World War II Chronicle: January 11, 1943
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A Navy surgeon aboard the destroyer USS Broome has performed his second appendectomy surgery at sea in three days. Both doctor and patient had to be tied down to keep from rolling… Page four reports the passing of Maj. Andrew S. Rowan, who was one of America’s more popular figures at the turn of the century. But the “Message to Garcia” incident that drove him to fame turned out to be pure fiction…
Brig. Gen. Kenneth N. Walker, commanding officer of V Bomber Command and one of the pioneers of strategic bombing known as the “Bomber Mafia,” has gone missing during a Jan. 5 raid on Rabaul. Walker regularly rode along on missions and was aboard a B-17F named San Antonio Rose when Maj. Allen Lindberg took off from Seven-Mile Aerodrome. Their Fort was last seen with a smoking engine headed into the clouds with a handful of Japanese Zeros in pursuit. Capt. Benton H. Daniel and Maj. Jack W. Bleasdale managed to bail out, but were captured by the Japanese and died while in captivity. The rest of the crew were never found, nor was their aircraft. More to follow…
George Fielding Eliot column on page 10… 175th week of the war summarized on page 25… Sports section begins on page 14, featuring a column by Grantland Rice… Col. Robert L. Scott, the top ace in the China-Burma-India Theater, has reportedly shot down two more Japanese warplanes in honor of one of his former pilots. Scott is currently the commanding officer of the 23rd Fighter Group. The 1932 graduate of West Point was an early advocate for making the Air Force a separate branch, and retires as a brigadier general in 1957.
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
WITH THE AMERICAN FORCES IN ALGERIA — Being with the troops in Africa, is in many ways, like attending a national political convention. Especially if you’re around one of the headquarters set up in the various coastal cities.
In Oran, for instance, the censor’s office serves as the press box, and that’s where you meet other correspondents and exchange dope and listen to the radio news.
Everybody eats at two big messes set up by the Army. If you want to see somebody and can’t find him, you wait till mealtime and you’re bound to see him there.
As at a convention, you run your legs off from one building to another, looking up various officers and having confabs. Everybody fills your ear full of dope, rumor and fact. Most of it you can’t use, and most of it isn’t true, anyway.
Convention-like people wander in and out of your room all day and night. Some of them you know, and some you don’t. Rooms are scarce, and you’re liable to have one friend and two strangers sleeping on your floor. You shake hands with scores of people whose faces you know, but you can’t remember their names or at which camp in Ireland or England you met them. And you’re always running surprisingly onto some genuine acquaintance.
A moment ago Pvt. Croby Lewis walked into my room. He’s a brilliant young American who joined the Canadian Army and was sent to England two years ago. Now he’s with us. The last time I saw him was at a cocktail party in London announcing his engagement.
Last evening I bumped into Lieut. Col. Louis Plain of the Marine Corps, who was one of my friends at Londonderry last summer. He’s a big Clevelander, hard as nails, who got the Marine situation well in hand here and then lost his voice, so he just makes motions.
On my first day here a beaming fellow in British uniform came up and started pumping my hand. It was Guy Ramsey of the London News Chronicle, whom I saw nearly two years ago when we were following Wendell Willkie in England. Ramsey is the greatest reciter of limericks in England. All of them are unprintable.
Way out in the country one night I was introduced in the darkness to Maj. William H. Pennington. We chatted a few moments, and it turned out we were in school together at Indiana University 20 years ago.
Yesterday a fellow came up whom I hadn’t seen for ten years. He was Grainger Sutton, once a linotype operator on the Washington Daily News. He is a major now.
So it goes. Friends you had in England, good friends from America, people you hadn’t seen for two decades. Tomorrow they’ll disappear again.
In wartime people leave without saying goodby — a fellow will be gone for three or four days before you realize his absence. It’s no use to inquire. You just accept it, and months from now you’ll be pumping his hand in some other foreign country. Or maybe you’ll never see him again. You never can tell.
You have to carry your own bed and tent, some extra rations, your clothes, and a lot of purely military stuff such as a gas mask, dust mask, tin hat, canteen, mess kit and so on.
No man can carry all that on his back. I personally couldn’t carry that much if there were two of me. Consequently it has to go on trucks. And inevitably it gets lost.
The result of this overweight of baggage is that people simply abandon part of it, even if they don’t lose it. They’ll be less comfortable, but they just can’t lug it all. Go into any billet or barracks and you’ll find bedding, or clothes, or barracks bags that the guy ahead of you left.
In the room I’m now occupying I picked up a nice cap which fits me better than my own, and also took the blankets I found on the floor and left mine in their place, because they were nicer than mine. There’s also a brand-new mess kit here if anybody wants it.
Wait, did Ernie mention a Marine officer in North Africa? Yes, Col. Plain was detached to the Army and helped plan and execute amphibious operations during the North African campaign. In fact he was second-in-command of a landing party at Arzew, Algiers, and was decorated for his role in capturing the harbor and several French vessels under fire.
Plain will later serve as the 27th Marines’ executive officer and is wounded on Iwo Jima. He enlisted as a private in 1925 and 32 years later he finished his career as a general.
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 11 January 1943. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1943-01-11/ed-1/