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Show Yank Troops in Ireland By Quentin Reynolds (WNU Feature Through special arrangement arrange-ment with Collier's Weekly) One of the strangest sights I ever saw anywhere was an American General Grant tank parked outside of the cathedral in the small but ancient town of Downpatrick. 1 walked inside and found the crew signing the book of visitors. Lest it be said they were merely sight-seeing in a tank, I might add that they had been scheduled tc have lunch in Downpatrick but had passed that up to see what many believe to be the burial place of the good Saint Patrick. I heard the sight-seeing tank crew arguing as to whether Saint Patrick had been buried here as Downpatrick claims, or at near-by Saul (where he died), or in 'Armagh (where he always said he wished to die). The argument as to where the dust of the good saint now lies is today as current and as colloquial as is the argument at home as to which was the better ball team, the Yankees of 1927 or the Yankees of 1936. Twenty-three places in Ireland Ire-land take considerable pride in claiming his bones, and Saint Patrick Pat-rick is no myth in Ulster by any means. ' Our Irish President. The army has made Belfast its port of leave. At best, 'Belfast is a rather dreary town, and I defy any Ulsterman to say otherwise. In fact, Ulstermen are the first to admit it. Our boys are sight-seers at heart, and at first they swarmed all over Belfast, looking at such architectural architectur-al atrocities as the Albert Memorial clock at the foot of High street, which rivals the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens in London for ugliness. During the London blitz, London citizens would run hopefully toward this tribute to ugly mediocrity each morning. But, alas, it was 'never hit and st(ii stands. The boys trooped hopefully into the Belfast museum and were mildly intrigued to find there the pictures of 13 former for-mer Presidents of the United States in whose veins there ran Ulster blood. If you care for details, the Presidents were Adams, Monroe, Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, Johnson, Grant, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The Grand Central hotel in Belfast Bel-fast is the headquarters for American, Ameri-can, Canadian and British troops and officers on leave. Tanks Everywhere. Northern Ireland is not a very big place. You can drive right across it in three hours. On your drive, you'll pass many magnificent gateways to large estates, for Ulster Ul-ster is the land of the very rich and the very poor. At these gateways you'll see sentries in the American uniform, for every large estate in Ulster was taken over, first by the British army and now by the American Ameri-can army which is gradually replacing re-placing it. Drive into these beautiful beauti-ful estates with lush foliage, lovely half-hidden streams, often filled with trout, and you'll find divisional or regimental headquarters. The house the staff lives in may be 300 years old and more often than not, you'll find that the local squire or lord who owns it is now living quite happily in a gardener's or bailiff's cottage on the estate. Price Is High. Hundreds of these large landowners landown-ers gave up their estates to the Crown when war came, for Ulster, unlike her fat sister to the south, never professed to be neutral. She paid for it when Nazi bombers gave Belfast hideous blitzes; but she thinks the price was worth it. She still has her self-respect and intends to keep it. It is odd to follow a trout stream and bump into an armored unit. We have plenty of Honeys (the light 13-ton 13-ton tanks) and plenty of the General Gen-eral Grants (28-ton tanks) in Ulster, and today the farmers of Ireland are as accustomed to seeing tanks crawl over their pastures as they are to seeing their cattle or their pigs. It's all part and parcel of the great changes wrought by the world's greatest war. As far as food and comfort are concerned, our army is the' best cared for in the world. To date, the only medical complaints which have registered themselves are yellow jaundice (quite a lot), athlete's foot and mumps. Their food, augmented augment-ed by fresh eggs from the local farmers, is better than the food of either the German, British, Italian or even the Russian army, and at night, when they sleep, their blankets blan-kets are as warm as the magnificent magnifi-cent woolen blankets that are given to the Russian soldiers in wintertime. |