VOL. III        NO. 10                  REG NO. L5015        DELHI, THURSDAY                  NOVEMBER 16, 1944
A line crew attached to combat troops disperses a liaison plane among the bamboo trees alongside the Ledo Road.

  By S/Sgt. EDGAR LAYTHA     Roundup Field Correspondent

    BURMA - It was a sunny day in Myitkyina and a very sunny one for the Burma Cubs, a valiant liaison squadron of the 10th Air Force. Their bulletin board surprised them with six awards of the Distinguished Flying Cross, 24 Air Medals and one Oak Leaf Cluster to an Air Medal. The recipients were all enlisted men, sergeant pilots who fly and maintain the breezy little Stimson Sentinels, their baby planes.
  The happy Cubs sat near their airstrip, painting their new emblem: A cub bear with a red cross on its
Touring Brambles
  Wispy, whimsical S/Sgt. Edgar Laytha is touring the brambles as staff correspondent for the Roundup. This is his second article, following sharply on the heels of last week's story about the G.I. Railroad.
  Before donning khaki britches, Hungarian-born Laytha was a contributor to the Saturday Evening Post and covered the Southwest Pacific Theater.
 Treat him kindly, chums - The Editor.
forehead, a mailbox on its shoulders. The little bear stood for the little planes, the red cross for the evacuation of wounded, the mail bag for the many thousand letters and Stateside packages the flying G.I.'s dropped to lonely outposts in the jungle. But the Burma Cubs did much more. They adjusted artillery, co-ordinated tank battles, dropped supplies and ammunition, and ferried generals to the front, carried Jap prisoners back. Ann Sheridan, once their passenger, left her pretty pink panties behind. They are still preserved as a curio.
  We sat under a shady Burma oak. The sergeants related their bold exploits in a dry, matter-of-fact manner. They feel rather casual about their adventures. With the next dawn, these lose for them the military glamour which is always present at the climax of a great escapade. But they love the thrill of taking a Cub plane into action whose only armament is the pilot's pistol.
  Almost all the Cubs flew in civilian life. Many are washed out cadets, many were too old to become cadets. All this increased their passion for flying. The strips lie five to 15 minutes from the front and they feel bushed when a day goes by without having been in the air. Once in a while, they are shot down or lost in bad weather. Then they name the strips after their dead buddies. Their main strip is Robertson Field, since T/Sgt. Harold D. Robertson has never returned.
  Death always was a close companion of the tall Texan, T/Sgt. James L. Penny, who was washed out at Randolph Field but earned the Air Medal at the famous Seton Strip, a sand bar in the Mogaung River, where a surrounded unit of the Chinese 38th Division was trapped and shelled from both banks. Penny brought in ammunition over the Jap mortars and evacuated the Chinese wounded under fire. He made eight return trips during the day and this was what he felt in the middle of it. "A man is nervous like a donkey . . he feels he is next . . still he has a job to do. He hurries loading the wounded."
  My first mission with the Burma Cubs took us deep into enemy territory. The pilot was T/Sgt. Edwin L. Booth, DFC, called "Pop" among the Cubs. Booth, 37, one of the oldest men in the squadron, once owned a garage in
In dangerous missions, tiny L-5 liaison planes, though vulnerable to enemy attack, fly in to pick up men wounded and almost isolated by Japs and jungle. Exhausted, grimy and unshaven, Sgt. Jack L. Mayer, one of the heroes of Burma, is loaded aboard one of the saucy planes.
Canton, Ohio, his hometown. He taught airplane mechanics on the side and flew his own plane for pleasure in a 500-mile radius around Canton. "Pop" is one of the best artillery spotters of the squadron, but follows his outfit's policy in being a jack of all trades. So, we went mail dropping.
  The jungle-green face of Northern Burma stretched beneath the little Sentinel like a wide open page of history and by its landmarks we read the squadron's record.
  The rebuilt town of Myitkyina and the once bloody Irrawaddy River bathed peacefully in the midday sun. Only the old bomb craters, now filled with stale muddy water, recall a grim past. Fresh green rice paddies in the midst of the yellowing dead ones, water buffaloes in the fields, toiling peasants in straw-thatched hamlets prove new life, new faith.
  We dive, the sergeant-pilot points to a village road, shows the spot where T/Sgt. Clifford W. Bryant, DFC, AM, from Hollister, Calif., nightlanded so audaciously during the battle of Myitkyina. Merrill's Marauders were split into three forces and the leaders of each had to be brought together. Bryant's job was to land in the center of the narrow village road, and pick up a colonel marked with white cloth. Young Bryant fell into a ditch as he stepped from the liaison plane into the night. Somebody helped him instantly to his feet. The colonel.
  The plain grows into jungle, climbs into the hills, the Bhamo road beneath us cuts through all. The road is busy. Chinese troops with their mule teams and rice-carrying K.P.'s are moving towards Bhamo. High above them in little clearings on the brow of the mountains, we see the large bashas of the Kachin people.
  The thick forest throws its scent to the sun. The aromatic perfume is all about us. The open, windowless little plane seems to sail between the emerald hills and the sky. I forget the Japs, the war, and see our baby plane in a world of peace taxiing tired city people over the Catskills, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park. But we dive again, sink into a clearing and throw the parcels and bundled mail from my lap into the grass where two G.I.'s are waving and waiting. We dive a second time to check whether the mail has been properly picked up. The performance is repeated in other forests on other clearings.
A liaison plane attached to combat troops takes off from a landing strip along the Ledo Road. Planes used the field even when it was under construction.

  We are nearing Bhamo and reach Pagoda 17, which sits like an elegant ivory tiara on the head of a green hill. It is the end of our safe line, but we fly on.
  Enemy territory. The trails beneath us are empty, the villages seem lifeless, nowhere a Jap. The uncanny silence of the landscape foreshadows the pattern of the new campaign. The Jap avoids contact to choose his own battleground. Or is he beneath us in the depth of the jungle which testifies so aptly for his sly character? He has never seen a jungle in his homeland but found a home in this war under the covering foliage of tropical forests.
  Heading towards Mogaung, the Cub plane wings over the Chin Hills, lands on a silver glade where activity is great. A cavalcade of Chinese soldiers, marching and on horseback, cross the glade, follow little trails into the jungle. Another section of the clearing is littered with parachute silk of all colors. Above us, a large transport plane dives again and again. Its seemingly limitless belly spits large supplies of ammunition, which descend by parachute and are picked up instantly by the Chinese. For them it's manna from heaven. Their C ration cans are very similar to ours. Instead of pork and beans, they get chop suey with soya bean flavor prepared and packed in Chicago. They are equally fond of parachute silk, for they wear it for shorts, shirts, dungarees.
  Over the Mogaung Valley, the sergeant pilot points to a bold mountain curve on a road leading into the plain. The curve is flanked from each side by two husky trees whose crowns meet above the center of the curve.
  There, underneath the leafy canopy, Sgt. Walter Benedict, from Washington, D.C., made his legendary landing, hurrying blood plasma, ammunition, gun oil to besieged Marauders who were holding tight to our road block.
  Another landmark. A meadow which meets the jungle. There S/Sgt. Alvin A. Zellinski, from Cleveland, Ohio, earned the Air Medal for his outstanding performance in tank control. He helped to direct our tanks with special radio equipment against jungle positions they couldn't see. When the battle seemed all over, Zellinski spotted a trailing tank knocked out by enemy fire. He radioed to the leading tank and the men were rescued.
  We are almost back in Myitkyina, but there is still the sand bank which brought 21-year-old S/Sgt. Walter A. Oggs, who washed out in Merced, Calif., the Silver Star. A C-47 shot down by a Zero crashed there. Oggs landed, brought first aid, saved the crew.
  And, of course, there are more places which tell the liaison squadron's story, but this would go to book length. There are the pilot Sgts. Davis, Goeders, Guthrie, Loescher, Durham, Wester and many others whose deeds were equally daring and brave in the great tales of the slick fiction the Flying Fortress and its cousins naturally have the field. But those men in the jungles will never forget the baby planes and the Burma Cubs. How could they have lived and worked and fought without them?


Captain Ranked By Lieutenant In New Theory

    MYITKYINA - Albert is a captain and Elbert is a first lieutenant, but Elbert has outranked Albert all his life by 15 minutes.
  Anyway, that's what some of their comrades around here say. First Lt. Elbert Higgins, the twin brother of Capt. Albert Higgins, was born a quarter of an hour before Albert, and therefore claims he's outranked him all through life and will continue to do so, no matter how many times he gets promoted.
  The Brothers Higgins, both with Merrill's Marauders, are as like as two tomatoes in a bottle of catsup. In fact, they are so much alike, that Maj. Gen. Frank Merrill ordered Albert to grow a moustache so he could tell Albert from Elbert.

BOTH ONE-EYED
  The Higgins brothers, from Texas, are both blind in the same eye, both were commissioned second lieutenants on the same orders, and were promoted to first lieutenant on the same orders; but recently Albert reached the status of captain, although still outranked by Elbert on the precedent-shattering birth theory.
  Ex-students of Texas A & M College, from which they were graduated in 1942, the Higgins boys lost out in R.O.T.C. because they were blind in one eye. The commandant at the school, however, got them a commission in the Quartermaster Corps.

QM AND LOVE
  "Being blind in one eye - or both - doesn't matter very much in the Quartermaster Corps." said a mutual friend of the Higgins boys, himself in the Field Artillery. "The Quartermaster Corps is like love," said he. The Higgins brothers could not be reached for a statement about the Field Artillery it probably would have been good.
  Albert in late weeks has been known as "Hugger" Higgins, a name which was hung on him by Elbert. While Albert was away on leave recently, Elbert sent him a number of mysterious telegraphic messages, signed "Fem," which purportedly were from a lady who had been "done wrong."
  The first message said that the fictitious lady was "about to become a mother," and then several days later a message arrived for the perplexed Albert, saying "have become a mother."
  So Elbert calls Albert "Hugger" these days. It has not been revealed what Albert calls Elbert since the incident, but perhaps it is just as well polite society doesn't know.


BIGGER B-29 BLOWS

    DETROIT - (ANS) - Gen. Henry H. Arnold, AAF Commander, told the Detroit Economic Club this week that the time is coming when thousands of American bombers will visit Japan daily to plaster that enemy homeland just as Allied fliers are crushing the industrial life of Germany today, adding, "Today only long-range B-29's can hit Japan proper, but tomorrow - things will be different."


Liaison Officer Wins Plasters For Burma Job

  By HUGH CRUMPLER    United Press Correspondent

    HQS., SEAC - Lt. Col. Joseph Rockis of this headquarters has been awarded the Bronze Star and the Combat Infantryman's badge for his work as liaison officer supplying rations and ammunition to a crack regiment of the 30th Division during the recent Stilwell campaign in North Burma.
  Rockis, 32-year-old former school teacher who has been five years in the Army, was also presented with a samurai sword, taken from a Jap officer, by Col. Yang Yie of the 30th Division, in gratitude for Rockis' work with the unit. He accompanied them in their southward march along the Tanai River, west of the Ledo Road, to Nabum, where they linked up with Brig. Gen. Theodore Wessels' Myitkyina task force.
  During the march, Rockis relates, Chinese infantrymen captured what they thought to be three Jap soldiers only to discover the prisoners were Gurkhas of Gen. Orde C. Wingate's "Chindits" who had become separated from their group. Information furnished by these men caused the regiment to alter completely its route.
  The colonel believes well-led Chinese are more than a match for the Japs, telling how the enemy lost 300 killed in one engagement between equal forces in the Hukawng, compared to Chinese casualties of 40 killed.
  Rockis arrived in the theater in September, 1943, and was promptly posted to an advance area, where he has served all but one month of his year overseas.


Slick Salween Horse Trader Gigs U.S. Vet

    HQS., CASAC - Chinese livestock merchants of the Salween country never heard of David Harum, but when it comes to slick "horse trading" they are hard men to "beat," says Capt. Bert Reinow, base veterinarian in the area.
  Reinow, veteran of 23 months in Asia who speaks Mandarin, woke one morning with the bright idea of buying a donkey as a pack animal, in lieu of the always-busy jeeps. He repaired forthwith to the local market.
  There he found a toothy merchant who had not one, but two donkeys for sale, twins in fact, a jack and a jenny. Reinow glowed at the news, well knowing he could easily resell a jenny when, as and if Ol' Man Rotation touched him with the magic wand. He knew the beast was worth about 3,000 CN; the merchant asked 4,000, so of course Reinow bid 2,000.
  After the customary smiles, retiring for tea and taking up the offer again, the deal was cinched for 3,000, an hour and a half later. The Chinaman loaded the animal on the American's trailer cart and departed with his other donkey.
  Reinow arrived at base, all smiles, and announced his good luck. "We'll call her Edna," he said, thus bestowing high honor (for the Salween country) on the local Red Cross girl. A friend took one look, said, "I think you better make it Ed."
  The Captain winced, conducted a clinical experiment, then screamed, "And me a vet, too!" His Chinese friend had slipped him the jack, and shuffled off with the twin jenny towards the terraced hills.


The C.B.I. Roundup is a weekly newspaper of the United States Forces, published by and for the men in China, 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. Boyd Sinclair, 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.










  NOVEMBER  16,  1944      

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

Copyright © 2007 Carl Warren Weidenburner




TOP OF PAGE     PRINT THIS PAGE     ABOUT THIS PAGE

SEND COMMENTS     ROUNDUP HOME PAGE



ROUNDUP

READERS