Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 May 1943 — Page 9

TUESDAY, MAY 4, 1943

Hoosier Vagabond

x. {Continued from Page One)

from the shell bursts that shower death from above, Our artillery has really been sensational. For once we have enough of something and at the right time. Officers tell me they actually have more guns than they know what to do with. All the guns in any one sector can be centered to shoot at one spot. And when we lay the whole business on a German hill the whole slope seems to erupt. It becomes an unbelievable cauldron of fire and smoke and dirt. Veteran German soldiers say they have never been through anything like it. Now to the infantry. I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can't be won without. Attack, Fright, Butchery I WISH YOU could see just one of the ineradicable pictures I have in ny mind today. In this particular Picture I am sitting among clumps of sword-grass on 8 steep and rocky hillside that we have just taken. We are looking out over a vast rolling country to the Tear. A narrow path comes like a ribbon over miles away, down a long slope, across a creek, slope and over another hill. All along the length of this ribbon there is now a thin line of men. For four days and nights they have fought hard, eaten little, washed none, and slept

a hill up a

Inside naianenols By Lowell Nussbaum

TWO YOUTHS who looked as though they were headed back to I. U. stood on S. Meridian st. attemptIng to thumb a ride southward Sunday. One carried & sign “Be patriotic—share a tide.” “We'll help you.” Dan Weir retired a couple of years ago as assistant superintendent of schools in charge of elementary education, his name plate still is attached to the wall outside his old room at the school board offices. Leaving the sign there is just a bit of sentimental whimsy on the part of Mr. Weir's associates. His office never has been assigned to anyone else—it's used occasionally as a committee room. Mr. Weir drops in at the board offices occasionally and talks over old times. . . . Jim StrickJand, OPA state director, hasnt made any speeches lately. His last talk was before the American Business club a Tocent Thursday and when the waiters brought in the plece de resistance—baked fish—the club members engaged in a prearranged demonstration, loudly denouncing the OPA, etc., and tossing their hard rolls at Jim.

R Aiound the Town HOWARD T. BATMAN, public counselor of the public service commission, is the proud papa of a daughter born Sunday at Coleman hospital. She probably will be named Geraldine: The Batmans have another daughter, Barbara. . . . John Longsdorf, assistant to the president of the light company, is beaming over the arrival of a new grandchild—his second. It’s a boy, the son of John's daughter, Mrs. Philip Burkhardt, Bryn Mawr, Pa. John makes a mighty young looking granddad Capt. James A, Carvin, former advertising manager of the light company, has been transferred from Chico, Cal, to Luke field, Phoenix, Arix., where he is the public rela-

Sweden

STOCKHOLM, May 4 (By gquare, across from my hotel window, I ‘can see a statue of King Charles XII of Sweden, with arm extended pointing a sword eastward toward Russia. For two and a half centuries the Swedes have remembered this national heré who led the Swedish army in a brave but disastrous ‘campaign against the Russians. Thus the traditional Swedish fear of Russia has deep roots, but I think there is a mistaken tendency in America to overweigh this tradition. Ever since El Alamein the Swedes have been convinced that the allies would win, and a majority of the people want them to win. Recently there has been some fear Here that Russia and Germany might make a Separate peace. German propaganda has been playing on that theme, causing increasing anxiety here. Hence Stalin's May day adoption of the unconditional sur- { renider objective brings a sense of relief among "many here. Fear of a separate peace has been voiced in the newspaper Social Demokraten, organ of ‘the Social Pemodcrats, who control the government, Social Demokraten says that ne responsible opinion in Germany How expects the war to end in a German victory. It gays that the third reich, while surrendering hope of n absolute victory, now aims at a separate RussoGerman peace, which is reflected in the German press.

Polish Iheident Causes Sty

MOSCOW'S ABRUPT action toward Poland has Rdded greatly to fears that preparations for a separate Peace Were Veing made. The liberal paper Dagens Nyheter Here said that through the Polish incident Etalin had Tet his allies understand that the Soviet was waging Wer war according to her own ideas, and that she Would establish such a peace as suited

urging motorists to The other had a sign:

Although

Wireless). —In Opera

hardly at all. Their aights have been violent with

hr By Ernie Pyle A || the Old

attack, fright, butchery, and their days sleepless and miserable with the crash of artillery. The men are walking. They are 50 feet apart, for dispersal. Their walk is slow, for they are dead weary, as vou can tell even when looking at them from be- | hind. Every line and sag of their bodies speaks their inhuman exhaustion. On their shoulders and backs they carry steel tripods, machine-gun barrels, leaden boxes of ammunition. Their feet seem to sink into the ground from the overload they are bearing. They don’t slouch. It is the terrible deliberation of each step that spells out their appalling tiredness. Their faces are black and unshaven. They are young men, but the grime and whiskers and exhaustion make them look middle-aged.

Tired Line of Antlike Men

IN THEIR EYES as they pass is not hatred, not | excitement, not despair, not the tonic of their vie- | tory—there is just the simple expression of being here as though they had. been here doing this for-| ever, and nothing else. The line moves on, but it never ends. All afternoon | men keep coming round the hill and vanishing even- | tually over the horizon. It is one long, tired line of | antlike men. There is an agony in your heart and you almost | feel ashamed to look at them. They are just guys] from Broadway and Main st, but you wouldn't re- | member them. They are too far away now. They are 100 tired. Their world can never be known to you, but if vou could see them just once, just for an instant, you | would know that no matter how hard people work | back home they are not keeping pace with these| infantrymen in Tunisia.

hundred years

it in other places.

The glorious old “floating palaces” between St. Louis and New Orleans long ago bow ed to the

railroads, and now not a one remains. The only symbols of activity today are the occasional ‘chuffing towboats pushing their acres of freight-laden barges before them. Except for these, the Big River is almost empty and as silent as it was when De Soto discovered it in 1542 or when La Salle floated down it In his canoes a century and a half later. Despite her tall smokestacks and her old-fashioned lines, Mark Twain would have found it hard to recognize life aboard the steamer Gordon C. Greene on which we traveled if he had stepped up her long stageplank and come aboard. Her oil-Burning engines would puzzle him, causing him to wonder what had happeried to the old wood-yards along the river's banks from which the oldtime packets took

tions officer. . Seen leaving the Toddle House (38th and College) with a big sack of hamburgers Sunday | was Charles Apostol, proprietor of the well- known | E. Ohio st. steak house. Times are tough, eh, Charley! |

Don Hevold’s Policy

DON HEROLD, the humorist, who recently was| elected president of the I. U. alumni, has decided | that as president he should have some sort of a policy. “Well,” he writes Fred Bates Johnson, “I am} for hydro-electric development of the Jordan river valley. Also I am for the establishment of a Chair of | Levity in the university. After all, one of the aims; of this war is to re-establish a sense of humor in the world, and to ‘eradicate pompous and over-serious statesmen. We would never have had this war if government had been in the hands of fellows like Mark Twain, Will Rogers, George Ade, Fred Allen and Kin Hubbard. And there must be amiable fellows even in enemy countries to match this group. Also I'm for the post-war abolition of the common head cold, extermination of ragweed and for Iower berths in banquet tables.”

The Perils of 19/3

THIS BUSINESS of moving into new houses before theyre completed has its hazards. Take the case of B. W. Owen, freight claims agent for Commer-| their cordwood fuel. cial Motor freight. Mr. Owen moved here from Co- dF 5 lumbus, O., after having rented one of several new . houses being completed on E. 67th st. The moving Steam-Heated Cabin van arrived and ‘some of the workmen directed the IN HER big steam-heated van driver to the house. Came the light and gas ; \ . company mien Who made Service connections. The| cabin, With the thermostatic conOwens got busy and worked hard arranging the fur-| trols he would look for the old niture. The next day, the construction foreman| pot-bellied stove that warmed the

knocked at the door. “Sorry,” he said, “but you'll have té move. Youre in the wrong house.” It developed that since no signs had been placed on the houses vet, the moving van driver had to ask workmen which was the right house, and the latter became confused. The Owens are pretty well settled by now, in the right house—2226 E. 67th st.

By Raymond Clapper

T happened to be in London when the Polish affair deevioped, and IT am certain there was deep concern in that capital about Russia's attitude. So Stalin's May day declaration vastly improved the situation all

around. This rather deflates an amazing effective German propaganda maneuver, which built up the Polish crisis to the point where the Russians were goaded inte retaliation. That in turn was built up inté a war of nerves regarding the imminence of a separate peace. German propaganda is active here, under the direction of Hans Thomsen, former Nazi minister to Washington, who is now minister to Sweden. The German legation directly facing the royal palace, fifes the swastika from the mightiest flagpole on the empankment here. This establishment is supposed to have & staf of Petween three and four hundred, although many of them are not listed as officially connected.

Americans Must Be Alert

IT IS AN 6dd sensation to sit down with a friend for a drink and discover a party of Germans moving in to sit at the next table. Strange persons come up to Americans, introduce themselves as newspaper reporters, and begin asking pointed questions about America. Newly arrived Americans must be on their guard against talking to strangers. It should not be inferred that the Swedish gov-

belles in Hhoopskirts and poke bonnets and the gentlemen in

satins and the finest of Broadcloth. The radio, bringing jazz music and the latest war news, ne doubt would surprise him; so would the hot and cold running water in the staterooms where a bowl and pitcher reposed in his day, the electric refrigerator purring in the galley . . . and a lot of other things. But the Mississippi river still belongs to Mark Twain, as it always will, and it was his river with its storied romance that the passengers aboard the Gordon Greene were seeking to recapture as our big steamer headed out of the Ohio at Cairo and turmed her nose toward New Orleans, nearly a thousand winding miles away. We found his Footprints, so to speak, in almost every sweeping bend—at Island 33 where, as a youngster of 18, he applied to Capt. Horace Bixby, pilot of the Steamer Paul Jones, for training as a ‘cub; at Ship Island, below Memphis, where his kid brother, Henry, met a horrible death when the steamer Pennsylvania's boilers exploded in 18358; on the crumbling bank where once stood the town of Napoleon, Ark. that he knew as a metropolis of the river and which was swallowed by the big stream many vears ago. » 5

Pass Island 10

TUESDAY'S DAWN found the Gordon Greene in the New Mad-

ernment is ‘especially lenient or partial to the Nazis] rid bend, 70 miles below Cairo, The United States office of war information has its own ‘establishment here, which is very active in the | united nations’ cause. The newspapers co-operate in| publishing material friendly to the allied cause, Thee nub of it, $6 far as I ean size it up thus far, is that no obstacles are put in the way of our side. Certainly all the Americans I have talked with are warm in praise of the attitude of the Swedish people! and officials, and consider that Here they are among, real friends who, regardless of their traditional attitude toward Russia. want to see 16 separate peace and

Treasury department and airline officials Will co-operate in making souvenir ‘covers,’ commemorating

service, available to stamp collec-

Mississippi River Today Is Different From One

Mark Twain Cruised

This is the second story in a series of five, retracing the route of the famous old river packets that plied between Cincinnati and New Orleans, written by a staff writer for this newspaper who recently made the 1500-mile {rip on the Steamer Gordon C. Greene.

By ROBERT TALLEY

Times Special Writer CAIRO TO MEMPHIS.—If Mark Twain, who lived a ago could come back today he would not recognize his beloved Mississippi river. The glamorous old packets, they were never out of sight of each other in the winding bends, have faded into the mists of history. were thriving commercial centers in his day have crumbled into the greedy waters, and tiny landings that he knew have blossomed into busy cities. changed, for the channel has shifted with the years and much of the hundreds of miles that he cruised in the days just before the Civil war is now solid dry ground. river lies to the left of it in some places, to the right of

once so numerous that

Towns that Even the river itself has The

that once plied

where the mile-wide river makes a Joop 15 miles around and then returns to only one mile below its beginning. Missouri is on the right bank, Kentucky then Tennessee on the left. At the head of New Madrid bend is Island 10, where Gen. Grant started his southward drive to capture the Mississippi river and break the backbone of the Confederacy in 1862. A little farther on is the ferry crossing between Columbus, Ky., and Belmont, Mo., where the Confederates sought to block the advance of Gen. Grant's gunboats by stretching a heavy iron chain across the river, and where the first real battle of the civil war in the Mississippi valley was fought. Near this point occurred the historic incident relative to Gen. Grant's generous consumption of liquor which later, when complaint was made, caused President Lincoln to retort: “Tell me what kind of liquor Grant drinks and I'll buy every one of my generals a barrel of it.” After the battle at Belmont, which ended in something akin to a draw, truce-boats bearing white flags met in the middie of the river, bringing Gen. Grant and Gen. Cheatham, the Confederate commander, and their staffs, for a conference. Grant and Cheatham were old friends, having fought together in Mexico, and they immediately exchanged felicitations—as well as drinks. The party went on for several hours and then adjourned from Grant's boat, the Maria Denning, to the Confederate craft where the conviviality and good spirits, Both liquid and otherwise, continued to flow freely. To the Federals, who had plenty of rare liquors and wines, the Confederates apologized for having ‘nothing but some Robertson county corn whisky.” * 2 x

Resurmed Battle

WHEN TIME, came for the tao boats to part, both generals and their respective staffs were in pretty bad shape. Many of the officers had exchanged articles of uniform in their quest for souvenirs and it was hard to tell a Yankee from @& Confederate. Under the pretext of obtaining fuel, the captains of the two boats steamed to a nearby woodvard for the night and next morning. after a good night's sleep, the Yanks and Johnny Rebs parted with hand-shakes and farewells, + +. to resume their battle, The story of this incident was told to the writer aboard the Gordon Greene Hy former Mayor George P. Carrel. 77, of Cintinnati, a passenger and an oldtime river man. His father, Capt.

One end of the 175-foot cabin of the Steamer Gor ion Greene, pictured above.

|

Among the Greene's 189 passengers were former Maver George P. Carrel of Cincinnati, at left, and William Birrell, a retired Boston business man. Mr. Carrel spent years in the: steamboat business, as” did his Father who was one of the pioneer figires oh the Ohio and

Mississippi.

Hercules Carrel, prominent for many vears as a river man, owned the Maria Denning which Grant had commandeered. The Maria Denning was named for Mr. Carrel’s cousin. One hundred miles below Cairo the Gordon Greene passed Reelfoot Tanding, a few miles from Tennessee's Reelfoot Lake which was formed overnight by an earthquake in the early 1800s. As the earth shuddered, giant trees crashed and the tortured river seemed to break apart, according to the accounts of oldtimers, thousands of acres sank many feet and the greedy waters from the big stream swirled in. Today, the lake is a paradise for hunters and fishermen. for mile after mile the banks glided past us a seemingly neverending curtain of green willows that grew to the water's edge and occasional sandbars that glinted in the sun. Except for the chorus of the crows that wheeled over the cornfields on the frequent islands, the Big River that in bygone days had echoed to the moaning whistles of hundreds of steampoats was as silent as the day when De Soto found it.

» ® ”

Recall Flatboat Days

THE SCENE was the same as the hardy fatboatmen found it when they drifted down from the Ohio Before the steamboats came, bringing to the settlements and

By Science Service

BERKELEY, Cal,

Mov 4 hi dia ro and with radioactive the SReCHIIVE CON mittee and distros y —In- chidomic phosphate as indieators | chaiimen of Indiana War

the 25th Anniver sary of air mall halation of immune serum sprayed showed that with inhalation the mas |

which resembled a resplendent tunnel, it

Here passengers dined, danced and took part in entertainments at night.

Greene had tried to follow the same course that Capt. Bixby and Mark Twain followed, our steamer probably would have made a forced landing in a cot= ton field for the big river has changed its course at Island 35. The channel which then swung west of the island and passed Wilson Landing on the Arkansas shore, now comes down on the Tennessee side and Wilson Landing is six miles inland from the main streant. It has been that way since the river changed its mind and decided to go on the other side of the island in 1876 n

An Old Tragedy

A FEW MILES perched high on a bluff, old town of Randolph thriving metropolis of the lower valley in the antebelium days, which gave Memphis a close race for commercial supremacy. Bub 1865, with a loss of 1700 lives. I% this area passed up Randolph and came to Memphis, and as the ve= sult Memphis is today & eity of 300,000 population while old Ran= dolph slumbers in the sun as a forgotten steamboat ianding. Ten miles above Memphis is Toland 40 where 75 years ago, “e W. R. Arthur, 2 Memphissto-oin= cinnati packet, exploded hey boils ers and 20 lives were lost. The

nin pH,

coffe rman rm cone re

farther on, was the Tenn, a

the plantations the medicines and iron, the bricks and melodeons, the cows and pigs, the anvils and the axes and other things that the pioneers needed. Most of these primitive craft were floated down to New Orleans and there broken up and sold while the crews returned by horseback or on foot over the Natchez Trace, but the big keelboats and broadhorns often made the return trip of hundreds of miles upstream by sheer power of human muscle. They were pushed with poles or hauled along by means of ropes tied to trees on the banks, the tedious voyage from New Orleans to the Ohio river requiring several months. Late in the afternoon the Gor= doh Greene passed Island 335, opposite Wilson, Ark, where voung Mark Twain, a passenger on the Steamer Paul Jones bound from Cincinnati to New Orleans, sum= moned up enough courage to in= vade the secret nirécinets of the pilothouse and ask Horace Bixby for a job. Twain had been a type-setter in New York and €incinnati and had started te New Orleans for South Amearica where He intended to seek his fortune, when the lure of the river ever= took him and he decided to be= come a pilot. Bixby agreed to train him, fof $100 cash ahd $400 more to be paid out of his Ast earnings, and the terms were aes

wreck drifted down the river and lodged on a sandbar at Redman’s Point, just above the city, where the rotting timbers were visible for many years, Nearby, too, in what is now a cotton field is the ped of the old river whers the Steamer Sultana, returning 2000 Federal soldiers to the North, Blew up on April 2%, 1867, With a loss of 1700 lives. It Was one of the preatest maritime disasters in history, Hat it received ceant attention, Heng overshad= owed at the time by the suriendsr of [ee and the assassination of

Lincoln, » » »

Artival in Memphis

DIRECTLY opposite Memphis the river has swallowed the town of Hopefield, Ark, Whieh fAourished many years ago, having dozens of saloons and VER & racetrack. Nothing remains o the caving banks now except & tangled wilderness of green Wwils joe, Behind which, set PRck Wore than a mite inland, aie the Mass sive levees that the United States atmy engineers have built to held the big stream in eheek and whieh are doing their job well it was almost dark When the Gordon Greene swung around the toe of Mud Teland in Memphis’ harbor, tured up Well Fiver and Bhat at the it's a Seambin Whar moored 1h a le we nearly & b his wile long And parking area ic an

cepted. it the ilot of he _ Gorden

STAMP COLLECTORS inhalation of Immune Serum SOHRICKER WILL AID pr 10 RECEIVE ‘COVERS’ Mary Become Anti-Flu Weapon

By UNITED PRESS A Rome broadcast reported | office of war information i)

WAR APPEALS DRIVE

Governor Behricker will addvess that the entey of the United Sal

he, 1h the Glaypoesl hotel suieides in Ameren.

want an allied victory. | from an atomizer may Become the | terial is uniformly distributed and and THIF weapon against influenza. BERBERA th the outermost alr shes The inhalations miz'st be used both of the lungs at the ends of the bron: to Ward off ah attack and as 4 rem: |chial tide “dy for the disease. Danger of humans getting alier=

RI gic to the immune horse serum has THiS iethod of prevention ahd heen overcome or at least vedweed treatment of influenga is being in-

by treating the serum with certain Alse included are the A. ® of vestigated by the naval laboratory ensyimes. Evaluation of this treated and © § © war relief committess. veseaich Whit No. 1, under the qi [Sethi aS & Preventive ahd remedy) Clatenee W. Gary, is

for experimental ntivenza 18 Wisk

her best.

My Day

WASHINGTON, Monday. —Last Friday night, in Washington, I went to a play wiitten by two young futhors, Phoebe and Henry Ephron. It is a farce

The meeting will be the first CR add the broadenst the formation of a Campaigns at \ fro to be hela oll mesh ful hoe aired anee tieipating Mesielts in he arganisa om tion are the ©. 8. ©, Chinese, Rus: Lai p a sian, Creek Porish- American and] Na other ielief And War seFviee

tors. Although special stamps B E I R | ve oy Oe muey iH 4 / 't uration the ‘‘covers” wil y eanor ooseve i availabe to (collectors, who buy | Bonds at airline offices. The bonds will Be mailed to purchasers by airmail, Lightweight stationery will be, used and officials estimate that 10000 envelopes and bonds will

change before going back up town te the Horace Mann auditorium for 4 meeting of the Columbia graduate club. After speaking there, I reached home in time to listen to the radis, keep an appointment

RN, when it opens in New York City, it will be called

“Thies & Family” Its purpose is te make you fash, and judging by the audience 14st Friday night, it sdcceeds. TH these Gays we should be grateful te those Who bring us such Yelease. Saturday night, in New York City, I went to see, or hear rather, “Rosalityda ” THiS operetta with charming Johann Strauss waltzes, gives one a very pleasant gay eveping. I Was Happy 16 have a Phalice to attend a performance. Sunday afternoon, after having Quite a large go Ag at bly, I went to a meeting held in Harlem for the Benefit of Bethune Cookinan college, and to honor Mire. Mary Mcleod de Nr. Roland Hayes sang

Tt ap

rahe

with & young man who is oh his way to England and, finally, wake the train ror Washington Nein joss in 2 de. hi fT AW very Blad to receive a little teaftet from the! E n a result in the sale of & childien's bureau, Which tells of the maveinity and east $187,500 in bonds,

rant ca Ai Bi Will pow be available under t He topes) SPOiOpIEtion Tob the Wives he NAME 31 "WINNERS IN LATIN CONTESTS

infants of the men in the armed forces. Any man gn in the Fourth, Afth, sixth or Sen a of a the ary, navy, marine corps or coast gua hes Special have his wife taken cate of “as long As similar ce aies BLOOMINGTON, Ind, May &— ATE Hot AvALIABIS through medical of Hospital facilities) Thitty-seveh high school Latin Of the ary or navy, or by of though, official state pupils have Been named winners in or local health weyvices” [the four divisions of the 20th anTHIS new service functions throvgh grants made nual state high school atin eon: by the childrens bureau to the state health depart- test sponsored by the Indiana unis ments uhder plans approved by the childrens buries. | versity extension division. This will be of great help to many men in the service Robert Konrad, Ben Davis high Who, When Whey were inducted inte the service, wor school, won third place in the

ried as to How thelr wives and Shiidheh were going to, Fourth @Ivision. Jeannette Hawk, ve ph wed I am o Bes Sue i tied for Fourth

i

rection of Cmdr. Albert BP. Krueger at the University of California here, Micé given ihhalations of a glo: bulin fraction of influenza horse Serum were protected against in: fluenze, the desiee of protection increasing with the duration of in:

halation, the naval researchert now

report to the American Association of Tin ste. Treatment with the immune sei uM Was effective when given as 10h as 48 hours after the mice got influenza, Repeated treaments 24 Hours apart were sighificanttly more effective than one treatment. Inhalation, the scientists found, is # Better method of giving the protective ahd refedial immune sei : op A up Ape

IT wr

| progress.

Your Blood Is Needed

May quota for Red Cross Blood Plasma Center — BBO donors. oe #0 far this WMonth=

tia % Suatassl Yesterday's done You ean help meet the quota By calling Li-100 for ah aps g to the Shamutt | 1%

| LANGUAGE GROUP

'RE-ELECTS YOUNG Bl Bert B Vouns TRdiana nye | sity fachity Member, Was res I international president of the French language Federation United States and Canada yesters day at the RteFRational cORVERHSA at New Vork eity. My. Young : Aled appointed to the United States] committee of the American ure js formin Souitiies a and e