Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 June 1943 — Page 9

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SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 1943

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Hoosier Vagabond

ALLIED HEADQUARTERS, North Africa (By

- Wireless)—To me the funniest incident of the Tuni-

sian campaign was. the following: Back in: January and February the headquarters

- of the 2d Eorps were in a deep ravine some six miles

the other side of Tebessa. Wooded mountains rose on each side quite deeply, and the bottom of the gulch was well coated with trees. ” The corps was down there in numerous tents, but it was -decided to tunnel big shelters into the mountainsides for offices, just in case of dive-bombings. So soldiers were set to tunneling. It was a major mining job, for they had to bore through solid . rock, using air .drills and dynamite. They worked in shifts, 24 hours a day. The blasted-out rock was hauled away in trucks. They bored four great tunnels into the mountainside, each one as wide as an automobile and some 50 yards long. ‘At the back end they connected all four turinels into one huge room, forming unquestionably the biggest and finest air-raid shelter in the continent of Africa. It took three solid weeks to build it. - And the very day it was finished, the Germans broke through Faid Pass and pushed us back through Kasserine, and the corps had to move in. a hurry. The gorgeous tunnels, all finished and beautiful, were never occupied eyen for an hour.

Who Went There?

AMONG THE items regularly issued to fronttroops over here is shaving cream. It is one thing erybody has’ found extremely useful. It turned out ¥ be thee best sunburn lotion we know of. The soldiers also puft it on flea bites with good effect. They shave with it, too, incidentally. It's just one of those little

discoveries of the war. ¥ »

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They tell an anecdote about a soldier on guard. duty in the front lines one night, for the first time, who heard a strange noise, fired at it, and then called out, “Who went there?”

By Ernie Pyle

The engineers who built those marvelous temporary steel bridges, strong enough to hold up tanks, over the Tunisian rivers after the Germans had destroyed the original bridges certainly are due a lot of credit. - Perhaps. the biggest satisfaction they got out of their work was naming the bridges after they

had finished them. They nearly always painted a name on signboards and staked one at each end of the bridge. You could tell one outfit was from

New York, for ‘you crossed a whole string of bridges | -

named ‘Manhattan,” “Brooklyn,” “Queensborough” and so on. But the one that tickled me most was a big one at Mateur which bore a sign with large black letters: ‘Huey P. Long Bridge.”

Washington on the Job

LAST DECEMBER when I left Oran I bundled up a canvas bag full of odds and ends that I didn’t want to carry to the front, and ‘left it at one of the offices for picking up at some future date. Months went by, and I never got back to Oran. I inquired about the bag a couple of times from trav-

" elers who had come from that office, and they re-

ported it was ‘still there. And then just the other day came a letter from Washington saying that a mysterious bag, sent by

‘me and: addressed to me, had arrived in America.

They described the bag, and it was without doubt my Oran storage bundle. Apparently somebody just got tired of seeing it around and decided to get it far out of sight. I can't remember what was in the bag, except for two items: (1) the only dress uniform I've got, and (2) a pound box of cube sugar I brought with me from America a year ago. I don’t need the sugar,

.as the army has plenty, and I've never had the

dress uniform on since the night I left London last fall. But now that it’s 4000 miles away I suppose some general will be inviting me out to dinner and T'll have to go in coveralls. While we're supposing, suppose we suppose it's Gen. Eisenhower himself, just to make it good.

Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum

PROFILE OF THE WEEK: Keller Taylor Brock, the genial president of the. Haag Drug Co., former country schoolteacher, one-time bank president, and a self-made man who's proud of his resemblance to the late Will Rogers. The resemblance applies not only to facial appearance, but also to his manner of speaking, and even to his philosophy. He keeps a picture of ‘the humorist on his desk, and Mikes to tell folks that he, too, has Cherokee Indian blood in his veins. K. T.—that’s what many of his friends call him—is a little past 60, stands about 5 feet 10, weighs around 185. He's pink faced, and a bit stooped. His gray hair is i thinning, and starting to get curly. He is active and has seemingly Mr: Broek unlimited - endurance, and at the same time has a #ouch of humbleness about him. = His mind is highly retentive, and he’s pretty good at

quoting poetry and Scripture.

He hates to bother with records, carries an. unbelievable amount of business detail in his head. He probably. could tell you what he had to pay for Castoria five years ago without looking it up in the books.

Mud on His Shoes

RATHER FRUGAL by nature, he's worked hard and saved all his life, and he can't understand why others aren’t interested in doing likewise. He lives on his 100-acre farm on Guion road, and is quite proud of the place. He sells much of its

" produce to his drug stores, here and in several other

Indiana cities. He isn’t a bit interested in his clothing, frequently shows up at the office with farm mud on his shoes. Sometimes he has trouble getting to sleep, and it’s nothing unusual for him, at 2 a. m, to slip a coat over his pajamas and drive down to his all-night store at 22d and Meridian sts. to see how things are going.

Sweden

LONDON, June 5 (By Wireless).—Back in London after five weeks in Sweden, I have the sensation of being a prisoner released from Shangri La. The Swedes showered me and five -other American newspapermen of our party with hospitality and with

genuine indications of sympathy for the allied side. But we were penned on. the other side of the wall, for Sweden is inside the German blockade, and we had some delay. getting back to England. The shooting down by the Germans of the British plane bringing Leslie Howard and others to London from Lisbon suggests that possibly the Swedes were not being overcautious when they would not allow our plane to make ; the jump over the North Sea to the British Isles until after many days’ delay while waiting for safer weather. When they insist on safe weather they don’t mean

: good weather, in the usual flying sense, but heavy . clouds or a thick overcast. The Swedes try to jump ' the Nazi blockade wall only when the clouds are thick

enough to hide their plane from German patrols.

. The nights are growing lighter daily, and if we had

not escaped this week we might have been marooned for a couple of months until more darknéss was available.

Strict Caution Is the Rule

WE WERE quite some thousands of feet up when the pilot suddenly ran out of his cloud cover into

\ the clear, and we could see German-controlled terri-

: tory below.

He had to make a dive down to within

‘My Day

I wisdom tooth.

3

NEW YORK CITY, Friday—Early this mornmg I went up to the hospital and lost my third I shall be glad when all four are finally removed, though I shall probably feel rather

4] ashamed, since one of my husband's aides said rather

pointedly the other morning, when I said I was to have a wisdom tooth removed: “Did you say wis dom?” At’ 3 o'clock, a very remarkable Argentinian woman, Miss Maria Rosa Oliver, came to see me. She has been working with the co-ordinator’s office and I enjoyed my visit with her very much, It was her courageous spirit which impressed me most. She did not seem to realize with what gallantry she was doing her

He won't drink coffee, prefers milk. He especially likes ‘milk toast, says cucumbers poison him.

Worked for John Hook

BORN ON A FARM near Overton, Ky., he taught country school briefly when he was about 18, then worked on a farm in Illinois to earn his tuition to Valparaiso school of pharmacy. After working a while at Chicago, he took a job as druggist with John Hook in his original store on S. East st., later went with Walter Stedfeld, and then opened his own store out in Haughville. About 18 years ago he opened a second store at 38th and Illinois. ‘A few years later, he and a partner acquired the then small Haag chain and built it up to 35 stores. He was a director of the old Citizens State bank in Haughville, now a Fletcher branch, and later was president of the old Maple Road bank.

Smokes Awkwardly

HE HAS on his farm an old interurban car that serves as a “club car” for a group of his cronies with whom he plays poker every Tuesday night. He has a trapshooting outfit, and he's pretty fair at pitéhing horseshoes. His favorite sport, probably, is golf. He's played at Speedway for years, shoots around 85 to 90. He gave up hunting and fishing, once his favorite sports, several years ago. - He seldom turns off the radio, likes it loud, and enjoys such: programs as Walter Winchell and One Man’s Family. He doesn’t care for movies, nor for classical music. He reads a lot, mostly aloud, and enjoys history and biography. When he goes on a

: vacation trip, he stops and inspects every roadside

historical marker, discusses it for hours. He smokes cigarets awkwardly, never smoked until about a year ago. Straw hats are one of his idiosyncracies. He buys eight or 10 cheap ones at a time. Then, as fast as he sits on; or loses one, he just reaches up on a shelf and gets out another. That's K. T. Brock.

By Raymond Clapper,

a few hundred feet of the ground to get inside the only remaining clouds. A year ago the wife of the Swedish minister to London was grazed by a Nazi machine-gun bullet which barely missed the gas tank of the plane she was in—which accounts for the strict ration that has been observed since. We were flown by Capt. Karl Lindner, one of the first five ripen to fly blind with instruments. He is on his way to America to make a survey for the North Atlantic air line which the Swedes hope to establish through a mission that is now in America. The Swedes are excellent pilots. Their governmentcontrolled air line runs a plane service to Germany, one ship each way daily. Now they want to open up a line connecting New York, the British Isles, Sweden and Moscow.

Have Something to Offer

THEY ARE WORKING on the assumption that Sweden would be a natural point on an American air line to Moscow, and that Sweden therefore has something to offer in return for the assistance hoped for from America. The principal Swedish banks, industries and shipping lines are financing a new Swedish company to handle the deal. The Swedes offer some inducements in answer to the question why America should turn over multimotored transports to her now when they are neetled so urgently for allied war uses. The fact. that the Swedes are turning their backs on the Germans in favor of dealing with the allies in this aviation matter is a clear indication of where they think their post-war bread can best be buttered. Incidentally, you only need to be back in England 24

. hours to realize how well the Swedish bread is but-

tered now, literally speaking, even though Sweden is isolated behind the German blockade.

By Eleanor Roosevelt

fact that she cannot go about by herself, because of an injury which makes walking alone impossible. After that I paid two visits and had to dress very hurriedly to reach Mrs. William H. Good's home in Brooklyn, in time for dinner with her before attending the student nurses’ forum at the Kings county hospital. : They told me that 39 schools of nursing were represented. There is such a shortage of nurses that the Red Cross is constantly asking for more really trained and experienced nurses to go abroad. We must also have at least a few left at home to do the directing of the less experienced nurses and of the nurses’ aides. We must not neglect telling our girls of thé possibilities of this service, which, perhaps, will bring them more satisfaction than any .other if they are anxiously waiting for someone to come back from

lo. work, in he. of. dhe. - the Wass, heeatise 15.12.50 absorbing and. so exacting,

ADVICE-HEINZ

Net Result of of Orders So Far Is Slowed Production,

Committee Told.

By DANIEL M. KIDNEY Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON, June 4—Fred C. Heinz of the H. J. Heinz Co., food processors for three-fourths of a century, has told the Boren committee of the house how it feels to be a member of a business advisory group dealing with a government agency. The gist of his testimony was that when such advisory committees gather in Washington it is only to be “advised” of what has happened to them in orders and directives already issued by the lawyers and professors. “Take the advisory committee on soups, for example,” Mr. Heinz explained. “Not a single person who ever made any soup had anything to do with the order establishing wartime regulations regarding it. They were just called in and told about it. Production Retarded “As a I understand it, these agencies when dealing with any particular product want men to handle the matter who are entirely unfamiliar with it. This is based on the idea that if they know anything about the business they might be preju-

| diced.”

The net result of their orders in the food field so far has been to retard production, Mr. Heinz said. He cited baked beans as an outstanding example. They were ordered out of cans to save tin, he said, while at the same time the Heinz plant in England were ordered by that besieged government to step up production in cans. Another example was when they tried to convert baby food from tin to glass, while at the same time the glass packers were being ordered to find other containers. Many of the orders for conversion to save metal turned out to be just the reverse, since whole industries would have to be retooled to carry them out, Mr. Heinz asserted. Ceiling on Quality He also dwelt on the matter of grade labeling apd elimination of brand names and quality. Under the grading proposed by OPA the labels would be A-B-C. “Compulsory grade labeling anticipates no quality beyond grade A’ Mr. Heinz pointed out. “Everything that might go into a package of higher quality would command no premium in credit or price to the farmer or the packer., There

ponents contend. “We are of the opinion that the adoption of such g plan is not necessary in furtherance of the war effort. We also believe that such a plan involves an attempt to change our domestic economy along lines not authorized by law.”

APPOINT VICAR

Reverend J. Willard Yoder Will Assume Episcopal Cathedral -Post.

signed last night as vicar of St. Matthew's Episcopal church to become vicar of All Saints Episcopal cathedral. The Rev. Mr. Yoder succeeds the Rev. John C. W. Linsley who presented his resignation to the Rt. Rev. Richard A. Kirchhoffer, bishop of the diocese of Indianapolis, The Rev. Mr. Linsley, now an army chaplain at Knollwood Field, N. C., was the first Indianapolis minister to join the chaplaincy after this war began. The Rev. John M. Nelson who has been acting vicar at the cathedral, will resume his former duties as executive secretary and missionary of the diocese. The Rt. Rev. Joseph M. Francis, late bishop of the diocese, ordained the Rev. Mr. Yoder as his last official act in the cathedral before his death. The new vicar was a Congregational minister prior to his ordination. The Rev. Mr. Yoder will assume his new duties Aug. 1.

LEGION POSTS BACK WARING MINE STAND

American Legion national headquarters said today more than 500 telegrams have been received from local posts supporting National Commander Roane Waring’s condemnation of John L. Lewis, United Mine Workers’ president. Mr, Waring, in a speech at Memphis, Tenn., termed Lewis’ “no trespassing order a stab in the back of an America fighting a war.” It was followed by an apology to Lewis from the South Fork, Pa. Legion post. Legion headquarters said that upon orders from Waring an investigation was ® being made of the South Fork post to determine whether it should be suspended. The Legion said many of the wires demanded expulsion of the post. Preliminary reports, the office said, indicated that only 10 men out of a 1942 membership of 107 attend-

ed the meeting at which the apolo'8Y to Lewis was made.

FOOD AGENCIES ; IGNORE EXPERT

would be a ceiling on quality ratheryy than a floor under it which its pro-{=

AT ALL SAINTS,

The Rev. J. Willard Yoder, re-|

‘Stretch’ Farm Land to Meet

War's Needs

‘This is the fourth of a series of timely dispatches from the nation’s Midwest “food bowl”—written by Phil Stong, novelist famed for his portrayal of American farm life. Himself a farmer, Stong talks —and writes—the farmer’s language in these articles. They reflect the situation in mid-May before the recent floods and excess rains in the Midwest.

CONSERVATION has been going on in this country ever since it noticed that disorganized exploitation of the soil had started dust bowls, other erosion, OKies, fertilizer shortages and similar problems that it might be as well to forget in the present emergency, but preserve for permanent future reference. “Stretching” a farm is an idea that can be taken in several ways. A farm can be stretched till it breaks, as happened in the dust bowl days. It can be stretched by plowing barnyards and areas of relatively low production, in- : SE conveniently situated and Phil Stong cultivated at a disproportionate expense of labor. That is happening now; Secretary Wickard anticipates an increase of 10,000,000 acres in food crop land this year. However, marginal tracts and the conveniences of ample hog lots and turning around places for vehicles can be largely recovered after the war. Erosion in marginal areas is thoroughly understood by the farmers, and its preventives and remedies have been a principal study of American agriculture in the food" bowl for 20 years or so; there will be damage but nothing irremediable.

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Difficult Comparisons

THE A. A. A. in Iowa has examined the plans.of about onefourth of the farmers in that ntral agricultural state—50,000 f 228,000. If farming conditions are at all similar to last year’s, the production increase should be 11 per cent more corn, 15 per cent more soy beans, 35 to 40 per cent more brood sows—and 7 per cent more cattle. Those last two figures are not contradictory. The relative production figures of lady pigs and heifers has been mentioned. - Since Secretary Wickard has already estimated the general increase in food production in this country at 3.5 per cent with good luck, there is little use to com-

2

By ROGER BUDROW A decision is expected shortly from Washington OPA officials on an under-cover fight that has been raging here over gasoline rationing. The fight centers about the plant transportation committees, a rationing method pioneered in Indianapolis, whereby employees of larger concerns do not go to the regular boards for gasoline books but obtain them through special boards in each company.

pare the estimated increase in

The chief purposes of this plan’

Weeds, like those collected on the tines of this horse es don’t take vacations.

production of the country at large with that of the breadbasket. California employs one-seventh of the agricultural workers in the

country, but prunes and lettuce are not precisely comparable with pork and steers. Cereals and meat are the basic rations; they are produced along the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Ohio. We Midwesterners hope to do a lot better than 3.5 per cent. No grapefruit, however. from the breadbasket. “Ding” did an amusing cartoon some weeks ago on the food situation, in which the pioneer cet- ‘ tler smiled at his descendants and announced that the Midwest was settled on sowbelly and beans. This was erroneous, of course, since it was settled on jerky (venison) and hominy, but even since game has diminished in the food bowl, and since the farmer has been “deflated” (in one instance by Mr. Hoover, an Iowan) North Central farming has seen that all its production is essential. Its skills and properties and temperament and productive capacities are indispensable, and our country knows it. '

Not

” ” ” % . bu 30 3 LAY: Big ‘Surplus’ Seen WHAT IS MORE, the cnemy knows it. Pretty soon, there are going to be lots of people of all nations to feed. We will have some pigs and 300,000,000 bushels of wheat left over, That reserve has not been built up to this figure yet but it must be very close. It has grown in spite of the small yse of wheat and small grains for artificial rubber and explosives. At a parity it would continue to grow at the margins of the food bowl indefinitely, to other surplus situations, till enough alcohol and butadiene plants are con-

was to save time of war workers and prevent swamping the regular neighborhood boards with work. But the regional OPA office in Cleveland frowned on the system and a few weeks ago issued a ‘directive stripping the plant committees of their authority to issue gasoline books directly. They were left with authority to recommend what the employee should be given. The recommendations are now sent to a central office in the Hatfield Motors building on N. Capitol

THIS CURIOUS WORLD

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' USED LAST YEAR BY U.S. WAR. INDUSTRIES : FOR DRILLING, GRINDING, SAWING, ETC., ON HARD METALS, HAD A TOTAL WEIGHT OF ABOUT LIVE MILLION CARAS.

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FEE os

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By William Ferguson

ALASKA HAS A 35,000-MILE COASTLINE... ABOUT 10,000 MILES GREATER THAN THE CIRCUMFERENCE

OF THE EARTH.

. AMERICA'S ORIGINAL OENNSYLVIAANA DUTCH CAME FROM WHAT COUNTRY

?

ANSWER—Originally from Germany, although some lived in Eng- : land for 3 Yime betore suming to America.

ceived to catch up with the farmer. The talk about wheat and other grain materials being insufficient for any rubber or explosive production that the country can now manage is nonsense. Look at the surlpuses and the suggestions that farmers should work at fats. The reason for this are obvious. Many years ago one of our great essayists and philologists, H. L. Mencken, expressed the opinion that farmers were a bunch of loafers who worked at planting a little while each year and at harvesting another little while and spent the intervals sleeping and junketing.

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Sounds Like Work

OF COURSE, the milch cows and the weeds and the feeding animals must have taken the same vacation; the fences were 1ebuilt by brownies, the wood was cut by gnomes; the postponed: jobs of the heavy seasons took care of themselves. No buildings needed repair or repainting; there was no smith work on ‘tools and implements, and when I saw my tenant Sam making a new set of harness.out of an old outfit and spare leather from Ssome-other old harness one Sunday afternoon, it was an optical illusion. The farmer works the longast days I know of, if he happens to be a good farmer. The mere ascountancy on my own small farm runs to about 16 pages a year, for income tax, and what that means in entries and transactions is appalling. What it means in plans and performances is almost incredible. The idea that the farmer gets up in the morning, milks a few cows, plows corn for a while, slops a few pigs and goes to the movies before retiring at what

ave. where the books are issued and then mailed back to the transportation committes which, in turn, hand them over to the employee requesting the gasoline coupons.

When some of the large concerns heard that the OPA intended to abolish the plant transportation committee, vigorous objections were made. They said their workers would lose too much time going to neighborhood rationing boards and agreed to set up the office in the Hatfield building. In-as-much as this is not provided for in the regular OPA set-up, the cost of operating this office—about $4000 a month—is met by concerns served by the office. Even though this “compromise” is operating af present, business concerns have been pressing OPA officials in Washington for a return to the former system of having plant committees handle issuing of the books directly. Just why the OPA objected to letting the plant committees issue gasoline books is not known. Some of these plant committees were lenient and some strict, but it was pointed out by William H. Book, executive vice president of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, that “therg was not, in the opinion of local and state OPA officials, as much lack of uniformity between

CHURCH FEDERATION OFFICERS TO MEET

A meeting of the executive committee of the Church Federation of Indianpolis will be held at 12:15 Monday in the Lincoln room in the Y. M. C. A. The Rev. Ellis W. Hays, pastor of the First Congregational church, and president of the federation, will preside.

BISHOP CRITICALLY ILL

WASHINGTON, June 5 (U. PJ). —The Rt. Rev. James E. Freeman, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and administrator o Washington cathedral was reported

in critical condition today, after

several weeks illness.

the city feller considers a ridicus lously early hour is not tenable in a country which uses a smaller personnel and less horsepower to raise more food, by 40 per cent, than it did a generation ago.

” s

Agriculture Sets Pace

AGRICULTURE HAS improved even more rapidly than mechanical methods in this country. Scientific agriculture, like veterie nary medicine, began in Scofe land and Germany and Switzer land; it has been continued in the United ;States. Americans did not discover the principles which led to the electric light, the telegraph and telephone, the aire plane, the submarine and many other things, but they discovered 4 good many original facts and use them socially better than ale most anyone else. In agriculture the United States is now without a rival. Germany preceded us with schools for its study, but this country had so much larger fields for research and study and so mucin more ine centive for study that the agrie cultural methods and yield of the United States now make those of the European states, excepting Rumania and the Ukraine, seem trivial. 5 1ablod A circle with. 8 radius of 200 miles from a center in Des Moines, ‘Towa, for instance, would include far more basic food production meat and cereals—than there is in Europe, or was, when those countries were at full production, There is tremendous produc=tion outside that circle, of course, in Texas, California, New York, Florida and the South. But that . is enough to match all the Nazis will grow during the war years. Armies march on their stomachs, Mr. Bonaparte made the observation. He missed a boat, when he forgot that fact.

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Washington Decision Expected Soon as Fight Rages on Gas Rationing by Plant Transportation Committees

them (plant committees) as has prevailed among the 10 district rationing boards in the county. The results were highly gratifying to all concerned. Supplemental applica= tions (for B and C books) were handled expeditiously and without any appreciable amount of lost time in war plants.” : .

It was suggested that, if the OPA questioned decisions made by the plant committees, it should adopt a system of spot-checking on the committees’ actions. This idea ape parently did not make much of an impression on the OPA.

Under the revised system of mail recommendations to the Hatfield building offices, mailing the books back and then delivering them to employees, it takes an average of four days for a worker to get his gasoline rations. “Too strict adherence to rules and regulations often causes of« ficials to adhere to the hard way and the long way of getting a job done,” Mr. Book wrote Senator Vane Nuys. The Indiana senator took the matter up with OPA officials in Washington and an announcement is due soon, he said.

HOLD EVERYTHING

a

- “My nu 5. boy triad rob a medal, but all you bring home is dishpan hands!”