World War II Chronicle: August 25, 1943
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First-hand account of the Battle of Viru Harbor on page five. The article mentions Capt. Anthony Walker of the 4th Marine Raider Battalion, who earned his first Silver Star last month. Walker enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating from Yale where he played football and boxed. He was commissioned in 1941 and spends 30 months of continuous combat duty, finishing the war as commander of the 6th Marine Division’s Reconnaissance Company. He earned the nickname “Cold Steel” due to his prowess in the bayonet and hand-to-hand fighting. Walker will spend a year in South Vietnam as Joint Military Assistance Command’s Operation Officer…
George Fielding Eliot column on page 10… On page 16, General George S. Patton has told his Seventh Army soldiers that they have destroyed the prestige of the Axis (see page 16)… Sports section begins on page 17.
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
SOMEWHERE IN SICILY — General Bradley has around him at the front, in addition to his military officers, a little official “family,” and it really is like a little family.
It consists of his two young captain aides, his sergeant driver, his corporal orderly and his brigadier general chief of staff whom I’m not permitted to name.
The two aides are Capt. Chester Hansen, of Elizabeth, N.J., and Capt. Lewis Bridge, of Lodi, Calif. Both are 25, both were graduated from college in 1939. Hansen from Syracuse U., and Bridge from California Aggies. Their nicknames are Chet and Lew and that’s what the general calls them.
Captain bridge has no “s” on the end of his name and he says it burns his father up to be called Bridges since he has an antipathy against Harry Bridges.
Both Captains went through Officers’ Training School at Fort Benning when General Bradley was commanding there and both came right out of the officers’ school into his family. They’ve been with him now for 16 months and consider themselves the two most fortunate young officers in the American Army. They sleep in cots under a tree about 50 yards from the general’s truck which also is parked under a tree since the general has an aversion to occupying buildings and usually keeps a command post in tents out in the open.
Around headquarters the two aides are on call constantly but for jeep traveling with the general they take alternate days. Both are bright, understanding, likeable fellows who worship at the general’s feet and do a good job representing him in the same thoughtful manner he uses.
The general’s driver is Sergeant Alex Stout of Port Barre, La., below Baton Rouge. Although he is only 23, he has been in the Army six years. He doesn’t however, intend to make it a career. Recently his grandmother died and left him a fertile 275 acre farm and when the war is over he is going back to farm it himself.
Sergeant Stout was married last Christmas Day. His wife is waiting back in Louisiana. He has a brother Noah who is a captain in the Army in Australia. Sergeant Stout has been driving for General Bradley for two and-a-half years. He is so good that when Bradley reached North Africa he sent back to the States for him.
Stout takes a meticulous pride in the general’s jeep. He has it fixed up with sponge rubber cushions, a built-in ration box under the back seat, and keeps it neat as a pin.
General Bradley says having a good driver is important for he relaxes while he’s riding and he can’t have a driver who annoys him by going too slow or one who keeps him tense by reckless driving. One night last winter the general had a black-out driver who was so cautious and creepy he had to take the wheel himself and drive half the night.
Sergeant Stout is another devoted fan of the general’s.
“He does everything for you,” the Sergeant says. “I got to him with my headaches, go to him for advice, go to him for money. He treats me just like my own father does.”
The general’s orderly is Corporal Frank Cekada of Calumet, Mich. Frank is the newest one of the general’s family, having been with him only since last March.
Frank says a colonel in Oran picked him for the job because he always kept himself looking neat and clean. He was driving a truck before he got this assignment. He had never been an orderly before but soon caught on. Frank’s duties are as he puts, “to keep the general happy.” He cleans the quarters, looks after the luggage while moving, and whenever he can’t find Sicilian women to do the general’s washing Frank does it himself.
Frank is 24, and before the war was, of all things, a bartender. He says the general treats him like a personal friend and he hopes nothing happens to this job.
General Bradley lives in an army truck, which has been fixed up inside like a tourist trailer. In the front end is a nice wide bed running crosswise of the truck with a blanket with the initials of U.S. Military Academy. Along one side is a desk with drawers under it. On the other side is a closet and wash basin. A field telephone is a leather case hangs on the end of the desk. There is a big calendar on the wall and each day is marked off with an x. There is a book rack with four or five columns of military textbooks, one called “Our Enemy, Japan” and a French grammar which the general never finds time to study.
On the front wall over the bed are painted the dates of the campaigns in North Africa with the beginning and ending dates and Sicily with the invasion date.
We conjectured on what date the Sicilian campaign would end and oddly enough the general’s date was a little further off than mine. There are no pictures in the truck, no gadgets on the tables. The general has not sent home any souvenirs, in fact he has acquired only two for himself. One was a German Luger from Tunisia and the other a lovely Sicilian dagger with the Fascist emblem on the handle. On the wall opposite the table is a big map of this area of Sicily. It probably is the most important piece of equipment in the place.
The general sits there alone at night studying the map for hours, thinking and planning moves for the morrow over this frightful country ahead. There alone before his map many of the most important decisions are made.
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 25 August 1943. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1943-08-25/ed-1/