggression, and that it was also important that the Allies stand together after the war if there was to be a secure peace. Much of his brief talk was devoted to stressing the need of a unified team aboard ship and of a unified team of Allies during and after the war.

By stirring our stumps

He finished by saying that all this would be achieved not merely by wishing it or talking about it, but by “stirring our stumps” – which is what this and the many other ships in this vast striking fleet proceeded to do.

There was no sign of the tension of approaching battle aboard the big ship at that time. The men were excited at the moment over the arrival of belated Christmas gifts from the labor union that built the ship. The union sent 2,400 duffle bags, and each was filled with toilet articles, a sewing kit, a small cribbage board, playing cards, and a money belt – the latter being especially popular. At least that was what was in the bag of one man when he dumped it out for me to see.

One of the minor discomforts of the war out here is that the men have nothing to send their money on. They have underground crap games on payday, which are frequently raided by the ship’s master-at-arms. He takes the kitty for the ship’s welfare fund.

War sometimes sure is what Sherman said.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 19, 1944)

Clapper: More

By Raymond Clapper

This is Raymond Clapper’s last column. It was written aboard the carrier from which he flew to his death in the battle of the Marshall Islands. The column was only about two-thirds completed; the second page of manuscript carried the slug “more.”

Frank Mason, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, delivered the copy from the carrier to Pearl Harbor, and it was wirelessed from there to the States.

Before leaving for the Pacific, Mr. Clapper wrote that “some people in Washington feel there is no sufficient awareness at home of how much our men are doing and in what a living hell they must sometimes do it.” He went to the Pacific to help increase that awareness. Some 14 columns written by Mr. Clapper in the days before his death have been printed posthumously, in the belief that he would have wished us to help him carry out that self-appointed mission.

With the Pacific Fleet, in the Marshall Islands – (by wireless)
Contrary to many predictions that I heard in Washington and in the Southwest Pacific, the invasion of the Marshalls did not prove to be another Tarawa. All concerned had one thought in mind in planning the Marshalls campaign – that there must be no repetition of Tarawa.

Nobody will admit officially that Tarawa fell short of what it should have been. But there were some faults in the plan of operations. For the Marshalls campaign, changes in planning were made to ensure that no matter how much delay the troops might encounter upon reaching shore, their cover would stay with them and hold the Japs in their holes.

Furthermore, the approach to the main objectives was planned on an entirely different basis for the Marshalls campaign. We not only made sure that the Japanese airpower was knocked out before our landings began, but the landings themselves were planned differently.

We slipped around to one of the rear atolls where we were not expected. On the first day we occupied small undefended islands near the larger ones of Roi and Kwajalein. The purpose in occupying those was to set up artillery for heavy bombardment of our main targets.

Enormous concentration

And above all there was an enormous concentration of the Pacific Fleet, with sufficient strength to have taken on any defense Japan wanted to attempt, including the use of her fleet.

The night before the battle began, the captain of the happy carrier which I was aboard during the air attack talked to his entire ship about the battle that was about to begin. He said the Marshalls battle was well-planned and carefully thought out, and that we started out with “a powerhouse of strength.” He said this was the biggest task group ever assembled in the Pacific.

The men aboard all had complete confidence. There were no jitters. There was almost a holiday air, because they knew that what the captain said was true. For days we had traveled in the midst of a large number of battleships, cruisers and other carriers. You could not look around the horizon without seeing the flattops of carriers and the peaked-pagoda effect of the low-water silhouettes of our newest battleships.

East Lynne at Eniwetok

After the first days of hammering at Kwajalein, as we swung out for our “strike” the next morning before dawn at Eniwetok, which is within bomber range of the great Jap base at Truk, one of our Navy fighter pilots, Lt. Robert A. Ogden, an Ohio State law graduate from Portsmouth, Ohio, reflected the spirit on board when he announced:

Tomorrow night, “East Lynne” at Eniwetok.

We are not bothering to clean out all the Japs from the Marshall Islands. It is more economical, and just as effective, to cut them off and let them “die on the vine,” as the method is referred to out here. That is what Gen. MacArthur is doing in New Guinea. It is a form of piecemeal blockade.

[MORE]

NOTE: Here the dispatch ended.