World War II Chronicle: March 2, 1943
XIV Corps commanding general Alexander M. Patch and 25th Infantry Division CO J. Lawton Collins are pictured on page seven awarding four soldiers the Silver Star. Pvt. Theodore W. Pavlovich (see his interview here) says he was waiting for the rest of Company A, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry to arrive on the island as was loaned out to a Marine outfit whose scout was captured. Pavlovich and the Marines were close enough to the Japanese that they had to listen to the sounds of their comrade being tortured throughout the night.
They also learned from captured Japanese diaries that the enemy would eat the buttocks of Americans they captured and killed. After that, Pavlovich didn’t take prisoners. But he did come across a Japanese officer wearing a sling. Pavlovich was able to snatch the enemy before he could detonate a grenade. Turns out, not only was this was the first Japanese officer captured on Guadalcanal, they pulled some useful intelligence out of him…
George Fielding Eliot says on page 10 that the Allied bombing campaign in occupied Europe isn’t softening Germany up for an invasion, but is stealing Luftwaffe resources from other theaters… Sports on page 14 and Grantland Rice writes about Honus Wagner, who was the best shortstop in baseball. Wagner was so good that Rice can’t even think of anyone that comes close…
A league of their own
Concerned that the war could bring an end to baseball, Chicago Cubs owner Philip Wrigley has formed the All-American Girls’ Professional Softball League. Page 15 says that management is considering what Midwestern cities will host ball clubs and will settle on four teams: Kenosha and Racine in Wisconsin; Rockford, Illinois; and South Bend, Indiana. Scouts have begun watching softball teams across the country for recruits. 200 are invited to try out at Chicago’s Wrigley Field.
Wrigley’s softball league uses a regulation size softball which is pitched underhanded, but from a mound which is closer to the plate than regular softball. The bases are further apart than in softball but closer than they are for baseball. The league is soon renamed the All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) and will be very popular. The female athletes won’t make Major League salaries, but they are paid pretty handsomely. Stay tuned for more on the AAGPBL…
Meanwhile, New York Yankees pitchers and catchers have begun working out at St. Petersburg, Fla. (page 15)… The Army is looking for a few thousand good pigeons. Page 19 says that the Signal Corps is still seeking messenger pigeons, who can be trained to carry messages in just two weeks… And on page 30 the British have a plan to send thousands of Bulgarian Jews to Palestine.
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
THE TUNISIAN FRONT, March 1 — (by wireless) — This and the next few columns will be an attempt to describe what a tank battle looks like.
Words will be poor instruments for it. Neither can isolated camera shots tell you the story. Probably only Hollywood with its machinery of many dimensions is capable of transferring to your senses a clear impression of a tank battle.
The fight in question was the American counter attack on the second day of the battle at Sidi Bou Zid which eventually resulted in our withdrawal.
It was the biggest tank battle fought so far in this part of the world. On that morning I had a talk with the commanding general some 10 miles behind the front lines before starting for the battle scene.
He took me into his tent and showed me just what the battle plan was for the day. He picked out a point close to the expected battle area and said that would be a good place for me to watch from.
The only danger, he said, would be one of being encircled and cut off if the battle should go against us.
“But it won’t,” he said, “for we are going to kick hell out of them today and we’ve got the stuff to do it with.”
Unfortunately, we didn’t kick the hell out of them. In fact the boot was on the other foot.
I spent the forenoon in the newly picked, badly shattered forward command post. All morning I tried to get on up where the tanks were but there was no transportation left around the post and their communications were cut off at noontime.
We sat on the ground and ate some British crackers with jam and drank some hot tea. The day was bright and mellow. Shortly after lunch a young lieutenant dug up a spare jeep and said he’d take me on up to the front.
We drove a couple of miles east along a highway to a cross-roads which was the very heart center of our troops’ bivouacks. German airmen had been after this crossroads all morning. They had hit it again just a few minutes before we got there. In the road was a large crater and a few yards away a tank was off to one side, burning.
The roads at that point were high and we could see a long way. In every direction was a huge semi-irrigated desert valley. It looked very much like the valley at Phoenix, Ariz. — no trees but patches of wild growth, shoulder-high cactus of the prickly pear variety. In other parts of the valley were spotted cultivated fields and tiny square stucco houses of Arab farmers. The whole vast scene was treeless, with slightly rolling big mountains in the distance.
As far as you could see out across the rolling desert in all four sections of the “pie” formed by intersecting roads was American equipment — tanks, half tracks, artillery, infantry — hundreds, yes, thousands of vehicles extending miles and miles and everything standing still. We were in time: the battle had not yet started.
We put our jeep in super low gear and drove out across the sands among the tanks. Ten miles or so east and southeast were the Germans, but there was no activity anywhere, no smoke on the horizon, no planes in the sky.
It all had the appearance of an after-lunch siesta but no one was asleep.
As we drove past tank after tank we found each one’s crew at its post inside — the driver at his control, the commander standing with his head sticking out of the open turret door, standing there silent and motionless, just looking ahead like the Indian on the calendars.
We stopped and inquired of several what they were doing. They said they didn’t know what the plan was — they were merely ready in place and waiting for orders. Somehow it seemed like the cars lined up at Indianapolis just before the race starts — their weeks of training over, everything mechanically perfect, just a few quiet minutes of immobility before the great struggle for which they had waited so long.
Suddenly out of this siesta-like daze the order came. We didn’t hear it for it came to the tanks over their radios but we knew it quickly for all over the desert tanks began roaring and pouring out blue smoke from the cylinders. Then they started off, kicking up dust and clanking in that peculiar “tank sound” we have all come to know so well.
They poured around us, charging forward. They weren’t close together — probably a couple of hundred yards apart. There weren’t lines or any specific formation. They were just everywhere. They covered the desert to the right and left, ahead and behind as far as we could see, trailing their eager tails behind. It was almost as though some official starter had fired his blank pistol. The battle was on.
(Continued Tomorrow)
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Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 2 March 1943. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1943-03-02/ed-1/