The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945
Page 141
His columns, done in foxholes, brought home all the hurt, horror, loneliness and homesickness that every soldier felt. They were the perfect supplement to the soldiers’ own letters.
Though he wrote of his own feelings and his own emotions as he watched men wounded, and saw the wounded die, he was merely interpreting the scene for the soldier.
He got people at home to understand that life at the front “works itself into an emotional tapestry of one dull dead pattern—yesterday is tomorrow and Troiano is Randozzo and, O God, I’m so tired.”
He never made war look glamorous. He hated it and feared it. Blown out of press headquarters at Anzio, almost killed by our own planes at St. Lô, he told of the death, the heartache and the agony about him and always he named names of the kids around him, and got in their home town addresses.
By September, 1944, he was a thin, sad-eyed little man gone gray at the temples, his face seamed, his reddish hair thinned. “I don’t think I could go on and keep sane,” he confided to his millions of readers.
He started home, with abject apologies. The doughfoots had come to love him. Hundreds of thousands of combat troops, from star-sprinkled generals to lowly infantrymen, knew him by sight, called “H’ya, Ernie?” when he passed.
He wrote, “I am leaving for just one reason … because I have just got to stop. I have had all I can take for a while.” Yet the doughfoots understood. They wrote him sincere farewells and wished him luck.
PACIFIC FOXHOLES CALLED
His books “Here Is Your War” and “Brave Men,” made up from his columns, hit the high spots on best-seller lists, made Hollywood. He was acclaimed wherever he dared show himself in public.
He loafed a while in his humble white clapboard cottage in Albuquerque, N.M.
He would sit there with “That Girl” and stare for hours across the lonely mesa, but the front still haunted him. He had to go back.
He journeyed to Hollywood to watch Burgess Meredith impersonate him in the film version of his books and last January he left for San Francisco, bound for the wars again—the Pacific this time.
He had frequent premonitions of death. He said: “You begin to feel that you can’t go on forever without being hit. I feel that I’ve used up all my chances, and I hate it. I don’t want to be killed.”
Fortune had come to Ernie Pyle—something well over a half-million dollars the past two years—and his name was a household word. He might have rested with that.
“But I can’t,” he wrote. “I’m going simply because there’s a war on and I’m part of it, and I’ve known all the time I was going back. I’m going simply because I’ve got to—and I hate it.”
So he went, and in the endless hours over the Pacific, in great service planes, he wrote with a soft touch of glorious Pacific dawns and sunsets at sea, of green islands and tremendous expanses of blue water.
SHARED GI’S POST-WAR HOPES
He journeyed to Iwo on a small carrier and wrote about the carrier crew. Then he moved on to Okinawa and went in with the marines, and there were homely pieces about that.
He had post-war plans. He thought he would take to the white clean roads again with “That Girl” and write beside still ponds in the wilderness, on blue mountains, in country lanes, in a world returned to peace and quiet. And these were the dreams of the doughfoot in the foxhole as much as they were his own.
But he knew that death would reach for him. In his last letter to George A. Carlin, head of the United Feature Syndicate which employed him, he wrote:
“I was completely amazed to find that I’m as well known out here as I was in the European Theatre. The men are depending on me, so I’ll have to try and stick it out for a long time.
“I expect to be out a year on this trip, if I don’t bog down inside again, and if I don’t get sick or hurt. If I could be fortunate enough to hang on until the spring of 1946, I think I’ll come home for the last time. I don’t believe I have the strength ever to leave home and go back to war again.”
But yesterday Ernie Pyle came to the end of the road on tiny Ie, some 10,000 miles from his own white cottage and from “That Girl.”
In one of his first columns from Africa he had told how he’d sought shelter in a ditch with a frightened Yank when a Stuka dived and strafed, and how he tapped the soldier’s shoulder when the Stuka had gone and said, “Whew, that was close, eh?” and the soldier did not answer. He was dead.
So yesterday on Ie a doughfoot, white and tense, looked up from a thin-faced, gray-haired figure prone beside him. Ernie Pyle had written his last letter home.
Allies Close in on Bologna from two sides: British troops of the Eighth Army (1) took Argenta and battled along Highway 16, while Polish units (2) drove beyond Castel San Pietro to points within nine miles of Bologna. In the central sector (3) Americans of the Fifth Army reached the outskirts of Pianoro, while other forces of the same army took Mount Tramanto and San Propsero. On the Lingurian coast (4) the Americans advanced a mile northwest of Ortonovo and were ten miles from La Spezia.
APRIL 19, 1945
BOTH ARMIES GAIN IN BOLOGNA DRIVE
British Capture Argenta and Battle Toward Ferrara as Poles Push Westward
By MILTON BRACKER
By Wireless to The New York Times.
FIFTEENTH ARMY HEADQUARTERS, Italy, April 18—British troops of the Eighth Army, slashing toward the main escape routes from Bologna on the northeast, have captured Argenta and are battling through the flood-flanked gap toward Ferrara, barely fifteen miles away, and the Po River, some three miles farther along Highway 16.
The latest reports emphasized that the mountains south and southwest of Bologna were slowing the Fifth Army’s main push. But the Poles on Highway 9 crashed two miles beyond Castel San Pietro to a point within nine miles of Bologna and the Americans cutting their way through the gorges of Highway 65 from the south eked out gains that brought them to the outskirts of Pianoro.
This is two miles beyond what is left of Livergnano. Even in this toughest of all sectors on the Italian front, the Allies’ forces are on the move under continuing air support by heavy bombers on tactical missions.
STAND ON IDICE SEEN
All signs pointed to a crucial German stand along the general line of the Idice River, which cuts Highway 9 four miles outside Bologna and curves up toward Argenta to form what has been dubbed the enemy’s Genghis Khan line. The Germans are believed to have staked the final defense of Bologna and the most vulnerable approaches to the Po on the holding of this line. New Zealand, Indian, Polish and Italian troops made notable gains toward it during the day, crossing the Gaiana Canal and extending the penetration since the Senio River crossings to almost twenty miles.
But there was still no sign of a breakthrough. Although the Eighth Army took 1,000 more prisoners, the Germans continued to fight back with all the fury of which they have long been capaable.
AMERICANS 8 MILES FROM CITY
The Fifth Army’s central drive down the “main line” to Bologna lowered the distance to that great objective to the shortest that it has ever been. Pianoro is between seven and eight miles from that city and the Americans have now fought through the mountain rimming the highway to a point within 1,000 yards of Pianoro. Tanks were able to grind onto Highway 65 at Zula, between Livergnano and Pianoro. Zula was entered after a terrible day during which one American unit on the most forward peak was inadvertently shelled by our own artillery.
APRIL 22, 1945
CONGRESS, PRESS TO VIEW HORRORS
Eisenhower Asks Delegations of Both To See German Concentration Camps
By WILLIAM S. WHITE
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, April 21—A Congressional delegation of twelve and a group of seventeen editors and publishers were formed tonight, at Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s request, to go overseas by air to inspect German concentration camps for political prisoners, conditions that the general had termed almost indescribably horrible.
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nbsp; The findings of these groups will be available to the world and to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco. The gravity of approach to this extraordinary mission—which could have a profound effect on the kind of peace eventually granted to the Germans—was illustrated in the fact that Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky, the majority leader, accepted a place on the Congressional delegation, although he will of necessity leave important pending legislation behind him.
DELEGATION IS BIPARTISAN
The Congressional delegation is bipartisan and includes members of the Military, Naval and Foreign Affairs Committees of both houses. Its membership follows:
Senators Barkley, Democrat, of Kentucky; Kenneth S. Wherry, Republican, of Nebraska; Walter F. George, Democrat, of Georgia; C. Wayland Brooks, Republican, of Illinois: Elbert D. Thomas, Democrat, of Utah, and Leverett P. Saltonstall, Republican, of Massachusetts; and Representatives R, Ewing Thomason, Democrat, of Texas; James P. Richards, Democrat, of South Carolina; Edward V. Izak, Democrat, of California; James W. Mott, Republican, of Oregon; Dewey Short, Republican, of Missouri, and John M. Vorys, Republican, of Ohio.
Messrs. Brooks, Vorys and Short have been among the most active men in Congress against internationalism.
JOURNALISTS LISTED
The delegation of editors and publishers includes:
Brig. Gen. Julius Ochs Adler, vice president and general manager, The New York Times.
Malcolmn Bingay, editor, Detroit Free Press.
Norman Chandler, general manager, Los Angeles Times.
William L. Chenery, publisher, Collier’s Magazine.
E. Z. Dimitman, executive editor, Chicago Sun.
Ben Hibbs, editor, Saturday Evening Post.
Stanley High, associate editor, Reader’s Digest.
Ben McKelway, editor, Washington Star.
Glenn Neville, executive editor, New York Daily Mirror.
William I. Nichols, editor, This Week.
L. K. Nicholson, president and editor, New Orleans Times-Picayune,
Joseph Pulitzer, editor and publisher, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Gideon Seymour, executive editor, Minneapolis Star-Journal.
Duke Shoop, Washington correspondent, Kansas City Star.
Beverly Smith, associate editor, American Magazine.
Walker Stone, editor, Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance.
M. E. Walter, managing editor, Houston Chronicle.
CONGRESSMEN SEE BUCHENWALD
WEIMAR, Germany, April 21 (AP)—Republican Representative Clare Boothe Luce of Connecticut, John Kunkel of Pennsylvania and Leonard Hall of New York visited the Buchenwald concentration camp today.
Mrs. Luce spared herself none of the grisly spectacles. She said that she hoped that the people of the United States would see motion-picture records that have been made there. She visited the basement crematorium where, in a white-walled room, thousands had been hanged from iron hooks.
Her prisoner guide told her how the executioner had used clubs shaped like potato mashers to kill victims who did not die quickly enough in the noose. She saw the elevator that carried the bodies upstairs to the furnaces. Outside the crematorium she saw a wagon stacked high with shriveled bodies. She did not remain long, saying: “It’s just too horrible.”
In the barracks she saw prisoners too weak to move from the tiered shelves on which they lay. Six had been forced to lie on the shelves in a space big enough only for three. She talked to many patients in the hospital—once a brothel—getting first-hand information about Buchenwald’s brutalities.
Among the emaciated prisoners was a 6½-year-old boy who had been imprisoned two and one-half years. “He was picked up in Paris because he was out after the curfew,” Mrs. Luce said. “No one wants to believe these things, but it is important that people know they’re true.”
She asked several of the former prisoners what should be done with Germans responsible for the atrocities, and they replied: “The same as they did to us.”
“That’s no answer,” Mrs. Luce said, but she did not amplify.
Mr. Kunkel declared: “No one could visualize these horrors without seeing them. It is hard to believe that such brutality existed anywhere in the world, but it certainly did here. It is incredible that some of the people were able to survive such an awful ordeal. This is a sight I hope never to see again.”
After a half-hour tour, Mr. Hall said: “You have to see Buchenwald to realize fully what debased beasts the Germans are. There is nothing here except brutality; corpses by the wagon loads. It certainly points up the question as to what should be done with Germany after the war.”
APRIL 23, 1945
7 MILES INSIDE CITY Defenses Overrun On 3 Sides—Resistance Is Mounting in Fury
By C. L. SULZBERGER
By Wireless to The New York Times.
MOSCOW, April 23—Despite bitter German resistance on both the Berlin and Dresden sectors, Soviet troops shoved forward again yesterday, capturing sixteen suburbs of Hitler’s dying capital of Greater Berlin and driving a salient across the main highway linking it with the Saxon citadel of Dresden, thus effectively narrowing the escape gap leading to the south. In addition to the suburbs, the Soviet High Command announced the capture of five towns on the approaches to Berlin.
[The Red Army has already seized one-sixth of Berlin in penetrations that total seven miles. A Stockholm report received from Berlin said that Soviet tanks had already thrust to within a mile of the center of the city at the intersection of Unter den Linden and Fried-richstrasse, according to The Associated Press.]
Official Soviet gains were reported early this morning in a restrained communiqué, which indicated that Marshal Gregory K. Zhukoff was driving hard on Berlin from the northeast, east and southeast. He solidified his positions by capturing the isolated towns of Biesenthal and Fuerstenwalde and then drove deeper into the thick cluster of suburbs ringing the city itself.
KONEFF STRIKES TOWARD DRESDEN
Marshal Ivan D. Koneff would appear to be by-passing Dresden farther to the south after having severed its principal link with the capital. His troops this morning were pushing hard for the Elbe River and Dessau, where the Americans are now battling German units striving to hold the flank of the last escape avenue for the besieged Berlin armies.
There has been no let-up in this shattering battle. Thirteen thousand prisoners have been taken in the Berlin sector alone, plus 500 artillery pieces. That Marshal Zhukoff has been able to seize more airfields is confirmed by the announcement that he captured sixty planes.
Marshal Koneff also overran some Luftwaffe bases and took 10,000 prisoners. The two army groups between them have taken 250 tanks and destroyed 156 others.
Edging like an inevitable juggernaut toward the city’s heart, concentric rings of rocket-firing Katusha trucks and line upon line of artillery—76 mm., 85’s, 122’s, 152’s, 203’s—hurled thousands of rounds into the crumbling citadel and were pulverizing it into that Goetterdaemmerung that haunts every German mind.
SOVIET FLIERS SIGHT AMERICANS
Overhead, wheeling and banking and virtually ignoring the last fanatic waves of fighters mustered by Reich Marshal Goering’s atrophied Luftwaffe, hundreds and hundreds of Soviet bombers, fighters and Stormovik attack planes bombed, strafed and rocketed to death the heart of “Festung Germania.”
As the political and military for tress of Nazidom disintegrated beneath this assault other Russian forces poured through the woods north of Dresden and east of Leipzig toward the advancing allies of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s command.
Soviet pilots in the south reported sighting the Americans at several spots, and some estimate the distance separating the advancing armies at no more than fifteen miles.
As this dramatic meeting impends, signalizing the ultimate strategical conclusion of the plans conceived in Moscow, London and Washington, Berlin’s doom was virtually sealed.
At this writing the furious battle is still ragin
g, but fierce German resistance by regular units was being firmly compressed into an ever-smaller area. Resistance was being met from storm troopers, the Volkssturm and hastily mobilized groups of retired reservists and civilians. They were using vast tank and tank-destroyer concentrations and withdrawing into the burning recesses of the city. The Russians also faced masses of artillery, including flak batteries hastily re-disposed against the advancing Soviet armor.
Pushing strenuously forward from suburbs to the east, northeast and southeast, which they had already gained Saturday night, Russian forces pierced at several points the ring of boulevards surrounding Berlin.
Soviet tanks picked up on their radios the frantic German messages—“They are blasting us hellishly”—and the eleventh-hour orders to “halt them at any price.” But the Russians kept on going. Working in individual combat teams, tanks, infantry and Cossack horsemen poured into Berlin while Russian shells strode up Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse with deadly, explosive steps.
RUSSIANS LAST IN BERLIN IN 1760
To the southeast the Russians had established themselves on the Spree River near the Lichtenberg railway station. Thousands, and more thousands, of troops kept pouring across the Spree, washing their grimy faces in its waters and shouting, “The war is coming to its end!” Others were driving west ward toward Berlin, the Elbe and their Allies.
To the south they drove toward Tempelhof airdrome, to which at the zenith of his career the Fuehrer had summoned Europe’s statesmen to listen to his orders. Now the huge airfield is a pock-marked waste, plastered by shells, bombs and Stormovik rockets.
Russian troops had not been inside Berlin since Oct. 9, 1760, when General Totleben accepted the capital’s surrender for his Empress Elizabeth and took its city keys, which to this day repose in the Kremlin.