The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-09-28
h Hollywood.
BY ERsKINE JOHNSON NEA Staff Correspondent

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 Alter singing virtually under en- emy fire for the last three months, Frances Langford doesn't think anybody or anything will ever again stop her from completing e song.
 Frances told us about it today in her first interview since returning to Hollywood with Bob Hope from an entertainment tour of North Af- rica and Sicily.
 She was singing, she said, in 135 degree heat at a field hospital near Tunis. As she sang a wounded sold- fer tainted, and hospital attendants carried him away. Frances didn't know whether to continue her song or quit. She decided to continue. A few minutes later a kitchen stove caught fire. She continued to sing while fire engine, which the sold- ters had been sitting on, plowed its way through the croI.d and put out the fire. Then she noticed every body looking up. It came from Yam kee guns, trying to knock down a NaZi observation plane. Frances continued to sing.
 The show must go onl I know now what 1t means" she said.
 Frances has only one regret. She wanted to remain in Sicily long enough to sing to the conquerors of Italy.
 Father Time disappointed me, :" she said. But she came pretty close to doing 1t at that. She sang to 19,000 American troops just after they pushed the Axis into the Strait of Messina. The stage she used was more than improvised. It was cap- tured-a Nazi tank.
 POPULAR DITTY
 Frances said she scrapped all her pretty, sentimental tunes and seren- aded the boys about female who is rapidly becoming the most sung about gal of World War IT-"Dirty Gertie From Bizerte." Most of the verses to "Gertie" wouldn't pass the Hays office censors, but the boys, sllU said, gave her some scrubbed up versions.
 And speaking of Bizerte, Fran ces said she stopped at the best hotel there, Tn fact, 1t had no com petition. It was the only hotel still standing after the Allied shelling. Two Nad prisoners, she said, car- tied her bags into the lobby.
 T get big laugh every time I think of what Hitler would have said had he seen those two Nazi supermen serving as bellhops."
 The night she checked out of Bizerte there was heavy Nazi air raid. "A friendly Yank," she said, "got us in his car to get us away from the populated area. But he became befuddled in the darkness and drove Us right toward an anti aircraft battery. Enemy fighters were SO close we had to abandon our car and dive for a slit trench. l fel: like a sissy because I was the first one out. But when hit the bottom of the trench my fall was cushioned. Bob Hope had beat me to it. He was our only casualty. fell on his foot and gave him a char ley-horse."
 FIRING FOR FUN
 Several nights later Frances and Hope were at a gun emplacement center outside Tunis looking over a big 90 nm. gun. The boys thought 1t would be fun If Bob and Frances fired 1t.
 T said okay," Frances said, but Hope said no, thanks. So I went ahead and did 1t myself. The con- cussion lifted me clear off my feet, and the boys thought 1t was very funny"
 Frances hopes to return to the battle zones as soon as she can. Like all overseas entertainers, she found our boys the most apprecia- tive audiences she's ever faced.