Page Two
CLOUDBU STER
Saturday, February 5, 1944
CLOUDBUSTER
Vol. 2—No. 21 Sat., February 5, 1944
Published weekly at the U. S. Navy Pre-
Flight School, Chapel Hill, N. C., under super
vision of the Public Relations Office. Contri
butions of news, features, and cartoons are
welcome from all hands and should be turned
in to the Public Relations Office, Navy Hall.
★
CLOUDBUSTER receives Camp Newspaper
Service material. Republication of credited
matter prohibited without permission of CNS,
^ar Department, 205 E. 42nd St., N.Y.C.
★
COMDR. John P. Graff, USN (Ret.)
Commanding Officer
Lieut. Comdr. James P. Raugh, USNR
Executive Officer
Lieut. P. 0. Brewer, USNR
Public Relations Officer
★
Editor: Lt. (jg) Leonard Eiserer, USNR
Associate Editor: Orville Campbell, Y2c
On the Lighter Side...
ALL CURED, AND $500, TOO
(From the Mare Island, Cal., Breeze)
A lad on one of our destroyers that had been
out for many months lay very ill in the sick
bay. His spirit was like a ship tugging at its
anchor in a high wind. He was just about
ready to let go and sail out into the great
beyond.
The doctor spoke about it to the skipper, who
asked: “Would a little good news help him,
Doc?”
“It might be the tonic which would save
him,” the doctor replied.
“Then tell him that we are headed for San
Francisco, only make him promise not to tell.”
The doctor hurried to the sick bay and whis
pered the good news into the ears of the lad,
who smiled and promised he would not tell a
soul. No medicine ever worked so rapidly- or
effectively. Soon the lad was up and about.
There was a song on his lips—he was on his
way home! Soon he was back on duty.
When the destroyer came in under the Golden
Gate bridge, the lad hunted out the doctor.
“Sir,” he hesitatingly asked, “would you do a
favor for me?”
“Why certainly, son,” replied the doctor.
“What do you wish ? ”
“Well, sir, I have $500 I wish you would keep
for me.”
“Five hundred dollars!”, exclaimed the doc
tor in amazement. “How did you get so much
money ? ”
“Well, sir,” explained the sailor, “you made
me promise not to tell that we were on our way
home—and I didn’t. But I bet every guy who
would bet with me that we were headed for
San Francisco. And, sir, I just cleaned up the
ship.”
Sunday Divine Services
Protestant 1000 Memorial Hall
Roman Catholic 0615 Gerrard Hall
1000 Hill Music Hall
Jewish 1000 Graham Memorial
* • •
Chaplain’s Office Hours: Daily, 0880-1700;
Monday and Wednesday, 0830-1800.
Father Sullivan will be in Chaplain’s Office on
Tuesdays, 1845-1930.
Confessions: Saturdays in Gerrard Hall, 1900-
2016.
Book Review ...
The Battle is the Pay-off, Captain Ralph
Ingersoll. Harcourt Brace and Co., N. Y.,
1943; 217 pp., $2.00.
This book has a purpose. Don’t let that
scare you, it is an exciting book—good reading
for any service man. It is not like most war
books. There are no laughs and few heroics.
There is little about what we are fighting for,
there is nothing about grand strategy; in fact,
there is not much about the tactics of a single
campaign. But there is a lot about battle, bat
tle as seen, felt, understood, and interpreted
by one man capable of putting his observa
tions into words.
Probably no other man engaged in the battle
of El Guettar was as observant as Captain
Ingersoll, formerly editor of PM, but any one
of the 500 American Rangers or 1400 Italians
in that battle would say, if they read his ac
count, “That’s it; that’s the way it was.”
As a battle, El Guettar wasn’t much, an en
gagement that began the night before when
the minefield was lifted and ended in late
afternoon of the following day in a destruc
tive but tactically ineffective Stuka attack.
The story covers the five mile climb during
the night into position on the enemy flank.
and the series of attacks by small groups, a
half dozen men here, half a platoon over there,
that resulted in control of the valley below.
It is battle as seen by one soldier, actively in
contact with the enemy, not as seen at staff
headquarters or even at a command post. It
is an account full of the small details of one
man’s experience—the rocks underfoot, the
clink of equipment, the stacatto of machine
guns, the cough of mortars, the whoosh and
wham of 155 mm’s, and the unbelievable in
tensity of Stuka bombs. There is the soldier
with the back of his hand blown off, and the
futile effort to bandage it. There is what it
feels like to be hit, suggested in that soldier’s
request, “Please, sir, cut it off—so I won’t
have to look at it.”
This book has a purpose. Chiefly, Captain
Ingersoll’s purpose is to make the reader,
whether service man or civilian, realize what
an Army or Navy is for, what all the drilling,
technical or military, is about. In battle is
revelation; then and perhaps then only, comes
the full understanding of the purpose of train
ing. Battle is the culmination of the long
process of training. Battle is the culmination
of the long process of sweating out that de
gree of fighting proficiency which enables us
to impose our will upon the enemy. That is
what a Navy and an Army are for.
—G. F. H., ENS Dept.
Male Call Briefs for Mission
by Milton Caniff, creator of “Terry and the Pirates” — (CNS)
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