A ROOM OF OUR OWN

...I was fortunate enough to draw a good ship with very comfortable accommodations...

...So, as in so many other matters, the newspapers have been 100 per cent wrong anent my relations with him, which are strictly military...

...We're stuck...

...Enemy planes now overhead.' Silence...

...The vessel was a bit on the old side, but when lying in the bunk and listening to the swish of water against her sides and the slow rise and fall of her prow, I needed only to close my eyes and presto, you and I were taking another ocean voyage together...

...At last the days passed, and the preliminaries were nearly over...

...Strangely enough, it didn't scare me...

...THIS is a rambling, poorly organized letter but I want to give you my impressions while they are fresh...

...It was impressive, but whether because I had seer and heard it at Cape Gloucester or whether intrinsically it was different I do not know, but it did not make or leave the impression that Gloucester did...

...Enroute To Hollandia "In due course we were loaded aboard ships and started on pur way...

...On the contrary, there is an undertone of excitement, yes, almost exhilaration, as one realizes that he is playing a part, small though it may be, in pushing along the road to victory...

...It was a long wait, but I was surprised at how calmly everyone took it...

...We certainly must do that again...

...Crossing the Owen Stanleys we struck very bad weather—great thunder-heads about us as our pilot tried to find his way through the thick clouds...

...During the time while there and waiting for our take-off, the correspondent gets a chance to write some 'home-town-stories,' items about this and that individual of some special interest that can be sent back to the local papers...

...If you'll look at the map, you appreciate that in the great pocket of the East and South, between Tanamarah and Madang, a great Japanese army with its supplies and reserves is bottled up, bottled up to be attacked and eventually destroyed by the terrain...

...The next night we had another alert, and the enemy dropped flares...

...Again, and I don't think it is my imagination, but just as at Cape Gloucester, there is something all-pervading about the certainty that one is headed for 'business.' It pervades and blankets the whole affair and gives it a seriousness—or perhaps better, pur-posefulness—that other military activities lack...

...Most of the time I have been situated where it was difficult or impossible to write, and no prospect of mail reaching you before I could write from here...

...I left here over three weeks ago...

...no one is outwardly long-faced or in the slightest degree depressed...

...The facilities are like Biloxi—there ain't no heat—so in the mornings and evenings it's a bit chilly...

...10 enemy planes 23 miles away, eourse 190...

...This job was especially well done...

...But our accurate, sharp-shooting destroyers drove the planes off, and we went to sleep and slept like logs...

...in terms of what it does to weaken the enemy but he always weighs his victories in terms of what they cost in lives...

...While we waited for the air attack we all knew that just one lucky hit and they wouldn't pick up many pieces of us...

...I also sent you some Japanese invasion money which I picked up...

...One incident may interest you: one night while aboard a vessel at Tanamarah preparatory to going over to Hollandia, there was a red alert...

...I am on the job for a few days alone...

...I got up long before dawn and went out on one of the upper decks...

...I was calm as a cucumber and found myself thinking, 'So this is the way it is.' Just about then the pilot stuck his head around the door and said, 'Have found a way back,' and so he had...

...It's funny, but when one is right up against it, and no fooling, it isn't half so bad as one imagines it...

...Incidentally, you'll have seen the General's statement about not being interested in the Presidency...

...As we moved along, one got glimpses of the great mountain ranges that seemed to rise precipitously out of the sea and mount upwards until they swathed themselves in the great thunderheads so typical of this region...

...All these words to say simply that MacArthur has hit 'em again, and so that the terrain takes up the battle for him and finishes off the enemy without his having to use up his American boys...

...But after the intense, sweltering heat of the past weeks in New Guinea this cool weather is heaven to me...

...Knowing my map a bit, I placed it correctly as a mountain that guards the entrance to the harbor at Tanamarah Bay...

...There the correspondents were thoroughly briefed,—that is, given the detailed information about the coming operation...

...Diller advised me that he wanted me to return here...

...The colonel who did the job had his information at his finger-tips, knew the height of this mountain range, and that group of hills, the depth of the streams that might have to be forded, the kind and, temper of the local - natives, etc...

...The first waves of assault troops were off and moving rapidly toward the shore...

...One could have read a newspaper from where I was...

...then an interlude of silence for 15 minutes or so...

...While listening and waiting it suddenly occurred to me that the waiting for the reports' was singularly familiar, and then it dawned on me why: it was exactIy like getting election returns, perhaps a hit more exciting, but strikingly similar...

...A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette PHIL'S graphic description of the Hollandia operations will interest those of you whose men are in the Southwest Pacific so I give it to you while it is still timely: "I'm sorry there has been this hiatus in my mail, but there was no alternative...

...We turned in that night knowing that the next day we would get down to business...

...I left the Hollandia area Monday, came back on a destroyer, and thence by air to Advance Eschelon, where Col...

...The rest of our crew will be back shortly, but until they do I have a bit to do...

...Nothing very fancy, but a nice souvenir for your round living-room table...

...Went first to Advance Eschelon, and thence 'over the hill' (as one refers to going over the Owen Stanleys) to our first destination...

...After a while he came back and said, "Sorry, but we can't go ahead any further—the weather is impossibla ahead, and I'm afraid we can't go back either...

...This gives them an opportunity to get to know the history of the outfit, its traditions, and above all something about various individuals in the organization...

...it was executed according to that plan, and Gen...

...Mac Arthur had succeeded again in his main, outstanding purpose: to hit and surprise the enemy...

...It was pitch dark, or so it seemed, but as my eyes got accustomed to the darkness, I gradually could distinguish the black massive form of a mountain...

...After a little time we rendezvoused with others who were to go with us, and then started on our way...

...It just happened that the vessel I was on was bang-up against many hundreds of tons of high explosives...

...He recognizes that a nation's greatest asset is its youth and he means to win his victories by such skill that we do not drain from that precious reservoir of our future...

...MacArthur measures every, victory not alone...

...I guess the Japanese used the same 'currency control' exercised by that Chinese war lord who, every time his exchange rate went below a stated figure, sent his guards out, arrested a couple of bankers, hanged them, and then the exchange rate went back to its fixed figure, until he had to repeat the process later...

...Just as the first streaks of dawn, like great search-lights, began to shoot their shafts of light across the sky, the naval bombardment began...

...The entire group on this ship was congenial, and the naval personnel was especially cordial to the correspondents and myself...

...Don't misunderstand me...

...It is for this purpose and this alone that the whole enormous war machine back home, and at the various bases, are organized and functioning: to enable combat trpops, ships, and aircraft to go into action against the enemy...

...prolonged silence...

...enemy planes five miles away, course 190...

...One more little incident (I have thought about what I .would write you so many times that I have forgotten whether or not I told you of this, so I'll take a chance on repeating myself...

...Don't think the naval bombardment was not impressive ! It was, but not as much so as at Gloucester...

...The Japanese printed the stuff and gave it to the natives fur their wages—perfectly worthless, but the Japanese made the natives accept it...

...One night while we were waiting for an enemy raid I listened to reports coming in over the radio: 'Eight enemy planes 50 miles away, eourse 190...

...So we had good visits about Joe and what he has been doing of late...

...It was a pleasure to watch him work and listen to him describe the coming work...

...The planes struck near by but not near enough to bother our sector...

...Again, after the lapse of more time, we made another rendezvous, this time after dark, so that when I got up the next morning I saw a sight I shall never forget and few ever see: a vast armada stretching as far as the eye can see in all directions, each ship in its allotted place and all moving with the majesty and precision of a great military expedition on its way to its appointed task...

...Last Winter I used to go to bed at night to do my reading in order to keep warm...

...Thence we moved on to another spot where the various correspondents were attached to individual units...

...After a bit there was an all-clear...

...I think you must have known long since that in all such matters he is his own adviser...

...THE outfit I happened to be traveling with had been at one time in Joe Farrington's area and I found a colonel who was born there, has a dash of the native blood (of which he is very proud), and who knows Joe...

...Strategically, this compares, as I see it, with Napoleon at Austerlitz, because here, like there, the enemy was beaten by scientific maneuver at the cost of practically no lives...

...A bit later our vessel moved in closer, and then we loaded into small boats and hit for the beach ourselves...

...The weather has begun to turn definitely cool and the nights have a real snap to them...

...MacArthur's Masterful Planning "The operation had been planned perfectly...

...In that respect I think that Gloucester will always remain for me (and, I learn, for all the other naval and military personnel who saw and participated in it) the classic, the ultimate in perfect, precision-perfect, coordinated attack by sea, land, and air forces in the taking of a hostile beach...

...Then, 'Enemy planes five miles away, course 90', then finally the all-clear signal...

...Four of them hung in the air over the sea at about a couple of thousand feet, poised there for minutes and minutes (it seemed like an hour) and lit up the sea around for miles...

...I'm sending you a little brown bowl I picked up at Hollandia...

...to take an objective which when occupied and exploited not only gives us a new base for future operations against the enemy, but which turns the otherwise hostile terrain into an affirmative, aggressive weapon in our behalf, and does this job at a minimum possible cost of life...