Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 May 1943 — Page 9

MONDAY, MAY 17, 1943

e Indianapolis Times

Hoosier Vagabond

NORTHERN TUNISIA (By Wireless—Just after daylight on the first morning of the battle that I regently sat in on as an awed semi-participant, wounded men and German prisoners began coming back down the hill to us. They didn't have far to come— the less seriously wounded could walk back down in five minutes. We were that close. About an hour after daylight I noticed that a man on one of the stretchers coming toward us had : on a British officer's cap. I had a hunch and ran over to look closely. Sure enough, it was my tentmate of the previous three nights—a British captain. When I ran up, the litter-bear-ers put down the stretcher, and I kneeled down beside it. As I did so the captain opened his eyes. He smiled and said, “Oh, hello, hello. I was worrying about you. Are you all right?” How's that for British breeding? I started to say something about being sorry, but before I could get a word out he said: “Oh, it’s nothing at all, absolutely nothing. Just a little flesh wound. It isn’t as though I'd been hit in the spine or anything.”

Carried for Mile and a Half BUT THE captain had a big hole in his back, and his left arm was all shot up. They had given him morphine and he wasn’t in much pain. His shirt was off, but he still wore his pistol and his cap as he lay there, His tanned face had a pale look, but his expression was the same as usual. Our first-aid station was too much under fire for ambulances or any vehicles to be brought up, so four litter-bearers still had to carry the captain a mile and 8 half to the rear. When he heard this he said: “That's perfectly ridiculous, carrying me that far. They'll do no such thing. I can walk back.” The doctor said no, il would start him bleeding again if he got up. But the captain got halfway off the litter and I had to give him a push and a few cusswords before he would consent to being carried. The captain was a young fellow, sort of pugilistic-

By Ernie Pyle

looking but with a gentle manner and an Oxford accent, He had been in the British 8th army two years without getting hurt. He had just joined us as a liaison officer, and was shot in the first half-hour of his first battle. We'd had nice talks in our tent about England and the war and everything. It seemed impossible that someone I'd known and liked and who had seemed so whole and hearty such a few hours before could now be torn and helpless. But there he was.

Two ‘Supermen’ Arrive A FEW minutes later two German prisoners same down the hill, with a doughboy behind them making dangerous motions at their behinds with his bayonet. The captor was a straight American of the drawling hillbilly type, who talked through his nose. I'm sorry I didn’t get his name. When he walked the Germans back to his sergeant he said, in his tobaccopatch twang: “Hey, Sarge, here's two uv Hitler's supermen fer yuh.” The battaiion surgeon, Capt. Robert Peterman of Hicksville, L. I, had remarked earlier how our wounded never groaned or made a fuss when they came in, so I paid special attention. And it’s true that they just lie on their stretchers, docile and patient, waiting for the medics to do whatever they can. A good many had been hit in their behind by flying fragments from shells. The medics there on the battlefield would either cut the seat out of their trousers or else slide their pants down, to treat the wounds, and they'd be there on stretchers that way, lying face down. It was almost funny to ses so many men coming down the hill with the white skin of their behinds gleaming against the dark background of brown uniforms and green grass. Some of the boys who were not too badly wounded seemed to have an expression of relief on their faces. I know how they felt, and I don’t blame them. I remember from the last war the famous English phrase of “going back to Blighty’—meaning being evacuated tc England because of wounds. In this war we have a different expression for the same thing. It is “catching the white boat” meaning the white hospital ship that takes wounded men back across the Atlantic.

Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum

AN APPLE for teacher is old stuff nowadays. Bill Crabb of The Times, who doubles in brass as a Journalism instructor at Butler, sat down at his desk Friday morning and was given, not an apple, but a potato. The donor was Joe Greenberg, who helps out in his dad's grocery. + « « Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Groebel, 4600 Carson ave., have donated a piano to the boys at Ft. Harrison. , . . Mrs. Edwin Johnston, 604 S. Temple ave. reports she was “burned up” Friday morning when she saw a guard at union station force about 20 soldiers, returning to duty after furloughs, to stand aside until all the civilian passengers had gotten aboard the Jeffersonian. She thinks the guard had the proper order reversed. So do we. , . . The evening last week when it was announced that Winston Churchill had reached Washington, three high school lads in the rear seat of a College streetcar kept up a chant: “Winnie's in the White House. Winnie's in the White House, etc.”

Around the Town

THE SHORTAGE of help is getting so bad that about half the patrons of the Indianapolis Athletic club’s Lantern room carry their own drinks from the bar in the next room on busy evenings. They seem to enjoy it, too. One man, attempting to serve the folks at his own table, found he had more than he could handle. So he just put a bottle of beer in each

Sweden

STOCKHOLM, May 17 (By Wireless).—Much thought is being given here to the exploitation of post-war trade, with every prospect that Sweden's eurrent prosperity will rise sharply at the end of the war. This, incidentally, is the subject of much bitter feeling on the part of the neighbor Norwegians, who are suffering so excruciatingly under the Nazi occupation. Not all of this is Sweden's doing. For other nations, recognizing that Sweden will be in shape to deliver goods quickly at the end of the war, are therefore looking to her for supplies. For instance, the Russians have brought some propositions to the Swedes. At the end of the war it will be simple for Sweden to send goods to Russia by water across the Baltic to Leningrad. The Swedes have an enormous shipping fleet. There are still more than 2000 ships totaling a million and a quarter tons, after a war loss of nearly half a million tons. They have half a dozen tankers inside the blockade which will be ready for use at the end of the war. Half of Sweden's shipping is ouesite the blockade, half inside.

Must Get Along With Russia

ANOTHER DEVELOPMENT in regard to post- ~ war trade is the current mission here of the Polish minister of commerce and shipping for preliminary negotiations with Swedish industries regarding deliveries of post-war supplies for the reconstruction of Poland. Sweden is offering building materials, prefabrieated housing and machinery on the representation that she will be better able to deliver, and at an earlier date, than other countries. It is particularly desirable that Swedish-Russian

My Day

WASHINGTON, Sunday.—Friday night my daughter and I went off a little distance into the country with four very busy gentlemen. We stayed for dinner with them and left them all telling stories, and apparently relaxing sufficiently to shed the cares of the world from their shoulders for a brief time. Yesterday morning I went over te do a recording for the office of war information. Then I talked to a gentleman who is writing a life of the president and, apparently, wishes to include not only his life, but information about many of the rest of us. Another appointment, then guests at luncheon, after which I tried to go to the benefit exhibition for Netherlands war relief, but it was closed. There was a number of people to see in the afterhoon, and I was especially pleased to have a call from the wife of the president of Equador and later from the president of Czechoslovakia, Mr. Benes. It is interesting to find that a number of coal mining companies feel that I have been unjust to

They-have written

of his coat pockets and carried the rest in his hands. . A Red Cab driver, in a friendly mood, informed us that 50 brand new cabs (some of them two-door jobs) had been placed in service in recent weeks and 50 more are due to go into service soon. He was driving one of the new ones, had had it six weeks and had put 9500 miles on it in that time—better than 200 miles a day. . . . One of our agents reports seeing one of the new women bus drivers with her 21st and Arlington bus with two wheels stuck in the mud beside the pavement at 16th and Shannon ave. She was just sitting there, waiting for a tow car.

Seven, Come Eleven

OUR AGENT in charge of keeping an eye on Monument circle reports seeing three or four boys in their middle ‘teens busily engaged in a craps game in the shadow of the west side of the monument at 2 p. m. Friday. Where was the police gambling squad? Memorial day falls on Sunday this year and under state law will be observed officially on Monday. However, the city schools will observe Sunday and the kids will have to go to school Monday. . . . This will Be the city's second (and the last, we hope) Memorial day without the colorful speedway race. A reminder of the Memorial days gone by—and those to come with peace—was a visit to the city the other day by Ted Doescher, of Chicago, the race steward the last few years. . Twentyfour of the 35 members of the Girls Friendly society of Christ church visited the Red Cross blood bank in a group Thursday evening and donated blood. They intend to repeat the donation in a couple of months, maybe with all 35 next time.

By Raymond Clapper

trade relations should develop, because they would help ease political situations in the north. The Swedes are inclined to be quite anti-Russian. This does not mean that they are pro-Nazi, but they are fearful of having Russia too close as a neighbor, although there are no indications that Russia is going to try to take over all of Finland and thus come up to the Swedish border, Whatever one feels about comninism, we realize that we will have to find a way to get along with Russia. With allied victory Russia is going to be powerful, and the question is whether other nations are going to try to work out a relationship or repeat the blunder after the last war of trying to ignore Russia and even trying to break her down.

Only Realities Count

THIS PART of the world as well as America must recognize realities, and if we blunder into drawing the line between the west and Russia we will be inviting a third world war. It is going to take time and patience, for the Russians are cantankerous and extremely suspicious. But the alternative is one of extreme danger. Therefore it is to be hoped that the mission of Joseph E. Davies to Moscow in behalf of President Roosevelt marks the beginning of a much more ecompatible relationship than we have had heretofore. Sweden, like America, in its difficulties with the Russian problem must overcome prejudices and suspicions. In Sweden's case the development of fresh trade relations with Russia after the war would be helpful politically as well as economically. Sweden may be in for some disappointment in so far as some here are inclined to overrate her opportunity for political leadership. The neutrals are not going to have much political force after this war. Norwegians comment bitterly on Sweden's ambitions. Sweden's reply, as expressed in an editorial in-the Dagens Nyheter, is that no rational European order can be promoted by excluding neutral states.

By Eleanor Roosevelt

One man actually sent me figures of earnings. He tells me, for instance, that a coal loader worked full time (the six-day week) in the month of February and earned $338.46, and in March, $468.24. He adds that a mining machine operator, during February earned $505.54 and in March $519.49. I am delighted to hear this, and I am sure that the bill at the company store is gradually being paid off. These stores kindly give cradit in case of illness and even at times when the men can not obtain work, or are absent from work for other justifiable or unjustifiable reasons. I wonder if the same mines looked over their books for the last 10 years would they find a different story of the earnings of the miners? Surely there would be weeks when there was no work at all, or only a day or two now and then. It is true, as I said in my former’ column, the companies during this time carried overhead charges and are now probably paying them off, so I doubt if all they make today is looked upon 2s “velvet,” and the miners’ earnings probably are not either. All of this does not make the principle of the company store a good one, even if the men today are able to pay their bills. The whole principle of company stores 3 bad ste, and I hope

MARS RIDES ZiaaRAILS

Railroads Keeping Pace With the War's Demands Upon Their Facilities

One of the biggest ingredients of success in war is transporta. tion. Trained soldiers, newly forged weapons, stacks of ammunition and food are useless until they are moved and moved again to points where they are needed. Charles Lucey, who wrote “Smashing the Axis,” the description of industry at war, reveals in a new series, of which this article is the first, how the railroads are rolling the nation to

victory.

By CHARLES T. LUCEY Times Special Writer

CHICAGO, May 17.—The courageous spirit which drove America’s railroad pioneers to knit a covered-wagon continent into a nation bound by steel rails is being reborn today to give this country the home-front transportation victory it must have to win the war. The locomotive, after taking a back seat to airplane

and auto for years, has emerged as a rolling national hero; the engineer's red bandanna as a symbol of glory returned. A modern Casey Jones, highballing for war, heads out of switching yards across plains and mountains every new minute of day and night with a mile of fighting cargo strung out behind him.

From cowcatcher to caboose the railroads are delivering. This report is written after covering 9000 miles of rail line from coast to coast, riding passenger trains and freights, ancient day coaches and “high shiners,” uppers and lowers; after talking to railroad presidents and roundhouse hostlers, yardmasters and sleeping-car porters, engineers and firemen. ® 2 =

Taking Up the Load

THE RAILROADS are the very lifeline of two great phases of this war—the alchemy of raw materials into ships and planes and

guns; the shift of millions of civilians into a military machine. That's a back-breaking agsignment in the greatest war ever fought. But moving great armies and their equipment is not all— Enemy submarines drove coastwise shipping from the seas and dumped millions of tons of oil, coal, timber and foodstuffs onto railroad axles. Gasoline and rubber shortages drove people from autos to trains. Wartime pay checks gave millions of families, after nearly a decade of hard times, their first chance to take trips—and they took them. Thousands visited sons in army camps. Never was any transportation system given such a task. America’s railroads are meeting it magnificently. Figures tell some of it: In 1942 railroads carried 638,000,000 ton-miles of freight, an increase of one-third over 1941's alltime record. They did it with T7000 fewer freight locomotives and 500,000 fewer freight cars than they used in 1929. Freight doubled in three years—and is going higher. 2 ” 8

In the Coaches

AMERICANS TRAVELED a breath-taking 54 billion passenger miles last year... The railroads met the job with two-thirds as many passenger cars, half as

Your Blood Is Needed

May quota for Red Cross Blood Plasma Center — 5800 donors. Donors so far this month— "1733. Saturday's quota—200. Saturday's: donors—168.

You can help meet the quota by calling LI-1441 for an appointment or going to the center, second floor, Chamber of Commerce aiaing, N.

ridian &

56.

many locomotives as they had in the '20s. Nearly 2,000,000 troops are mov=

ing every month. In world war I, U. S. ports and rail yards leading into them were often choked with traffic. The war department, office of defense transportation, Association of American Railroads and all operators the country over are smarter now. There has been little congestion. But 1943 railroading isn't all steel and statistics. It's other things too. A young mother on a dusty day coach crossing the Mojave desert, tending a tiny son whom his sel-dier-father at a California camp will see that night for the first time. A weary conductor giving up his berth to a traveler in Texas. A soldier poking his head from a car window in New York City's vast Pennsylvania station to ask blandly, “What town is this?”

” ” ”

Bury Face in Cotton

ENGINEER ED IVERSON and Fireman Harry Stack burying their faces in dampened cotton waste to keep out fumes and gas as their Great Northern locomotive roars through snowsheds in the Rockies.

A dining-car waiter explaining spotted linen: “I went to six different cars in the yards trying to get more tablecloths. But no use. You'd a-thought I worked for a different railroad.” The old-time news butcher is back and having a field day among crowds with money to buy almost anything offered. Once more a little spare change can be picked up by selling the same magazine two or three times, retrieving it at successive abandonments. The 1,250,000 U. 8. rail workers, many working overtime, getting scant rest, trying to handle vastly more traffic than ever was dreamed of for their trains, are doing heroic service. Featherbed (made work) rules still cost manpower, but most officials have their eyes on the greater job being done. s ” =

Troop Trains First

TRAINS ARE OFTEN late, delayed by troop or high-precedence freight movements. You wait in line in the diner. The coffee may be thin. But most people take it without grumbling. The performance is there for all to see: The Pennsylvania railroad, on its eastern division prior to war, was handling a smart 25,000-30,000 passengers daily, including heavy travel into Washington, Its high mark was 65,000 for the 1037 presidential inaugural, when freight traffic stopped 10 hours. On the same division today the Pennsylvania railroad averages more than 100,000 passengers daily. (It hit a peak of 159,000 on Easter Saturday.) And freight moves ishout interruption. The nns; ni iit this di-

and lighter cargoes, such as pers ishable foodstuffs bound north. Grades were steeper than they would be for heavy freight. But war drove the colliers into port. In eight months the Pennsylvania railroad has handled over this division 177,000 carloads of Southern coal bound for New England. Extra electric power units were rushed in to do the pulling. ¥ 0 #

Move Record Freight

THE NEW YORK CENTRAL, serving the vast Eastern and Midwestern industrial areas and feeding the big New York and Boston embarkation ports, last year moved 49 billion ton-miles of freight, or 125 per cent more than the 22 billions of 1938. Its 5% billion passenger miles were about double the 1938 level. Often this was a job calling for fine railroad science in meeting clearance problems created by shipments of huge machinery units and prefabricated sections of ships. Sway at curves and train speeds had to be figured minutely, rock cuts and tunnels widened, tracks depressed under highway bridges. The Central, meeting with other railroads the cry of the East for fuel, moved 231,000,000 barrels of oil last year. It brought tanks, guns, jeeps and airplane engines out of Detroit, and when the search for war-scarce essential materials reopened ore mining in northern New York it put the cars there to move the minerals. One day before war broke the telephone rang in the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad offices at New Haven. On the line was a contractor just given a contract for a big army camp. He had to get moved at once 40 million feet of lumber, 120 carloads of cement, 75 carloads of plumbing and fittings, 20 carloads of sash, 15 carloads of roofing material and much more. And, quick, please, a 60-car railroad siding. In just five days the New Haven had an 80-car siding built and was unloading the first of his materials. 8.8 2

South Is Busy

80, TOO, IN the South, where railroads have taken on a tremendous load in moving troops and supplying camps. The Southern Railway, with an increase of less than 3 per cent in motive power, was able in 1042 to handle without congestion a freight traffic increase of 7% per

ON<mM'*y

Women taking up work in a Sonthern

Coal for hungry war furnaces starts from a Norfolk

and Western yard.

maintenance Pacific shop.

Keeping the line open. Day and night the track gang is by’

f

Passengers are ever more numerous. A Pennsylvania station scene at any hour,

Two sergeants learn the fine points of railroading at a Southern camp,

with 6563 in 1941, and more coal, sugar, textiles and lumber. The Atlantic Coast Line railroad carried double its prewar ton-miles of freight traffic. Here in Chicago, greatest of American rail centers and cross roads for 26 trunk lines, where bungling could strangle the nation’s war transport, I watch men “humping” cars in the Chicago Belt Line's giant yards, going day and night under unceasing war pressure. “Humping” is the way long freight trains—and they run 100 to 125 cars today—are broken up at the major rail gateways and reassembled into new trains which will take them to their destinations. Slowly, a car or two at a time, a yard engine breaks them up, pushes them over a hump in the huge yards and, unmanned, they feel their way down through a web of switches and join a new train with a dull thud of couplers. At the nearby Illinois Central and Chicago & North Western yards it's the sam& pattern. In inexpert hands the 5000 cars handled daily in the Belt Line yards would be as confused as a bowl of spaghetti. Today they move without a hitch. Id ” o

Carrying Bigger Loads

IN KANSAS CITY I see huge steel arms at the Santa Fe railroad's 10-million-bushel grain elevators lift a boxcar full of wheat, turn it as a fortune-teller would turn a teacup, and beautiful hard grain roars down into elevators.

A lanky Kansan says: “We'll

HOLD EVERYTHING

flick Hitler with this, too.” In Texas, proud Rock Island railroadmen tell how, on the long run from Chicago to Tucumcari, N. M,, two steam engines do the work nine formerly did, and how today's engines go 12,000 to 15,000 miles a month against a prewar 4500, This historic performance at-a time when the danger of en« gine shortages has every railroad worried. In California I see nine long freight trains in 31 miles of track, hauling raw materials to West Coast airplane plants and ship« yards that would slow production in a matter of days if they fale tered, But they don’t falter, : Most railroads are making a lot of money, and many wish they could put more of it back into rolling equipment and trackage, But they can’t get men and mae terials for the job. In some areas, as a result, railroadmen are wore ried about plant maintenance, Nor can they get as many locos motives as they need. They're disappointed that skilled rail workers haven't been given higher deferment ratings by draft authorities. There are plenty of headaches, But over and above it all, as the government is acknowledging, America’s railroads are winning about as tough a home-front bate. tle as has ever been fought.

NEXT: Over the Rockies on a War-Load. .

’

TWO U. S. R REPORTERS INJURED IN AFRICA

ALLIED HEADQUARTERS North Africa, May 17 (U. P.).= George Palmer, 28, United Press staff correspondent accredited te the British Mediterranean fleet, and George Tucker, Associated Press naval correspondent, were ins jured today in a ground collision between two airplanes here. The plane in which the corres spondents were passengers had just arrived and had pulled off the runs way when another aircraft crashed into it in process of landing. Both newspapermen were taken to a hospital where it was sald Palmer suffered from facial lacers ations and concussion and Tucker from shock. Both were unconscious when they were taken from the plane, §

3-DAY STRIKE El AT CHRYSLER

DETROIT, May 17 (U. B,