The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-05-16
\ BROADwAYTTE IN ITALY
 PART III lon the AnzlO Beachhead
 AuriI 11. 1NA1l

April 2l, 1041)
 Dear Walter: That 'blulder' in Sicily where g of our transports were shot down is of particular iI- terest to me, since I was in one of the ack-ack units that had a grimy hand in the proceedings. But wait this isn't going to be another one of those endless inside stories. Ac- tually I'm mentioning 1t only for the interest 1t might possess as the point of view of guy who was there when 1t happened. Fair enough? Okay, then, here goes |. In all the official reports and ex- plantations I've read, one fact, I think, hasn't been stressed suffi- ciently. That fact, so simple that the people refuse to be bothered with it, is that ten minutes before the C-47s showed up, the Liberty ships in the harbor were attacked by German planes. What happened when the transports arrived isn't very difficult to explain. They not only got tangled up in the zones of fire, but excited most of the beach and naval guns into strong resist ance. That increased fire (which did most of the damage) was an in- evitability, Walter, not a 'blunder'. The men who passed the ammuni- tion were doing the only logical thing, and if someone has to be blamed, how about blaming the real williams of the piece - namely, a quirk of fate, aided and abtted by the Luftwaffe.
 Well something new has been added to the press coverage of the southern Italian front-something known as the feminine touch (which has absolutely nothing to do with a lady's flair for borrowinug dough. The new addition comes in the form (and ahhh, such formD of Miss Rita Hume, a real locker from out of the American northwest who has been writing some luSty front line pieces and otherwise giving Ter all for good old INS.. Her mascu- line competitors are a little uneasy about the whole thing, though, and Isn't hard to understand their point of view. War is hell on the guys who fight 1t, and it can be hell on the guys who report it-especially when a shapely young thing that wears dresses (of allthingsD comes a-rom- pin among their typewriters. One of the scriveners yipped: How can a guy be professionally unethical when he's competing with beauti- ful woman?' But the UPS Bob Vermillion had an answer for that. Against 0 beautiful woman, quoth Robert, you abandon your ethics in Self-defense!
 Tn consulting my little black diary, I find that the bombing of Villa Virtue, in which Ernie Pyle and four others were slightly in- jurea took place just about 90 air raids ago. The raids slowed down for c while after that, but were stepped up again in the past two weeks. Last night, before turning in, the diary totals were 184 raids over the beach itself since invasion day, and by 2 o'clock this morning 1t had jumped to 188. They tell me it was one of the hottest nights on record, and while my own room has a bay window that looks right out on the harhor where all the excitement took place, I don't remember hear ing any disturbing noises. was very rested man this morning, hav- ing had an unbroken night of sleep. But the more I think about that, the more I suspect that I'm either nuts or have developed a set of shock-proof reflexes.
 More and more the beachhead seens to be assuming the aspect of a private little war in private little world. You begin to sense that as a campaign it's something separate and distinct with a personality all it's own. Certain factors contribute to this attitude For one thing, its confined size has given all the units a chance to get acquainted and has made them conscious of their inter- dependence. Also, the men are com monly flattered by German propa- ganda program that has been de- signed especially for their consump- ton. This, when sexy Sally takes to the air of a night and tells our troops in the pine grove to quit simplifying Bing Crosby so loudly because the ferries on the other side of the Mussolini canal don't go for Crosby, the whole beachhead is still laughing about it the next morning. The real payoff, though, came re- gently during one of our own night ly broadcasts of the correspondents copy to Naples At the end of dis patch, an unctious German voice