Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 August 1943 — Page 11

[ERE IN SICILY (By Wireless) —Outside peaks of bitter fighting and heavy that highlight military operation, I bestanding trait in any campaign is the Ss that gradually comes over every- ‘ Soldiers become exhausted in mind and in soul as well as physically. They aequire a weariness that is mixed up with boredom and lack of all gaiety. To lump them all together, you just get damn sick of it all. The infantry reaches a stage of exhaustion that is incomprehensible to you folks back home. The men in the 1st division, for instance, were in the lines 28 days— walking and fighting all that time,

EaASIOn

night. » Ordinary Weariness

HAVE You ever in your life worked so hard and g that you didn’t remember how many days since you ate last or didn’t recognize your when you saw them? I never have either, the 1st division, during that long, hard fight Troina, a company runner one day came up to a certain captain and said, excitedly, to find Capt. Blank right away. Important ”

captain said, “But I am Capt. Blank, Don’t pognize me?” the runner said, “I've go to find Capt. Blank yy.” And he went dashing off, They had to

NED TEANY, the I. A. C. athletic director, and Mrs. Teany went to a movie the other evening. When they were leaving, Mrs. Teany kicked something on he floor. Picking it up, she saw it was a silk band, d presumed it had fallen off some woman's clothing. . She turned it in to the show manager. When they got home, they found Teany’s hat was minus, its band . .. A crowd stood in front of an E. 10th st. liquor store that has nearly empty shelves most of the time, “Whazzamatter—a holdup going on?” inquired a latecomer. “Naw,” replied one of * the crowd. “Look at those shelves, plumb full of whisky.” . .. Herbert Hoover. was right about that f | “grass growing in the street” business, but it has taken quite a while to prove it. One of our readers cites the courthouse sidewalks along Washington st. . . , By the way, we referred incorrectly Thursday to the “WLW national barn dance” We knew all the time it was WLS,” oe got a bit twisted.

This Isw't Just Hearsay

ONCE UPON A TIME, dear readers, there was an advertising salesman on a local newspaper Whose y was drawing cartoons, He became pretty good his hobby and. began to dream of seeing his handirk on the comic page of a newspaper. After a year two of futile efforts to get something published, went to a friend who convinced him he should e his skefiches and go to New York, there to show me. of the big syndicates. He packed up r to New York. The first syndicate man ~ cartoons to decided Hie had lots of ‘Son, I'm going to write a letter about you polis by the name of Joe Blow.” : name.) “Why, he’s my boss,” startled adman. Back home, he showed

: . Instead of repayment in money or goods, the President says in his latest lend-lease report to congress that “victory and a secure peace are the only coin in which we can be repaid.” Lend-lease is part of a genieral allied war pool. Each nation contributes everything it has to the pool—because the sooner we win the war the more lives and treasure we all save. So America contributes food and tanks to Russia, bombers to Britain, and the lives of American soldiers in the campaigns in Tunisia, Sicily and the Pacific. Britain contributes Spitfires, battleships and Mont’s 8th army. Russia contributes thousands of to make the gouging wounds in the German

‘How can you sort all that out? How can you fix any doll values and figure out who owes who ‘how

are lost, that isn’t lend-lease and the British ‘Is nothing. If we allow the British to fly the 8 with thelr own crews, some of whom are

} facetious Britisher ends arguments about lendsaying that Britain will be glad to pay it all y releasing all of her airplanes and all of her

Japs. “lease ald now amounts to nearly 14 billion ,. We loaned the allies about 10 billions in the , Lend-lease now is running at the rate of

(Continued from Page One)

By Ernie Pyle|

on. As for the rest of the army—supply troops, truck drivers, hospital men, engineers—they too become exhausted but not so inhumanly. With them and with us correspondents it’s the ceaselessness, the endlessness of everything that finally worms its way through you and gradually starts to devour you.

Writers Also Grow Weary

I'VE NOTICED this feeling has begun to overtake the war correspondents. It is true we don't fight on and on like the infantry, that we are usually under fire only briefly and that, indeed, we live better than the average soldier. Yet our lives are strangely consuming in that we do live primitively and at the same time must delve into ourselves and do creative writing. Especially is this true of the press association] men. A great part of the time they go from dawn till midnight or 2 a. m. I'm sure they turn in as much toil in a week as any newspaperman at home does in two weeks. We travel continuously, move camp every few days, eat out, sleep out, write wherever we can and just never catch up on sleep, rest, cleanliness, or anything else normal. ° . The result is that all of us who have been with the thing for more than a year have finally grown befogged. We are grimy, mentally as well as physically. We've drained our emotions until they cringe from being called O6ut from hiding. We look at bravery and death and battlefield waste and new countries almost as blind men, seeing only faintly and not really wanting to see at all. I am not writing this to make heroes of the correspondents because only a few look upon themselves in any dramatic light whatever. I am writing it merely to let you know that correspondents too can get damn sick of war—and deadly tired.

his sketches to Joe who said: “Why didn’t you tell me you could draw like this.” And now, the guy's stuff is- starting to appear in his own pdper. Believe it or not, folks, this happened right here in Indianapolis. And it wasn’t on The Times, either.

It Wasn't a WAVE

A TRUCK pulled up in front of the WAVE and SPAR recruiting station on monument circle at noon Friday. One of our agents who happened to be a short distance away was startled to look that way a minutes or so later and see two men carrying a gal in WAVE uniform out and boost her onto the truck. Moving closer, he saw it was merely the dummy WAVE they’ve had in the window , . . Bud Turner, the printer, took his Chrysler to a garage the other day to have a gasoline line leak repaired. When he returned the next day, he found workmen busy giving his car a valve grinding job. When he protested, the manager discovered the valve grind ‘should have been given to another Chrysler taken into the shop at the same time. Bud decided he needed the job anyway, and the manager. went half way by giving him a bargain rate.

A Gentle Reminder

MONTAJEAN JACKSON, secretary to George Madden, Block's advertising manager, bought a pair of shoes the other day went back to her office without paying for them or signing a charge slip. She wore the shoes several times but they hurt her feet. Then she remembered and went down and signed the sales slip, and lo—the shoes stopped hurting immediately. She swears it’s so . , . One of our OPA officials was standing:in line in front of the ticket window at union station the other day, fidgeting for fear he’d miss his train. Finally the man ahead of him got to the ticket window and asked for a ticket on a certain train. “Why, that train's gone,” the ticket seller said. “What,” ejaculated the man, “you mean it was on time?”

By Raymond Clapper

per cent of our war cost, so that relatively it is a

minor item for us.

We may expect considerable increase in reciprocal lend-lease, from other united nations before lang. For some time we have been receiving benefits from them. Reciprocal aid at times has run as high as 30 per cent of what we were laying out. When the East Indies are recovered we may expect that we shall get large quantities of natural rubber on reciprocal lend-lease. If we furnish high-octane ‘gasoline to Great Britain on lend-lease why. should we not receive in exchange natural rubber? Pooling works both ways. When President Roosevelt first explained the lendlease idea at a press conference back in 1040, he used , the illustration of a garden hose. If your neighbor’s house was on fire and he wanted to borrow your garden hose to fight it, you would, of course, lend it to him. After the fire was put out your neighbor would return the hose. Or if it was qamaged he would replace it with a new one.

Getting Rid of Dollar Sign THAT, SAID the president, as he flicked the ash from his cigaret, was the new idea that would enable us to get rid of the silly old dollar sign. The inference from that illustration was that after the war, after the fire was out, we would expect the British, the Russians, the Chinese and others to furnish us with replacement goods until all lend-lease aid was repaid. Now emphasis is on the more practical side of

‘frying to get all of the aid possible thrown directly

into winning the war, and thrown wherever it will help most. in speeding victory. The first lend-lease act says that the president may extend aid on any terms he deems satisfactory, and that the benefit to the United States may be payment or repayment in kind or property, or any other direct or indirect benefit which the president deems satisfactory, . Under that authority, .the president states in a message to congress, that congress made it plain it wants no new war debts to jeopardize the coming peace, He says victory and a secure peace are the only coin in which we can be repaid. For those who have lost sons in this war, surely no other coin would be acceptable.

By Eleanor Roosevelt

am glad T am seeing these hospitals for I will know in the future what lies behind every boy in a hospital at home. Day by day as I get nearer to what pecple here call up north, I rebel at the horrible waste of

We must fight and win this war and it must be such a victory that we can enforce the peace. This involves years of work in

Axis. Hold on Europe's Satellites Has Slipped 50 Per Cent.

By HARRISON SALISBURY United Press Staff Correspondent

LONDON, Aug. 30.—The axis grip on both satellite and neutral nations has slipped at least 50 per cent since Germany’s prestige was at its height, a nation-by-nation roundup of Hitler's purported European citadel revealed today. Not a single nation of Europe appeared to have escaped the trend

away from the axis and toward the|

allies, indicating the certainty that one of Hitler's major problems in the final phase of the war would be protection of his own internal lines, At the very moment when demands upon the wehrmacht to meet military contingencies in Russia, in western Europe and on the Italian frontier have reached their maximum, the German high command appeared to have been forced to divert ever larger forces to guarantee security within the socalled citadel.

Air Attacks Tell

Momentum of the trend was increased sharply by the fall of Mussolini, the successful Russian summer offensive and the growing weight of allied air attacks. The sityation in the neutral countries appeared ‘as follows: TURKEY — Formerly displaying extra correctness in all relations with the reich, including trade agreements despite the AngloTurkish alliance, the Turks openly express the fullest symphathy with the allies. There was lively speculation Turkey eventually would enter the war on the allied side when, as and if the Germans are expelled from Crete and the Dodecanese,

Shows Allied Sympathy

SWEDEN—After three years of a careful balancing act in which the Swedes avoided giving offense to the nazis, the Swedes discontinued nazi troop transports across their land and directed the stiffest kind of protest at Germany over the sinking of two Swedish trawlers. The Swedish press and public manifest open sympathy for the allies. SPAIN—Despite the axis support which placed him in power, Premier Francisco Franco has reached the midstream of a delicate effort to shift Spain from a position of non-belligerency to actual neutrality and friendship for the allies.

PORTUGAL~—This country played doggo: during the axis ascendancy, despite a treaty with Great Britain, and its press was the most neu« tral of Europe. Portugal's press now shows some allied tendencies and sympathy,

Swiss Still Neutral

SWITZERLAND—The strict and rigid neutrality of Switzerland stays familiarly unchanged, The situation among the satellites ran parallel to that growing among the neutrals. Denmark, long played up as a model German protectorate, created such a situation by restlessness that the Germans have been compelled to occupation ahd martial law. The other satellites:

NORWAY — Alwdys restive, the Norwegians rose so constantly

against Nazi occupation authorities |f

that internment of all Norwegian officers and drastic new controls resulted. FRANCE — The best-organized and = best-disciplined in Europe awaits the allied invasion and Chief of Government Pierre Laval holds only against increasing press ure. Guerrillas Bolder POLAND, GREECE, JUGOSLAVIA—Widespread guerrilla activity testified to the increasing boldness of opposition to the Germans,

in one of the war's most or BG a peace.

SHOP FOR CHRISTMAS!

NOW, WALKER ASKS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 (U. P).

ITALIAN FLEET PAWN IN GAME

Believed Italy Is Holding It To Bargain; Is Vital Factor in War.

By WILLIAM STONEMAN

op a ne . 0 Daily News, In ALLIED FORCE HEADQUARTERS IN NORTH AFRICA, Aug. 30.—Italy still has five fine speedy battleships lying in Spezia and Taranto, but it now. seems likely that the Italian government will prefer to keep them as bargaining counters rather than risk their loss

the British and American forces in the Mediterranean, The experience of the battleship

hit at a range of 13% miles in an engagement off the toe of Italy on July 9, 1940 is thought to have convinced the Italians that any general fleet -action would be disastrous. Since that time their force of subsidiary ships, eight-inch gun cruisers, six-inch gun cruisers, destrbyers and submarines have been so heavily reduced that it would be difficult to organize an effective screen for the capital ships

risk them. = Cruiser Loss Heavy

seven inch cruisers and a; very small number of-destroyers are still fit for action—less than 50 per cent of the prewar total. The two heavy cruisers are probably still under repair and the light cruisers are scattered in various ports. The capital ships are split up between Spezia and Taranto and ‘with the allies. in command of the straits of Messina there is no way for them to get together.

highly valuable acquisition for the allies and it is entirely in the interest of the Italians, who are bound to surrender eventually, to save it as a source of bargaining power if it were acquired intact, it could

ij

EERE, J

SAY CANADA LEADS

ane Indianapolis Times

in any general naval action with g

“Cavour” which received a direct

even though the Italians wished to) :

Only two eight-inch gun cruisers, |

The Italian fleet would be aj

IN INFLATION FIGHT|

Daulshs. troops shown (top) ‘as they: retreated when the German army entered Copenhagen in April, 1940, “ Representatives of the German and Dani gavernments (center)

sign their: neutrality agreement.

Germans (bottom) invade Denmark.

Naval Forces Will AbsorbMost of Dads in Draft Call

By FRED MULLEN United Press Stat Correspondent

‘WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 (U. P,) — Available figures indicate today that

Tokyo Bombsight Inventor Lost|

‘| was 2,038,000, while on Dec. 31 this

calls of the army and navy are

EL an, and the ctast

number of battle dasimliies and the rate of loss .through sickness and

non-combatant deaths, as well as|really con

discharges for other reasons.

As of July 31, the combined)

strength of the navy, marine corps and coast guard enlisted personnel

is expected to reach 2,624,000, an

increase of 586,000. This would]

mean & monthly demand upon selective service for 117,200 inductees. It was also known that combined

averaging 300,000 a month, and will contine to average that number through December if selective serv-

ice estimates prove correct when |W.

the actual calls come through for November and December. It already has been revealed that the

October call is “a shade lower” than

312,000. During the present and the re-| maining months ‘of the year, the| navy’'s enlisted personnel will increase by. 491,000 men, the marine

guard by 18000.

BIDDLE ANNOUNCES

» FEE r

SEARCH UNDER WAY FOR STRYCHNINE

VANCOUVER, B. C., Aug. 30 (U, P.).—A search was under way today among Canadian armed forces throughout ‘ the Pacific ' command snd the far: north for the last of more ‘than 150 medicine bottles that

are labeled. “morphine” but which contain liquid strychnine and

the ceophane substi being dis+ ;

SHIFT IN HIS AIDS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 (U. P). tients. Cetra Brus Bigs