Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 July 1943 — Page 11
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FRIDAY, JULY. 30, 1943
BO The Trlianizpofis Ther
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SECOND SECTION
Hoosier Vagabond
ABOARD A U. 8. NAVY SHIP OF THE INVApRIoN FLEET —(By Wireless) —(Delayed) — Before gailing on the invasion our ship had been lying far ( out in the harbor tied to a buoy for several days. Several times a day “General Quarters” would sound and the crew would dash to their battle stations but always it was a photo plane or perhaps one of our own, Then we moved into a pier. That very night the raiders came and our ship gos its baptism of fire—she lost ner virginity, as the sailors put it. I had got out of bed at 3 a. m. as usual to stumble sleepily py to the radio shack to go over the news reports which the wireless had picked up. There were several radio cperators on watch and we were sitting around drinking coffee while we worked. Then around 4 a. m. all of a sudGen “General Quarters” sounded. It was still pitch ark. Shooting had already started around the harbor 80 we knew this time it was real. I kept on working and the radio operators did too, or rather tried to work. So many people were going in andsout of the E> shack that we Were in darkness half the time joce the lights automatically go off when the door opened,
Biggest Guns Let Loose
THEN THE biggest guns of our ship let loose. They made such a horrifying noise we thought we'd “Kbeen hit by a bomb every time they went off. Dust and debris came drifting down from the ceiling to smear up everything. One by one the electric light bulbs were shattered m the blasts. The thick steel walls of the cabin ook and rattled as though they were tin. The entire vessel shivered under each blast. The harbor was lousy with ships and they were all shooting. The raiders were dropping flares all over the sky and the gearchlights on the warships were fanning the heavens. Shrapnel rained down on the decks making a terrific clatter. All this went on for an hour and a half. When it was over and everything was added up we found four planes had been shot down.” Our casuaities were negligible and no damage was done the ship except little holes from near-misses. Three men on our ship had been wounded. Best of all, we were credited with shooting down one of the planes!
By Ernie Pyle
Now this raid of course was only one of scores of thousands that have been conducted in this war. I'm mentioning it to show you what a little taste ‘of the genuine thing can do for a bunch of young Americans. As I wrote the other day our kids on this ship had never been in action. The majority of them were strictly wartime sailors, still half-civilian in character. They'd never been shot at, never shot one of their own guns except in practice and because of this they had been very sober, a little unsure and more than .a little worried about the invasion ordeal that lay so near ahead of them. And then, all within an hour and a half, they became veterans. Their zeal zoomed. Boys who had been all butterfingers were loading shells like machinery after 15 minutes when it became real, Boys who previously had gone through their routine lifelessly were now yelling with bitter seriousness, “Dammit, can’t you pass them shells faster?”
Gunnery Officer Makes Report
THE GUNNERY officer, making his official report to the captain, did it in these gleefully, robust words: “Sir, we got the =-- «= « cacal” One of my friends aboard ship is Norman Somberg, aerographer, third class, of Miami. We had
been talking the day before and he told me how he had gone two years to the University of Georgia studying journalism and wanted to get in it after the war. I noticed he always added: “If I live through it.” * Just at dawn, as the raid ended, he came running up to me full of steam and yelled, “Did you see that plane go down smoking? Boy, if I could get off the train at Miami right now with the folks and my girl there to meet me I couldn't be any happier than I was when I saw we'd got that guy.” It was worth a day’s pay to be on this ship the day after the raid. All day long the sailors went gabble, gabble, gabble, each telling the other how they did it, what they saw, what they thought. After that raid a great part of their reluctance to start for the unknown vanished, their guns had become their pals, the enemy became real and the war came alive for them and they didn’t fear it so much any more. This crew of sailors had just gone through what hundreds of thousands of other soldiers and sailors already had experienced—the conversion from peaceful people into fighters. There's nothing especially remarkable about it but it is moving to be on hand and see it happen.
Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum
TOM RIDDICK, the Baldwin Piano Co. representative here, .is a firm believer in reciprocal relations. His son, Air Cadet Tom Riddick Jr., has been stationed at Knoxville, Tenn, for some time. Mrs. Riddick Jr. joined him there and was taken into a private home and treated royally. Mr. Riddick Sr. was so impressed with the southern hospitality accorded his daughter-in-law that he felt it should be reciprocated in some way. So he called Ft. Harrison, explained that he had an extra bedroom in his Williams Creek home and would like to provide a home for some soldier's wife, preferably one with a baby. Within a short time, one arrived at the home, accompanied by a five-month-old baby. Strangely enough, r. Riddick found that his guest was from Knoxville nd that she was well acquainted with the family that had been so kind to Mrs. Riddick Jr: A real incidence, eh! P. S. Cadet Riddick has just been transferred to Nashville,
Very Much Alive
WHEN W. B. (BILL) KUHN, veteran printer, retired from the News a month or so ago, the newspapers carried nice stories about his retirement and his career. Imagine his surprise the other day when Mrs. Kuhn received a letter from a relative in another . tate, attempting to console Mrs. Kuhn on “the Ydeath” of her husband. The relative had seen the story of Mr. Kuhn's retirement and apparently misread it. “I'm glad it was only a mistake,” says Bill. . . . A sailor who frequently has to run down 38th st. to catch the Central trolley on Pennsylvania got tired of bumping his head on a certain low hanging limb. So one day recently he printed a neat little
In Sicil SOMEWHERE IN SICILY (By Wireless—Delayed). -—After we had finished lunch out of our K rations in the shade made by the wing of our transport plane
at a North African airfield, we climbed back in. In
® couple of minutes the field was a dense cloud of dust as the mass of transport ships warmed up for the flight across to Sicily. We knew how German transport planes were shot down like ducks in the closing days of the Tunisian campaign. But now the allies’ air supremacy has made it possible for us to ferry large numbers of transports across without danger. That shows the difference between controlling the air and not controlling it. We had as many fighters overhead for escort as there were transport planes. We flew in formation, very close to the water, so that no enemy could sneak up under us. Our fighter escort crisscrossed overhead. I have used the term “fighter cover” many times, but never before did I realize «that it can be literally a cover. Directly over us as this mass of fighters, circling and sweeping the flanks of our formation. So that it would have been impossible for enemy planes to get near us. Actually no enemy planes were around. A fighter pilot told me he had not seen an enemy plane in the last five Hors, although he had been in the air most of that time.
Prepare for Emergency
AS WE GOT out over the water a red-headed, freckle-faced kid popped out of the operating compartment and told us to put on our Mae Wests. He said that if the plane was forced down it would float for 40 minutes, giving ‘everybody plenty of time to get out.
My Day
HYDE PARK, Thursday—I understand that, under the law which makes the change in the status in the women’s army corps, they will have to re-enlist, and they will have the opportunity, of course, of not doing so. I suppose among the girls now in the WAACs, who will shortly become .WACs, there will be some who will be glad of this opportunity. Many people start out on something that they want to do for patriotic reasons and enter with great enthusiasm, but when they find it means a daily grind it is hard to keep up that initial enthusiasm. So I have wanted to say something to these girls. Nowhere, have I seen any tribute paid them for, the.
on
some from
note suggesting that the limb be removed, and fastened the note to the limb with a thumb tack. The next day the note was gone. So was the limb. Just goes to show how the home folks will co-operate with the armed forces.
Campus Dolls Up
THE BUTLER CAMPUS is getting a bit of face lifting. A new road is being built from Jordan Hall to the new College of Religion building. In order to make the latter building more visible from a distance, quite a few catalpa trees have been removed from in front of it. . . . The Y. M. C. A. is launching plans for the celebration next year of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the international Y. M. C. A, in England. At the same time, the Indianapolis Y will celebrate its own anniversary— the 90th. The Y was founded here in 1854. , . . A publicity releasé from the National Institute of Diaper Services contains good news for our soldier boys. The news is that none of their infant sqns and daughters need toddle around without diapers, since “the infants of the men in the armed forces will be served first by all the members of the diaper service institute.”
Auto Loses ‘Pants’
AN UNIDENTIFIED motorist lost the “pants” off one of the rear fenders of his car at Meridian and Ohio sts. Jimmy Millis, stock boy at the State C. of C. saw it fall and salvaged it. He'd like to return it to the owner. Jimmy thought the car might have been a Cadillac. The metal piece is painted black and has two chrome stripes on it. See Jimmy at the State C. of C. . .. Lt. Paul Sparks, the former school psychologist, has sent friends here an announcement of the arrival of a son, Paul Edward, July 20, at Seesler field, Miss. Mrs. Sparks is the former Jean ase.
By Raymond Clapper
The redhead proved to be the crew chief, T. Sgt. Melvin Engel of Portland, Ore. That made me homesick for Portland. I find that I get homesick for most any place you can name, if it is in the states, as I have been in most of them. Our plane convoy was really an air freight train. We hauled six army jeeps over on that trip, plus much other material. These cargo planes are DC-3's, the same as American commercial passenger planes. They will haul 30 persons—I mean 30 using the metal bedpan seats which you must ride on over here, Almost before we had settled down we passed Pantelleria, rising like a big rock out of the Mediterranean. We could see the city clearly but were unable to distinguish any of the bomb damage, which I hore to see iater. We were traveling on a plane named “Father Time,” which had been a second home to half a dozen of us for a few days. We flew in it from the airforce command post to a Flying Fortress field for the Rome raid. After returning from Rome we flew in it to the main allied headquarters in the rear, and then back to the forward command post, in all covering
as much mileage in “Father Time” as we did on the Fortress trip to Rome. .
Beautiful Landing
THE PILOT, Lt. Joseph A. White, a tow-headed kid from Greensboro, N. C., made the most beautiful landing you ever saw, in Sicily, despite a terrific cross wind plus the propeller wash from the plane ahead. That landing had all the elements for a crackup, except that this kid knew his business. We sighted the coast of Sicily in midafternoon of B perfect Sunny day. Looking out at our formation n, it appeared like a school of those fish that skim the water alongside ships plying piv ical waters. We landed where our troops had come in a few days earlier. There we loaded our gear into
Jeeps and set out to find our ax way around the island
By Eleanor Roosevelt
qualities of character which will keep them in throughout the duration of the war. I am not belittling the work which women are doing in factories, in shipyards and in a thousand and one vital occupations, Many women can do this kind of work who could not for one reason or another, enter into the military services. Every woman who takes a boy's place serves under the same conditions, but she knows she is directly releasing some man to swell the ranks of the men who are now bringing the war to a close by their actual participation in the fighting. Nevertheless, when it is over, it will be the men and women who accepted the discipline and the risk of life and limb, and, perhaps give up their lives on front, who
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Using Every Bit of Cargo Space Good as Having
New Ships in a Convoy
(Fourth of a Series) By CHARLES T. LUCEY Times Special Writer NEW YORK, July 30.—They call it free transportation. It's the cargo you wedge into a ship when, by all the usual standards, it already is full. This free transportation, as put to work by the war shipping administration, has carried millions of tons of war supplies to allied armies.
You get the idea when you go down into the hold of a big, gray freighter in an East coast harbor, where sweating, bare to the waist huskies, gay bandannas about their heads and longshoremen’s hooks tucked in their belts, work against time to load for the next convoy. Through the morning big booms have been lowering marine corps trucks through open hatches, and they are fitted in one against another to capacity. That is where loading operations often stopped in normal times. But today longshoremen pile hundreds of cases of foodstuffs into every foot of space not used by trucks—in them, under them, all around them. A boom swings in from a loading pier with a great iron fistful of cases, lowers them quickly and men heave them one to another until hold and ‘tween deck are bulging. Toward the stern a giant floating derrick groans under the lift of 30-ton General Sherman tanks, settling each, sealed tightly against sea moisture, into blocked areas beside the hatches. A dozen men, brown under the sun, steady each tank into position, make blocks fast and tighten cables so there can be no rolling. = os 2
All Space Used
ABOVE and below deck every possible bit of space is tagged for war goods. Use of broken stowage cargo, such as cases of foodstuffs, to load a ship full-and-down—full as to cubic capacity, down to plimsoll in the water—has become something of an art with
LOCAL BUDGET ADS T0 USE ESTIMATES
As a result of a 1943 law provid-
.|ling for earlier' advertisement of
local government budgets, some taxing units may have to use estimates on increased utility valuations instead of actual figures, it was learned today. Noble W. Hollar, secretary of the state tax board, said the board would be unable to certify the utility valuation figures before the city school board and probably some township units have to advertise their budgets and tax rates. The school budget must be advertised by Aug. 7. However, the valuations will be certified in time for the county and city governments to use the actual figures, Mr. Hollar said. “Adjustments in the school city rate can be made by the county tax board if the wvmluation estimates should happen to be too low,” Mr. Hollar said.
FIND MISSING PET ‘LOST’ IN BASEMENT
“Brownie,” a Doberman Pincher dog owned by Mr. and Mrs. Harold Ellison, 151 W. 9th st., was about to become a mother and suitable arrangements were made for her. But suddenly she disappeared and the called police who searched the neighborhood for two hours. Later, Mr. Ellison found Brownie self-imprisoned behind the
furnace in the basement. Several
oh mamas, of ComFMgesiP Ee
the war shipping administration. Studying loading records of ships sailing with war supplies, Capt. Granville Conway, in charge of Atlantic area operations for the WSA, found an all-too-prodigal expenditure of ship space at a time when lack of bottums was one of our toughest military problems. The captain—he left Maryland's eastern shore when a boy in become master of an ocean vessel at 22—has the seaman’s direct way about him, and he wrote to Washington to get something done about it. So many ships sailed last month and here's the space that was wasted, he told Washington. What he said he sup-
ported with figures. = » ”
WSA Presses Case
4 . THE WAR shipping administration agreed and went to work on it. It is difficult, very often, to change the ways of a government agency which has built up its procedures over many years. But the WSA pressed its case with the war agencies concerned here and, today, it’s as good as having new ships in the fleet without having had to build them. WSA pushed the same policy in lend-lease shipping. Unused cubic space in some cascs, on the word of shipping officials, had been “terrifically high.” But WSA men set about finding broken stowage cargo that could fit into ship's space where big cargo wouldn't fit. The results were quick in showing—on one of the big convoys over the top to Murmansk and Archangel there were but 600 tons of unusual capacity in the convoy’s tens of thousands of tons.
Proper use of light is as important as manning guns on a merchant vessel with a convoy at sea. Here's an expert (left) rigging the lights so marauding subs can’t spot them. Right: A Baldwin locomotive reaches the Middle East.
SI Ada AA aan
Capt. Granville Conway, In charge of Atlantic area operations for the
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war shipping administration.
That meant every ship was loaded to within an inch of its deep load line in the sea. The Russians lhke it, too, and said so in a grateful letter to Capt. Conway.
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Stitch in Time
TODAY, ALL 'agencies—army, navy, lend-lease and so on—sending supplies overseas furnish WSA with a check list of what is to be had on each vessel. The WSA
men inspect each list to make sure the prospective cargo makes for proper loading. Not long ago the Russians sent a list to WSA showing 2000 tons of steel in 20,000 feet of hold space, What kind of steel is it?— WSA men wanted detail. When they got the detail they found not 20,000 feet, but 60,000, were needed. It meant reassigning the whole cargo—in good time, however, and not in the last few hours before sailing when such a discovery might mean missing a convoy with war goods needed badly back in Stalingrad. Loading in United States ports must be keyed to unloading on the other side of the world. One day out in the Red sea there was a 90-ton derrick available for loading—the next day there wasn't. Bombs had destroyed it. WSA men Lad to take that into account. WSA men here must be ready to meet such a contingency. If the big shore derrick is gone, if only one hatch has a 50-ton boom, but the other four hatches only five-ton booms, there must be some figuring to lift tanks and heavy vehicles. In an American port WSA goes into the holds and cuts exits in bulkheads between hatches—and the heavy vehicles can be moved inside the ship to where they can be reached by the big lift.
Speakers to Urge Political Unity on Peace Settlement
America’s role in the world’s postwar problems for a permanent peace will be discussed in 12 Indiana cities by Senator Harold H. Burton (R.
0. and Rep. Robert Ramspeck (D. Geo.) during the next two weeks. The legislators are scheduled to arrive in Indianapolis next Monday to address a public meeting at the war memorial auditorium Monday night. The meeting is being sponsored by a special committee headed by Hugh McK. Landon, appointed by Mayor Robert H. Tyndall to arrange the event. Tuesday the legislators will address meetings in Bloomington and
‘BAZOOKA’ OUTPUT
IS ON MASS BASIS
SCHENECTADY, N..Y, July 30 (U. P.).—The “bazooka,” America’s newest anti-tank weapon, has been in mass production at an undisclosed General Electric company plant, company officials announced
‘today.
Soldiers who use the weapon dubbed it the “bazooka” for its remote resemblance to the musical instrument made famous by comedian Bob Burns. Maj. Gen. L. H. Campbell Jr, chief of army ordnance, has revealed that the weapon is being supplied in quantity to united nations
Terre Haute, Wednesday in Crawfordsville and Lafayette, Thursday in Muncie and Elkhart, Friday in La Porte and Gary, Friday in Columbia City and Ft. Wayne and Tuesday, Aug. 10 in New Albany. The speakers will stress the need for keeping the post-war peace settlements nonpartisan in nature with both political parties cooperating in one program for the nation. “While it is true that post-war problems will have political aspects, they are economic and moral in their nature and cannot be solved on partisan basis,” said Mr. McK, Landon in announcing arrangements for the meeting.
WAVE’'S HUSBAND KILLED EAST GRANBY, Conn., July 30 (U. P.).—The war department notified Mrs. Mary Ronan Lipinski a few hours before she reported for duty in the WAVEs that her husband, Pfc. Joseph Lipinski Jr., 28, had been killed in action in the Pacific theater.
HEAVY EARTHQUAKE SHOCKS INDICATED
NEW YORK, July 30 (U. P).— The seismograph at Fordham university registered severe earthquake shocks at 9:07 p. m. (E. W. T.) last night, it was announced today. The shocks were centered 1540 miles south of New York, apparen the Virgin islands.
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Of course, it meant welding up the bulkheads later. But it might also mean the difference between quick or delayed unloading of vehicles needed in Africa.
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Constantly on Alert
PRECISE CARGO planning— and inspection to back it up— goes on constantly. At the miles of piers in United States ports WSA stevedoring supervisors constantly are on the alert for bad loading that might waste space or threaten safe operations at sea. Maybe nitrate is being loaged next to metal in the hold of a ship—that- means corrosion and it must be changed. Perhaps it's found that an ancient nine-knot-ter is lined up for an African convoy which needs more speed, while a 16'2-knotter is set to haul flour in a much less vital movement. WSA tries to catch all such slips. On the last night before a big convoy goes out Capt. Conway is out among the ships helping them make the sailing deadline. Crew members may fail to appear and replacements will be needed, or a ship radio goes wrong at the last minute, or a ship's agent may have to be routed from bed at 3 a. m. to correct something wrong with his vessel. All these difficulties require decisions—and Capt. Conway gets down at the spot to make them most effectively. This kind of WSA control goes on all over the world. Cables that come across the desk of the traffic manager in Washington tell part of the story.
5 ”n #
Space Increased
“ONE GOING out to a WSA man in the Southwest Pacific reports that a WSA representative in an Asiatic port had advised that a U. S. ship, sailing into the
ASKS MORE SCRUTINY OF SHARE-THE-RIDES
James D. Strickland, director of the Indianapolis district OPA office, yesterday urged war defense plant executives to give full support to plant transportation committees because of the acute shortage of tires, gasoline, automobiles and au-
tomobile parts. Speaking to more than 300 war plant executives in the war memorial, he said that the country faces a critical situation as to tires, gasoline and transportation generally. “Hven in a case where there is a share-a-ride agreement,” the OPA official said, “extra gasoline should not be alloted drivers if there are satisfactory public means of transportation.” According to present regulations, he explained, if two hours or less are consumed by the workers in making the round trip to his work, the employee will be regarded as having satisfactory public transportation if he does not have to stand in the conveyance in which he is riding. :
8 os
SAVES COMRADE’'S LIFE
SOMEWHERE IN AUSTRALIA, July 24—(Delayed)—(U. P.).—A soldier's medal for saving the life of a comrade has been awarded Capt. Nathan H. Wexler, Brooklyn, N. Y., Lt. Gen. George C. Kenney, commander of allied air forees in the Southwest Pacific, announced
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southwest Pacific area, had 340,000 feet of space available for wool.” : The vessel had loaded 4000 tons of ore, and Washington figured the free space should approximate not 340,000, but 400,000 feet. And so, the cable instructed, the ore should be trimmed and leveled to provide maximum free space. That means going down into the ship's hold in the southwest Pacific and doing some shoveling —but it also meant a 15 per cent to 20 per cent heavier wool cargo back to America. To West Africa goes a cable ordering that as soon as a certain ship completes discharge of cargo it be dispatched back to New York in ballast. Ordinarily, a question might be raised as to why the ship shouldn't be crossed to Guiana, then brought to America with bauxite. But she’s a fast 15-knotter, needed back here for a high priority military movemen, and so she’s ordered back directly. From South America a cable says shippers insist on 10,000 tons of cargo for New York delivery, hence it is not being placed on a New Orleans-bound ship to which WSA had assigned it, but on another, WSA cables right back— the cargo must move on the vessel originally assigned or remain there. As Lewis W. Douglas, directing the world-wide war transport job, has pointed out, never before in the history of shipping have bombing planes, large tanks, invasion barges and torpedo boats been carried into virtually every part of the globe. Problems of loading and stowage challenge the most resourceful imagination.
” ” ”
Tribute to System
THAT LOADING efficiency has been constantly improved is a tribute to the exacting control system set up in U. S. ports and in 50 foreign ports where WSA men are on the spot to do everything possible to expedite ship movements—and to let Washington know when stumbling blocks are found. All over the world it means watching the manning, bunkering, equipping, stevedoring, loading and discharging of vessels. It means checking lighterage, tug and barge services, studying terminal operations, keeping records to show just what efficiency is at the end of any week or month.
Trained men are doing this job, generally experienced shipping experts taken from U. S. shipping companies now acting as WEA agents, operating their own ships as programmed by the government to fit the vast shipping needs of a nation at war. Always to be reckoned against these operations are not simply the usual maintenance and repair, but losses in sinkings; major repairs, sometimes amounting almost to rebuilding, because of enemy adtion, plus converting, arming and degassing (against mines). ‘ When war came no such organization existed. The way it has been put together in little more than a year is the chronology of one of the top administrative jobs of the war by Lew Douglas, Franz Schneider, W. N. Westerlund and the able staff around them.
NEXT: Strategic materials flow into the U. S.
HOLD EVERYTHING
“Your mother and father are both doing fine!”