World War II Chronicle: April 29, 1943
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American pilots have figured out how to attach 1,000-lb. bombs to their P-40 fighters and are now pulverizing their Japanese targets in Burma (see page three)… Meanwhile, on page six we learn the commanders of the China-Burma-India Theater are in Washington to confer with Secretary of War Henry Stimson… Helicopters — or “helicoptors” in the article — were still a brand-new concept in 1943, Igor Sikorsky having first flown one that was still tethered to the ground in 1939. Page six also reports that the U.S. government has awarded shipbuilder Henry Kaiser a contract to build “airplane that can stand still or fly backward.” The machine he likely has in mind is a design by a teenager named Stanley Hiller named the “Hiller-Copter.”
George Fielding Eliot column on page eight… Yesterday we noted the passing of Maj. Gen. Robert Olds and on Tuesday another general had died at Walter Reed Hospital. Brig. Gen. Frank D. Lackland (bio here) had retired last year and becomes the namesake of Lackland Air Force base in 1947… Page 26 tells of two Marines who volunteered to take out four enemy pillboxes on Guadalcanal. They took a whole lot of guts, a few grenades, and fortunately for them luck tagged along…
Recently we read a warning from an outspoken officer that the war could drag on for decades if we don’t get the right equipment in the right hands quickly, as the Japanese will consolidate their captured territory. On page 32 we have a U.S. senator warning the same thing. Bear in mind that while we view this war with the benefit of hindsight, they lived in a world of purely conventional weaponry. Had it not been for a top-secret weapon currently under development, the United States and Japan could have fought each other for a lot longer, with many millions of casualties. Looking ahead from the end of April we still had a very long and bloody war ahead of us…
Sports begins on page 44, which reports that former Major League catcher Mickey Cochrane’s Great Lakes Navy baseball team will play the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals on Monday. Also mentioned is hard-hitting Montreal Royals prospect Jack Graham. The son of former catcher Peaches Graham gets a call from the Army Air Force before the Brooklyn Dodgers though. He has a decent rookie year in 1946, playing 102 games for Brooklyn and the New York Giants. Graham returns to the majors as the St. Louis Browns’ starting first baseman in 1949, hitting 24 home runs and knocking in 79 runs. He had a distinguished minor league career, hitting 354 home runs…
The “Torpedo 8” story continues on page 53.
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
NORTHERN TUNISIA. — (By Wireless) — Africa is a strange country, and this war is very little like the last war in France. Yet here too many an American sleeps beneath a field of poppies — poppies so red and vivid that their beauty is strangely saddening.
The desert battlefields and the northern battleground too are alive now with flowers. They grow wild, in patches as thick as grass blanketing in solid acres. They grow together in vast stretches of red, yellow and orange, all of it framed by the lush green of new grass.
Even the dullest spirits among us can’t help being touched by their ironical loveliness.
I have stopped now and then to see some of the battle graveyards. The Germans bury their dead in small cemeteries along the roadsides, but we concentrate in fewer and bigger graveyards, usually on the edge of some town. Arabs are hired to dig the graves.
At Gafaa there is an American cemetery with more than 600 graves. It is in desert-like country, and the graves are aligned in precise rows in the naked gray earth. Each is marked with a waist-high wooden cross.
In a nearby tent is a great pile of ready-made crosses, and a stack of newly carpentered wooden markers in the form of the Star of David, for the Jewish dead.
As all the American dead in the Gafaa area have been located and reburied in the permanent graveyard, this cemetery section will move on to other fronts.
The little German cemeteries are always bordered with rows of white rocks, and in some there will be a phrase neatly spelled out in white rocks with a border around it. One that I remember said, in rough translation:
“These dead gave their spirits for the glory of Greater Germany.”
In one German cemetery of about a hundred graves we found 11 Americans. They lay among the Germans, not segregated in any way. Their graves are identical with those of the Germans except beneath the names on the wooden crosses is printed “Amerikaner,” and below that the Army serial number. We presume their “Dog Tags” were buried with them.
On one of the graves, beneath the soldier’s serial number, is also printed: “T-40.” The Germans apparently thought that was part of his number. Actually it only showed that the man had his first anti-tetanus shot in 1940.
My friend Sgt. Pat Donado of Pittsburgh was with me when we looked at this graveyard, and as we left he said:
“They respect our dead the same as we do theirs. It’s comforting to know that.”
We also came upon a number of Italian graveyards set out in fields. These graves too were well marked, and each had a bouquet of wilted marigolds.
At the side of one little Italian cemetery, which was beautifully bordered and decorated, were half a dozen additional graves, apparently dug at the last minute before retreat. They were just rough mounds, unmarked except for an empty quart wine bottle stuck upside down at the head of each grave. Inside the bottles we could see scraps of paper, apparently with the dead Italian’s names and numbers on them. Naturally we wouldn’t violate these graves by pulling out the bottles, but even if our inclination had been rowdy we would have been afraid to. There are rumors, which I have not been able to verify, that such grave-marking bottles are sometimes booby traps.
The Germans leave very clean country behind them. Their savage organization must be one of the best in the world — probably because of desperate necessity. We’ve gone all over the Tunisian country from which they have fled, and evidences that they have been there are slight. You see burned-out tanks in the fields, and some wrecked scout cars and Italian trucks lying in roadside ditches, and that is about all. Nothing is left behind that is repairable. Wrecked cars are stripped of their tires, instruments and lights. They leave no tin cans, boxes or other junk as we do.
We’ve seen little evidence of German earth-scorching, probably because the retreat northward was too fast. Some bridges were blown up. Mountain passes and the paths around wrecked bridges were all heavily mined.
But the most noticeable thing is the destruction of all telephone lines. They cut down about every other pole along the highways, and snipped most of the wires. The poles weren’t chopped down. They were sawed off about two feet above the ground and very neatly sawed off too, the fastidious marauders.
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 29 April 1943. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1943-04-29/ed-1/