World War II Chronicle: April 30, 1943
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Page two reports that large formations of Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighters are now flying across the Atlantic to reach combat units in Europe and North Africa. There is attrition, with several planes having mechanical issues or ditching in the ocean, and that brings up the logistics of how best to get everything from the United States to the front. You may not be terribly interested in the logistics of combat, but the economics behind the war can make just as important — or even more so — than the thrilling strategy and tactics. We had brilliant leaders and hard-nosed fighters. So did the Germans, and as we can see in Tunisia the Afrikakorps had more experience. I would argue a major factor in how well we fought was because our capitalist system was far more efficient than that of Nazi Germany. They are dumping tons of precious manpower and resources into super weapons like jets, missiles, and remarkable tanks that, while impressive and well ahead of their time, have little strategic impact. Meanwhile, the United States is determining what will have the biggest impact on the war and making a ton of it, despite having the challenge of having to split everything between two theaters — both of which require shipping.
While we can wonder years later why they risked the losses of pilots and P-38s, back then it was someone’s only job to figure it all out. And they determined that the reward of increased shipping space was more valuable than the risk of transatlantic flight. Since the twin-engine warplanes had enough range to hop the pond, the vast majority of planes still get there and the convoys could carry other things like fuel, camouflage netting, or cartons of cigarettes which can actually be just as crucial to the fighting man as the Lightning.
It would be fascinating to see, if there was some kind of simulator that did this, how things would turn out if the American people switched places with Germans. Fascists will be fascists, so it wouldn’t be long before the simulated Fourth Reich expanded into Canada and down through Central America. But in this case, we’d task Hitler with fighting in Europe and in the Pacific.
Instead of having to produce massive fleets of Liberty ships, everything the European United States did would be within relatively easy reach. We’d only be fighting in one hemishpere instead of two. Instead of super weapons, have our troops armed with cheap and easily maintained vehicles and plenty of fuel with fleets of four-engined bombers. Our limited industrial capacity I think wouldn’t be as much of a factor if we weren’t stupid enough to invade the Soviet Union or devote resources to a genocide. Could Hitler and his staff get what they needed across an Atlantic swimming with our submarines? And how would they have stacked up against well-supplied Americans with plenty of combat experience? I don’t think Germany would have fared well at all, even having the benefit of factories and their vast resources being so far away from the war. I think it would be just a matter of time before you had American bases on Vichy French territories off the coast of Canada and then the battle would bleed into North America.
But then you could get into the “what-ifs:” If we had invaded the Soviet Union I don’t think it would have ended much better for us. While it’s not hard to think we could have captured Moscow, the USSR was just too big and had too many people. Every country has its dark past, but America in the early 1940s was not a culture of conquest. And when the Japanese attacked our simulated North American Germany, what if we didn’t declare war as Hitler did? Interesting to ponder. And could the challenges of distance force the Germans to focus more on an atomic weapon? The bomb in Hitler’s hands and not ours would be a game-changer.
Also on page two is a story of a sailor being washed off his destroyer by high seas and miraculously being dumped on another ship 40 minutes later by another wave… George Fielding Eliot column on page eight… The “Torpedo 8” story continues on page 19… A war correspondent tells of riding along on a 10-hour bombing mission in the Pacific, the longest task force operation of the war so far (see page 30)… Sports begins on page 41
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
NORTHERN TUNISIA — (By Wireless) — One night at Kairouan three of us correspondents, finding the newly taken town filled with newly arrived British and American troops, just drove out of town into the country and camped for the night. We didn’t put up a tent. We just slept in the open.
The mosquitos were fierce, and we draped netting over our heads. We were in a sort of big ditch right alongside an Arab graveyard. But neither the graves nor the mosquitoes bothered us that night, for we were tired and windburned, and before we knew it morning had come and a hot sun was beaming down into our squinting eyes.
And what should those sleepy eyes behold but two Arab boys standing right over our bedrolls, holding out eggs. It was practically like a New Yorker cartoon. For all I know they may have been standing there all night.
At any rate they had come to the right place, for we were definitely in the market for eggs. They wouldn’t sell for money, so we dug into our larder box and got four eggs in trade for three little cellophane packets of hard candy. Then we started all over again and got four more eggs for a pack of cigarettes.
We thought it a good trade, but found later that the trading ratio which the Germans had set up ahead of us was one cigarette for one egg. We Americans have to ruin everything, of course. But as one tough-looking soldier said:
“If I want to give $50 for an egg it’s my business and my $50. And from all I’ve seen of Arabs an extra franc or two ain’t going to hurt them any.”
All this transpired before we had got out of our bedrolls. But the youthful traders didn’t leave. As we were putting on our pants each boy whisked a shoeshining box from under his burnoose and went after our shoes. Then when we started a fire and were feeding it with sticks, one of the boys got down and blew on the flame to make it burn better. It was easy to see that we had acquired a couple of body servants.
The boys were herding about two dozen goats in some nearby clover. Now and then one of them would run over and chase the goats back nearer to our camp. We called one boy Mohammed and the other Abdullah, which seemed to tickle them. They were good-natured, happy boys of about 15.
One of them tried on my goggles. He seemed to imagine that he looked wonderful in them, and giggled and made poses. He didn’t know the goggles were upside down. Also he didn’t know that I was hoping fervently his eyes weren’t as diseased as they looked.
The boys told us in French that the Germans had made them work at an airport, opening gas cans and doing general flunky work. They said the Germans paid them about 20 francs a day, which is above the local scale, but they were German-printed francs, which of course are now absolutely worthless.
Our self-appointed helpers hunted sticks for us, poured water out of our big can and helped us wash our mess kits. They kept blowing in the fire, they cleaned up all the scraps around our bivouac, they lifted our heavy bedrolls into the jeep for us, and just as we were ready to leave they gave our shoes a final brushing.
We paid them with three cigarettes and two sticks of gum each, and they were delighted.
When we were ready to go we shook hands all around, au-revoired, smiled and saluted. And then one of the boys asked apologetically if we could give them one more thing maybe. We asked what it was they wanted. You’d never guess. He wanted an empty tin can for his goats to chew on. We gave him one.
“Hadji” is the Arab word used in place of “Sir” before the name of anybody who has journeyed to Mecca and become holy. Seven journeys to the Kairouan equal one to Mecca, so we correspondents now go around calling each other Hadji, since most of us have crossed the city line more than seven times.
Another word we’ve adopted is “djebel.” It’s Arabic for hill or mountain. On the maps every knob you see is Djebel This or Djebel That. So we also call each other Djebel, and if you think that’s silly, well, we have to have something to laugh at.
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 30 April 1943. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1943-04-30/ed-1/