Vol. III   No. 24.                                             Reg. No. L5015  Delhi,  Thursday                                        February  22,  1945.

BRITISH  KIDS  PAY  VISIT
TO  FAMILIAR  AIRPLANE
    1333D BU, ASSAM - C-46 Curtiss Commando No. 603 flew over the homes of Masters Chester Morris and David McCrea, two British children who live near here, 844 times before they were invited to the Base to see it at close range.
  No. 603 made 422 round trips across The Hump in less than a year's time, establishing an all-time record of trips across The Hump. The crew chief, S/Sgt. Theodore J. Tomski, of Blossburg, Pa., met the children when they were brought on the Base by an officer who had become acquainted with their parents.
  The children had never seen an airplane on the ground. They asked numerous questions, and Chester summed it all up with "The airplane is quite a remarkable invention."
  The C-46, named Censored, is now off to the glue factory getting a complete overhaul.

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'ROUNDUP' PASSES OUT USA GUIDE

    The Roundup, dipping into the pool of the future with the realization that personnel now overseas some day will be forced to accept an assignment in Uncle Sugar Able, is printing this short, practical guide to that country.
  The United States is composed of land which is bisected in the center by the Mississippi River. Everything east of the river is known as New York and everything west is known as Texas. There are a few other States, but their status in the union is not exactly known.

SOFT BEDS COMMON
  When you get to Shangri-La, do not be inveigled into sleeping in one of the big, soft matressed beds that are so common. Many cases of curvature of the spine have resulted from this practice. In order to get a good night's sleep, carry a blanket and sleep on the floor.
  When taking a shower, care must be taken, as hot water is fairly common, and cases of G.I.'s being scalded are a common report.
  Food is generally plentiful but in some localities powdered eggs are almost impossible to obtain. You probably will be forced to eat the shell-covered kind on most occasions. Remember, do not eat the shells, simply crack the egg and toss away the outer covering.

DEHYDRATION SCARCE
  Dehydrated vegetables also are scarce - being almost extinct in the U.S.A. Stores have on display potatoes, carrots, spinach, and turnips in their raw and natural state. You will notice pieces of soil still clinging to these items. Wash before eating.
  In many restaurants you will see an item called steak on the menu. It tastes pretty good when you get used to it. Of course it doesn't compare with our very own spam and corned willy.
  Water comes out of faucets unchlorinated. It is wise to carry a small packet of chlorine with you. We advise your very own private lister bag.

SPOILED STUFF
  You will have to be very cautious when ordering drinks in bars and saloons. Bartenders will try to sell old, aged stocks of Scotch and Bourbon. Don't be taken in by such practices. Some whiskey is 20 to 30 years old and obviously spoiled.
  The country is occupied by Republicans, Democrats and a few other off breeds; but the Democrats have been running it for quite some time.
  Watch yourself when you get back, especially if you are in Brooklyn or Texas, and you will probably be able to get along, and possibly make a few friends among the native population.

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First member of the Mars Task Force to set foot on the Burma Road was Lt. Alfred T. Martin of Salem, Va., who received a field commission after leading a patrol which placed demolition charges of TNT and mortar shells in the middle of a Jap-held supply artery to blow a crater in the famous highway. A veteran jungle fighter, Martin has been in the Army five years and was a tech sergeant during the previous Burma campaign.

  By SGT. ALAN KAYES     Roundup Field Correspondent

    HQ., MARS TASK FORCE - February 2 was one of the big days in the attempt of the Mars Task Force to cut the Burma Road as they drove towards Lashio.
  On that day, Lt. Col. George T. Laughlin of the 124th Infantry and Lt. Col. Loren D. Pegg of New York went along as observers with three platoons. At the jump-off the platoon leader and platoon sergeant were wounded. Laughlin and Pegg jumped into the breach. Laughlin taking over two squads, Pegg the third, designating themselves as sergeant and corporal respectively. They advanced with the platoon to its objective.
  Sgt. Clyde M. Stockton of San Antonio, Tex., started up the hill in the same engagement carrying an M-1, a grease gun (the new all-metal .45 caliber submachine gun) and a pistol.
  As this walking arsenal advanced up the hill his platoon leader's M-1 gave out. Stockton swapped the M-1 for the one he carried, and proceeded up the hill, firing as he went. Pvt. John Valdez, of Houston, yelled that his M-1 had jammed, so Stockton swapped rifles with him and continued firing his grease gun. When he ran out of ammo, Stockton ran to a wounded man, picked up a carbine, jammed it into a pillbox, and fired until the magazine was empty. He ran back for rifle grenades, dropped by one of his own men, borrowed another M-1 that was working, picked up a musette bag of carbine ammo from still another wounded man, and went on leading his squad, ending up on top of the hill with all his guns and part of his carbine ammo left.
  "I didn't see any reason for throwing an M-1 away - I knew the fight would be over and I could repair it," he explained afterwards.

REAL TEXAN
  Another Texas sergeant from Houston, whose mother is a staff sergeant in the WAC, went into action carrying a Lone Star State flag tied to his rifle, which he intended to plant on the hilltop. He started up the hill as a mortar observer, but when the telephone wire ran out he went on as a rifleman. He grenaded two pillboxes, joined Stockton in a melee in front of a nest of pillboxes, and caught shrapnel in the leg when a Jap returned an American grenade which burst in front of him.
  He killed the Jap with his rifle as he fell to the ground, and then was carried down the hill to an aid station. Twice he sneaked out of the aid station and started up the hill with the flag in his hand, and each time the aidmen caught him and dragged him back. They took him to a portable surgical hospital where they kept him overnight, but released him the next morning and back he went with the flag.
  But he didn't plant it on the hilltop. His CO finally prevailed upon him to plant it some place else, explaining, "It's too large a flag and too bare a hill, and besides, the Yankees in this outfit who fought just as hard as you Texans did, won't like it."

YANKEES THERE TOO
  And there were Yankees fighting in the outfit side by side with their battle-happy Texas buddies. A bazooka gunner, from Cincinnati, threw away his bazooka when it failed to work, picked up an M-1 and a handful of grenades and went into the attack with the rest of his troop. When they reached their objective he became an aidman and litter-bearer, and although untrained in first aid, did what the medics called an amazing job. He was killed by a Jap sniper as he helped evacuate a patient down the hill to the squadron aid station.
  Pfc. Albert Z. Sutton, of Chicago, a mild-mannered troop clerk who was a writer in civilian life, asked for line duty to be near a buddy. When another friend was shot down right before his eyes, Sutton went berserk. He grabbed a grese gun and went from pillbox to pillbox, blasting Japs. He ignored a Jap Namboo machine gun which was firing at him at point blank range, killed the gunner, and accounted for four more Japs. He arrived at the objective unscathed, but pale and shaken by the experience.

JAP PLUNDER Cpl. Albert Silva of San Antonio, Tex. (right), and Pvt. Edward R. Purdin of Greenfield, O., examine a captured Jap light machine gun. The Namboo was taken from a Jap who tried to charge the heavy machine gun position held by the two G.I.'s on a hill.

KNOCK ON HEAD
  Sgt. Kim Hill of Champaign, Ill., a former U of Illinois student, was fired on by a Namboo, jumped into a foxhole he had just grenaded and landed on a live Jap. Hill couldn't reached his own bayonet, so he grabbed the Jap's sword with his right hand and wrestled with him for possession. The Jap, armed with a percussion type grenade, pounded it on Hill's forehead to set it off and kill them both. Hill clawed it from the Nip's hand, tossed it away as it exploded, then stabbed the Jap in the throat with his own sword.
  Lt. Leo C. Tynan, Jr., of San Antonio, went along with the troop of Lt. Jack Knight of Mineral Wells, Tex., as a field artillery observer. He had specifically requested the assignment. As they went up the hill together, with Knight blasting pillboxes and shouting encouragement to his men, a Jap tried to bayonet the troop leader but Tynan killed the Nip.
  Later Tynan reorganized the platoon, re-establishing communications, then led them on in the attack on a new objective under heavy artillery fire.

OFFICERS PRAISED
  One enlisted man, as he came off the trail leading from the perimeter, remarked, "Our officers have done some of the god-damnedest fighting I've ever heard of in my life."
  He had just seen Capt. William Wood, another Texan, and leader of a combat column, pick up a 30 caliber machine gun which had lost its mount as a result of a direct hit. He picked up the machine gun and led his troops up the hill, firing at pillboxes from the hip, sometimes bracing the gun in the crotch of a tree. He finally ran out of ammo. Reorganizing his units, he found that his artillery observer had been killed, so Wood contacted Mars artillery on his own radio, using cavalry talk, and directed fire on Jap positions by compass, gun direction, shell strikes and any other means that came to mind. So successful was Woods in his sensings that artillery used his directions as a concentration number and knocked out Jap positions completely.

SIDE BY SIDE
  There were other officers who fought with distinction side by side with their men. A lieutenant from Minneapolis, twice wounded veteran of the Myitkyina campaign, and wearer of the Silver Star, had killed his first Jap in the new campaign on January 19th, when he led his troops to an objective in a dusk attack. He volunteered for a combat patrol mission on February 4th, and the 29-year-old lieutenant was the first to go down under Jap sniper fire.
  Maj. George B. Jordon, of Douglas, Ariz., led his troops forward into high ground near Kawngsong, after Mars artillery laid down an intensive barrage. His group was the "Blue Chips" column - each man distinguished by the blue poker chip worn on a string around the neck. Jordon and his men gained their objective in the bitter fighting in this area, in time to hear Lt. Col. Caifson Johnson, former professional wrestler of Minneapolis, radio to Maj. John Lattin, another column commander: "Come on up, John, I have a new home for you." Johnson had moved his men across the floor of the Hosi Valley at dawn, and then up a 2,000-foot mountain to reach Loi Kang.
  Heroism wasn't confined to men in the line. A Brooklyn G.I. had tried his best to lead a mule, but just couldn't handle the animal. He pleaded to stay with the outfit, so they made him an aidman. He gave his life on Feb. 2, when he crawled out beyond the perimeter to rescue an enlisted man wounded and pinned down by fire.

LOSES HAND
  At Tonkwa, a staff sergeant picked up a grenade tossed at him and tried to throw it back but it exploded and tore away his hand. He didn't want sympathy. "Hell, I only lost a hand," he said at the hospital, "My buddy lost his life."
  Pfc. Arthur Affeldt, of Alexander, Minn., had better luck in the fighting for the hill position on the second of February. Affeldt moved up with his unit, picked up a discarded grenade made of a TNT block, just in case he might need it. Advancing uphill, he was fired on by a Namboo, so he rolled to one side and continued to crawl upwards,

After ambushing a tank and truck convoy, a demolition squad of the Mars Task Force plants dynamite charges in an effort to further disrupt enemy traffic along the Burma Road, main escape route for Japanese retreating towards Lashio.

watching spurts of dirt follow him up the hill. He finally maneuvered behind a small ridge which protected him from fire, then crawled close enough to a pillbox to use the improvised grenade. He saw at least one dead Jap as he passed the position.

ANOTHER TEXAN
  Sgt. James L. Speck of McKinney, Tex., also did well with grenades in the same encounter. While the rest of his squad was pinned down by fire he circled a Jap position and neutralized it with a grenade, killing two Japs. A Namboo opened up on him not 10 feet away but he threw his grenade as he turned, killing a Jap and silencing the gun. He continued uphill another 30 yards, still under fire, and threw a grenade into another Jap position, getting two more Japs and knocking out another Namboo. As he threw this grenade, a Jap rifleman in a slit trench five yards away jumped up, fired at him, and missed. That gave Speck time to aim his carbine and kill another Jap. Pinned down once again by automatic weapons fire, Speck crawled to three men who had been wounded in the burst of fire, and rolled them down the hill out of range of the weapons. Here he gave them first aid and saw to it that they were evacuated. As the wounded were carried off Speck saw a man from an ammo pack train go down, shot by automatic weapons fire. Speck crawled over to him under fire and moved him out of danger, then administered first aid.

RECOMMENDED
  Following a reorganization of his platoon and re-issue of ammo, Speck went out again, this time with Lt. Thomas Farley, to take a large fortified position, apparently a Jap command post. Approaching from different angles, Speck and farley liquidated the men holding that position. When his outfit reached the objective the men came under sniper fire, so once again Speck became an aidman and evacuated more wounded under fire. He has been recommended for decoration and citation.
  Pfc. John Sebastian of St. Louis, Mo., a squad leader, found two of his men wounded beyond the perimeter, while his position was under fire. Directing the rest of the squad to concentrate their fire on a pillbox from which sniper fire was coming, Sebastian crawled out beyond the perimeter and hauled the two men back to safety and medical aid.
  Pvt. Robert Rymp of Topeka, Kans., made his attack standing up in the face of enemy fire, shooting a grease gun with one hand and tossing grenades with the other. Afterwards he said, "I was just doing what everybody else did." But his covering fire and the accuracy of his grenade throwing made possible the elimination of several Jap positions by men in his squad.

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NO STATESIDE CIG RELIEF EXPECTED

    NEW YORK - (ANS) - The Big City went all out this week to relieve the acute cigarette shortage plaguing the nation, but the situation still looked as dark as a Burmese jungle in August, with indications pointing to continued troubles on the civilian front.
  Service personnel still are as well supplied as ever.
  This week the OPA announced after an informal pow-wow with jobbers and wholesalers that starting within a few days store would put cigarettes - if any - in full view on the counters, not under. This put a damper on the new brand dubbed "stoopies" by the wiseacres. Clerks have been slipping favored customers "stoopies" from under the counter when the uninformed weren't looking.
  That doesn't mean everybody is going to get smokes, however. Daniel P. Wooley, Regional Administrator for the OPA here, said that only 60 to 70 percent of the 1943 cigarette consumption would be available this year.
  Unperturbed by the shortage, 12 hitch-hiking soldiers in Portland, Ore., found a new way to get rides. They take Portland or Seattle signs off highway posts and hold them out with the bait dangling. The bait, of course, is every guy's favorite brand.
  In Washington, the Federal Trade Commission investigating the shortage at the instigation of Congress gave another answer for the shortage. Too much prosperity with more people with money who never indulged having taken up

WE GUARANTEE THEY ARE NOT TWINS Sgt. Henry Palejczyk, Base Engineers' electrician at the 1333rd Base Unit, points to his double. They are both Sgt. Henry Palejczyk. His hobby is trick photography. Not only did he pose twice in the same picture but he also snapped and developed it and printed his own negative in his homemade basha workshop. Ah, that Palejczyk ingenuity.

the habit has cut out the supply of the regular smokes.
  An incident in Buffalo, N.Y., spot-lights the shortage and throws a new aspect on the picture. Thomas Farrell, 56, who gave up drinking five years ago but just couldn't stop smoking, had a ready explanation this week when arraigned on a drunkenness charge. "You see, Judge," he said, "you want a cigarette. You go into a tavern. Whether you're on the wagon or not, you've got to buy a couple of drinks before even approaching the bartender on the subject of buying smokes."
  Farrell said he lost track of the number of tap rooms he visited in an attempt to buy cigarettes and conceded he may have had too many drinks.
  Sentence was suspended.

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WEART DEPUTY CG OF CHINA THEATER   CHUNGKING - Brig. Gen. Douglas L. Weart has replaced Maj. Gen. Gilbert Cheves as Deputy Commander of the United States Forces in the China Theater, it was announced this week.   Weart will also be commanding general of Rear Echelon troops, Cheves remains as commanding general of SOS in the China Theater.

YANK PRISONERS IN MANCHUKUO   WASHINGTON - (ANS) - The Japanese shifted 177 American war prisoners, including Lt. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright, from prison camps on Formosa to Mukden in Manchukuo last November, the War Department disclosed this week.   The group included 17 other generals, 119 colonels, six Navy captains and 34 enlisted men.

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'JUNKMEN' GET BRONZE STARS

    HQ., 10TH AIR FORCE, BURMA - "The Burma Junkmen" collect salvage and instruments from 10th Air Force planes downed in the jungles of Burma.
  In the words of Capt. Gari King, CO of liaison squadrons, "The salvage sorties they make into the jungles are practically our main source of supply for instrument and replacement parts."
  The leading spirits of the Burma Junkmen are M/Sgt. Roy F. Kappel of Wakefield, Kan., and First Sgt. James O. Roberts of Cement, Okla. They were recently awarded Bronze Stars for their work.
  Kappel's toughest mission was one by which he had to travel by leaky boat to a sand bar in the middle of a river deep in the jungle. He was accompanied on this trip by Sgt. Kenneth Harner and Sgt. Edmund G. Omdoil. The trio were on the sand bar for six days and finally had to be evacuated by a liaison plane.

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The Roundup is a weekly newspaper of the United States Forces, published by and for the men in Burma and India, from news and pictures supplied by staff members, soldier correspondents, United Press, OWI, and Army News Service. The Roundup is published Thursday of each week and is printed by The Statesman in New Delhi and Calcutta, India. Editorial matter should be sent directly to Capt. Floyd Walter, Hq., U.S.F., I.B.T., New Delhi, India, and should arrive not later than Sunday in order to be included in that week's issue. Pictures must arrive by Saturday and must be negatives or enlargements. Stories should contain full name and organization of sender. Complaints about circulation should be sent directly to Lt. S.R. Rose, Hq., U.S.F., I.B.T., New Delhi, India. Units on the mailing list should make notification of any major change in personnel strength or any change of APO.

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  FEBRUARY  22,  1945  

Adapted from pages 3 and 4 of the original issue of I.B.T. Roundup shared by Greg Clark

Copyright © 2007 Carl Warren Weidenburner




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