Evening star., 1942-09-15
Allen
Continued From First Page. J

been taken prisoner in the Tobruk
raid, but his name was withheld.
Allen, native of Mount Savage,
Md, has been an eyewitness to prac-
tically every action involving the
British fleet in the Mediterranean.
His work. notably his story of the
fierce German bomber attack on the
aircraft carrier Illustrious, won the
Pulitzer Prize for international
reporting in l941.
Later he survived another brush
with death on the line of battle
when the British cruiser Galatea
was sunk from under him.
Always Came Through.
Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cum
nmgham, now member of the Al
lied War Council and former COM
mander of the British fleet in the
Mediterranean, told newspapermen
in Washington, in praise of Aliens
initiative:
Why, it got so I hardly liked
Allen to 60 to sea at all He was a
stormy petrel-always got into trou-
BILE wherever he was. But he
always came through. He had an
explanation for it. saying cautiously
that what my folks want is a live
story, not dead reporter.
These were only the high lights of
sea-roving career with the British
feet, always in the close presence of
danger. He has ridden tiny craft on
patrol, and many times has been
carried within sight of enemy shores
by British task forces pouring shells
into enemy strongholds in Europe
and Africa. ~.
He had to break a British Ad-
miralty tradition to do it.
In the summer of 1910, he pre-
vailed on British officers with nine
weeks of persuasive pleading to let
him go with the Mediterranean fleet
and report its operations. 1t had
never been done before.
Allen first boarded a DESTROYER
and since has sailed on every type
OF combat vessel except a subma-
rlne-more than 100000 miles of
travel on war-tossed waters up to
the sinking of the Galatea on De-
cember 16, l94l.
Then he learned to swim-during
vacation at home early this year.
Saw Aegean Attack.
When the British decided to
smash at the Italian grip on the
Dodecanese, Allen was permitted to
go along and he gave the world it's
first description of the British as
sault on those important Aegean Sea
islands off the southeast coast of
Greece.
Later came reports that the Brit
lsh cruiser Ajax had sunk three
Italian warships off the coast of
Sicily. Within a day or so came
Aliens eyewitness story of that
triumph over the Italian feet,
His next assignment was, perhaps,
his most daring He joined a Brit
lsh squadron which sailed knowing
ly, into a possible trap when it set
out to invade the virtually land
locked Adriatic to attack Valona
the Italian base on the Albanian
coast.
Allen watched the British guns
hammer that port into uselessness
as base for Italian troops and sup
pies IN the campaign against
Greece-and sent out the first eye
witness story of that attack also
He sent vivid stories of the pound
Ing of Bardia, when the italians
were besieged in that Libyan port,
from the Slow, broad beamed moni-
tor Terror" which sailed past en-
emy land batteries and poured 900
tons of TINT shells ashore.
Under Heavy Fire.
Allen was under his heaviest fire
when 40 to so Nazi planes flung tor
pedoes at the sides of the Illustrious
and 100000 pounds of high explosive
bombs at her flight deck
His most recent experience under
Nazi air attack was when a British
destroyer survived a nine-hour at
tack by so stukas off the Egyptian
coast last month. He was cut and
bruised.
Earlier in August he was the onlv
casualty in British naval squadron
which shelled the island of Rhodes.
He fell down a hatchway on the re-
turn voyage.
Before he joined the Associated
Press at Charleston, w. Va, in No.
Vember, 1888, he worked on the Bal
tlmore News, the Charleston Daily
Mail, the Washington Herald, the
Portsmouth (Ohio) Morning Sun
and the Huntington (W. Va.) Eve
ming Herald
He joined the Associated Press
Bureau in September,
1885, and sailed for Europe in July. |
1888, after a period on the cable and |
Latin American desks in the New
York headquarters of the A.P.
His assignment was to help cover
the Spanish civil war, but the crisis
n Czechoslovakia DETECTED him to
Prague. He later went to Rome and
remained there until he was as
signed to Alexandria, Egypt, where
his sea-faring career began.