Army Censorship-and Tasty Revenge

...Here, pull up an ear next to me and hear it for yourself...

...The Seventh Army major, a civilian in uniform like most of us, read the Patton story, including the continuation on the inside page, and shook his head slowly...

...Talking to them several times later, the news of the face-slapping came out...

...We heard no more about the face-slapping story...

...Without hesitating, my colleague replied, "Of course—we're from General Patton's staff—we've come to pick them up...

...As managing editor, I had put the most ticklish story imaginable on Page 1. Vague rumors had swept through the Seventh Army headquarters in Sicily (or APO 758, New York—the V-mail address) that General George Patton had slapped a wounded soldier in a field hospital and accused him of cowardice...

...After the end of the Sicilian campaign, I was sitting in the office of the Giornale di Sicilia, on Julius Caesar Square in Palermo, wondering what would happen when I took around that week's Stars and Stripes page proofs to the censor...

...The fact is—" "The fact is that the masthead does say that the contents are passed by the U.S...

...I haven't even put it on top as a main story...

...We shared another brandy —I couldn't put the blame on him exactly...

...The crayfish, I recall, were very tasty...

...No reporter or editor would really want to print secrets—such as the pattern of a combat patrol behind the lines or the code signals of rescue helicopters—that might endanger the lives of fellow-soldiers...

...Then he hung up...

...I knew the game was up...

...That is not the problem," the major said...

...I decided to play it straight without comment on Page 1 of Stars and Stripes...

...The beach resort on the outskirts of Palermo was a gathering-place for colonels and generals on Patton's staff, Allied Military Government officers, and privileged characters with transportation of their own from Stars and Stripes...

...He hung up and turned to me...

...I'm going to put this up to the colonel...

...At Mondello, nobody wore his rank on a bathing suit and there was a certain equality on the beach between officers and enlisted men...

...He cupped the mouth of the telephone in mid-conversation and whispered to me, "I'll be damned if he isn't going to his boss and asking if the story's okay to run...

...The revenge, if it could be called that, came a week or so later at Mondello Lido...

...Not to learn that colonels from the public information office still ran the soldier newspaper but, rather, that a frank report had somehow managed to slip into print without passing the military test of what was proper "news" for morale purposes...

...Both sides gulped in surprise later when the colonels from Seventh Army and the sergeants from Stars and Stripes got dressed...

...He chickened out on making the decision himself...

...I'm not making any editorial comment...

...I asked...

...What we smart apples did not know was that two-holster, pearl-handled Patton was in the doghouse at the time with his boss, General Eisenhower, at Allied Force Headquarters in Algiers...

...He inked and hammered out a wet proof of Page 1, and I took it around to Seventh Army headquarters for censorship...

...Well, I feel for you, major, but this is really the first time you've ever asked me to kill a story for nonmil-itary reasons...

...The problem is that General Blood and Guts is right here on this island, in fact, he's just one palazzo away from here, and I don't think he'd enjoy reading this with his breakfast tomorrow...

...I thought I'd get you off the hook," I went on cagily, "by playing it under a small two-column headline, very discreetly, so nobody would think we're making a big deal out of it...

...I'll tell you what," he said...

...Now I'm sorry I called," the major said, "because I have to speak to the chief of staff myself...

...A moment later he got through to him—and explained the story...

...The colonel says," the major said, "to get in touch with Georgie's chief of staff...

...Army Censorship—and Tasty Revenge by HERBERT MITGANG When a regular Army colonel recently called the Pacific Stars and Stripes the "Hanoi Herald" because it printed a frank account of how an infantry company had been chewed up by the Vietcong and forced to pull back, I was more than a little surprised...

...His fluency in Italian enabled him to perform a much more vital assignment—catching the snide cracks which the newly liberated Italian press directed against the allied forces occupying the island...

...Now what...

...I waited for the big decision...

...Do I make myself absolutely clear...

...Then the censorship is compounded because it damages the credibility of news already printed among trusting readers, whether civilians or soldiers...

...Some of us had picked up most of the facts—news is where you find it— at, of all places, Mondello Lido...

...Then the story, which had been voluntarily suppressed by civilian correspondents in Algiers, was picked up in the States, broadcast nationally in somewhat garbled form, and straight". . . nobody had too much to do in those post-invasion waiting days . . ." ened out in print...

...The face-slapping had become a scandal in the War Department, puzzled the Washington decision-makers, and been bounced back to Algiers...

...We both waited now for Patton's decision, wondering if he would get on himself...

...The major muttered, "Yes sir, General, you certainly do...

...The details could not be printed because nobody would speak for the record at the Fifteenth Evacuation Hospital or anywhere else...

...The worst part will come when soldiers start sending us the clippings from their hometown newspapers, asking us if we've seen this story and how about printing it in Stars and Stripes...

...He called him immediately, mentioned that we had the story, and waited for the answer...

...But it isn't a censorship matter," I argued...

...The major had saved General Patton's breakfast reading, maybe even his breakfast...

...there would be grumbling in high places...

...None of us had any special affection for Patton off the battlefield when he strutted around Palermo, dreaming up ways to dress down soldiers who forgot they had to behave as representatives of his command instead of tired men on leave...

...If we don't, then they'll stop believing that we're independent...

...Below the promontory near the end of the beach there was a rather elegant restaurant where Mediterranean lobster—crayfish—could be obtained by ordering them a few days in advance...

...A colleague of mine, a former New York sports writer with a gift of gab and matching nerve, suggested that we stop in and see if by chance we could pick up the delicacy...

...At this point a wire-service account of the incidents reached me in a news bundle sent from New York to supplement our official and staff-gathered stories...

...And so the story was put into type by our Sicilian makeup man in the Giornale's composing room, he as usual not knowing what it said but always smiling sweetly...

...I think enough time has elapsed for me to tell about it...

...Keep talking," he said, reaching for a bottle of unlabeled brandy in his desk and pouring us both drinks...

...The censorship was almost exclusively on military matters—such as disclosing the location of units or tipping the enemy to a contemplated attack—though I cannot forget one of the rare instances when military sensibility and damning news collided...

...The owner politely wagged his finger and said, "I'm sorry, those are reserved for General Patton—he is having a big party...

...Kill the story...

...They'll think we only run Army handouts...

...The major kept saying, "Yes, General, yes, General," until finally there was a pause...

...I don't know what's necessary for the good of the Seventh Army but I do know what's good for my service in it...

...This presents a little problem," he said...

...All I could do was watch the major nod and hear him say yessirs...

...Passing through Tokyo once on the way to look at the Vietnam war, I stopped in at the prosperous Stars and Stripes office building and found its viewpoint far removed from the forlorn readership in Southeast Asia...

...Nothing sums up the enigma of this Pacific edition better than its ambiguous masthead phrase: "An authorized unofficial publication...

...The owner didn't doubt him, and even accepted my colleague's word when he said that the General's paymaster would be along the next morning to foot the bill...

...it turned out that Patton had struck twice on separate occasions, once slapping a soldier hospitalized for malaria whom he regarded as a malingerer...

...For the Pacific edition of Stars and Stripes—going all the way back to mid-1945 when it was belatedly allowed to start publishing by the personal publicity-oriented General Douglas MacArthur—has always operated as a headquarters house organ for the Asian command in Honolulu and Tokyo...

...That way we'll both be covered...

...Major," I heard him say, "this is your chief of staff, Seventh Army...

...And we'd look ridiculous—so would the Seventh Army censor's office—if Stars and Stripes couldn't print a piece that took place right on this island when the news is already out in the States...

...I asked innocently...

...But there is a whole spectrum of American news— including anti-war sentiment from campus to Congress—that endangers young minds in uniform if not printed...

...Pat-ton's colonels liked to toss a football around and one day, not knowing who these paunchy players were, we challenged them to a game of touch football...

...That tradition of trammeled news was carried forward to Vietnam...

...The unspoken reasons are the real ones: to insure American command control and avoid possible censorship by the touchy South Vietnamese government...

...Is there one for the enlisted men...

...Once in a while, when Bill Mauldin's audacious cartoons ridiculed rear-echelon tyranny ("Beautiful view," remarked one officer to another stiffly overlooking a mountain...

...nobody had too much to do in those post-invasion waiting days . . ." The major assigned to the pro forma job of checking our pages was an American of Sicilian extraction...

...Then I rushed back to the composing room of the Giornale di Sicilia to search for a substitute piece to plug the news hole where the Pat-ton face-slapping incident would not run in that issue, or any other, of Stars and Stripes, Sicily...

...He asked the headquarters operator to connect him with the general who was Patton's chief of staff...

...But neither his work nor that of reporters telling the facts from the front without the glory was suppressed...

...The Italian-speaking Military Government officers did not always know when the Sicilians—who had never attended an Army language school—were putting one over on them...

...Although a bureau exists in Saigon—and often gets in trouble for doing its best by reporting the worst—the newspaper itself is still printed in Tokyo after all these years...

...It hasn't any military secrets in it...

...In World War II, when Stars and Stripes editions followed, and in some cases preceded, the arrival of foot soldiers in newly liberated cities, it was generally believed—above all because it was printed in a believable war...

...Why do these things always happen to me...

...A personal apology was ordered to all the officers and enlisted men who had witnessed the incidents...

...With profuse thanks and friendly waves, we loaded the crayfish into our jeep and took off...

...Army," he said, "and so far as I know the Seventh is the only one here, and I'm elected, God forbid...

...Nothing quite like it had happened since the First Punic War in Sicily . . ." The major tossed down his brandy and reached for the telephone...

...A military newspaper put out in a war zone naturally has to be supervised...

...The trouble with unfavorable-news management is that the news gets out anyway...

...Entering the restaurant, we noticed a big mound of crayfish newly hauled in from the sea...

...HERBERT MITGANG is on the editorial board of The New York Times...

...Finally, the General returned to the telephone...

...Our mouths began to water...

...It has never decided whether it can be a bold newspaper in the tradition of the European and Mediterranean Stars and Stripes edition during two World Wars...

...Nothing quite like it had happened since the First Punic War in Sicily— and surely not since the Americans had followed other conquerors to the Mediterranean island...

...there was no higher court of news appeal...

...Regarding that matter, the answer is—" and now he stressed each word, "—do what is necessary for the good of the service and the Seventh Army...

...Why so...