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Show LEW FREE PRESS. I.F.HI. ITAH With Ernie Pyle at the Front Boy Does Big Job Brazilian Troops in Italy Ordnance Keeps Army in Trim by Repairing Parts HOLLYWOOD LST Personnel From All Parts of Country Prove They Can Take It A CTORS are people, but not many studio bosses realize that. Too By Ernie Pyle IN NORMANDY. One of the things the layman doesn't hear nt tha ahnilt IS the OrdnanPP Hpnartmpnt - - . Tn for .it tc . i) nnn 111. . s4 i As. in . . .. tVA tl I. A.TAn fta v Qirarn w 13 mue aware ui except isuiuici CrancJica uiai mciajc in a vague way. And yet the war couldn't keep going without it. For ordnance repairs all the vehicles of an army and furnishes all the ammunition for its guns. Today there are more vehicles in with it all the time. This comw T M rr iften here grease paint gals and boys ire rated as so many pieces of prop-irt- y to be used or not as the bigwigs lee fit, then turned out to pasture. I once knew a young director who itated flatly that "actors are bums." de reeled off an entire column to rove his point that by and large ictors not only bite the hands that eed them but will take the arms off it the elbow. "They come to town with profiles md paper suitcases," he snarled. 1 I W fa Y&r-- IoWng at i sir? 1 ; If iliJwi I I I i v anxious tor a the American sector of our beachhead than in the average-size- d American city. And our big guns on an average pany does quick repair jobs. What it hasn't time or facilities for doing it hands on back to the next echelon in the rear. heavy day are The division ordnance companies more shooting up hit the beach on The next than $10,000,000 echelon back began coming on D- of ammuworth I IV plus four. The great heavy nition. So you see Uay outfits arrived somewhat later. i- -i ordnance has a Today the wreckage of seven job. weeks of war is all in hand, and in Ordnance per- one great depot after another it is This vouthful Italian lad. member sonnel is usually worked or re-- of the being 6 7 underground and familiar with about or per built or sent back for until Livorno area, directed American salvage cent of the total possible is made avail-- : troot)s from mi.d areas. men of an army. everything Ernie Pyle able again to our men who do the That means we fighting. In later columns I'll take tiave many thousands of ordnance-me-n you along to some of these repair St. in Normandy. Their insigne is that do the vital work. companies a flame coming out of a retort nicknamed in the army "The Flam-ji- g The cook on LST No. 392, on which If 1 Onion." Ordnance operates the ammunit- I came to France, was a beefy. fellow named Edward PIT I ion dumps we have scattered about But much bigger Strucker of Barberton, Ohio, which the beachhead. 'iian its ammunition mission is ord- is near Akron. Cooking on these transport ships Anance's job of repair. Ordnance has tf is a terrible job, for you suddenly 275,000 items in its catalog of parts, and the mere catalog itself covers a have to turn out twice as much food as normally. But Eddie is not shelf. In a central headquarters here on the worrying type, and he takes it he beachhead a modern filing sys all m his stride. Eddie has a brother named s tem housed in big tents keeps in the army engineers, and Charles and condition on the number of 500 major items in actual use on in the past year has been lucky .he beachhead, from tanks to pis- - enough to run into him four times once in Africa, once in Sicily, and iols. twice in Italy. We have scores of separate at work oc ordnance companies One of those small-worlexperithe beachhead each of them a ences happened to me, too, while on firm able within itself, complete that ship. We lay at anchor in a to repair anything the army certain harbor a couple of days be'V; uses. fore sailing for France. On the seca tank Ordnance can lift ond day I was in the washroom shavas easily as it can a bicycle. ing when a sailor" came in and said or It can repair a blown-ujeep there was a Commander Greene who the intricate breech of a mamwanted to see me in the captain's moth gun. cabin. The only Greene I could think Some of its highly specialized re of who might be a commander made are up largely pair companies in the navy was Lieut. Terry of men who were craftsmen in the Bmf "itfif iwnnimaitiftrr Greene, whom I had known in same line in civil life. In these You Greenwich Village days. my find the average :ompanies you will Covered by a buddy in foreground, didn't know I ever bad any age is much above the army averwho has a perch on the stump of a Greenwich Village days? Well, You will find craftsmen in age. blasted tree, American GIs charge don't get excited, because they their late 40s, you'll find men with a street in the village of St. Eny. up lurid weren't very anyhow. their own established businesses At any rate I went to the capwho were making $30,000 to $40,000 tain's cabin, and sure enough it a year back home and who are now was the same Terry Greene all You'll wearing sergeant's stripes. right. By some strange coincifind great soberness and sincerity dence we had both got 17 years plus the normal satisfaction that older in the meantime. whole from comes making things Greene held a very important poagain instead of destroying them You will find an IQ far above the sition in the convoy. He was tickled for he average for the army. It has to be to death with his assignment, that way or the work would not get had been in the States almost the whole war and was about to go nuts done. You'll find mechanical work being for some action. I haven't seen him on this side of done under a tree that would be Channel to discuss it, but I'm the in housed in a $50,000 shop back America. You'll find men working afraid our trip over wasn't as ex16 hours a day, then sleeping on the citing as he would have liked. But and it ground, who because of their age you can't please everybody, was just tame enough to suit me don't even have to be here at all. Ordnance is one of the undramatic fine. One of the gun crew is Seaman branches of the army. They are the mechanics and the craftsmen, the John Lepperd of Hershey, Pa. He fixers and the suppliers. But their is about the oldest man in the crew. job is vital. Ordinarily they are not He is 34, and has three daughters in a great deal of danger. There 17, 15 and 13 and yet he got drafted are times on newly won and congest- last November and here he is sailed beachheads when their casualty ing across the English channel and rate is high, but once the war set- helping shoot down German planes. tles down and there is room for It still seems a little odd to him. It movement and dispersal it is not is quite a contrast to the building been in. necessary or desirable for them to game, which he had do their basic work within gun Also on this ship I ran into one of range. Our ordnance branch in Normandy my home - towners from Albuhas had casualties. It has two small querque, Electrician's Mate Harold branches which will continue to have Lampton. His home actually is in DeSales Glover of Pittscasualties its squads Farmington, N. M., but he worked and its retriever companies that go for theitelephone company at Albu- burgh, who enlisted when he was 14, Now was mustered out with DFC, the Air up to pull out crippled tanks under querque, installing new phones. he is the electrician for this ship. Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters, fire. But outside of those two sections, He has been in the navy for two the Purple Heart, and 31 bombing if your son or husband is in ordyears and overseas for more thanfel-a missions to his credit. nance in France you can feel fairly year. He is a tall, dark, quiet deal more easy about his returning to you. I low who knows a great Mail Goes don't say that to belittle ordnance about the Southwest than I do. He our house driven has he past said worin any way but to ease your ries if you have someone in this many times, and we had long nosbranch of the service overseas. talgic talks about the desert and Indian jewelry and sunsets. We are both tired of being where we are and Ordnance is set up in a vast we wish we were back on the Rio structure of organization the Grande. same as any other army command. The farther back you go Among the soldiers I talked to the bigger become the outfits on the LST were Corp. Loyce and the more elaborately Gilbert of Spring Hill, La., Pfc. equipped and more capable of Oscar Davis of Troy, N. C, and work. doing heavy, diPvt. Floyd Woodville of or armored Every infantry vision has an ordnance company :hance, or so hey say. But vith their first mccess they turn n the people who suilt them up, re-'uto do this or se y. 4 Eny Captured Jii mff:t!i: good-nature- :f at Naples when the Brazilians disembarked. Brazil has asked that her troops be used on every front. Brazilian air troops have received training in U. S. and war workers of America have turned out a large volume of supplies for the South American troops. Prknnprc; I V' 30-to- n p iiff: Hero Mustered Out bomb-dispos- al L pnr pH for I L S. rf JL-- s ' ' , Those studio gold Dolores Moraa juite a few carry on a strange kind )f war with their actors in which, or ' 10 it seems, they try to impede their srofessional progress. I say 'strange kind of war" because to ne it's ridiculous to sign a batch of lids, boys and girls, to long contacts, then to keep these kids miles 'rom a camera until at option time bey are unceremoniously given the fates. This is not the rule at all studios. nd many times the nobody of today take jecomes tomorrow's star. Let's noth-ng loan Leslie, who has been in but big pictures since she :hecked in at Warners. Right off the jat she was handed the femme lead pposite Gary Cooper in "Sergeant York." Then an important part opposite Jimmy Cagney in "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Joan held down an xtremely impressive role with Ida Lupino, Dennis Morgan, and Jack Carson in "The Hard Way," by the feminine lead in "RhapsGerman prisoners aboard a coast transportwar ody in Blue" and her newest, War-leJones." Joan came to weariness and homesickness alike seem evident in the faces of these to work. She's working. She's German prisoners as they gather around on deck. They face a long ne of the lucky ones. period of internment in the United States before they return to the homeSo is Dolores Moran. Dolores, an land which they are singing about here. absolute greenhorn at acting, wasn't rushed into a picture on arrival. Instead they let her get her feet on Pock-Marke- d the ground before giving her a dramatic role as Miriam Hopkins' jiaughter in "Old Acquaintance." now she's sWI Dolores came through, so with Humphrey Bogart in "To Have and Have Not." Dolores Moran, it should be noted, is on her way up lot out, as she might have tared elsewhere. There's also Alexis Smith, whose story is too well known to bear retelling here. iff tFnj it l fol-ow- ed "Cin-ierel- guard-manne- d A Jap Seaplane : j, .-- smvsfm No n, sol-ii- er They'll Beat Watching marines at this captured harbor in the Marianas islands examine the results of bombing and strafing of a Jap seaplane by American air"Mavis" was one of several caught on the ground men. The at the Jap seaplane base at Tanapag harbor. The number shot from the air has been considerable, but the Jap loss of planes destroyed on the ground has been increasing. U. S. four-motore- d The Second Marine Cemetery Dane Clark tried out at a couple other studios before reporting to Warners, where he was shoved into "Action in the North Atlantic" with Humphrey Bogart. He's just finished "The Very Thought of You," and unless he does a part for Uncle Sam instead is definitely on his way in pictures. Other studios that take time to develop young players are Metro and Paramount. Marjorie Reardon came to prominence in "Stage Door Canteen" along with other youngsters. Ditto Elizabeth Taylor, who'll surprise you in "National Velvet." Diana Lynn gets star billing in "Our Hearts Were Ycung and Gay." And look what's happened in one year to Sonny Tufts. Yep, star dust keeps clouding up our way, ana we jusi Keep on roiling of along. He's a Deserving Boy Freddie Bartholomew, who's I asked if the General was still at Walter Reed hospital. He said yes, and that his father was very excited because they had just built him a penthouse on the hospital roof. I have been told that despite his age and poor health General Pershing is very close to this war, and that some of our general staff call on him almost daily for advice and counsel. Time Wasted Take the case and what a easel -- of Robert Alda. Bob stepped into stardom with his first picture, 'Rhapsody in Blue." A product of burlesque, Bob was signed like hundreds of others each year, but, unlike others, he wasn't asked to sit around he was put to work. Now, after a big buildup as a newcomer playing George Gershwin, he'll probably be seen first in "Cinderella Jones." Eleanor Parker might be just another pretty girl. Certainly the Cleveland, Ohio, youngster is pretty enough. But her first part was that of Joseph P. Davies' daughter in Eleanor "Mission to Moscow." clicked, so in her next "Between Two Worlds" she got the feminine lead opposite Paul Henreid. Good Pyle Finds General Pershing's Son Making cap-'.ai- la rs m Among the army personnel aboard sur ship was Capt. Warren Pershing, ton of General Pershing. The who is not a professional at all, started out as a private n this war. He is in the engineers. He is a tall, blond, regular fellow nd everybody likes him. He leans ver backward not to trade on his father's name. He doesn't speak of the General unless vou ask him. braids who share this director's point of view and there are Ixceptiont That Make Rule Through long-ter- it' J general stink up the joint." rec-ird- d IV that part, and in The first contingent of Brazilian troops is shown arriving in Italy to take its place beside the American, British and French Allies in the fight against the common foe. A Yank guard of honor was on the dockside V.i rrt d r Joan Leslie 1 aired JPNV r man-size- d out-rep- I Taking advantage of a lull In the driver fighting, marine halftrack snatches a few moments to read his mail while a fellow crewman keept the enemy under surveillance somewhere on the Japanese front. f"itT" in Marine details dig graves in the Second marine division cemetery the temporary resting places Saipan. The cemetery has been made Second marines who fell in tLe hundreds of Leathernecks of the are assigned for details base. Marianas of Special the conquest of care the cemetery. and protection on for the the do- ing a Shirley Temple meaning he's as he was a just as good grown-u- p child actor is under term contract to P.R.C. . . . Minna Gombell, after playing meanies for years, went goodie in "Sight Life" for Universal. (I don't mean "gooey.") . . . Jimmy McIIugh is proud over th success of little June Allyson. H predicted she'd be a star. Dick Powell also shares Jimmy's |