Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 8 December 1942 — Page 13

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“bearer.” - . heard of his nomination, “I'll probably be the first

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‘WITH THE AMERICAN TROOPS IN ALGERIA (By Wireless).—The American forces are welcome in North Africa. Oran gave a terrific demonstration for them, Soldiers who came in the first party say the ‘town was almost deliriously happy over the Americans’ arrival. They analyze the . feeling about as follows: Forty per cent of the demonstration was based on the Frenchman's love for show, for cheering anything that passes; 20 per cent was due /to the farseeing knowledge that this eventually meant the liberation of France; and another 40 per cent was based on personal and bodily gratitude at the prospect of getting something to eat again, The Germans Thad stripped North Africa of ‘everything. Foodstuffs went across the Mediterranean to France and on to Germany. ‘The people here actually were in a pitiful condition.

_ They were starving. The American occupation naturally stopped this flow to Germany. Our soldiers

say that within a week they could see the effects.

; Food produced here in this fertile country now stays

here. Further, our army is donating huge food stocks to the city. The people are gradually starting to eat once more.

.Gorging on Oranges

Americans, notoriously, are often foolishly gen‘erous. The troops in the first wave came ashore with only canned field rations carried on their backs, yet our soldiers gave much of this to the pitiful-looking Arab children. The result was that pretty soon the soldiers ‘themselves hadn't much left to eat, so they lived for days on oranges. In England, oranges are practically unknown, so here we've gorged ourselves on oranges. Some troops have eaten so many they got diarghea and broke out in a rash. I buy tiny tangerines, very juicy, to carry.

Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum

LAST FRIDAY, Nelson R. (Boney) Gorsuch, industrial engineer for the gas company, attended the

Exchange club luncheon as the guest of Eddie Demlow. When he went to get his old, well worn hat, it was gone.. The only one left was a brand new Mallory, size 7%, with the price tag still in it. Because of the weather, there was nothing Boney could do but wear it. But since his work takes him into plants where a new hat soon would be grimy, he went out and bought himself a new hat, thus preserving the other guy's hat until he can claim it. Pretty considerate, eh? . , . Irving Lemaux, banker, manufacturer and chief air raid warden of district 40, has been chuckling over a Ht3 tle incident that occurred when an emergency medical group was being set up in his district. When a committee was casting about for a stretcher bearer, one woman said she knew just the man for the job. Who? “Why, Mr. Lemaux—he’s so kind and pleasant that he’d make a good stretcher ‘“Humph,” grinned Chief Lemaux when he

person to ride on the stretcher.”

Nice Fresh Vacancy SHERIFF ALi FEENEY, whe expects to be eave

the jail residence about Jan. 1, drove out on the North

side the other day, looking for a house for rent. He stopped in front of one vacant house, then discovered it had been rented. Just then a milkman (Polk) drove up. “Looking for a house?” he inquired. “Yeah,” said Al, “Well, I've got just the place for you,” said the milkman. “One of my customers—a six-quars customer, at that—is going to move out of 5262 Central. Get over there quick and you can get it.” Al got the house and the milkman got another customer, ®

Washington

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8—We obviously have learned the military lessons of Pearl Harbor. What happened a year ago jolted us forward as if we had been shot out of a catapult. Within a year we have reached a tempo of military preparation that probably no nation ever equalled in such a period. . We have surprised ourselves—as I know from a visit to war industries in the Detroit area last week. The monumental performance of war industry is matched by the work of the government in mobilizing an army which must be now around five million. When we criticize the government for inv efficiency, we forget that the raising of this army by the government is an achievement to match the production of the weapons for it. One year ago we discovered that this was war, and

"lights are turned out. Also, the army has ringed the

By Ernie Pyle

around in my pockets. They cost a franc each, about one and a third cents. We have all been equipped with foreign-issue American money. ‘The smallest denomination, a dollar bill, looks just like our regular money except for

a yellow stamp. This money is accepted everywhere, | -

but you get your change in francs. The exchange is 75 francs to a dollar. Prices already have started up, but still are cheap according to our standards. Good Wine costs only 44 francs a bottle. FEowever, wine is about the only thing left to buy. Stores have pitifully small stocks.

Restaurants have horse meat on the menu.

Get Along on Shouting

ORAN IS a big city. It reminds me very much ‘of Lisbon. There are modern office buildings and beautiful apartment buildings of six and eight stories. The Renault auto showrooms downtown were full of brand new cars when the army arrived. ‘ In a few days the army had bought every car, and in a few more days the Red Cross had taken over and turned the showroom into a club for troops. Soldiers now stand around the piano and sing “The White Cliffs of Dover.” Some of our soldiers speak French, but not many. Every French dictionary in Oran has been sold, but the Americans have no inhibitions, and get along on pidgin French and loud shouting. As soon as the Americans came, the stores began pasting shatter-tape on the windows, for they knew that German bombing probably would follow. In England the taping is in very conventional patterns, but here it is a work of art. ’ There have been. German planes over since we came. There was much shooting from the ground, but no damage has been done yet. Oran is not blacked out. It is dimmed out, but really not very dim. When planes come over, all the

city with smoke pots. When these are set.off, they create what seems to be a heavy fog, which is very effective for hiding the city.

Two souls made happy. . . . Tipton S. ‘Blish, who was a reporter on The Times a few years ago, now is Staff Sergt. Blish. He’s down at Carrabelle, Fla., serving as

|l—On the Syrian War Front

(Editor's Note — The French, had. gone into Syria

and so forestall Nazi infiltration. One spearhead mvasion now was approaching Damascus. Ge

Henry Mitland Wilson had

British, aided by the Free

to wrest control from Vichy f the Sir

broadcast an wultimat to

Gen. Henri Dentz, the Vichy Frénch commander, to give up Damascus and declare it an “open city” to save its

destruction.

Gen. Dentz ignored the ultimatum.) SYRIA WAS A TERRIFIC experience.

It gave me

my first real insight into the British—their incredible courage and how they fight with practically no equipment. After seeing the German way in Yugoslavia, I shuddered at the impact of a peoplé who consider war a game of sport, and not an effort requiring a lust for a murder

and®an overwhelming hate. in Syria.

Everything was so casual

My great worry was that I couldn’t get to Damascus

in time to witness its capture. My orders from New York had been very specific: SUGGEST YOU SYRIAWARD FOR FALL DAMASCUS

Friday, June 20th: Capt. Huband—a British officer assigned

to conduct correspondents to the front—and I drove into Safed. Capt. Lamming, who was being relieved by Huband, said that the quick way to get to Damascus

a reporter on The Cycloner, weekly paper published for the 38th (Cyclone) division. At lot of other home town boys are down there, too.

. ’ . Quite a Surprise WHILE HER HUSBAND, the Methodist hospital superjntendent, was out of town the other day, Mrs. John G. Benson received a letter from the company that prints Who's Who. The letter expressed sympathy to her on the “loss” of her beloved husband, and explained that they were getting out a new book, “Who Was Who,” and would like permission to include his’ biography in it. Mrs. Benson was a little surprised, and so was her husband when he came home. He wrote the company a humorous note and got an apology—mistakes will happen—in return. . . Lieutenant Governor and Mrs. Charles M. Dawson are in Florida for the graduation of their son, Howard, from. the air officers’ candidate school, as a second lieutenant. He gets a 10-day furlough before going overseas, so they're going to stay and spend it with him,

I nfluencing People

A BUS DRIVER wisp seemed to have read Dale @arnegie’s book, “How to Make Friends and Influénce People,” managed to crowd 63: passengers -on:a N. Meridian bus seating 27 the other night—and made them like it. By jollying them along and getting them to “help” him, he got the passengers to pack themselves in like sardines and had them laughing and having a hilarious time. He let some passengers enter By the rear door, and people in the crowd back there made change and sent the dimes on up to him. One of our friends reports it was the ‘shortest trip I ever made.” He -was so impressed he got the driver’s name—Don Pierce, 971 Udell st. Keep it up, Don,

By Raymond Clapper

will make the present flying fortress look like a sparrow. Will the rest of us be smart enough to use that production’ genius to end this crazy business of German cr Japanese war maniacs setting the world afire every time they can accumulate enough powder to start a war? Will we be so dumb as to have the weapons in our hands and still let them go on doing that to us? Anybody who has flown over the oceans and continents, as many have done now, and anybody who has a glimpse of imagination about the kinds of airplane that are to come, knows what Anthony Eden, British foreign minister, means when he says that after. this war the world will be one village street from Edinburgh to Chungking.

Isn't the Lesson Clear?

ANYBODY WHO starts using his shooting irons anywhere along that street endangers all who live on it. Like the Chicago loop, it is no place for gangsters to be allowed to play with machine guns.” The street

was through Metulla, but “there is some sniping #:ii: 1 on the road and ; you might get picked off.” I told Huband we would have to take our chances because I had been rushing - madly for two days to get to Damas- p cus and 1 meant to get [Cecil Brown there. We started out. Within 15 minutes we drew into a place called Queneitra. There were two Vichy tanks still burning alongside the road, and almost every one of the 50 houses in the town was half destroyed. Furious fighting had taken place here not many hours before. A battalion of Queens had been surprised by the Vichy French and almost wiped out.

Book: Lists Dead

WE WANDERED around by an abandoned schoolhouse, and found where the fusileers had made a hasty evacuation. Around the: grounds of the schoolhouse there were scattered papers, ammunition, hand grenades and equipment, all the mute, disordered paraphernalia of retreat. Sedgwick and I kicked around the papers, careful not to kick a hand grenade, Huband reached down and picked up a warrant book of the Queens regiment. He glanced through the book and recognized almost every name, men from his own battalion. Several names were crossed out, a notation beside them — “Dead.” Huband grunted: “I see where so and so got .it.” He noted some of the men owed a mess bill of a couple pounds. “Just like that chap,” Huband said, pointing to one

name.. “He always signed ‘oo many chits.” , In kicking around through the papers and inanimate trash I turned over a book, pocket size, and paper backed. It was: “I Found No Peace” by Webb Miller. Col. Haggard, in command of the forces which had retaken Queneitra, said we couldn’t go on the direct route to Damascus because there were two French tanks running around up there

and he could give us no protec-

tion to get through. “I don’t advise you to go an inch farther up this road,” Col Haggard said. We took his advice. We then sped away on another route to Sheik Majon. A soldier came by on a motorcycle and we stopped him and asked his report on the situation.

Predicts City’s Fall

“I HAVE just come down from a point eight miles : outside Damascus. The city is going to fall this afternoon. We have been laying down a very heavy barrage. Only four tanks are holding us up.” We drove through Kisweh up to the advance British position on the road into Damascus. This was the road that Col. Lawrence —Lawrence of Arabia—had come.

up to take Damascus from the

Germans and Turks. At this ad-

vance point, Sedgwick and I put

on our tins hats and lay in the ditch and watched shiny black Senegalese moving Indian file across the flat terrain for the beginning of what the British expected to be a final assault on Damascus, I had made it in e.

» SATURDAY, JUNE 21st—In the pre-dawn light I came to Free French headquarters outside Kisweh. There were about eight correspondents in the party. Col Philibert Collet, the small,

Swarthy chief of the Circassian

cavalry, came strolling out with a long cape and khaki scarf wound a half dozen times around his neck. He was dragging on a cigaret. One of the correspondents offered him a sip of whisky. He refused it, saying, “I await the sunrise for that.” Then another car came up with two more correspondents, and the conducting officer informed Col. Collet they were reporters. “Mon dieu,” the colonel exclaimed, “there are now enough

JAPS ISOLATED

“Everything was so casual in Syria.”

to capture without offending the natives.”

correspondents here to capture Damascus!” The most intriguing character here is Maj. Ferguson of the Black Watch regiment. He is a Scot, but represents to me the Hollywood version of the Englishman, and seems like a character straight out of P. G. Wodehouse. ” ” ”

French Exhausted

Ferguson is youthful-appear-ing, has a long straggly blond mustache, wears a nlonocle. The other day he drove for three miles along a road under constant and insistent machine-gun fire. Ferguson wheeled the car at 60 miles an hour, reciting at the top of his voice the poetry of James Elroy Flecker. That was typical,

too—typical of the Englishman

who doesn’t know the meaning of fear, : » ” » MAJOR FERGUSON — Ferguson of the intrepid Black Watch— screws his monocle tighter into his left eye and squints up at the sun over Syria. “Thought I heard a plane,” he. says. “Sorry.” The mid-morning sun streams dow and bounces back into our faces from the stone courtyard of this Beau Geste fort. We are just south of Kisweh, a few miles outside Damascus.

One~wall of the fort shades a

dozen Free French troops lolling in grotesque positions of exhaustion, Over in another corner are

Cured Human Heads Scarce

In Famed Papua, Fliers Find

‘seven unshaven,. crummy-looking Vichy French prisoners, some sprawled on the stones like lizards, others hunched over their knees. They suck away at cigarets, their eyes empty. The Vichy French captives have that curious expression that creeps over a man's face when he figures nothing matters any more, Ferguson’s wide, limpid mouth under his blond mustache flaps rapidly, outlining the strategy for the onslaught against Damascus, from three sides. The final attack, he assures me. The confusion of preparation is in full swing. Gen. Paul Louis Le Gentilhomme comes out of a small room at the entrance to the fort and drifts through the stone, arched gatewhy on his short legs. A mincing walk, he has, almost Oriental. Le Gentilhomme is director of Free French field operations in Syria, and his men are not doing very well.’ One arm is in a sling. A Vichy French plane came over the other day and “dropped a bomb.. The general fell and broke his arm. ” ” 8

“Toast to the French

FERGUSON fis called away, I go outside the walls to stand beside the road where Gen, Allenby punched the way: through the Turks twenty-five years ago to reach fabled Damascus, It doesn’t

GOVERNOR GETS

British and Free French soldiers look toward Damascus, “a place

seem fabled now. It is just a place to reach, and that with great difficulty. : It is merely a place on the map to capture without shell ing, without offending the natives, Fifty feet on each side of the road ebony Senegalese, glistening with sweet, are padding in bare feet toward the front. They pay no heed to the stones, burrs, the sharp-edged, thorn-lined twigs. Their faded khaki coats are too tight, and dark with sweat in the back. Their cartridge belts are slung over shoulders and the muscled legs move like the pistons of a big, black locomotive just picking up speed. Some of the Senegalese carry rifles balanced on their heads. Others have taken off their hats and sweat is rune ning through their shiny, corke screw hair and rushing down their solemn faces. They do not have steel helmets. A voice says, “I've.a-hottle I've been saving for something or other.” It is Ferguson. “It doesn't seem to matter very much now, Come on to my cubby. But there is no soda.” We go in and sit down, “Did you ever hear of a Scots= man becoming both personal and sentimental?” Ferguson asks. He doesn’t expect an answer to that, because ha adds: “To the French, our former allies.” We toast the French. “For four years I was stationed in Demascus, 'T was a liaison officer with the Free French in this campaign. I know every one of the officers over there.” He waved his free hand in the general direction of Damascus. “They are my friends. I like them, they like me. I know just where the French officers are sitting at this moment planning how to resist: our attack. “The walls are a dark green and there's a picture of General Foch on the wall back of where General Dentz is sitting. I can picture that scene, because right up until the armistice I sat at a number of conferences just like it.” ‘He stares at the glass in front of him.

(Copyright, 1042, by Random House, Inc.; distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)

TOMORROW—Entry into Damascus; & battle between a destroyer and a tank; with the Australians before Beirut.

Scores Holiday

Jobs for Pupils

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 (U. B.), —Releasing children fram school

TO QUELL RIOT

Axis Sympathizers Moved

LESS FUEL OIL

Ration Is Only Enough to Heat Half of Mansion On Fall Creek.

of the world must be made safe for civilized people to go .about their business. Also, we expect to have a lot of business to be about after the war. War production has built up American manufacturing capacity that will need markets all over the world. We also want to relieve ourselves of the heavy. cost of modern war. By every requirement of our own security and welfare, we must have a steady world around us. I was not an isolationist before Pearl Harbor but I was before the fall of France. Events since then have convinced me that we were all wrong in our belief after the last war that we could escapz another one by keeping our heads down. We tried that. We gave it a thorough trial. It didn’t work. We know that policy will only bring us back again to another one of these wars. "It is not even a risk It is a certainty. Pearl Harbor brought the war to us a second time, It ought not take three lessons to teach us what is 80 clear now after the second lesson.

By GEORGE WELLER

. SOMEWHERE IN NEW GUINEA, From Relocation Center; |pec. 8. — Airacobra pilots, busy . buzzing up the Japs in ‘Buna’s em1 Killed, 9 Shot. bittered rectangle, find it consid- ‘| erably easier to locate well-hidden —AXis sympathizers were being| some things for which they always removed under military guard from |p. ont Papua was famous: Huthe Manzanar Japanese relocation| —.. "p..4c :

center today to prevent a ‘recury p The secondary wave of head-

rence of the Pearl Harbor anniversary riot between pro-allied and|hunters from Staten Island and pro-axis elements among the»10,000! Sacramento, Evanston and Baton Rouge began combing this end of

interned Japanese. About 30 wives and children of New Guinea. for cured human heads almost. as soon as they ar-

the ‘125 ‘persons attached to the nonJapanese administrative personnel rived. When some hairy armament hand

also were removed from the camp for protection. The roundup of told the guy who wiped the jeeps’ axis sympathizers began after an'windshields that Buzz Wagner took cutbreak Sunday night when one|some human heads from Papua, the Japanese was killed and nine were|search for heads began and now nothing can stop it.

wounded. Military police normally on duty| pighter. pilots like Lieut. Bill at the camp were augmented by|pavitt of Colorado Springs open the

regular army units to halt the dem-

day by careening down upon and machine-gunning the Japs dug in between Buna’s greater and lesser fighter strips with a 500-pound bomb, then come home at 300 miles an hour across the cloudy Owen Stanleys and immediately start head hunting. It is evidently the lure of the unknown. The Japs are tough to find, but kinky heads, aromatic and bodyless, are harder. A Christianized native whom Davitt, in company with your correspondent, approached in one village pointed hillward: “Only bad peoples up there take heads:” * When Bill pressed him, tie buéhyheaded boy with flowers in his hair got the ‘idea that the Coloradan wished to lay him personally upon the block. “Me good boy,” he said, with hauteur. “When die, me bury in ground. Head too.” No sale.

it didn’t take the country very long to rise to the allout’ demands that total war makes. If we seemed slow from week to week, tlre look back over one year gives us perspective to recognize the achievement for what it is, Will we be as quick and as apt in learning another lesson? © Will be as quick to learn the lesson that the world is now so small we can’t escape the effects of what happens anywhere on the globe?

Just One Village Street

WILL WE recognize what the heavy bomber means, and what the bigger models that are sure to come will mean? Will we see that the super-bomber, still to come, puts us at the mercy of any other nation that - can build "in volume? Will be see that the superbomber also gives us and like-minded nations the weapon to stop future warmakers in their tracks? Our engineers and our industrialists are smdrt enough to design and build those bombers, ones that

My Day

to fill holiday rush jobs is & violation - of federal law, Kathe arine F. Lenroot, chief of the children’s bureau of the labor department, said today. “Reports coming in from many places indicate a tendency to take increasing numbers of school children for work in overcrowded stores where the strain is pare ticularly heavy in the holiday season,” said Miss Lenroot. “Boys and girls of 14 and 18 have not reached the stage of maturity ip which they would have the physical endurance to work under such pressures with out detriment to their health and welfare. Christmas is a. chile dren’s holiday and it would be a pity if they arrived at it so exe hausted that they were unable to enjoy it.”

HOLD EV ERYTHING

Fuel oil rationing is no Pespecter of persons. Governor and Mrs. Henry F. Schricker have been notified by OPA officials that only about half of the governor's mansion on Fall creek can be heated with fuel oil under rationing-regulations. The governor will be allowed only sufficient fuel to heat 3200 square feet of floor area. This will keep warm this winter only a iew of the mansion’s 20 rooms, Since the governor is expected to ‘entertain occasionally even in war time, he and Mrs. Schricker are planning to stagger the fuel oil consumption by closing off most of the rooms and saving fuel enough to heat guest rooms for formal oc-

By Eleanor Roosevelt

5075 IEE Bp

.. WASHINGTON, Monday.—Last evening IT had an hour's’ visit with nine honor juniors of Colgate university, who have been using their last semester to study various government deparéments, with special emphasis on the activities of congress. Dr. Paul S. Jacobsen, associate professor of political science, and his wife, were with them as usual. I found them an extremely nice group of young boys.’ They all expect tc enter the service almost immediately, and this may be the last group Colgate will be ‘able to send until the end of the war. These boys, I am sure, will profit by their experience, "both now and in the after-war j period. They were all very much “impressed by the size of the job almost any government agency covers, and the fact all th the men they worked with seemed to know,

Ebay

“not. only their own particular job, but to have an

Amderstanding of its: re elationship to the other work

armed forces and will see that the toughening process which comes from thinking through problems will not be neglected while the process of physical toughening up is going on. I received a letter yesterday from a gentleman whose son’ I.came to know on my trip across the water, He was a member of the crew that had taken one of our planes across and was returning fo go on with his work. We talked of a great many things and he told me so much about his father that, on arriving home, I wrote his father of our meeting. One part of his answer is so typical of the American scene that I want to quote it here: “Knowing your wide interest in this melting pot which is our counfry, I'm going to enclose a business card and an advertising card of the small corporation

of which I am a member. “Here we have a Bostonian with Irish and French! Huguenot ancestors, a New Yorker who is proud to| worship the god of his fathers as a Jew and an

onstration. - Pro-axis elements reportedly had run through the vamp shouting: “Pearl Harbor! Banzai!”

. Soldiers on Guard

Brilliant searchlights illuminated the camp last night ° as soldiers maintained watch. The uprising began near midnight Sa y when six Japanese wearing a and ‘seriously injured Fred Tayama, president of the Japanese-American Citizens’ league and -a long-time advocate of loyalty to the United States. A mob of axis sympathizers demonstrated in front of the hos- | pital where he was taken. Harry Ueno, asserted leader of the mob, was taken in custody. A

American, and a native of Barbados whose father Was, mob stormed the jail and attempted

an English sugar planter and whose mother was

to remove Ueno. When “tear gas

Scotch. Our five associates—employees would not be failed to alt the rioting, shots were

term—are likewise of bps work:

Navy to Muster Out Prize Porker

MARION, II, Dee. 8 (U. P)—

The Frankfort Pure Milk Co. paid Betty Hamilton $315.60 for’ her prize pig at an auction of products of the county victory pig-growing

contest. The company gave the

pig to the navy recruting station. Quartermaster William Bobbitt today. assigned Herbert Bobbitt,

yeoman 2c, to take care of the animal, assigned two other sailors: | to have their picture takeh with ||

the pig and employees of the dairy ° company, then offered to trade the porker for office equipment,

460 BODIES FOUND

AFTER SHIP SINKING

DURBAN, South Africa, Dec. 8 (U, P).—It was reliably reported yesterday that 460 bodies have been washed up on .the beaches north and south of here since Thursday, many of them ‘victims of recent

sinkings off the Zululand coast.

Many were . -Teported mutilated by ‘sharks. : A majority of them were said to have been “bodies of Italian war

prisoners.

; The Iargsst aliip: sulk 15. recent -1da; was the British vessel Lland-

“What, we need is not. a blue aff

pig,”

casions.

Cuba Promises

Cigars to Yanks

HAVANA, Dec. 8 (U. P.) ~The Cuban government has indorsed a project to donate 400 Havana cigars to the United States armed forces for every 1000 Havana

cigars sold in the United States

or sent or taken to that country, the Havana cigar export corporation' annqunced = yesterday. President Fulgencio Batista, who left on an official visit to the.

yesterday is taking | [f e chest, with two ||}: for President

3. Spetialiyemae Roosevelt. ‘The brand is the

same that Prime Minister Win ston 4 iv $d IY N