Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 May 1943 — Page 9
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The
Hoosier Vagabond
AT THE FRONT LINES IN TUNISIA (By Wirefess) —When our infantry goes into a big push in northern Tunisia each man is issued three bars of D-ration chocolate, enough to last one day. He takes
fe other food. He carries two canteens of water instead of the usual one. He carries no blankets. He leaves behind all extra clothes except his raincoat. In his pockets he may have a few toilet articles. Some men carry their money. Others give it to friends to keep. In the days that follow they live in a way that is inconceivable to us at home. They walk and fight all night without sleep. Next day they lie flat in foxholes, or hide in fields of freshly gieen, knee-high wheat. If theyre in the fields they dare not even move enough to dig foxholes, for that would bring the German artillery. They can't rise even for nature's calls. The German feels for them continually with his artillery. The slow drag of these motionless daylight hours is fie arly unendurable.
Fight at Night, Lie Low by Day
LT. MICKEY MILLER of Morgantown, Ind., says this lifeless waiting in a wheatfield is almost the worst part of the whole battle. The second evening after the attack begins, C-rations and five-gallon cans of water are brought Mie across country in jeeps, after dark. You eat in the gark. and you can't see the can you are eating from. You just eat by feel. You make cold coffee from cold water. One night a German shell landed close and fragments punctured 15 cans of water. Fach night enough canned rations for three meals are brought up. but when the men move on after supper most of them either lose or leave behind the next day's rations, because they're too heavy to carry. But,
Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum
THE GAMBLING fraternity has been smiling hope fully over a rumor that “General Tyndall's going to resign as mayor.” The rumor has it that “several big shot senators are trying to get him recalled by the army.” Well, we called hizzoner, and he says it's merely wishful thinking on the part of the gamblers. He'd welcome a chance to resume his army connections, but isn't doing anything about it, he said. . . . By the way, the general's pet peeve of the moment, we hear, is the OPA. He has a 210-acre farm south of town—has had it 20 years—and decided the other day he wanted a hog butchered. This is a pretty busy time for farmers and he didn't want to have his tenant farmer waste & day butchering when he should be plowing, or whatever it is that farmers are doing right now. So he sent the hog to a regular butcher. The butcher said he was Sorry, ) But he couldn't do it. “Why,” inquired the general. *Well, you didnt butcher any hogs in 1941 so, under OPA rules, we can't butcher one for you now.” Practicing and Preaching THE ANNOUNCER was giving a resume of the days programs over WIBC shortly before 8 a m the other day. In between, he put “jh a plug for a cough remedy, urging listeners to “get quick relief from asthma and plaguing coughs.” All through the announcement there was, in the background, the faint sound of someone coughing and coughing. Maybe the studio engineer, or maybe even the announcer. . . . Add similes: As hard to find as parking space downtown on Sundays. It seems harder to find a place to park now than before gas rationing. Possibly it's because some folks who used to go for drives out in the country now just drive downtown and save gas. The downtown streets Sunday afternoon and early evening resembled a country town on Saturday night. The streets were packed
Sweden
STOCKHOLM, May 5—(by wireless) —As one Ewedish official here said to me, Sweden has learned to live as a small power that is a different thing from trying to live as a big power. The old trouble that has plagued Europe has’ been the attempt of small countries to become bigger, to scheme and plot and go to war for more territory. They have not learned the lesson Sweden has learned. It was learned here in a very hard way vears ago. when Sweden dreamed of being the giant power of the north. From Viking times the Swedes looked to the East, organized expeditions and sought trade in what is now Russia, where they established a government. In fact Swedes say the name Russia is of Swedish origin. Sweden was a warlike nation for centuries, fighting almost constantly with Russia, Poland and Denmark to dominate the Baltic and the North. King Gustavus Adolphus, Sweedn’s greatest hero, was killed in battle fn Germany. King Charles XII conquered Denmark od Poland and invaded Russia.
Learned Wars Did Not Pay
BUT OVER the years Sweden gradually found that wars did not pay. and that another way of existence was possible, which during the last century of peace has enabled Sweden to become a model abode of freedom and economic security. The Swedes have found that a nation can be happy. properous and respected without being big or warlike. Instead of conquering territory, the Swedes learned to send ships with fine products all over the world. They advanced through technical skill instead of
WASHINGTON, Tuesday — Yesterday morning we had the great’pleasure of welcoming Madame Chiang Kai-shek here again. Her trip across our great counftv and the speeches she made, have been a very exhausting experience. I hope that during the next few weeks she can really rest and recuperate. She needs to build up her strength before returning to China. Madame Chiang says she watched all of our countryside out of train windows, and was impressed by the similarity that exists between the Chinese and our own landscape. She has talked with many people individually and has met great crowds. Some of you may remember a mention I made in my column of of a foremah in the Pursglove, W. After ng irom re
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 1943
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as they say, when you're in battle and excited you soft of go on your nerve. You don't think much about being hungry.
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Indianapolis Times
The men fight at night and lie low by aay. when New Channel Bypa SSeS Spot Where Old Steamer Pennsylvania Exploded
This is the third 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 special writer for this newspaper who recently made the 1500-mile trip on the steamer Gordon C. Greene.
the artillery takes over its blasting job. gradually creeps over them. What sleeping they do is in daytime. But, as they say, at hight it's too cold and in daytime it's too hot. Also the fury of the artillery makes daytime sleeping next to impossible. So does the heat of the sun. Some men have passed out from heat prostration. Many of them get upset stomachs from the heat.
Finally Yield to Weariness
BUT AS THE third and fourth days roll on weariness overcomes all obstacles to sleep. Men who sit down for a moment's rest fall asleep in the grass. There are even men who say they can march while asleep. Lt. Col. Charlie Stone of New Brunswick, N. J, actually went to sleep while standing up talking on a field telephone—not while Mstening, but in the middle of a spoken sentence. You can't conceive how hard it is to move and fight at night. The country is rugged, the ground rough. Everything is new and strange. The nights are pitch black. You grope with your feet. You step into holes, and fall sprawling in little gullies and creeks. You trudge over plowed ground and push through waist-high shrubs. You go as a man blindfolded. feeling unsure and off balance, but you keep, on going. Through it all there is the fear of mines.) We have to discover the mine fields by stumbling into them or driving over them. Naturally there are casualties, but they are smaller than you might think— just a few men each day. The greatest damage is psychological-—-the intense] watchfulness our troops must maintain. The Germans have been utterly profligate with their mines. We dug out 400 from one field. We've found so many fields and so many isolated mines that | we have run out of white tape to mark them with. But still we go on.
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| with pedestrians, with a thick sprinkling of fellows! in uniform. But there were many older folks, most, of whom seemed to be window shopping.
Around the Town
BILLY THOMPSON, the bespectacled hockey| player, is in town for a few days saying hello to his] friends. . . . Add sights about town: A fellow stand-| ing in front of the Y. M. C, A. at 6:30 a. m. yesterday. | thumping his fist into a catcher’s glove and looking] as though he wished someone would come along and get up a game of catch. . . . There usually is a crowd in front of Kresge's these days watching an elderly landscape artist dash off genuine water colors. Two or three wiggles of a brush produce a tree. A cloud requires only a swipe of another brush. The paintings are quite reasonable, too; only 50 cents for the] regular and 75 cents for the large size. . . . The school | board offices have been packed for several days with kids seeking work permits. They're mostly pupils of the county schools which finished their term last week. Those that wish to work in Indianapolis have to get work permits from the city schools.
Stand at Attention
THE NAVY'S portable recruiting “station” was parked on monument circle Monday evening and the | recruitef's were playing phonograph records to attract the attention of prospective sailors, WAVES and SPARS. A couple of soldier boys were walking past; when The Star Spangled Banner was played over the| loud speaker. The two soldiers immediately froze at attention and remained at attention until the se-| lection was finished. The navy boys could have done | the soldiers a dirty trick by playing the record over| and over. . . . Membership tickets for the Knot Hole! Gang are being distributed to the various group organizations such as boy and girl scouts, Y. M. C. A} ete. this week. The memberships cost 10 cents each, | are available for boys and girls 10 to 16 inclusive, and, entitle the kids to attend eight ball games. The first) game is with Columbus at Victory stadium this] Saturday.
By Raymond Clapper
force of arms. They won markets by craftsmanship and enterprise instead of by guns. Ro it is that the Swedes can say to me that Sweden has learned to live as a small power. Finland's woes arise partly, though not entirely. out of a failure to learn that lesson. Sweden knows that so long as there is no world security she is in danger. That was the burden of the May day remarks of Premier Hansson. As leader of the Social Democratic party and successor to Branting, he was long a pacifist and opposed military expenditures. But in the last few years he has had to reverse his position and take measures to provide defenses for Sweden, which are now considerable.
Will Fight for Neutrality
PREMIER HANSSON warns his people that] Sweden is in an exposed and precarious situation simply because of her geographical position, which lies near possible paths of attack and strategical regions. Swedish hopes for the safety of the north were shattered in April, 1940, when the Germans attacked Norway. Sweden's position now, as authoritatively stated, is that she will try to continue her neutrality and to remain out of the war. But this does not mean Sweden will neglect her rights and obligations just for the sake of peace. Premier Hansson says the Swedish defense force is prepared to intervene when necessary and to use weapons to meet an act of violence so that Swedish neutrality may be respected. That is plainly addressed to Germany, as a result of the recent Nazi firing on a Swedish submarine. It is significant that Hansson has repeated his warning that, if attacked, Sweden will resist with all her force. The people were again notified on May day that in such case they must fight, and were warned not to believe any Quislings who might appear.
By Eleanor Roosevelt
was Guy BE. Quinn, and I heard today that the Carnegie hero fund commission has awarded him a medal which is to be presented to his widow, who will also be paid monthly death benefits over a period of six
years. This fund was established by Mr. Carnegie in 1904. Since that time, the fund has paid the widows and other dependents of persons who lost their lives in the heroic saving, or attempt to save, the lives of others, the aggregate sum of $3964.000. In addition, the fund has paid to heroes who performed such acts without losing their own lives, $1,875,000 to be used for educational expenses, the purchase of homes, or other purposes of permanent betterment. In this particular mine disaster, looking up the case of Mr. Quinn, led to the discovery that Mr. Bradford Gainer had helped in the attempt to rescue 10 other miners with Mr. Quinn, and was fortunate
¢. a as i
snough to come out alive. He has also been awarded
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By ROBERT TALLEY Times Special Writer
MEMPHIS TO VICKSBURG.—Of all the terrible steamboat disasters that made the Mississippi a river of tears as well as a river of romance in the old days, none was more tragic than that of the steamer Pennsylvania, whose boilers exploded at Ship island, 60 miles below Memphis, on June 17, 1858, bringing sudden death to scores and horribly scalding many others, including Henry Clemens, Mark Twain's younger brother. Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel L. Clemens, as you know, hastened to Memphis and was at Henry's bed-
side when merciful death ended his sufferings.
The
famous author never overcame the tragedy. Although only 23, he never really looked young again, according to Albert Bigelow Paine, his biographer. “Gray hairs had come, as he said, and they did not disappear,”
relates Paine.
“At 23. he looked 30, at 30 he looked nearer
40. After that, the discrepancy in age and looks became
less noticeable.”
If Mark Twain returned to the river today he could
not find the scene of the disaster that killed his brother,
because the channel now flows through Hardin point cut-off at the narrow neck of Walnut bend, and what used to be Ship island is now six miles inland from the main stream on the Mis-
sissippi shore. Around the bend the winding river once traveled 13 miles; today the cut-off dug by Uncle Sam's engineers has shortened the distance to less than a mile, It was through this man-made cut-off that our steamer, the Gordon C. Greene, breasted the swift current as we proceeded downstream from Memphis on Tuesday night, the bright moonlight dusting the silent willows that lined the banks and glinting upon the broad sandbars. It was on just such a night as this, and only six miles away, that there was enacted the grim tragedy that gave Mark Twain his premature white hairs that are familiar in all his pictures.
Four Boilers Explode
THE PENNSYLVANIA, on which Henry Clemens was a vouthkful second clerk, was creeping along on a half-head of steam, towing a barge containing cordwood for her engines, which was fast being emptied. Suddenly, four of her eight boilers exploded with a thunderous crash; the whoie forward part of the boat was blown to bits, and almost immediately the wreck caught fire. Scores were killed in the explosion, and others drowned when they leaped from the flaming decks into the river, Mark Twain, who was coming upstream on another boat, heard the news at Greenville, Miss, and hastened to Memphis. He arrived to find his brother and other horribly scalded victims of the disaster lying on pallets in a public hall, which had become an emergency hospital. Henry lingered in agony for eight days before he died. A group of Memphis ladies, refusing to let the boy be buried in an unpainted pine coffin, contributed $60 and bought him a metallic casket.
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He Was Shipwrecked
“MAY GOD BLESS Memphis, the noblest city on the face of the earth,” wrote the grief-stricken Mark Twain in a letter to his sister, Mollie, on the day Henry died. She has done her duty by these poor afflicted creatures, especially Henry, for he has had five—aye, fifteen, TWENTY times—the care and attention that anyone else
Memories of another disaster came back to former Mayor Carrel of Cincinnati, a passenger aboard the Gordon Greene, when he passed the Island 66, 20 miles below Memphis, as a young steamboat clerk, he was shipwrecked on this island in 1886. The heavily loaded Belle of Shreveport, on which he was employed, went ashore at the head of the island when she failed to answer her rudder in the swift current and sank within a few minutes. Passengers and crew built a fire on the shore, which attracted the attention of a passing steamer, and aboard latter they were taken to Helena, Ark.
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A Lost Metropolis
NEAR THIS scene in the old days was the thriving town of Commerce, Miss, a rival of Memphis, which fell into the river shortly before the Civil war. Nothing remains on the caving bluffs now except an old barn on the 5000-acre plantation of Richard Leatherman, Memphis cotton man, and one-time king of the Memphis Cotton Carnival, whose pioneer forefathers obtained the land in a deed from its original Indian owners. Early Wednesday morning the Gordon Greene steamed past the mouth of the Arkansas river, sweeping in from the west in a great bend, and the site of the old steamboat town of Napoleon, Ark. which flourished for many years at the confluence of the two streams. It was Napoleon for which Mark Twain hunted when he returned to the river in 1882 after an absence of 20 years. He never found it, for in the meantime the greedy river had swallowed it . . . streets, homes, churches, saloons, business houses and all. All that is visible on the site now is a river navigation light on the still caving, muddy bank where
.the tangled wilderness works in
profusion. A few years ago a curious steamboat pilot went ashore to explore the scene. He found nothing but a weatherbeaten old tombstone, the last .one remaining in the old town's cemetery which the river had claimed as it had everything else, = » »
A ‘Trail of Tears’
IN THE HEYDAY of the steamboat era, Napoleon was one of the busiest towns on the river between St. Louis and New Orleans, being a gateway to the west as immigrants bound for Texas and California went up the Arkansas to Little Rock and proceeded overland by wagon.
By Emie Pyle. Scene of ‘58 River Disaster Is: Inland Now
Interested in the historic points of interest along the Mississippi river were the passengers aboard the
steamer Gordon C. Greene, some of whom are shown here on the upper deck.
Dugan, one of the pilots.
A flourishing little city, it had the only United States marine hospital in the area except the one in New Orleans, and there Gen. William T. Sherman was taken after he had fallen ill with fever while leading his army against Vicksburg. The town began crumbling into the river while Sherman was a patient there in 1863, and he was removed to another hospital at Helena. Slowly but surely, Napoleon continued to slide into the river, and by early in the 1870s not a trace of it remained. Memories of “Trail of Tears” that marked the removal of the Indians westward from the Mississippi Valley a century ago returned when the Steamer Gordon Greene, puffing through the sinuous sweep of Prophet Island Bend, below the mouth of the Arkansas river, passed over the watery graves of 400 hapless redskins. All were drowned when the Steamer Monmouth, which the government had chartered to transport them to Indian territory sank there on the night of Oct. 30, 1837.
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The Greatest Disaster
THE MONMOUTH collided with °
another boat, the force of the impact being so great as to shear of her cabin from the hull.
The cabin drifted down the river for a short distance and then broke into two parts, emptying its human cargo of 700 Indians into the dark, muddy stream. Braves, squaws and papooses floundered in the water, and more than half of them were drowned. Up to its time, it was the greatest steamboat disaster in history. Toward noon, patches of clearings and cultivated land began to appear on both banks, and thet passengers on the Gordon Greene got their first good view of the massive levees that the government’s engineer have built to hold the big river within its banks during times of high water, In the great flood cf 1927 the old levees broke “at numerous places, and hundreds of thousands of acres in the fertile valley were flooded, together with their towns. But in 1937, when the river's stage was even higher, the strong new levees held without a break anywhere along their hundreds
of miles. > ” -
Sometimes Win—or Lose
JUSUALLY THE levees are built back from the river, often a distance of several miles, to provide a wider basin for times of high water. In the bottomlands between them and the river's banks is the most fertile soil in the world, on which one can grow almost anything that he can drop into the ground. But the farmer op sharecropper who plants outside the levee must gamble with the river for his crop;
“God bless Memphis, the noblest city on earth!” wrote Mark Twain, after citizens had ministered to his younger brother, fatally scalded in a steamboat explosion below the city.
if all goes well, he will reap a rich harvest, but if the tricky stream turns against him, the result will be complete disaster for his season's work, Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses. About noon the Gordon Greene passed under the tall spans of the new bridge that connects Greenville, Miss, with Lake Village, Ark. but neither town was visible to the passengers, both being somewhat inland from the main channel, The widely separated banks were wearing their curtain of green willows and broad sandbars reflected the bright sun.
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Shanty-Boat Life
IN SHELTERED coves and on islands all along the river were the floating homes of shantyboat
people, which bobbed in the waves spread fanwise by the Gordon Greene's churning paddlewheel. Most of them were fishermen who run their trotlines' and kept their catch in the crate-like boxes that swung idly at anchor, a few inches below the surface of the water. These families usually included several tow-headed kids, both boys and girls, barefoot and clad in overalls, and a decrepit old hound —probably for hunting purpqses— which bobbed in the waves snarls and ribs. Far from the world and its worries, it seemed to be a pleasant way to live if you care for that sort of thing—plenty of catfish in the river, a little vegetable garden in a clearing on the bank, wild berries and fruits in profusion, perhaps an occasional unwary chicken that wanders from a4 nearby farmer's barnyard and is soon in the pot. ” ” ”
The Missing Senator
FORTY MILES below Greenville, where Louisiana Bend makes 2 sweeping curve to the west around Sarah island, the state of Louisiana came up to meet us on the west bank, although the east bank was stil] Mississippi. A few miles further on lay the historic old town of Lake Providence, La., now hidden behind
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Explaining is Capt. Will
the tangled wilderness of Stack island as it lies hard by the bed ° of the old river. Here, as one of Lake Providence's early settlers, came Gen. Joseph Kerr, Ohio's “lost sena= | tor,’ after his mysterious disap=~ ° pearance in 1824, which was not ; ‘cleared up until long after his death in 1837. Gen. Kerr, who had served in the senate from Ohio and had been a prosperous merchant in Chillicothe, became dissatisfied with political and other conditions there. He left Ohio with his family with the intention of going" to Texas, but disliking to enter a foreign country, he changed his mind and bought a plantation one mile above Lake Providence. Two of his sons went on to Texas, how= ever, and died at the Alamo,
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Tied Up at Vicksburg
GEN. KERR was a grandfather, on his mother's side, of former Mayor Oarrel of Cincinnati, whom we have previously mentioned as a passenger aboard the Gordon Greene. When Mr. Carrel visited Lake Providence several years ago he found that the old plantation and even the family burial ground that had contained Gen. Kerr's grave, had been claimed by the river. Nothing at all remained. The Gordon Greene continued on through the Mississippi's snaky bends, and toward dark that day —four days and four nights out of Cincinnati—she tied her lines to the bank and dropped her stage plank ashore at high-hilled old Vicksburg, “Gibraltar of the Confederacy.”
NEXT = From Vicksburg to Natcher.
SEE USE OF NYLON IN TIRE OF FUTURE
By Science Service WASHINGTON, May 5. — Those new tires you are going to get, after the liquidation of the firm of Hitler, Tojo and Co, has been properly ate tended to, are likely to have a radically new type of reinforcement built into them. J Instead of the now standard cords of rayon or cotton, they will con= tain solid strands, or monofils, of nylon-type plastic—the kind of thing already familiar as toothbrush bristles, fishing-line leaders and ten< nis-racket strings. Use of these oriented synthetic linear polyamide monofils, to give them their full technical title, has |just been made the subject of a patent by Dr. George P. Hoff, research chemist.
Monofil strands have been found | greatly superior to cotton and rayon ‘leords, Dr. Hoff states, because of |their great strength, elasticity and | flexibility, and because the absence of any twist makes for a better bonding between them and the | rubber. He adds that the use of the new type of reinforcement will permit tires to be made much lighter and thinner—a long - yearned - for but unrealized dream of automobile en« gineers.
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