Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 September 1944 — Page 9

SE — p——

~ house keys in one year, . ,

‘and Fall Creek.

tats

IN ENGLAND, October, 1942-1 is a When they see an American in civilian clothes they Oc strange

night, here is this American camp. There are rows on rows of khaki: tents; some of them ‘Yound, some of thefn square. They are built "OB ¥idges, with depressions in between for drainage. We are in a far country from ‘home. Work is urgent and grave “in this camp. The air is chill and damp, and ghostlike sentries walk _ their posts in the blackout, If there were only bonfires about we "might be a picture from Civil war days, 1° wander among the tents, picking up new friends- here and ‘there. Even in the dark the presence of a stranger draws soldiers as molasses draws flies, for an outsider in camp is a curiosity

and anything that breaks the monotony is welcome.

“The boys in this camp Work seven days a week, unloading the vast and constant flow,of war supe plies from America out of trucks and freight cars. It is dark now when they get up of a morning. It will soon be dark before they get back from work in the evening. Their tents have neither heat nor light. isn’t much to do but sit on your mattress in the dark till bedtime. There are no chairs and no cots. The straw-filled mattresses lie on the ground. The boys stack their blankets In daytime to keep them dry. At night some of them write short letters while holding a flashlight. Some go to the water faucets and wash their clothes in the dark. Some gather in tents and play guitars and sing old songs. I even heard a violin accompaniment to singing in one tent.

‘(rood to See an American

WE BTOOD in the dark, talking, New boys would Join our huddle out of curiosity, and after. hearing me say something they'd speak up. with, “Say, you're an American, aren't you?” And I'd say yes ard they'd shake hands and say, “Well, I'll be damned, I never expected to see an American over here,” or “Boy it's sure good to see an American.” That's a funny psychology the soldiers have. They're surrounded by Americans, of course. But theyre all in uniforms, and they cease to be Americans to each other and become just soldiers.

There

Note: Th 1 he 0 nr of reps pst Ei pi stn sot ou Armed

“look upon him as the first real seen since coming over here, It's a kind of flash-

back to home and normal life before everything went

olive-drab.

‘Deep darkness came and we were only forms in| a circle, We stood there in the night and talked for nearly three hours. We stood because there wasn't any place to sit down. Inside the crowded tents boys had gone to bed. Now and then we'd stick out heads inside a tent flap to light a cigaret and

then light one from another all the way around,

Army Life Is Rugged

IN THIS CAMP there are both Negro and white

troops. They are given liberty on alternate: nights.

‘Only a certain percentage of any camp is ever allowed out at any one time. Thus it works out that each man gets only one evening a week in

town,

“The nearest town Is two miles away, and most of them have to walk. By the time they get supper and are ready to start it is 8 o'clock. They have to

be back by 11, + They have only chilly water to wash and shave in, standing at an outdoor trough, They use an outdoor latrineé, There is no Possible way for them to take a bath, True, the army is building concrete-floored barracks huts for them, out of composition materials, as fast as it can. But labor is scarce, and work goes slowly. “If they'd take a few of us off unloading, we could throw up those barracks ourselves,” one of the boys said. “There's a lot of fair carpenters among us.” But the unloading of supplies mustn't stop. There are hardly ‘enough men even: now to keep up with the flow. The army hopes to have everybody housed before real winter comes. Some of the boys I talked with had just come recently from another camp, where their living conditions. were even better than they'd had back home. That's the way camps go. Some good, some bad. The soldiers seem to feel it's just a matter of your good luck or your bad luck, and you can’t have it good all the time, I've almost got so I hate the ‘word “morale” because it's used so much by the professionals. But there is such a word, so I will use it and say that the morale of our troops in England is not only fine byt is downtight admirable. wea

Inside Indianapolis 8 Lowell Nussbaum

DR. THURMAN B. RICE, the state heallh board

"director, is proud of the fact his four sons all are

Eagle Scouts—the highest rank in scouting, It's probably the only home in Indiana, he believes, with that many Eagle Scouts. It must resemble an acrie when all the “eagles” are home. They are Robert, a sergeant in the engineer's corps; Brooks, an aviation cadet, and James and Reed, both in Shortridge. , . . The governor's office received a 75-page, handwritten letter from one of the governor's constituents the other day. The longest letter received there within memory, it was on a religious subject. , , . Mrs. Robert Fennell, program chairman for the Indianapolis P-T. A. has a novel way of carrying her home door key. It’s attached to one of those spring chain affairs, such as are used to hold nose glasses, and 1¢> fastened inside her purse. Her relatives gaye her the gadget last Christmas after she had lost 17 W. C. Tremear of Kenneth L. Fox & Co, sugar brokers, read about the Indianapolis soldier in France finding a wrapped sugar cube in his K.ration advertising the Tee Pee at 35th “This indeed was a coincidence,” he writes, “but there is no local connection. Since the war started, the sugar refiners have turned over most of their wrapped tablet production to the armed services for Inclusion in these food kifs, using up whatever wrappers they had on hand. Incidentally, this must have been the brand of sugar we sell. Jack Frost, as we used to supply the Tee Pee with wrapped tablets.” Woaps: looks like he slipped an advertising plug in on us there, '

In War and in Peace

EARL C. FARMER, 1508 Broadway, writes in to ask if the President of the U. 8S. is commander in chief of our armed forces in peacetime as well as in wartime. The answer is yes. It's in the Conet tution of the U. 8S. Section 2 of Article II says: “1. The President shall be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the

World of Science

WARTIME SECRECY has made it impossible for most members of the public to visit the great industrial plants built during the last two Years as part of theiwar effort. As a result, it will not be > until the end of the war that the public fully apprecigtes the tremendous advances that have been made in plant de*%lgn, construction methods, lighting, etc. Probably the most spectacular advances have been in the field of lighting. These have speeded up war production and are expected to lower the cost of producing peacetime goods. . One such method, born of wartime prodiiction demands, was described before the Illuminating Engineering sqgtety by John L. Kilpatrick, Westinghouse lighting specialist. Installed in the new plant at Bustleton, Pa, built by the Defense Plant Corp, and operated as an assembly line production of aircraft by the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co., the new lighting system’ transforms the great arched bays of the plant ' into “tunnels of shadowless light totaling nearly three miles in length.” )

Upside Down Lighting

MR, KILPATRICK describes the lighting system as “a new system of high-intensity upside-down mercury vapor lighting.” It was designed to take advantage of the arched-roof construction of the plant, to exclude .direct and: Indirect glare, minimize heat

My Day

HYDE PARK, Sunday.—The trip down by the night train from Quebec so peaceful, as far as we were concerned, that I was appalled, when we reached Washington Square Friday morning, to see

the damage that the hurricane had brought about.

Large trees in the square lay uprooted, and the havoc was pitiful. Trees always seem to me to have personality, and when a big one is blown over you almost feel that it must have hurt the spirit ‘within the tree, Especially ignoble must’ it seem to have your branches down in the dust, and, in this case, the pavements! - In Long Island, apparently, not only trees suffered, but houses and * telephone and. electric wires’ were all put out of commission. Our aniihericaw could not be reached by telephone, “and _When I finally-saw her in the late afternoon 1 found that she and the children were not only without but also with. cooking.

militia of the several states when called into the actual service of the United States . , .”. Theres no mention of war or peace. ... One of ou tattletale agents was standing in front of the telephone building about 2:20 p. m. Thursday when a police squad car pulled up across the street and stopped in a no parking zone, One of the cops got out and walked across the street—right in the middle of the block—and paid a phone bill. Boy, it would have been too bad for that cop if Patrolman Hod Eller had caught him. . .. J. P. Howenstein, 4514 E. 17th, has some tomato plants that are the pride of the neighborhood. There are two dozen of them, seven to nine feet tall. and they're loaded with tomatoes. , , . And the Roscoe Lahue family, 2058 Winter ave. is proud of a big sunflower. They climbed up on the garage to measure it and found it was more than 1215 feet tall. + « + John Kleinhenz stood against the school board building at Ohio and Meridian the other evening, with a couple of books and magazines held inside a newspaper. A G. I walked up ‘end held out a nickel. “Want a match?” ask John." “Oh,” apologized the G. I. “I thought you were selling newspapers.

About Boys and Dogs

LEE WELLS, 2841 _Ruekle, lives on his imagination (he's a magazine fiction writer) but he swears this is not fiction, but the truth: He was walking his dog, Honey, a week ago Saturday afternoon ard met a small boy—about 4 or 5. “I have a dog” said the lad. Asked what kind of a dog it was. he said it was a bird dog. And then he added, a bit apologetically: “It's a bird dog, but its wings haven't come ‘out and it's not flying yet.” . , . Lee also tells this one. He was out in his yard the same afternoon when his Times carrier boy—Don Jeffries, 3105 Sutherland—came to collect. With him was his dog The dog started cut in the street, and Don called: “Here Ferum!" “What did you call your dog?” asked Lee. “Ferum,” he repeated. "Perum? That's an odd name. Where'd you get it?” asked Lee. “Oh,” replied the boy, “I noticed he had a rusty color on his back, so I named him Ferum. That'y Latin for iron." Scholarly, these carrier boys.

SECOND SECTION

(First of a Series)

' By DIXON WECTER Author of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home. NO MANUAL has ever been, written for changing the soldier back into a civilian.

Yet as any war's end,

lem on the home front. The most important post-war surplus is not guns and planes, or munitions factories, but the millions of hands and brains with their nerve reflexes trained for a Job that no longer exists. Just now, vocational experts in Washington and elsewhere are trying “to translate the skills of a radar operator, bombsight mechanic, or flash ranging observer into peacetime skills that come closest to matching. But the personal and emotional retooling of a man, from war to peace, is eyen more basic. So far it has received little attention.

- = - ‘Scared’ in the Morning

‘“You get scared to death in the morning, come ° through it, and spend the afternoon reading or playing. cards,” writes a divebomber pilot in the South Pacific to his mother. From accumulating experience at the rate of 400 miles an hour; how is he going to slip back into the life of a dairy farmer in upper New York state? - Certainly’ no man-made machine could be expected to pass abruptly from full speed ahead into reverse without stripping the gears, or some kind of functional damage. The. Ruman nervous system is far moré #daptable, but even so, tension takes its toll, “Young soldiers now returning on three-week furloughs after 18 months overseas, under the army's rotation plan, are apt to be nervous, explosive and impatient; chain - smokers, seekers after stimulants and diversions.

- » ” Blow Off Among Selves

They blow off energy in rough» and-tumble play among them-« selves, ‘often worrying about their blood pressure or insomnia, or critical about “the way things have been going” in their absence. This: does not mean that the average man will return a hopeless misfit. He needs a friendly briefing on what to do. The ideal counsellor is a veteran of world war I. who has both seniority and understanding of the problem, and whose advice will be heard respectfully by his Junior, ¥ Also, &ivilians as a whole—

friends, employers — should learn as much as they can about the psychology of veferans, and act accordingly. The returnee can no more slip effortlessly into the old life than he can blet out the memory of a thousand things which the stay-at-homes have not shared with him. # : = LJ Veterans Can Understand

These experiences no one else

{ can quite understand, save fellow

veterans and preferably the men

! in his old outfit.

-By David Dietz

i among ex-soldiers, who speak his

For this reason he will seem, for a~long time, more at ease

language, than among even his

radiation and shadow areas, and provide well-diffused | illumination with easy and low-cost maintenance. “In each bay,” Mr. Kilpatrick says, “shadows have “heen eliminated by directing the inverted lights upward against the highly reflective, curved, white ceiling," instead of downward in the conventional manner,

close to the floor.”

Extension Lamps Eliminated .

THE SYSTEM was worked out by Mr. Kilpatrick of the Westinghouse staff, and L. N. Blugerman, plant engineer of the new Budd plant. The result is that 35 foot candles of soft illumination, three times .as much as the light from an average easy-chair reading lamp, are available throughout the working area of the factory. Extension lamps and their resultant glare have been eliminated from the factory. The diffused light is obtained from a twin row of indirect fixtures mounted on a catwalk suspended down the center of each main factory aisle or bay. The major source of light is the new 3000-watt mercury vapor lamp but in order to obtain a modified color correction, these are used in conjunction with groups of 750-watt incandescent lamps. The mercury vapor lamps give a bluish light because red rays are missing from their spectrum. These are supplied by the incandescent lamps.

i

Mr. Kilpatrick points out that the present system was not possible until lighting engineers had developed the 3000-watt mercury vapor lamp. If smaller

lamps had been used, ‘the cost of the required number of ‘lighting fixtures would have been prohibitive, he said,

By Eleanor Roosevelt

tive surrcunded by modern inventions is extremely difficult.. Our ancestors kept their milk and butter down the well, but now when the electric icebox goes off there is no well to keep things cool! Like many of her neighbors, my daughter-in: law spent the afternoon trying to find enough ice to keep the children's milk from going sour.

Fortunately, her house was unhurf, and my real :

sympathy went to another young woman of my acquaintancé whose house, a summer cottage, was completely flattened by the gale. Her children luckily were not there at the time, but she still has not been able to find out. whether any of her belongings were salvaged. On Saturday 1 dia a little shopping. and got back ‘here in the early afternoon. Little damage was done here, except for some branches that were blown down in the woods, That was an extraordinarily courageous thing those ‘young scientists did when they flew Straight into the teeth of the storm to find out wind. Their exploit will make

The reflector-like ceilings completely dif- | fuse the’ light, throwing it even under large objects |

home folks. His desire to be with them should cause no jealousy or illwill from wife or mother.

this is the most vital prob-

mothers, sisters, wives, neighbors,

*

e Indianapolis

After experiences like this—hugging a beach as a Nazi bomber dumps its load nearby—your boy may be impatient and high-strung.

It is difficult to settle down into the old groove after a oh while on the front. Under fire, while a bulldozer fills in bomb craters to clear the way for advancing American forces, a doughboy learns about

fear and how te control it.

In time he will rebuild the bridge of daily experience and communication with those he loves at home. They are his debtors for sacrifices made, and should treat ‘him patiently, tactfully, What has war done for him? First of all, it has disciplined him to take orders from superiors, to wait endlessly for other people, and sink his identity in. a serial number.-- Being an American, not a Prussian or Jap, he has no stomach for regimentation as a way of life. = = - Once out of uniform, he will want to be the captain of his soul.

ES ——t

Johnny will be restless, with a nervous energy that the old peacetime ways cannot absorb. He will need to blow off some of the energy which in France was used up, as in the above photo, by continuing to advance through the hedgerows despite the fact that one of his buddies has been killed.

He will not like to beg for a job, cap in hand. On escaping from orders, he will be an individualist rampant, often with a touch of youthful rebellion against elders and people in civil authority. But withthe help of civilian understanding, his pride in himself and what he has done should turn not into arrogance but into a-deeper self-respect, After the last war, much was said about “the silent soldier,” the boy who refused to talk about the war, Today many stay - at - homes have been forewarned, and talk

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18,1944 ~~.

WHAT WILL JOHNNY BE LIKE WHEN HE COMES MARCHING HOME? —NO.

. What Has War Done to Your Boy?

only of tedious neighborhood gos-

sip, until the man on furlough sometimes blurts out, “But, Mother, don't you care what I've “been through?”

No Two Are Alike

No two soldiers are alike, or have exactly the same battle memories. Some want achingly to talk, to their family and Triends, about the war, They gain a certain relief from “spilling it.” Often it is better to uncork painful memories then try to forget them. On the other hand, few soldiers like to be lionized on a stick, and air the grim, sometimes terrible, recollections of Anzio or Tarawa. The essence of tact: is to let the veteran alone, to steer questions, interviews and speechifying solely

* according to his inclination.

If he wants to sit in a rockingchair in the sun, smoking and thinking, it is unwise to interrupt his reverie,

He wants sympathy and friend- |

chip rather than parades. ” s o. He May Be Moody

At the end of the war, the veteran will come home restless, with a nervous energy that the old routine of desk or work bench cannot absorb.

Sometimes he will stride out~’

doors to walk it off in the wind and rain. If long exposed to battle fire, he will be moody—depressed by gloomy weather or personal failures, prone to worry, or find his nerves frayed by noises like the backfiring of a car. After his keyed-up state, he will need what the air force calls decompression — or relaxing slowly under the sedative routines of civil life, while finding a safety valve for his energy in outdoor sports and games. Before he has settled into old grooves, the veteran is prone to be a shade more reckless in taking chances—whether in driving a car or picking a wife or making a business speculation.

8 » ” Craves Security

Be he also craves security, after the vast uncertainties of war, with a job and a home of his own. While a man is in uniform, certain responsibilities “have been suspended for him, whether that of figuring up his income tax or the choice of a career, and at first the spur of making endless decisions may seem painful, He may almost pine for somebody in authority to tell him what to do. On the other hand, army life has often taught him lessons of leadership, technical know-how, and self-confidence from travel and new associations, He returns more mature, and like all “old soldiers”. will think of himself as aged beyond his years. He has known fear, and learned something about his ine most self in mastering it. War's effect is to accent a man’s traits more often than to tHange them. But whether he thinks in terms of God, fate or chance, he will have reached certain bedrock conclusions about his own courage and reliance. upon..a power oute

side himself when the going gets ‘|

hard. : And on getting home he is apt to feel that America, untouched by the ravages of war thanks to his efforts, is a beautiful country, and one that was worth fighting for. NEXT: He Needs Understanding.

Question Quebec Leaves Unanswered: Will Russia

Give Her Allies Siberian Bases for Smashing of Japs?

By Scripips-Howard QUEBEC, Sept. 18.—Vastly more than meets the eye lies behind the Roosevelt-Churchill admission to the press that the most

seriqus difficulty with which the

Quebec conference had been confronted was “to find room and opportunity for marshalling

against Japan the massive forces which each and all nations concerned” are ardent to engage against her. The allies already have all the men and all the equipment needed to beat Japan to s& pulp. But the difficulty is to find a way to get at her. We are already winning victory after victory in the Pacific, but what we really need are opera- . tional bases, either in China or Siberia. With land bases such as these we could Knoek out Japan, probably in a matter of months. But that ‘if” is a big one for Japan occupies ‘China, and Russia controls Siberia. ; The China situation is consid erably worse than the American man in the street realizes. His attention has been focused on Rurope.

BARNABY

Newspaper Alliance

. gains. They may soon

Churchill-Roosevelt Highlights

QUEBEC, Sept. 18 (U. P.).—Here are some of the highlights of the press conference given by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill Saturday on the results of the ‘Quebec conference: “The Pacific command never figured in the discussions and there is no prospect of creating a so-called supreme command over all allied

forces upposing Japan, , .,

The most serious difficulty with which the conference was confronted was to find room and opportunity for marshalling against Japan the massive forces which the allies have built up.

“No date has been set for the next great operation because a date cannot be set for the end of the war with Germany.

“The Urited States and Great Britain are determined to fight all the way across the Pacific unfil Japan is crushed.”

Meanwhile, however, little items

buried on inside pages have been whispering of grave reverses in the Far East. We are getting nowhere opening up supply lines to China, yet without them China's war against the Japanese will drag on endleSsly. Or, what's worse, the

Japanese will continue to score

crippling . establish all the Siberian

railway communication way overland from the border to Singapore.

"among the

In Burma, the allied campaign | has been a fiasco. : *

Siberia, of course, is the readymade if not ideal springboad from which to launch a decisive attack by land and ‘air against Nipdon. But the Soviet Union is not now “nations concerned” which Roosevelt and Churchill said were “ardent” to get at the Japanese. She is still neutral. Thus the two statesmen may have been hinting that a “second front” in Asia as a sort of reverse lend-lease on Russia's part: would be more than welcome,

From what the President and prime minister said it is clear that Russia would not need to contribute-much, if anything, beyond bases. Aside from these, we have ample of what it takes to launch a victorious offensive. The biggest international question of today, therefore, is: Will Russia play-ball with Britain and America after Germany's fall? Will she make the spirit of

Dumbarton Oaks come to life by

offering the allies “the room and opportunity for marshaling . the massive forces” which they now 2 ready to use against Japan?

EDITORS NAMED TO SHORTRIDGE ECHO

The tentative appointments of editors for the daily publications of. the“Echo, Shortridge high school paper, were announced today. The students, who will begin their duties next week, are: Ann Lindstaedt and Marge Brink, Monday;

Shirley Rae Evans and Bob Mintz, |’

Tuesday; Peggy Yockey and Ann Lytle, Wednesday; Shirley Rose, Thursday, and Lois Ramsey ahd Phyllis Jay, Friday,

By Crockett Johnson

any information about

That Davy Jones! Woulda' give me the pirate

‘Maybe he doesn’t know about it. . .

£-

te

fests, .. A fie ried, indeed—

Nonsense. He admitted he had | | || And as if | need Davy prattling away It won't be TOO dark. . . The a complete file on all treasures. with a lot of advice! There's been foo ‘newsreel people I've invited Said it was confidential. . . As much talk already about our treasure to film the dramatic event if can't be Yrusted! Me! Old expedition! Mum's the word. from now always set.up floodlights. . . “Silent” O'Malley, the Sphinx— - on, m’boy. We'll do the job silently ~ m—— AR and secretly, in the dead of night— = \ LN aN B oy Lo

"PAGE

‘realize that the only really satise factory letters written by men 1

————Labor— i Miners May Hold Key

To Election

By FRED W. PERKINS CINCINNATI, Sept, 18. —

Mine Workers leadership, fo adoption of an anti-Roogevelt

pro-Dewey statement in the vention here, will be to propagandize this policy down through the rank ‘and file of the union’s membership. T h e importance of this from the political standpoint is that Mr. Perkins miners’ union has large member= ships in several key states whose electoral votes may decide the presidential contest. For instance, in Pennsylvania, with 36 electoral votss, which most polls have been giving to Mr. Roosevelt on a narrow divie = sion, the mine. workers have 230,» 000 members. ” ” » MR. ROOSEVELT won Penne sylvania in 1940 by approximately == 280,000, so the Democratic mars gin could be reversed if all the other sections of the electorate cast their bullots as in 1940, and if the miners follow the advice of their national convention,

The same applies to West Vire ginia, with only eight electoral

votes, but with 115,000, coal mine ers.

. It is true to a lesser extent in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois—where the miner vote is less important but where Republican claims are more confident than they are in Pennsylvania and West Wirginia, = » 2 @ THE CONVENTION proceede ings have shown that it will not be easy for John Lewis to get anything like a unanimous anti= Roosevelt vote from coal miners in the November election,

The proportion of miners whe do not believe in swinging away from the Roosevelt allegiance is believed to be greater than the size of the convention minority when the anti-Roosevelt statement was adopted,

Before debate was cut off, most of the rank-and-file speakers were pro-Roosevelt. There were only a few anti-Roosevelt, speak ers, but when the standing vote came the majority on the anti= Roosevelt side was tremendous— some observers said 3 to 1, and others as high as 20 to 1.

We, the Wome Love Letters Help Dispel Loneliness ;

By RUTH MILLETT z -IN.-TELLING men overseas hows 2 ; to become successful letter writers the navy bureau of personnel gives a long list of ihjeus that are “sure fire.” “The list is headed by “dove ended with “love.” And “love” is also stuck in the middle of the - list—just to re= ~. mind the men that it is nume ber one in ime portance. If the men overseas or will just take 6s that to heart— Miss Millett they'll be suecessful at writing letters, all right. For though the women back home want to know as much as will pass the censor about the experiences their men are having and their personal reactions to the war—the thing they most want to hear is that their men still love them and are anxious to get back to them, EJ - s IF EVERY letter a service man sends his wife or girl hammers | home that subject, his letters will be read over and over and carefully saved,

And the woman who loves him will be convinced he writes the most wonderful letters in the world.

The same thing is true in ree verse, of course, and any list of topics that a woman might in clude when writing to her man should be headed by “love'~ ended by “love” and have “love” in the middle of the list. - » s

SOMEHOW most of the people who gave advice on letter writ= ing at the start of the war didn't

women, and