Front page: Annapolis football legend “Navy Bill” Ingram passed away last night in his sleep. The Marine Corps swore the 44-year-old former Navy head football coach in as a major back in January. While Navy Bill was at the helm, Navy’s football team went 9-0-1 in 1926, playing Army to a 21-21 tie at Chicago’s Soldier Field. The Midshipmen finished No. 2 in the nation, but modern scoring systems rate them as that year’s national champions. Page 18 of tomorrow’s newspaper has more on Navy Bill…
George Fielding Eliot discusses the fading threat of German U-boats on page eight.. Chapter 3 of Clark Lee’s “They Call it Pacific” on page 26…
Sports on page 46. Charles Smith, the little brother of former Texas A&M end Herbie Smith has arrived at College Station to take his brother’s place on the team. Herbie, a hero in A&M’s Sugar Bowl victory over Tulane in 1940, joined the Army out of college and was killed in September 1942 when one of his P-38 Lightning’s engines failed during takeoff. Charles plans on also becoming a pilot when his time comes… United Aircraft News ad is on page 57.
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
ALLIED HEADQUARTERS, North Africa — Men and machines have both now passed their shakedown period in this war — at least here in North Africa. Men who weren’t up to their jobs have largely been culled out and given different work. There are still some inept ones in office jobs, but among the line troops the mill of experience has pretty well ground out the weaklings, the freaks and the misfits.
And it’s the same with machinery and weapons. Some things have proved themselves almost useless. Others have turned out so perfectly that the engineers would have to scratch their heads to think of any change in design.
In the mechanical end of our African war three American vehicles stand out above all the others. They are the jeep, the GMC two-and-a-half-ton truck, and the Douglas DC-3 cargo plane.
The DC-3, known in the Army as the C-47, is the workingest airplane in existence, I suppose. It lifts incredible loads, and takes terrific beatings from rough fields, hard handling and over-use. Almost any pilot will tell you it is the best airplane ever built.
The GMC truck does the same thing in its field. It hauls big loads, it is easy to drive and easy-riding, and the truck driver can do practically anything with it up to an outside loop. It seldom gets stuck, and if it does it can winch itself out. The punishment it will take is staggering.
And the jeep — good Lord, I don’t think we could continue the war without the jeep. It does everything. It goes everywhere. It’s as faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat. It constantly carries twice what it was designed for, and still keeps going. It doesn’t even ride so badly after you get used to it.
I have driven jeeps thousands of miles, and if I were called upon to suggest changes for a new model I could think of only one or two little things.
One is the handbrake. It’s perfectly useless — won’t hold at all. They should either design one that works or else save metal by having none at all.
And in the field of accoustics, I wish they could somehow fix the jeep so that at certain speeds the singing of those heavy tires wouldn’t sound exactly like an approaching airplane. That little sound effect has caused me to jump out of my skin more than once.
Except for those two trivial items the jeep is a divine instrument of wartime locomotion.
Only once in my long and distinguished jeep career have I ever had anything go wrong. That time the gears got all mixed up and the thing wouldn’t come out of low gear. It was while we were still fighting around Mateur.
Our road was under heavy German shellfire, so the only thing we could do was take off cross-country and make a wide circle around the shell-infested area. We drove through shoulder high barley fields, along footwide goat trails, up over hills, down steep banks, across creeks, and over huge rockbeds. Then just as we hit the main road and were out in the free again, this gear thing happened.
We still had 20 miles ahead of us, and there was nothing to do but keep on going in low gear. Luckily we hadn’t gone more than a mile when we saw a little sign denoting an Armored Force repair depot. We drove in just on a chance, and sure enough they said they could fix the jeep. They not only fixed it but gave us supper while we waited, and were extremely pleasant about the whole thing. That’s better than you get in the States.
The boss man of this outfit was Lieut. George P. Carter, of Louisa, Ky. He had intended becoming a doctor, and had just finished his premedical course, but now he’s a doctor of heavy machinery. His gang retrieves tanks and repairs them, and keeps all the mighty rolling equipment of an armored division in order. To them, fixing a jeep is like a boilermaker fixing a watch, but they can do it.
The mechanic who fixed our gears was Sergt. Walter Harrold, of Wadena, Minn. Already that day his outfit had been forced to move twice. German artillery had got their range once, and they were divebombed another time.
Sergeant Harrold had been working and moving and dodging all day and would have to work some more that night, yet he worked on our jeep with as much interest as though it were his own. You can tell a mechanic at heart even on a battlefield. Or maybe I should say especially on a battlefield.
