The Enterprise (Mercedes, Tex.), Vol. 31, No. 8, Ed. 1 Friday, March 3, 1944 Page: 3 of 6
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THE ENTERPRISE, FRIDAY, MARCH 3, 1944
By W. L. White
© By W. L. White WNU Features
SYNOPSIS
CHAPTER I: The story of the famous
19th and 7th Bombardment Groups, of
Lieut. Col. Frank Kurtz and his Fortress
crew in the tremendous air campaign
that saved the day for the United Nations
in the Southwest Pacific. Lieut. Kurtz,
who was pilot of the old Fortress, known
as “The Swoose,” which escaped from
j Clark Field, in the Philippines, tells of
that fatal day when the Japs struck. He
j pedals to the wreck of Old 99, finds eight
' of his crew lying in an irregular line.
i CHAPTER II: Lieut. Kurtz tells how
orders to camouflage Old 99 were coun-
termanded; instead they were to load
bombs. . Then he was ordered to jerk the
l bombs, reload with cameras and rush
; the camouflage. Preparations made for
I taking pictures of Formosa. Someone
shouts, 'Look at that pretty navy forma-
I tion. The “navy formation” happens to
l be a flight of Jap planes.
I i. CHAPTER HI: Bombs hit the mess
i bom The Japs move off. They hear
J another hum. “P-40’s,” they think, but
they prove to be Zeros coming in from
the direction of Corregidor. The boys
duck back into their foxholes.
CHAPTER VII: Lieut. Kurtz takes up
the story again. He describes the hot,
dry Christmas day in Australia, and how
U. S. fliers spent it. A report comes in
over CW radio. It was from Schaetzel
saying he’d be in after dark with one
body aboard. Schaetzel gets in, his plane
a wreck. Gen. Brereton lands on the
field and the boys are summoned to a
meeting. _____
CHAPTER V: Fortresses are kept in
the air to save them from the Japs.
Through some mistake someone opens
fire on them. Japs begin photographing
the place. No longer safe to sleep in the
barracks, cots are moved into a corn
field. With no fighters left to defend
them, evacuation begins. Lieut. Kurtz
tells of last plane trip out in a patched-
up plane. Japs land light tanks at Apari.
Squadron commander Major Gibbs fails
to return from mission. U. S. forces flee
from Clark Field to Mindanao.
Texas Theatres Are Big
Help in Bond Sales
The motion picture theatres of
Texas were responsible for $47,665,-
0 59.00 in War Bond sales represen-
ting ten and a half percent of the
state’s total of $462,731,000.00, ac-
cording to an announcement recived
today by Mrs. Floyd Ennis, manager
of the State Theatre from R. J. O’-
Donnell, state chairman of the mo-
tion picture industry’s 4th War Loan }
campaign, who informed her that
the industry’s total figure repre-
sented more than 550,000 individ-
ual bond units and that there was
little question about the motion
picture theatres of Texas selling a
“Bond For Every Seat”, the goal of
their campaign.
t
O’Donnell advised Mrs. Ennis that
Nathan Adams, State War Finance
Committee Chairman, had stated
‘.‘the motion picture industry of Tex-
as has again come through in a
magnificient manner and along with
their fellow team mates, the retail-
ers, radio and press of the state,
can take justifiable pride in their
bond selling record for the 4th
War Loan.”
The total of $47,665,095.00 in
Bond sales accredited to the motion
picture industry resulted from the
following activities: 200 War Bond
premieres, wherein a War Bond
was charged as admission to see a
new picture furnished gratis by the
film companies, totaled more than I
$20,012,350.00 “Free Movie Days”
in more than 200 theatres brought
an additional $1,019,809.00.
Red Skelton, famous star of
(screen and radio, was responsible
for sales of $6,600,500.00 at War
Bond rallies held in Dallas and
Houston industrial plants, and $14,-
351,000.00 more at his radio bond
broadcast show at the U. S. Naval
Air Station at Grand Prarie, Texas.
“Truth or consequences,” another
radio show which was aired from
the Fair Park Auditorium in Dallas,
resulted in additional bond purch-
ases of $1,828,000.00.
The Hollywood Bond Battalion,
headed by screen players, Raymond
Walburn and Lynn Merrick, toge-
ther with 7 war heroes, were respon-
sible for $3,141,400.00 in bond sales
as a result of their bond selling ap-
pearances in Amarillo, Port Arthur,
Beaumont, Galveston and San An-
tonio.
The various film companies with
their exchange^ in Dallas purchased
more than $300,000.00 in bonds
from theatre issuing agencies.
Another $412,000.00 in bend
sales resulted from miscellaneous
theatre activities such as bond buy-
ing stunts and direct sales at bond
booths in., theatre lobbies.
Can Vitamins Restore
Color to GRAY HAIR?
Brunette Blonde Redhead
In tests with gray haired people, a leading
housekeeping magazine, using the “anti gray
hair vitamin.” found 88% of those tested had
some success. GRAYVITA contains the tested
amount of this remarkable vitamin PLUS <!50
Int units of Bi. Get GRAYVITA now. 30 dav
treatment $1.50, 100 days’ $4.00. Phone
WILLIS DRUG STORE
Phone 350—Mercedes
J CHAPTER VI
[ “About an hour out of Del Monte,
Shorty Wheless drops out of forma-
tion—we guess it’s engine trouble
and he can’t keep up this rate of
climb—and half an hour later Pease.
As we come to the rendezvous point
where we’re due to make our turn
and go straight in on our target,
only thirty-five miles away, Lee
Coats drops out—his motors we can
see are weak, he can’t make the al-
titude.
“That leaves just my pilot., Jack
Adams, and Vandevanter to go on in
alone. When we thought there would
be six planes, we had planned to
divide into two flights of three planes
each. The flights were to come in
on the target, at three-minute inter-
vals and at different angles.
“There are just two planes now,
so Jack decides he’ll pretend he is
one flight and Vandevanter will play
like he was the other. The two of
us against this big gang of Jap ships
we are closing in on.
“So, as agreed on, we come in
first—flying north to south. But the
overcast is so thick we have to get
down to about 1.3,000 before we can
see the target, and there it is—we’re
glimpsing it and then losing it and
glimpsing it again through breaks in
the clouds—a row of transports and
naval craft escorting them.
“Remember, we’re down to 18,000.
That’s not our altitude. The old D-
model Fortress is designed to per-
form best in combat at almost dou-
ble that height. But 18,000 is right
where the Zeros do their best stuff.
“When we come in on the target,
I’m down there in the lower jaw.
But now my job as navigator is
temporarily over, so I can leave it
and go back to the bomb bay, where
the bombs are hanging in racks on
either side of a little aisle.
“Now the bomb-bay doors are
opened, and light comes up around
the bombs. And now the bombs are
away. I lean over to look down
through the open bomb-bay doors,
feeling a little woozy because my
oxygen mask is back by my seat in
the navigaicompartment, and
just before Jack Adams from his
pilot’s seat slammed those bomb-
bay doors closed, looking down be-
low the belly of the ship I think I
see something, but then the doors
slam shut and there is only black-
ness. So I run back to the naviga-
tor’s compartment, and, boy! there
they are—a whole gang of Zeros
coming up after us. How did I feel?
Just the way anybody feels the first
time, no matter what they pretend
later—it scared the hell out of me.
Jack headed for a cloud which we
estimated was below us at about
10,000 feet—sloping down toward it
with full power on. Meanwhile the
Zeros had opened up on us about
thirty seconds after we first sighted
them—in an air battle the stuff
doesn’t take as long to happen as it
does to tell about later—and while
we were tearing for that cloud, reg-
istering 330 miles per hour on the
speed indicator, our gunners began
returning their fire.
“There were five of them after us
—climbing up and in on our tail.
Our bottom gunner shot down the
nearest one, but the other four kept
coming in a tight formation. Jack
Adams began wish-washing our tail
up and down to give our top gun-
ners a chance at them—no reason
why the bottom gunner should have
all the fun—and sure enough, the
top gunner picked one out of that
formation. That left three.
“So then Jack pulled a cute one.
He throttled back suddenly and one
Zero overshot us to the left, which
made him a clay pigeon for our
side gunner, who picked him off.
Then still another came up under
our stabilizer in the tail, and our
bottom gunner got his second for
the day. That made four Zeros
down and one to go—and it was still
going for us in spite of all we could
do. '
“We’d dribbled on down through
the bottom of that cloud, and Jack
was looking for a nice beach to set
her down on. But there wasn’t any
beach—only jagged rocks with white
surf wrapped around them—and we
kept losing altitude.
“The hell with those, so Jack
nosed her in toward land, still losing
altitude fast, and then right ahead
of us we spotted a big clump of
trees—about sixty feet high. Well,
there wasn’t time for anything but
a prayer, and not any long rambling
one either. But Jack handled the
situation beautifully. He pulled her
nose up as high as he dared and
just cleared those trees, and then,
cutting the remaining two motors so
we wouldn’t have to climb out of her
in flames, he made as nice a belly
landing in a rice patch as you could
hope for. Just as the ground was
coming up at us I hit the dome re-
lease gadget with my fist and it
rolled off, leaving that little hole you
can crawl out of quick if she catches
fire. But Jack set her down so
gently I hardly noticed the crash.
“You’ve forgotten that one re-
maining Zero? Well, I hadn’t, be-
cause it had followed us all the
way down. I crawled out as fast as
I could and started running away
from the plane parallel to the wing.
The funny thing was Bill Railling,
the co-pilot, was either stunned or
felt comfortable right where he was.
Anyway, he stayed right in his seat
while this Zero circled and then
came in, right along the line of our
wing. I just had time to fall down on
my chin and then it all happened in
a split second. The Zero’s guns
opened up, so that the first slugs
began kicking up the dust about
thirty yards away in a straight line
just a yard from my chin as she
went by with a big wh-h-h-i-i-ish-
sh-sh—the slugs beating a tattoo
along the length of the Fort’s wing,
with old Railling dreaming away
there, all relaxed in his seat, right
in the middle of them, and, believe
it or not, the boy wasn’t even
scratched! It goes to show it doesn’t
make much difference which way
you run or whether you run at all.”
“Within three minutes of the time
we crash-landed in the rice paddy
behind those tall trees we were sur-
rounded by^ a gang of Filipinos, all
waving the 'longest, sharpest knives
you’d want to see. But pretty soon
we convinced them we weren’t Jap-
anese, so they all got helpful and
told us we were on Masbate Island.
The chief of police produced a little
pony, and with a couple of branches
they cut we rigged up a pretty com-
fortable stretcher for Sergeant Ju-
mio, the one who had the cannon
bullet in his leg; we had to get him
to a doctor soon.
“Because these natives wanted to
honor the American officers who
were fighting for their country, they
brought me a donkey to ride. Of
course to have refused would insult
them, and yet I didn’t dream the
kind of a deal I was getting into.
The first half-mile wasn’t so bad,
and I even thought I was lucky I
wasn’t walking and getting sore feet,
like you do in the infantry. But
pretty soon I began to realize, first
just a little bit, and then more and
more, that there are worse things
than having sore feet.
“We crashed on the fourteenth of
December and on the twentieth we
bought an outrigger canoe for fifty
pesos, and hired natives to sail and
paddle us to the island of Panay,
with me getting a chance to brush up
on my navigating. When we were
about forty miles from land I noticed
the skipper of this craft of ours had
Because these natives wanted to
honor me they brought me a donkey
to ride.
crawled up into its nose and was
peering down into the water. Why?
Well, he explained, there were sup-
posed to be a lot of floating Japa-
nese mines here, and he thought it
would be all right if we didn’t bump
any of them.
“The next day we landed on Pa-
nay, and were told the American
forces were all ganged up down at
its southern end, and when we got
to them we reported to General
Chynoweth. Then we really were
in for it. Because it seemed the
old 19th Bombardment Group had
left Mindanao for Australia; so they
grabbed us and attached us to a
Filipino Field Artillery regiment,
giving Jack Adams, Bill Railling,
and myself a battalion to command,
which we thought was going to be a
considerable honor, since we were
only lieutenants.
“Then we looked "them over. They
were all about high-school age. Half
of them didn’t speak English, and
the job was to get them to under-
stand you. Of course they didn’t
know what to do with a rifle, but
this didn’t matter, because we had
only fifteen rounds of ammunition
per man—not enough for an hour’s
target practice.
“The Field Artillery part of it all
consisted of the name, plus six
sights for old World War French
75-millimeter field guns. The guns
themselves had been sunk on a sup-
ply ship in Manila Bay. The sights
had been shined up and were in
prime condition.
“We didn’t encourage these kids to
keep their rifles loaded, being afraid
that if one of the guns went off in
the dark they would start banging
away and shoot each other and
maybe us, so we gave them bayo-
net practice instead. Early in Jan-
uary they moved us over to Caygay-
en on Mindanao Island—we heard all
the troops from all the islands were
to make a stand there. But no Japs.
They gave us a section of the beach
a mile and a half long to defend if
they came.
“Right behind our lines there was
a small Jap colony. We knew they
were there, of course—we’d gone
through their houses looking for ra-
dio equipment, anything they might
use to send information to the Davao
Japs—and we posted a small guard
around them. But they’d slip out and
! go on down to Davao to join the
Davao Japs, and there wasn’t much
we could do to stop it. We were only
a handful ourselves. I didn’t care
much for that country—particularly
the pythons.
“So I was tickled to death when
word came to go back to old Del
Monte Field, where the planeless
aviators were being assembled for
evacuation to Australia, where we
would get safely back into the air
again.
“I got to Del Monte on March thir-
teenth and we were all ganged up on
the field, where we were expecting
B-17’s to carry officers and men to
Australia. At 9 p. m. we heard the
motors of a plane and turned on our
landing lights. But it didn’t see
them and kept on going. We didn’t
know it then, but we didn’t have A1
priority, for those planes that night
were intended to take out General
MacArthur and his party and their
baggage and records—only the Gen-
eral hadn’t yet arrived. But we
supposed the planes were for us.
“About 11 p. m. we heard another
plane and snapped the landing lights
on, and this time it saw them and
landed. Out of the Fortress stepped
Lieutenant Pease of our own 19th
Bombardment Group. He told us
the other plane we had heard was
Godman’s—it had got mixed up and
bumped into the sea.
“But Pease was immediately
called over by General Sharp, who
told Pease that General MacArthur
had been delayed, and that the plane
should wait over a few days until he
came.
“Now Pease didn’t want to wait
over for a single hour of daylight on
Del Monte Field, for by that time
the Jap planes were swarming over
the place. Pease knew the Air Force
was trying desperately to hang onto
what few Forts they had left, and
he realized that if he stayed over the
next day the infantry would make
him quite comfortable in a foxhole
at the edge of the field, where he
could watch his plane become the
prize for a Japanese turkey shoot,
for Del Monte by this time was as
unsafe as Clark had been, a fact the
infantry didn’t seem to have quite
grasped.
“So Pease explained to Sharp it
would be all right with him, provid-
ed General MacArthur understood
what he was getting into, that he
had a fine plane here except that it
had just come from the Java war
and was slightly out of repair. It
was too bad, for instance, that the
superchargers were out, but he
hoped he’d be able to clear the run-
way on the take-off and not slip off
into a cartwheel at the end of it,
spilling the General’s party and all
that baggage all over central Minda-
nao. And then, if he did take off, I
there was the little matter of his hy-
draulic system, which had gone bad
on him, so when he came to land the
brakes wouldn’t work, and he might
not be able to stop when he came
to the end of the runway.
“Well, General Sharp decided that
it certainly wasn’t suitable, and told
Pease he’d better get started back
to Australia before dawn.
“ ‘Pease,’ I said, ‘I’m goin’ with
you. You don’t know it, but you got
a new navigator for this trip. Be-
cause I’m not goin’ to stay in this
damn place no more.’
“Well, Pease agreed to let me
work out my passage that way, and
also said he could take off fifteen
other planeless aviators if they didn’t
mind the risk. He didn’t have much
trouble with this call for volun-
teers. I think most of them by this
time held my views of life on the
ground.
“We all got in, and discovered
Pease hadn’t been bragging a bit
about his plane when he talked to
the General. It was in just as terri-
ble shape as he had said it was; in
fact, he had been overly modest
about it.
“Now take a look at us in Austra-
lia. Exactly forty-eight hours after
we arrived the Australians told us
Radio Tokyo had broadcast, ‘It is
now understood the American Fly-
ing Fortresses are operating from
Batchelor Field near Darwin,’ and
they were one hundred per cent
right.
“How they knew it we never
learned for sure—probably from Jap
pearl fishermen, who had been
thinly scattered along this Austra-
lian coast and who when war broke
out went back and hid in the bush.
The RAAF (Royal Australian Air
Force) boys would spot their camp-
fires at night and try to track them
down, without much luck. Probably
they had radio senders, and even
a layman could count our four en-
gines and recognize us as Flying
Fortresses.
“The country itself is as desolate
and sparsely populated as the worst
parts of West Texas and New Mex-
ico, arid the most important town
for a thousand or so miles is little
Port Darwin, with seven or eight
thousand people, sitting there on the
rim of Nothing-at-All. It has wide
streets—like one of those Midwestern
towns built in the boom of the eight-
ies-r-a good hotel which is subsidized
by the Qantas Airways and reminds
you of the one on Wake Island, a
band which plays in a bandstand in
the park, and a zoo with a few
emus, kangaroos, ,and koala bears.
No fresh vegetables, everything im-
ported in cans. There you have
Darwin.
“Batchelor Field was about forty
miles back in the brush, and it con-
sisted of a couple of runways hacked
out of the mesquite (it was hard to
get tools for grading or dynamite
for stumps) and a hangar run by
the RAAF.
(TO BE CONTINUED) 1
Red Cross Asks $200,000,000 i
To Cover Wartime Needs
WASHINGTON, D. C.-Confronted
with responsibilities of .unprecedented
proportions, as the war enters its
most crucial stage, and with a stagger-
ing task ahead in the post-war period,
the American Red Cross opens its
1944 War Fund appeal March 1, con-
fident that the American people will
respond to the limit of their ability.
President Roosevelt, president of the
American Red Cross, Norman H. Davis,
chairman and active head of the vast
organization, and Leon Fraser, na-
tional War Fund chairman, join in
urging the people of this country to
help Red Cross reach its national
objective of $200,000,000 because of
the vital part it must play within the
next twelve months.
Chairman Davis, in opening the
campaign, will stress the fact that
with the decisive stage of the war at
hand, the Red Cross must assume a
greater burden than ever before, and
at the same time must provide aid to
servicemen being returned in ever-
increasing numbers.
Red Cross operations over the entire
world during 1943 have dwarfed its
activities during the first two years
of war.
An even greater burden will be
placed on Red Cross services in 1944.
Thousands of American men and
women are now in Red Cross service
with U. S. troops at home bases and
overseas. Field directors, hospital,
club and recreation workers are with
American armed forces in virtually
every command, Mr. Davis asserted.
Both in Europe and in the Far East,
Red Cross workers have either gone
with invasion forces into new combat
areas, or have followed within a very
limited time.
On the home front, the Red Cross
has broadened its service tremend-
ously. Field directors are serving in
every sizable military establishment!
and camp throughout the country, and
recreation and social service worker#'
are located in Army and Naval*
hospitals. i
One of the most important and
necessary war-time Red Cross func-
tions has been the collection of human1
blood for plasma. Thirty-five blood
donor stations are now operating.
The dramatic story of the Red Cross
Blood Donor Service, through which
thousands of soldiers and sailors have
been saved from death, began in Feb-
ruary, 1941, when the Surgeons Gen-
eral of the Army and Navy asked the
Red Cross to procure 15,000 pints of
blood. Last year more than 3,700,000
pints of blood were collected for the
Army and Navy. This year the goal is
more than 5,000,000 pints.
With major battles of the war yet
to come, the Army has asked the Red
Cross to supply many millions of sur-
gical dressings. American men wounded
in battle will depend acutely on the
vast Red Cross surgical dressing pro-
duction program.
Numerous other Red Cross home
operations, such as Prisoners of War
packaging centers, where more than
a million parcels for war prisoners
are prepared each month for shipment
overseas, are supported by citizen*1
participation in the Red Cross War
Fund.
So extensive is Red Cross service
during this war that every American
civilian can contribute something to
at least one of its functions. To con-
tinue this gigantic work, all Americans
must assume their share of the re-
sponsibility of carrying on this far*!
reaching service.
The $200,000,000 quota will enable
Red Cross to alleviate suffering and
pain at home and abroad, and to carry
on its vast military welfare service. !
Nt'W SHOW fFUSIONS'
THR'-L.VA, MYSTEWgl
FRIDAY, MARCH ToT^OOP. M.
Mercedes High School Auditorium
Admission—50c and $1.00 (Iincluding Federal Tax)
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Netz, Paul C. The Enterprise (Mercedes, Tex.), Vol. 31, No. 8, Ed. 1 Friday, March 3, 1944, newspaper, March 3, 1944; Mercedes, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1074024/m1/3/: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Library.