Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 June 1943 — Page 17

Hoole, Vagabond

ims IN AFRICA (By Wireless).—One of the, sagas of this war—and one that can’t be fully : So until after the war—is the career of the come They; Have yet to hear the crack of an enemy gun, but their overseas record already, is talked about throughout the length ‘and breadth of Africa. They have been away from home now since the spring of 1942. They are one of the proudest organizations I've ever come across. They brag about what they've taken and swear they are yenning for more. The army engineers build things, as you know. These particular engineers build airfields and depots and barracks for other soldiers, But it isn’t so much what they have built as where they built it, and how. . On their first and biggest job they lived for five ‘months in an isolation that few other American troops have known. They worked day and night. he only way they knew when Sunday came was that colonel would put on a necktie, They wore out their gloves and worked with Bandage hands. Supplies failed to reach them on schedule, so they went on half rations, and then on ‘quarter rations. Each man got only one quart of water a day. They had no entertainment of any kind, and no mail for three and a half months. Well, some. mail dig come at the end of two months, but it was all fourth-class, including a sackful of training manuals for troops in Arctic climates.

In ‘White Man’s Graveyard

THESE WERE the first American troops to hit the Congo. They built an immense base camp in record time, when the natives had said it couldn't be built .at all. Then, in squads and platoons and companies they pushed deep into all parts of central Africa. They built emergency airfields all over the veldt find through the deep jungle. They built one airdrome from scratch in 20 days. They built hospitals, roads and bridges, and set up barracks for the troops

Uncanny Yanks

NEW YORK, June 18.—From all informal accounts it is evident that our naval commanders have developed a knack of dodging air bombardment which is well-nigh uncanny. You can always depend on the ingenuity of the American sailor, and these lads

are showing the Japs a lot of new tricks in seamanship. With the altitude of the attacking bomber established, it is equally simple to compute accurately the point in flight at which the bombs will be dropped. The - flight path of dropped bombs—once detached from the racks—cannot be altered. And when the release was pulled, it was ‘done on the only information available to the bombardier—the position, course and speed of the surface ship, plus, of course, his own speed, course and the prevailing wind direction and force. A smart skipper, knowing the point at which the bombs must be released, also knows how long it takes for them to reach the surface of the water. And being alert chap, he aims to get his ship off its original ‘©dirse, change speed, anything to get himself and his™ vessel away from the spot at which the Jap aimed and expected to find him.

Without Equal in World

~ IT'S A LOT LIKE BOXING. Sometimes you guess wrong and step into a straight left. But when it comes to knowing their ships and what they can and cannot do, the American fighting sailorman is without equal anywhere in the world. A good safe miss is a hundred

~ LONDON, June 18 (By Wireless) —Next to winning the war, the allies have no task much more difficult than that of trying to agree on the treatment to be accorded Germany after her surrender. This is the subject of much intense argument in England. Allied propaganda experts say it only helps hold the Germans together to make threats of severe treatment after the surrender. They say it plays into the hands of Goebbels. In Sweden I saw - evidence that extremist statements made on the allied side were being used by German propagandists to spread fear among the Germans, inducing them to fight to the bitter end. Russian broadcasts beamed at o ' the Germans have significantly “eontinued the Stalin policy of making a distinction hetween Hitlerite Germany and the German people. 5 + vi ‘always ‘aims his propaganda blows at the Hit“derite regime; not at the German pepole, and he said sgome months ago that Russia had no ambition to “destroy Germany but only the Hitler regime,

‘Separate Peace Is Out

NEVERTHELESS, NAZI propaganda is telling the Ferman people. of the horrors of a Bolshevik victory er Germany. - Evidently the Germans are being prepared for the eventual idea of surrendering to the "British and Americans but not to the Russians, It seems unlikely that anything of the kind could happen, because the Casablanca terms of unconditional «surrender mean just that, not surrender to two of the .allies while continuing to fight a third. ‘We could not make a separate peace, leaving one ally to carry on alone. Certainly Britain, whose »situation was rescued by ‘Russian resistance, could snot do it. I can’t believe anything like that is in the Jeards, yet some of the best-informed military sources “think there is a real chance that Germany will try

‘0 bring it off.

v Day

| WASHINGTON, Thursday —In writing the other Say about the section in the anti-strike bill, which will not permit labor unions to make political contri- } , IT did: not make it clear that there are restricon corporations als, but that it is far more

ood ng ek

By Ernie Pyle

that were to follow. But not for themselves. “Hell, no,” said one sergeant. “We ain't slept in a building since we left the states, We build ‘em, we don’t use ’‘em.” The outfit has its fun as well as its work. They have killed two elephants. They hunt antelope, deer, buffalo and crocodiles. Snakes don’t even count. Monkeys and leopards were accumulated as pets. One company in a locality where horses abound is called the “Mounted Engineers” because almost every man owns a horse. Another unit is known as the “Mayors of Harlem,” since they are in direct control of more natives than Father Divine has followers. Their work is tough, dirty and unglamorous, and it is done under the most trying conditions. Working | in “the white man’s graveyard,” they have lost only one man—due to a streptococcic infection. They have learned to take everything the tropics have to offer and still keep going,

Bugs and Beer

“WE HAVE lived with more different kinds of bugs than Carter has Little Liver Pills,” one of them said. And another one said: “At first, when a bug wandered into the warm soapsuds we call beer down here, we'd throw. the beer away. The second week we would take the bug out. The third week we took the bug out, squeezed him dry, then drank the beer. The next week we drank the bug. Now we catch them and put them in our beer for flavor.” . There were more than a thousand of these tough army engineers at the last counting. They are scattered in seven different parts of Africa, toiling away. Their commander, whom I am not permitted tc name, is a tall, gangling soldier of the old school, whose greatest misfortune is that he has a face which looks something like mine. Otherwise we're nothing alike. In conversation he is pleasant, and during working hours he is tough. He is always immaculate jn his dress, and he remains immaculate even when the tropical sun hits 150. He stands so straight they call him “ramrod.” At work he always carries a silver-tipped swagger-stick under his arm. One admiring engineer described him as “a swagger-stick carrying a swagger-stick.”

By Maj. Al Williams

yards, and getting that hundred yards calls for the finest kind of co-ordination. The young American air student represents a glorious complex of apparent contradictions. It’s hard to reconcile the shy, even bashful, greeting and handshake of today with the determined, self-reliant and daring youngster handling a fast single-seater g few months hence. At the moment of the handshake, you feel like putting your hand on his shoulder. But when the same kid steps out of the fast fighter plane some time later on, you feel more inclined to say “Sir.” All during the tour of the air corps fighter-pilot training posts, I was impressed with the vast number of former junior aviators serving as mechanics and fighter-pilot trainees. And I enjoy recalling that almost all the student pilots and the mechanics recognized the Gulfhawk, saying all the nice things about

; that gallant little ship as they ran their hands over

her shiny wings and fuselage—things which airmen understand and which might sound strange to “foreigners.”

Most Inspiring Days

DID YOU EVER have a child who recited the poem

or sang the song at his or her very best—before the

company? Well, then you know how I felt when these

“lads praised the startlingly rapid climb or the swift

maneuverability of my Gulfhawk. Those two months on the road, with exacting aerobatics down close to the ground almost every day followed by lectures to pilots and mechanics, with a total mileage flown running between 11,000 and 12,000 miles—represented by far the greatest expenditure of energy I have ever turned out in any such period. But they were the happiest, grandest and most inspiring 60 working days of my entire life.

By Raymond Clapper

Whether Russia wants a Communist Germany or other Communist states along her western frontier is the subject of much difference of opinion among diplomats here. Some in the past have assumed that Russia - was preparing underground Communist regimes to take over wherever possible—in Germany and France, for instance. I find equally well-informed diplomats who say Russia is not nearly so interested in whether neighboring states are Communistic as in whether they have stable governments which the Russians can deal with and which the allies can depend on to hold together. For instance, it is not considered to be an advantage to Russia or any other victor power to have Germany churning in revolutionary disorder, .nor France, when there could be a regime\in each country through which orderly conditions icould\be “maintained.

Two Views in Germany

THAT GETS into the whole question of the treatment of Germany at the end of the war. Lord Van-

sittart, former official of the British foreign office, has campaigned throughout the war for the hardest possible treatment of Germany. He would keep her a

‘ slave country forever. His policy is known as Van-

sittartism, and it is violently argued through England. Chairman Alfred J. Dobbs of the Labor party conference took a position of semi-Vansittartism in his keynote address, when he said effective steps must be taken to control Germany’s industry and to prevent her from ever again loosing war upon the world. He said ‘the German desire for world domination did not originate with Hitler but was shown in the wars of 1864, 1870 and 1914. The other viewpoint was summarized in the Labor party's declaration, at its Bournemouth conference in -1940, that the best hope of destroying aggressive force in the axis and effecting a lasting peace lay in en-

couraging socialist and democratic governments in|

enemy countries.

By Eleanor Roosevelt

Of course, all gentlemen of means do not unite on candidates any more than do all trade union members, but it is easier for the candidate who represents big business to obtain the financial backing needed. There is a question as to whether the rights or

difficult for unions to meet a situ-

atfon where there are tions of this Kind than Jt.3s Yor 5

aly euhnection With. i. I read it over a numbér of times and. I have so far been unable to: see why it

LLUNY EMPIRE

KEVYNOLDS and ELEANOR PACKARD

Italians Unaware

Stab in Back Meant War With England

V—“STAB. IN BACK"— WHEN WE ARRIVED

A FATAL MISCALCULATION

at the Union club in Rome

on June 10, 1940, and found ladies in the bar, we knew things were bad. This was the first time in half a cen-

the Union club, which was

tury that women had ever invaded the male precincts of”

probably the most staid of

all British social organizations on the continent. The bar was crowded with not only newspaper people,

but also with bankers from

Barclay’s, Imperial Airways

executives, British institute officials and members of the

embassy.

Everybody was drinking and laughing, but

there was an undercurrent of tensity in all the gaiety.

Betsy Mackenzie of the London News Chronicle

grabbed us and said, “You must have a drink on me. This is the first time I’ve ever been able to buy a drink in this

bar. make that possible! P

British press attache, said. is all about.”

And to think it’s taking a declaration of war to

“Half a mo,” half a mo,’ ” Ian Manro, who was the

“They don’t know what this

He then explained to us that, only half an hour before, Sir Percy Loraine as well as Francois-Poncet had

received notification to appear at the Chigi palace at

4:30 in the afternoon. “There’s no boubt about it, now—Ciano is going to hand them notification of war. And the Duck is going to speak from the balcony at 6 this afternoon.” : At 4 in the afternoon, gendarmes and Italian infantry were stationed in strategic, out-of-the-way places around Venice square. At 5 p. m., thousands of uniformed Fascists, including students, began to converge upon the Palazzo Venezia. They carried placards, most of them scurrilous, caricaturing John Bull and Churchill. By 6, one hun--dred thousand people must have squeezed themselves into Venice square and adjacent streets. At 6:01, Mussolini, dressed in his uniform of a corporal of honor, bounced up like a jack-in-the-box on the balcony. He was greeted with probably the greatest applause he had ever received since he announced the end of the Ethiopian war. This acclamation was the- result of the fickleness of the Italian people. Little did they know the tragedy they were. applauding. ” EJ ”

Public Is Deceived

THEY THOUGHT they were acclaiming the end of a conflict and that the war would be over a few weeks after Italy's entry. It looked as though Mussolini was making a “smart move” to realize his revindications upon France with a minimum spilling of blood. They thought France was already beaten and England left in a hopeless position, ‘It was money for jam. The Duce interrupted the applause and started speaking. Throwing his arms about as never before, to emphasize each point, he said: “pighters of land, sea, and air, black shirts of the revolution and. of the legions, men and women of Italy, of the Italian empire, and the Kingdom of Albania, listen. The hour destined by fate is sounding for us. A declaration

to the ambassadors of Great Britain and France...” Eleanor, who was at Venice square to describe the reaction of the people, counted seven times that the duce was called back for curtain bows after he had finished his speech. There was little doubt

FINN-NAZI BREAK APPEARS IN OFFING

ight, 1943, by The Indianapolis Times Cored Th e Chicago Daily News, Inc.

LONDON, June 18.—~The undercurrent of Finnish sentiment looking toward escape from German entanglement still appears to be long way from reality—depending, as it does at the present. state of affairs, upon overtures by Russia—but th latest edict by Field ‘Marshal C Gustav Mannerheim, commander-in-chief of Finnish armed forces, is seen here as an encouraging trend which may find more articulate expression during the present session of the Finnish parliament. Mannerheim has refused outright to grant the German demand that Finnish volunteers in the Waffen 8. S. be sent north for service under German St. Gen. Eduard Dietl. These Finnish Waffen (S. S. troops) numbering about a battalion have just returned to Pinland after two years on the eastern front. . Despite lack of any surface indications that Finland is moving openly toward disengagement with

{the Germans, there is a definite

of war already has been handed

that the Italian public had been taken in by the Fascist propaganda and that they believed that Italy was merely, to use a bullfighiter’s term, giving the coupe de grace to France, political enemy since the risorgimento. Few of them thought of it as actually involving Italy in a war of blood with England. 2 8 =

The British Depart :

AFTER WE HAD sent all there was to send on the speech and reaction of the populace to it, we called at the Mackenzie apartment. Betsy and her sister, Phyllis, secretary to the British air attache, had heard the speech over the radio. On orders of the Rritish embassy, they had not ventured to Venice square. Phyllis gave us a good news tip. She said that the note Ciano had coldly handed Sir Percy without any personal comment stated that the war was not to go into effect until midnight. We later confirmed this on the phone with our border string correspondent, who said that, hours after the Duce had spoken, the train service between Italy and France continued normally. Hundreds of French and English were permitted to pass through customs without any unusual delay and continue into France, while the same freedom of movement held true for Italians returning to their homeland from across the French border. It was the last of the old-fash-ioned style of declaring war in advance. Two days later, the diplomatic train bearing the British cflicial party left. Scores of Italians, many of them wearing the Fascist badge, risked their positions by going to the station to say farewell to their English friends. During the first three months "of Italy's participation in the war, we were constantly being sur-

prised at the number of English -

whom we ran into in Rome. During this period, they continued for the most part quite unmolested and without surveillance by the Italian police. Eleanor made a trip to Florence about this time to write a story on the wealthier English people who were still residing in their villas there. She found that they were living normal pre-war lives except that their social relations with Italian friends had been somewhat curtailed.

“Fighters of land, sea and air, black shirts of the revolution and of the legions, men and women of

Italy, of the Italian empire, and the Kingdom of Albania, listen! handed to the ambassadors of Great Britain and France.”

A declaration of war already has been The above scene dramatizes the manner in

which Mussolini met Italy’s “hour of destiny” on June 10, 1940, by swinging aly. into the war on Ger-

many’s side.

One English lady told Eleanor: “It is not that there’s any rule against our visiting or receiving Italians, but we don’t want to involve them in-difficulties with the police. We have noticed that whenever we do have contact with Italians, they are immediately summoned to the questura.” ” ” ”

Speaking Out of Turn

BUT WHEN Mussolini saw, toward the middle of September, that England was going to fight on, he tightened up restrictions upon English nationals and immediately launched a systematic campaign to round them up. The first we heard of it was one morning when Eleanor’s English masseuse failed to keep her appointment. Telephoning to her apartment, Eleanor was informed by the portiera that the English woman had been taken away to confino the day before by two plainclothes men. Another ' English acquaintance of ours who next disappeared was Dr. Edward Strutt. He was a quaint, gray-haired old codger with a nose as bulbous and red as a beet, who was a great Latin scholar and drinker. He had worked at odd jobs for all the American and British newspaper organizations in Rome for the past two-score years and was a duly qualified member of the Foreign Press club. His great failing was his desire to impress people with his scholarly and literary attainments. He was constantly dedicating

sonnets to Eleanor, which he would ‘bring to the office and deliver to Reynolds, who would then find occasion to pay him for some imaginary assignment which he hadn’t had. It must have been a little more than three months after Italy's declaration of war that there was a meeting of ‘the Foreign Press club. And Strutt, whom the Italian press officers had always liked, was still an active member. Everything would have been fine if Strutt had not decided he had to speak. It was the occasion of a reception for Press Minister Alessandro Pavolini. The German correspondents, who numbered more than threefourths of the members of the organization, had decided that their gauleiter, Baron Wolfgang von Langen, was to make a speech welcoming Pavolini. But as Von Langen arose to his feet to speak, Strutt popped up and beat him to the spoken word. In perfect Rtalian, Strutt made a long peroration. The Italians, it must be said, thought it was a rather absurd, but amusing incident, and Pavolini made a pleasant reply. But the Germans were furious, and the following morning Von Langen demanded that the Italians arrest him. ” s ”

Censors Whimsical

THE NEXT we heard of him was a week later when we received a letter in Italian from him. It said that he was confined in a tiny village at an altitude of 6000

King, Princess—Like Johnny and Susie— Fuss About Their Honeymoon Plans

“Yes,” interjected Princess Aspae

By JOHN A. PARRIS United Press Staff Correspondent LONDON, June 18 (U. P.).— When boy meets girl, it doesn’t make much difference whether they are king and princess or Johnny Jones and Susie Smith of Zanesville, O., some research into royal romance revealed today.

Like Johnny and Susie, King

mother in Grosvenor Square. Or Maybe Ascot? “1 think we should have our honeymoon in Ascot,” Alexandra “It’s so quiet and beautiful there.” “Let's get married first,” Peter

said. “Then we can argue about) a

king t ee

[Peter reminisced.

But|

sia, Alexandra’s mother. “You have to get married first.” “Well, maybe we'll get married sooner than you expect,” Peter came back. “The government may decide to let us get married before the end of the war. I still have hoges. Doesn’t Like Waiting “Sometimes I had rather not be king. ' I am sure my peopie at home | coe want me to get married whenever I choose. After all, if we have to walt until after the war I may be an old man and Sandra may have fallen in love with somebcdy else.” ““Pon’t be funny,” Alexandra said. “You already have yourself a wife, but you don’t know it.” They laughed. : “Remember when we .iirst met?” “It was at an allied officers’ tea party a year ago in March.” r “Yes,” Alexandra said. “The first time I saw you I said to myself I

“I was relieved when I found out differently. That is where I started going to town. You might call our courtship a whirlwind affair,” Peter

said, now addressing himself to the|

correspondent. “I never gave Sandra time to catch her breath after that. A month later we met in London for lunch and went to the cinema to ‘Sun Valley Serenade.’ That ridin] we drove back to Cambridge, where Sandra was going to school. One-Armed Driver

“1 proposed on the way. I don’t ]

have the faintest idea what I said.

I just know I almost ran into the|

ditch a couple of times. One-armed driving isn’t too safe.” The king and princess agreed that everybody wanted them to get married except the Jugoslav cabinet. King George of Greece gave his blessing, ‘as Peter said his god-

father, King George of Britain, did, |"

The Jugoslav cabinet was split

{over the advisability of the couple| = married ‘the war. |.

feet, with the result that he suffered from the cold at night. He said the streets were unpaved and the cobblestones hurt his feet. ' The local g¢ensor, however, had written a postscript in red ink in which he said: “The altitude is less than 3000 feet, and it is not true that the streets are unpaved.” Strutt in turn had written a post-postseript, saying: “Do not believe the censor, he has had too much Chianti.” The censor then appended still another remark: “That is also untrue.” It is doubtful that in any country at war there ever existed ‘a more fantastic censorship than in Italy before the Germans made them tighten up their restrictions. Most of the censors took the whole thing as a joke and were constantly making whimsical notes on the margins of letters that we received. One of our best friends in Rome was a Danish cdrrespondent, Jorgen Bast. He showed us some of the correspondence which he had with his wife. For nearly two months they had been writing back and forth about her coming to Rome on a visit. Finally, everything was arranged, and she wrote to tell Bast that she was leaving on the following day. The Italian censor wrote in ink: “Congratulations. It certainly took a long time.” Copyright, 1942, by 2, by Reynolds and Eleanor Packard; published by Oxford uss versity Press; distributed by United Features Syndicate, Inc.) NEXT: II Duce Shows His Prowess,

ing; while none objected to a poste war marriage. Going back to the argument ovel the honeymoon, Peter said: “If we could spend it anywhere in the world, we agree that it would be America — somewhere in California. Maybe Hollywood. I always wanted to meet Bob Hope.”

HOLD : EVERYTHING

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