Tag: 1944 January 24

1/23/44 Mission:

TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Twelfth Air Force):
   Colonel William S Gravely takes command of XII Air Force Training and
Replacement Command.
   B-26's bomb the area S of Avezzano while B-25's hit the town of Avezzano and road junction at Monte Cornacchia; A-20's bomb Vallecorsa with good results; A-36's attack Vallecorsa, road junctions at Fondi and in the Priverno area, the town of Ceccano, and railroad at Sezze; P-47's bomb the bridge at Skradin, Yugoslavia; RAF Desert Air Force (DAF) fighters strafe tanks and trucks on the British Eighth Army front, and XII Air Support Command fighters cover the US Fifth Army's Anzio beachhead during the day.

1/24/44 Mission:

TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Twelfth Air Force):
   Weather cancels all medium and light bomber operations. In Italy, fighters maintain cover over the Anzio beachhead (Anzio and Nettuno are captured during the day) and encounter increased air attacks; 3 fighters are claimed destroyed in aerial combat, while 1 Allied fighter is lost. P-40 fighter-bombers hit road at Penne, while A-36's bomb Velletri and the road junction E of town, and hit other communications targets.

1/24/44 Italy
Martha:
I am sitting here in my tent, a wood floor under my feet, a stove going, and an electric light and radio in operation. It is one year to the hour since I made my first landing outside of the continental United States.
It has been an interesting year. I have seen the densest jungle in the world. I have flown over an ocean, spent time on one island of rock, and another on which trees grow only above the timberline. I starved on civilian rations in one place, eating five full meals a day and going to bed hungry. I’ve shot monkeys in the jungle, and seen natives huddle around in a group in the bush, not speaking a word—natives with breasts so long they are carried over the shoulder while leaning over to work. An African boy has warned me of the dangers of bathing.
After flying over the biggest desert in the world, I landed in a land of orange trees and palaces, a land with modern highways, power lines, and hotels. A land with an irrigation system so great it has transformed an age-old desert into a countryside not unlike parts of our middle-west. But all of the changes have not disturbed the burro, the camel, the ancient wells using ox-drawn leather buckets, the primitive rope making machines, the hand-looms, or the Arabs.
I saw a reenactment of one of the oldest Arab customs. A girl, her nose already cut off for her first infidelity, crawled, without a whisper, from her husband’s house, her ankles bleeding where the feet had just been cut off for her second and last infidelity. In the same town was a “tribe” of whores, only one of whom was over 14 years old.
Arabs, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Italians have wined and dined me. An Arab, youngest son of a man worth many millions, waited on me hand and foot, as is the custom. A French restaurant keeper found steak for me, when steak was unheard of, because I made whoofle-birds for his three children. He even gave me a clean table cloth. The Vulcanos have adopted me. “Mama,” the very large Italian matron who ran the restaurant in which my rest camp people ate, called me “our major,” and always had turkey, steak, and cheese for me, as well as saving out the good wine and best apple-jack. The Gozlands and Mrs. Barba have created an American home for me in Africa, in which I am treated like their own son, who is in the Free French Air Force.
In Africa, I saw the peach of which Christ was so fond, the peace which can only be found on a mountainside in an olive grove. It is a feeling which defies all verbal description. It can only be approximated by a pine forest covered deep in snow.
I have seen an entire large city turn into one giant whore house, because when people are hungry long enough, and when uncontrolled prices make the cost of one month’s living exceed a life time’s savings, one scruples break down.
One of the most familiar sights in my life is a long line of people, many of them well-educated professional people, trudging wearily along the road, barefoot in the snow, their whole world piled high on a small cart, going back to whatever home the war has left them.
From where I sit, I can see seven small children. They are standing near my mess, holding their tin cans which mean life to them. They are permitted to extract from my garbage cans prize pieces of soggy bread, a delicious chunk of fat meat, a half-eaten canned peach. Their homes and family were destroyed in the battle. I feel as if I were fattening them for the next war. When questioned, and told that if she stayed around the flying field, she might be bombed again, one little girl laughed easily, and said she didn’t care because it was easier to die that way than to starve to death. The AMG* is doing a good job, but the Germans destituted millions of them. My tent is literally better than the king’s palace, and I live like a god compared to most of these people.
During the year I have dined pleasantly with two officers who have fired on me, one of whom’s complete outfit I wiped out; I’ve seen a young German fighter pilot at such close range that I could have recognized him had I seen him on the ground during the following month; seen Americans show extreme devotion to duty and also seen other who should have been shot on sight.
Honey, I vowed when I left that I wouldn’t let the war change me, but it has. The sanctity of human life is a farce we have developed to flatter our own ego. The superiority of America is not inherent in being an American. Many other peoples are equal to us. We have the edge now, but we shall have to fight for every inch from now on. God does not take sides in a war. The men with the best brains, and equipment and the army with the most men and equipment, and most guts, always wins.
I have also learned that I am deprived of only one important thing over here. Although I can recall you only by memory of things done together, and visualize only your pictures, I now know that with you, everything else can be licked easily.
Darling, I love you more each day. Cy.

*American Military Government for Occupied Territories