Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 November 1942 — Page 22

"Hoosier Vagabond

IN ENGLAND, Nov. 13.—You never Year the word: ®raid” used around an airdrome, It’s either an “operation” or a “mission.” If a mission is called off at

the last moment; it is ‘scrubbed.” Some of our mis--

sions have been scrubbed even after the planes were

in the air, due to a sudden change

in weather. : With English and continental weather being what tt is, a mission is seldom decided upon definitely more than a few hours before takeoff time. But in the infrequent cases where a day raid is definitely decided on the night before, the

crews are not told of it, because -

some of them might not be able to sleep. They're awakened early and ‘told they're going. The navigators are “briefed” about an hour ahead of the rest of the crews, so as to give them time to work out their course and study their maps and ground photographs. The hardest time in an airman’s life is the few hours between ‘riefing” and taking off. It’s then he gets to thinking how serious it all is. Because of this very thing, the air forces make their “briefing” as close as possible to take-off time. Usually it's between two and three hours, for it takes this long to get the planes bombed up and ready to go.

You've Got to Hold Steady

ONCE IN THE AIR, everything is all right. From the very moment of takeoff, everybody in the plane is busy. They all agree that the most ticklish part of the trip is when they cease “evasive action,” upon reaching the target, and begin their bombing “run up.” For during the “run up” you have to hold your course absolutely without deviation, to give the bombardier a steady sight. Regardless of flak or anything else, you

Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum

M. S. BLOCK, vice president of the Wm. H. Block Co.; picked up the store phone Wednesday (Nov. 11) and made a purchase, ordering it charged to his account. A few minutes later the credit department e5lled- shim and told him his account had been frozen

the day before under the government’s drastic credit regulation W. He'd neglected to clean up his account within the 40 days allowed. ... .. A stroll through the dime stores indicates there’s no shortage of so-called “tin” soldiers this year. They're really not tin —seem heavy enough to be made of lead. . . . Hunters who've been out around Traders Point complain that the section is full of foxes and that the foxes have been decimating the rabbit ranks. Time for & fox hunt. . . . The cashier at a food establishment out in Broad Ripple displayed the ultra ultra in fingernail polish recently. It was green. The most that could be said for it was that it was startling,

Blue Devil Nicknames

YOUTHFUL NICKNAMES usually are colorful. No exception are those of Shortridge’s Blue Devils, seeking their ninth straight victory and undisputed claim to the city championship against Tech today. For instance, Fred Freihofer bears the delicate nickname of “Lard.” Don Ambuhl answers to. “Dog.” John Claycombe’s alias is “Moon,” When the boys want Dick Parker, they call “Pedro.” Some of the others: Ralph Thompson, “Machine Gun”; Don Rogers, “Hiram”; Ray Stone, “Ox”; Gene Battreall, “Trees”; Jim Cooley, “Nose” or “Schnozz’;. Reiman Steg, “Creamer”; Edmund ‘Haggard, “T”; and Fran-

Washington

‘WASHINGTON, Nov. 13.—As the alfied offensive spreads, the consumption of war material will ‘go up by leaps and bounds. ~ Every time our troops occupy a point, that freezes # corresponding amount of shipping, planes, gasoline, . tanks, repair parts, clothing, food, and miscellaneous equipment. When a ship is in action it fires hundreds of shells within the space of five minutes. When we send up a four-motored bomber, we must put more than 2000 gallons of gasoline in the tank. So when you talk about a 1000-plane bombing attack, you are talking about 2,000,000 gallons of gasoline —which is perhaps 40,000 barrels. When -we occupy ‘new points, we not only must run ships there with these absolutely essential supplies—we must ‘also ‘have escort vessels available to protect them from submarines. Churchill says the last convoy to

.

{1 Russia required 77 warships. Escort vessels don’t

grow on trees. We are fighting in the Pacific, in the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, and we are sendIng stuff into the Persian gulf and the Indian ocean. What we are sending now is nothing to what we shall have to send as our own expanding forces go into action. If we are having trouble giving our allies as much as they want, what. will.the load be when we have our own forces to supply in addition?

Victory Means Harder Sacri fice

THE POINT of all that comes home to us here in America. The point is that each victory we gain means a tightening of the belt at home,

Each victory means that the appetite for ships, tankers and everything else grows. So the better we do abroad, the tighter we must cut our civilian economy at home. On the heels of the African victory, the WPB decides to tighten fuel-oil and gasoline allowances for non-military consumption. There will be more tightening, if we continue to win. Victory abroad means harder sacrifice at home. That will be the rule until the war is over,

My Day,

LONDON, England, Thursday.—I - found myself sitting at breakfast yesterday morning in Londonderry between a young member ;of the ATS and a

young ‘WREN. I had asked the heads of the women’s organizations to dine with me the night before and Capt. Kirkman decided ‘I should see some privates.as well. .The ¢ girl at my right gasped when two : fried eggs appeared on the plate in front of her and every other girl at the table gazed with complete incredulity at the sight. As { one girl said, “It’s two months’ ‘rations all at once.” .I greatly benefited from the fact that the navy and army get supplies from America. I had run out ofepaper tissue handkerchiefs Tg which, when you have a cold in the head, are almost a necessity. I laid in a new store at the hospital, knowing that nowhere in Great

‘never did catch on around here.

object to a little Snconvenience at ome,

‘British and American naval establishments in and

"By Ernie Pyle

must hold dads “It really isn't very ‘long, but the boys say it seems like months. Our bombers make their “run-up” in various types of formations, depending on the weather, strength of ground defenses, and so forth ‘Sometimes. they bomb in huge formations fiying close together, ahd all drop their bombs at once, when the leader drops. Sometimes they break up into small formations and come over a few planes at a time. Sometimes they string out and come in singly, a few yards behind each other, like geese in a row.

Get Drinks to Warm Em Up

THEN THEY HEAD for home. There is usually a fight on the way, for the Germans have had time by then to get their fighters back in the air. Then the sky is full of flak puffs of various shades, and of tracer bullets and of cannon shells bursting, and of planes twisting and roaring and falling away in spins. Safely back at the home field, the R. A. F. and U. S. crews go through about the same routine. Trueks pick them up and take them to headquarters. The crews, half-frozen, go into a warm locker room and pull off their heavy flying clothes. “Boy, does that heat feel good!” one of them said. Then they have a drink to warm them up. In the R. A. F. it’s rum; in the air corps it’s whisky. They drink hot coffee with it. ‘Some of thd crew members are teetotalers, so they pass up their drinks. The crews are interviewed by an intelligence officer; one officer handles one whole crew at a time. Each man tells him what happened and what he saw. He takes it all down. Eventually all these reports are welded together, and from this over-all report the air forces work out their communique and draw their plans for the future. Now that it’s all over, the fliers have their reaction. The warmth and sea-level atmosphere make some of them terribly sleepy, and they can hardly keep awake during the interrogation. Others are keyed up to a high pitch and are animated for hours. But regardless, they'll all be in the lounge that evening—gay and lively, to swap their stories.

cis Pray, “Schwa.” Brooks Rice, son of Dr. Thurman B. Rice, has three brothers whose nicknames rhyme with his. Brooks (varsity) is “Fluff,” Robert (graduated) is “Puff,” James (freshman) is “Duff,” while Reid (still in grade school) is “Tough.” That's all we know.

Lost Dog Department

- TWO YEARS AGO next March, Mrs. W. C. Engle, 3409 Brcokside parkway (S. drive), found a little female black and tan terrier type dog in the 1300 block of Beville ave. When newspaper ads failed to produce the owner, she kept the dog and became very attached to it. Last Saturday the dog died. Now Mrs. Engle would like to contact the original owner so she could get another just like this one—maybe a brother or sister, or even a nephew or niece. The dog had medium’long black and tan wavy ears, Mrs. Engle writes, a short tail and was about the size of a terrier. The dog probably had cocker spaniel and terrier blood, and maybe pomeranian, weighed probably 12 pounds, adds Mrs. Engle.

Pet Peeve Department

OUR PET PEEVE of the moment: The oh-so-proper radio commentator who rattles off the names of places and people in the war news with such a Frenchy pronunciation that the listener’s mind slips out of gear and coasts from weariness in figuring out what he means. For instance, take the Algerian port of Oran. Listeners could keep up better if he'd pronounce it “O-ran” instead of like the word “wrong;*{ minus the “g.” The same with Darlan, ete. If his conscience won't let him fudge a little on the correct foreign pronunciation, then how about slowing up after the “tough” names while the listener’s mind translates them and catches up? That nasal stuff

By Raymond Clapper

TI wouldn't repeat these obvious facts except that there are some indication® of irritation at restrictions on the home front. Some of the candidates in the recent election say those irritations influenced the election results. Some of the letters which have been coming into this office since the election reflect the same note.

“Let George Do It”

i

This one-time social center for Civil war veterans sets in the shadow O. N. Wilmington, a Grand Army man, serves as head of the Grand Army league. This tree trunk, witk the cannon ball embedded in it, was brought from the battle of Chickamauga.

of the club for today’s service men.

Keeping Alive Spirit of ‘65 in ‘42 Activities

By ROSEMARY REDDING THE WORN red brick building sets at 512 Ne: Illinois st. in the shadow of the Service Men’s center, Today's boys in khaki and blue glance at it a bit quizzically and then go on into the larger building to play cards and swap a few stories. Few realize that the house next door served as just such a social center for the boys in blue from another generation, And many a resident probably has given the two-story, old-fash-ioned edifice a second glance. There is just something about it that tickles the imagination. There's that red, white and blue ribbon in the window for example. From it is suspended a

gold star, Then there is that faded sign, = Friendly.

A Story Behind it

YES, THERE is a story behind: it. The original story-tellers,

those veterans of Gettysburg and

Chickamauga and Sherman's march to the sea, aren't around often to tell it anymore but their sons and daughters meet there to perpetuate it. Soon after the Civil War, the comrades formed the Grand Army of the Republic to strengthen the fraternal feelings of those who fought in the war between the states; to' perpetuate the memory and history of those who died and to help their needy widows and orphans. Four posts of veterans and a number of allied organizations were organized here. Their so-

‘meyer, Lucy F

The ‘business of anathel war row 1s talked at the fort as members<of the Women’s Relief Corps and

cial center was in an old building on the site of what is now the county garage, When it was razed, they had to move. : Elderly Dr. Sollis Runnells had been interested in the Grand Army “boys.” He ran a sanitarium in the building at 512 N. Illinois and decided to lease it to them as a meeting place. The veterans moved in in 1923. There were quite a few of them left then and the high ceilings of the old house echoed as they refought the war. » ” 2 THEY NEEDED a name. It had to be something with fort as

” other allied JSroups ‘sew “for the Red Cross. Left to right are Mesdames Catherine "Lavery, . Daily, Louise ‘Burk, Charlotte’ K. “Treat and Leotia L. Welling. *

e prefix — naturally. Bill Herschell, Hoosier poet and philosopher, would drop in on them and one day remarked that it was the friendliest spot he’d ever seen. Right then and there; the veterans picked the name. Ft. Friendly, it would be. And Ft. Friendly it has remained. Year by year, the seats at the card tables gradually became vacant. on, the representatives of allied organizations, like the Woman's Relief corps, the Ladies of the Grand Army, the Sons of Veterans, its auxiliary, and the Daughters of Veterans, had to take over

As the veterans passed

the management of the fort.

There still remains a Grand Army man to head the Grand Army league. He's O. N. Wilmington, the 97-year-old veteran who is assistant adjutant general of the G. A. R. He has an office in the state house and walks once a month down to the fort to “just look in and see that everything is all right.” ’ ® 2 =

Filled With Memories

THE PATRIOTIC groups built an addition, a large hall, to the back of the original house. Both

Grace = Han: » make ‘Joandages forthe Red.

the hall and house are filled with memorabilia. There are oil painte ings of this and that Hoosier vete eran and Civil war generals and pictures of G. A. R. reunions. © There's an old hat rack belongs ing to Governor Oliver P. Mors ton, the state's Civil war governor. The brass plate on it declares that “many eminent men hung their hats here.” In the assembly hall, the speak= er’s stand is made from a pine. stump brought from the battle of Gettysburg. There is a cannof ball embedded in it and in the tree trunk from the battle of Chickamauga. A likeness of Line coln can be found in almost every room. In the old days, when one of the allied organizations ‘ needed #& speaker, they would call on a vet= eran. His topic? Well, the com= rade might be asked to speak on some special topic but his subject never changed. As one of the members of an allied group put it: “In those days, if we asked a veteran to speak, we got Civil war history—whether we wanted it or not.”

” » ”

Rooms Busy Again TODAY, the business of. war. is filling the rooms again. Sewing machines ate ‘humming as women :

Some are doing eivilian defense and USO work. And although they are busy with the war at hand, they don’t forget the -one ‘fought more than 75 yearsh ago, helped to start the Memorial day observances and thé’ allied groups consider it a “duty” to carry on. The boys in blue helped set up homes for veterans and though there are few left, the sons and, daughters keep a watchful eye on them. Yes, that’s Ft. Friendly. The original “garrison” is down to just about the last man now. But their sons and daughters are “holding the fort.”

IT IS AN APPALLING THOUGHT, if these straws are an indication’ of the wind, that enough people are - resentful of some wartime inconveniences to affect the elections. I have a typical letter here which says: “In spite of the. assertions of newspaper columnists, and of effusive declarations of certain types of “politicians that the people stand ready and anxious for an all-out war effort, it is not true. Yes, the people are 100 per cent for winning the war, but 75 per cent of them want George to do it. .'. . They do not want to: be deprived of a single ice-cream cone to win the war. They resent vengefully any disruption of their accustomed routine. Of course, if you accuse any of them, they deny it stoutly, but their actions and evident attitude toward ¢the war effort belie their words.” Perhaps he is wrong. I don’t know. But since the election, Senator Willis of Indiana has received more than 600 letters protesting against extension of £as0line- rationing. Evidently a sizable . letter-writing campaign is going -on against restrictions to save tires and gasoline. Possibly the writers don’t stop to think that it takes 40 barrels of gasoline to send up a big bomber. Possibly they don’t stop-to think that the rubber which they use up cannot be replaced: except by taking it out of military needs. These are not matters that one would want to be read about by American soldiers fighting on Guadalcanal, or in Algiers and Tunisia, or by American sailors and merchant crews risking their lives to get war supplies to the fighting fronts, or by airmen who go out over Europe. Our overseas forces are suffering some - inconveniences, too, and might not understand people who

- By Eleanor Roosevelt

But. very grateful also. ‘At 9:30, we started out and visited some prominent

around Londonderry. - We saw one British destroyer, which was one of 50 we turned over early in the war, and a Canadian Corvette. These little ships do much convoying and are very workmanlike, We visited a repair shop, where the boys presenti me with two ashtrays, one for the president and one for myself. I don’t smoke, but I wouldnt give up mine for anything, since B has inscribed on it my code flame, - At 11 o'clock, we stood in Londonderry square, which was filled with people for the Armistice day memorial ceremony. A bugle sounded, a bell tolled, a clock struck 11 and we read the inscription on the shaft, “To the men who fought in 1914 to 1918 and the glorious dead.” After this ceremony, at which the mayor greeted me, and after I had goné to the city building and signed the visitor's book, we went to the naval hospital, which is some distance from the rest of the “establishments. “They told me they had seven different nationalitief

By BILL CUNNINGHAM Widely-Syndicated Columnist

I THOUGHT they were fooling when they called up and asked me to introduce Westbrook Pegler, who was, so they said, scheduled to make the principal address at a superhorsepowered luncheon to be held by the Associated Industries of Massachusetts in the biggest hotel hall in Boston. -

I thought they were fooling because if Peg had taken up oratory, it was something so new none of his former associates had heard anything about it. The understanding has. always been that Peg can’t speak and won't speak. He’s contracted to attend, and: has attended, an occasional affair, and has even sat at the head table as an official “distinguished guest,” but it’s always specified that he won't be called upon. . For my money, and for all his slugging and slamming, the fellov is shy. Maybe part of it comes because he composes thosé ‘pieces of his like a man killing snakes—about one snake per hour. He’s what’s known in our, business as “a bleeder.” In other words, he bleeds out his copy, word by word, and with

. great suffering.

The finished product may read like something tossed off with a: flourish and with the ease of a gent blest with a slick and selfstarting vocabulary, but every one: of those columns takes him from four to eight hours of writing. He thinks hard and writes hard. A man, really to go on his feet, needs to "have a much easier way with words, for you speak them faster than you write them, and there’s no out, or tearing up the page to start over. ;

» td #

"He Went the Distance

BUT IT SEEMS he was going to speak, so I showed up at the appointed hour and was ushered to a chair beside his. The introducing was no chore. I've known the ‘tall red-head for 20 years, and covered many an event with him back ‘ before 1932 when he left the sports trenches to enter his -new and controversial field to be--come a hero to many, and a public

“I didn’t know you'd gone in for spell-binding,” I told him. “Well,” said he, I tried it in New York and it didn’t seem so bad. ” He wasn’t acting as if it seemed so very good. I didn’t say anything about it, but I noticed that he only dabbled with the luncheon, There was sweat on his brow, and his hands kept moving restlessly in the fashion of a man who is very ill at ease. He must have drunk a half gallon of water and he kept fumbling with some notes. Finally, after an admiral, Under Secretary of War Patterson, Governor Saltonstall, ‘and some rousing band music, his turn came. I launched him with what I hoped was the smash of a bottle of verbal champagne, and he arose and talked a few minutes about supreme court decisions as they affect labor unions. It wasn’t a long job, and he was plainly not at ease, but he

went the distance and the Teesung

was over. 5 ” 8 A Man Named Powell

NOW,. WHAT FOLLOWS may seem to be astray, but just keep going and you'll see that it all hooks up. When the Japs struck Pearl ‘Harbor, and promptly arrested every United States citizen

-they could lay hands on in the

Orient, one of the Americans taken was an editor named J. B. Powell, seized in Shanghai. He went out in 1917 and he had long been regarded, both "there and here, as the best informed foreign ‘newspaperman and editor in: China. His two papers, the China Weekly Review and the China Press, were known and hated by the Japs for their fearless comment and criticism of Japanese aggression. Both had been suspended and sealed by Hirohito’s monkey-men as soon as they got control of Shanghai, but Powell, himself was not taken until Dec, 20, 1941. They ‘told him “he was being

taken “to headquarters for quesHoning. The weather was cold,

be imprisoned, they'd let him come “back, at least, for his clothing, he simply threw on a light coat, and went along as he -was, wearing thin socks and no heavy clothing of any sort.

In a Filthy Cell

INSTEAD of “questioning at 4 headquarte,” they threw him into a cell with 40 other people, mostly Chinese. The cell was unheated. It’s dimensions were 18 by 12 feet. It’s only sanitary facilities were a foul and open box in one corner. Many of the prisoners were women. There was no place fo sit down, or to sleep. There was no privacy, no relaxation of any sort, not even room to move.

_- This mass of miserable humanity sal in a packed mob *upon the floor, or kneeled and always, by order, facing Tokyo. Their shoes had been taken from them, following the Japanese custom of leaving the shoes outside the door before entering a room. " This left Powell in thin silk

HOLD EVERYTHING

—rCOCOOCR,

ey

NASUE RAPE

“Sorry I haven't any ri costume;

George, but 1 rushed right over.) MN :

sox. He's no kid any more. He suffered brutally from the cold in his feet. # 2 =

He Was All But Dead

FINALLY, Powell was all but dead. Three months of stinking prison diet, mostly soggy rice, had reduced his weight from 150 to 80 pounds: Shortly after. his incarceration his practically bare feet began to pain him, first in the heels. The pain became so intense he couldn’t

“put on his shoes when taken out-

side the cell for the endless questioning with which the Japs were trying to hang the title of :spy on him. The Japanese doctor only laughed at his claims of pain. Finally, the feet turned purple. They sctually rotted away. late in March, after being in prison since December, he was taken to the hospital and Japanese army doctors cut his feet off. In June, under constant pressure from friends and newspapermen, he was finally released; was repatriated and was sent home, a stretcher case, on the Gripsholm. The man is now in. a New York hospital. The doctors say if he'd been in the clutches of the Japs for 10 more days, he never would have survived. As it is, he’s a cripple for life. : 2 8 =

Went Through for a Guy

THE OTHER DAY I ran into Grantland Rice, and he said to me, “have you contributed to the Powell fund?” “No,” said I, “I didn’t kiow anything about it.” ~

“Well, give me $50” said the dean of sports writers. “We're all doing what we can. It's a pretty brutal thing.”

“I didn’t know anything about y

it,” I explained again, “but how much do you need? How's He fund coming?” : “Well, it’s better ‘than it was,” Mr. Rice said. “Westbrook Pegler

Westbrook Pegler Is No Orator—He Just Went Through for a Guy

up in your town last week, I didn’t know Peg hed gone in for aratory, but he just indorsed the check over to the fund, and a parently paid his own expenses.” Then I understood. : Peg can't speak, and doesn't speak. He just went through for a Buy.

NAMES NEW STAFF

Florenee Newlin is the newly= appointed editor-in-chief of The Surveyor staff at George Wash. ington high school. Other staff members are second page editor, Norma Messmer; third page editor, Shirley Spear; sports editor, ,Robert Petranoff; club editor, Lois Ollman; feature write Leona Waldner and Phyllis Wat rewrite editors, Virginia Kronoshek and Betty Gaddis, and circulation manager, Miss Gaddis. Miss Jeanne Helt is faculty sponsor. Approximately 60 former Wash= ington high school athletes now im service will receive Christmas card gsiingy from the school’s Mothers

The first aid group of Cis 1 District 31 will hear Dr. Thomas ! Noble Jr., local physician and geon, at a meeting at 7 :30 » Monday in the Catholic commu center, 1004 N. Pennsylvania st. Dr. Noble will discuss Joyehaloey of dealing with eme; cies. - His talk is entitled Who in. an ‘Emergency—aAre

charge of Miss ‘Mary Louise and Ivan S. Glidewell, first aid and accident: the Red Cross ‘in

The boys in blue