THE CHINA MAIL,- SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1951.
Mrs. McCracken gives her verdict on Middlesex's 'Little America'
Cigarettes, nylons
D
are on ration
by JAMES STUART
RUISLIP.
RIVING into the car park at Ruislip
I had to manoeuvre through rows of glittering American sedans and convertibles, the latest streamlined pro- ducts of Detroit.
This "parking lot" in Victoria Road, beside a big block of low, yellow brick buildings, could have been anywhere be- tween New York and San Francisco.
From a tall flagpole the Stars and Stripes was flying.
"Little
Here in suburban Roi', is he Anerica" of Middlesex, as transatlantic as was Picradily's wardme a Jow Comer.
This is the headquer of the United States Third Air Force.
Women and children there
this
In
There is one big difference between "Little Antica" and theme of the war. and cut through the gate pass American wo- men, wives of officers an men. to do their shopping in the camp's
INS
r to take a cup
of coffee with their Bu bir
And as the children che d'
of the local school?
the
Doys and girls romp along stree: with youngsters
Between 500 and 600 US A.. For offers and m cmployed
تنا
General
Johnson's headquanaus bulk o
tr
#
::1 the officers
NCOS are married af have and families living
their wives
with hem
0:
Many live locally in Ruist}};
her, have found homes as far
Dua Beatnsfield and Gerrard: Cruss: uhers have a "flat
town.
How do be wives and ch dren
Mes Donn get on in England?
McCracken. wile
Colone! Belmar McCraken, answers h question. She and her husband were having a cup of coffee in She the headquarts estaurant.
Sand
When I told our two boys that we were going hone
at the god of this month
Fay
sund Hoine Tas ish me, isn't
21
Off to Texas
Suid the you: McCracken
The
At lunch at the NCOs' club' Eugene+ Technical-sgi. suburban are
Maloney with his wife and son All are Mike, four years old, Interested in the child's comic. The hub is lavishly fitted with games and amuse- American £6 ments-inclading pin-lables. a little more than
Mrs McCracken fives the life of
middle class the housewife. "I do all my shop- ping in the local shops," she said. Colone supplement it in the PX."* hitron get They have not found the cost he English of diving much different from
thank América, paying abou! den' you eculd de wet any difference week rent,
on very well with and } yours-te..
in their speech. When we were they paid for similar acconimo- disaster-are the wife and ble
on vacation un the Continent nation at home,
recently people who heard hem
the PX stores lu
daughter of Major James Pa.er. American son. He has a house in Ruislip
talking and then heard us would airmen and their families can and says: "I am pleasantly sur-
not believe
children."
they were
The McCracken
Gary, aged seven, and Denis,
ve, have been het
300 a
week
prised at the kindness of the our buy almost everything from a
people, particularly my neigh- cake of son to a British-made people chidren, bleyele or refrigerator. Paid for bours."
mainly you men, Single doliars only.
national service privates, live in a comfortable barrack block in he headquarters. Off du.y they may wear civilian elcthes, their tarian shirts and "sunburst" les add gaiety to Ruislip's American scene.
ure
Ca
for wo and Soon a half years
hev going to fly the Atlante Colonel McCracken
is being moved an arbeid in Texas.
The McCrackens have bee.. renting a house no far from the headquarters.
Gary and Demis goo a loral private school, and
The Air Force paper goes to press. At work at a Bulalip printing shop are Corporal Mike Lucas (nearest cameră) ind Pf-c Lawrence Mila. The paper is published weekly and distri buled to all American servicemen in Britain. It is called The Eagle, reports the social and profes alonal activilles of members of the Air Force family in Britain-
Some things are rationed cigaretes, cameras and nylons
mong them.
"The ra on has been worked out with your British Customs people," a USAF spokesman told "This is to stop trafficking ne in them outside, and has bee kept to a minimum.'
So Ruislip is not overflowing with American cigarelles. the Americans
The Americans have their own cinema, and in a field behind the car park their own baseball diamond,
NO
U.S.A., but Ruislip Middlesex. Mrs. Geraldine HD- coti, wife of Master-sgt. R. G. Hillcott, leaves the camp store with an armful of groceries, With her. is daughter Bundan, three
..
The CO buys a camera the PX shop-equivalent af Nasfi-Major-general Leon W. Johnson is served by Miss E. B. Hart, of South Barrow,
Sgt. Roy Hulsman (nearen cameral and Sgt. W. Mortersen select tunes on the "juke box."
The Ruislip Rockets are For reckoned cne of the bes. base- And for the.
wizer SE&IÓN, American Ruislip's basketball team is now strictly ball teams among are limited to a carton and a haif forces in Europe. They have starting practice.
won 32 out of 38 games.
(World Copyright Reserved)
week-300 cigaretles,
They pay $1 a carton, or about twice as much for 200 cigareucs
as we pay for 20.
have
Some of the American families! who have not brought U.S. cars over
bought left-hand drive export British cars-with- out waiting, without
purchase 18
1ax. Provided the dollars are there, they get an English car in a fortnight.
One rigid rule
The Third Air Force HQ has Ils own billeting officer, whose job it is to find homes for men with families. He is in touch with all local estate agents, and, I was told, found few cases of
landings wanting to ifleecet American tenan's. The US. Al Force has a rigid rule: No man / may bring his family over unifl
A
16
he has accommodation for them.19
Just arrived from Kansas City where they had to take to the hills to get away from the flood
British Crossword
33
4
#14
[15
18
Puzzle
20
22
23
-
• PX or Post Exchange to the 24.
American equivalent of NAAFI.
1 Hàmy ham a Bulelip school and Ciury, 'seven, And Dale, five,fare Frosted by their mother, Mrs. Donna M'Orsikan Gary bar în American-type lunch was,
26
ACROSS
3 Counterfeil (8)
8 Tol (6)
9 Disclosed (8)
11 Made up (8)
12 Monster (4) 13-Puzzle (5)
18 Slumber (5)
10 Frank (4)
125
WWWDOWN
1 Fissure (5)
2 Corpulent, (5)
8 Tries hard (7),
4 Skin. (4)
Regrefied: (4). |
|0′ Constráln ((6),
Unexpected? (0)........
THIS
DREAM MEANS:
Your dream symbolists very natural- not deeply re- pressed long- Log for home, husband and family.
The lovely
old mansion
shut up for
your own cHE-'
long time
YOU BENT US THIS DREAM .... [YOU SAW A
Bernar, Canadá.
LARGE AND LOVELY OLD MANSION WHICH HAD BEEN SHUT UP FOR A LONG TIME. YOU WISHED TO GO OVER IT BUT WERE FORBIDDEN TO
ly home-life; you've been missing and hankering after Its Eccurity and happiness,
en-
you become You are forbidden to go over it unti raged to the caretaker, which suggests that you see in mar- Plage the only way to regain and repeat that happiness. The playing children fit, of course, into the ploture of the happy home.
THE
THEN YOU BECAME ENGAGED TO THE CARETAKER ANDA WERE TAKEN OVER THE HOUSE, YOU LOOKED OUT OF AG WINDOW AND SAW A FIELD FULL OF
PLAYING CHILDREN
Your partner does not seem to be clearly defined; so/per-- laps for the moment you haven't quite made up your mind, and are more interested in marriage than in any particular
m123R
It re, given your wholesome instincts and happy child- hood, you shouldn't have long to wait,
The beastliest kind of
as two ships lived it
He is more at home with the CRUEL SEA. By He is a single-minded author. Nicholas Monsarrat. Cas- The ships, their men, the enemy, rough-hewn simplicilies afical-
the sea, the incidents that occur seasickness, bad
temper, sell. 12s. 6d. 416 pages.
by
war
GEORGE
MALCOLM THOMSON
It is a nightmare period, the In this beasiliest kind of fighting -three are his sole concern. He comradeship, fear, guts, cold, de- end of which is the destruction F anybody were seeking has chosen The Battle; it might sire to be at home with the wife, of Compass Rose by torpedo, and
to whether theme for war be truer to say, The Battle has speculation as
that emotion, hardly chosen him. The Cruel Sea has wife shares novel, he would think of choosing the Battle the marks of a nevel that had to As he says, "The only heroines
be written.
я
of the Atlantic, That grim endurance match was the sternest test of grit ever imposed on a maritime people. It was the longest, severest, most critical of all the episodes of the war. It was all of these things and a great deal besides.
to
But does it lend itself readily
dramatic treatment? Has il
a major, centrul hour of climax? Has it flamboyance, romance, the thrill of individual achievement? Hardly.
war
Yel in "The Cruel Sea" Mon- sarrat, taking the Atlantic against the U-boats as his sub- ject, has written the most sur- cessful and inspiring war novel so far published. It is a Book of the Month which, for many readers, will be the book of the year.
It has no plot. When, In an dll-advised moment, Monsarrat
NICHOLAS MONSARRAT The Bottle has chosen him.
be the deaths of most of her crew. elc. After that nothing is quite so a better bad again. Saltash is
and Compass Reze ship -than slowly the Navy gains superiority
a: the ships."
There are two of them, Com- pass Rose,
which A corvette comes to a bad end, and her suc- cessor, Saltash, a frigate that manages to survive, About a 150 men are involved in the fortunes of the two vessels. Most of them dle, when Compass Rose go: down Monserat notes how they died.
"Scme Men died well," he cays, providing list of examples. "Same died badly"--he gives the reasons why. One, for ins.ance was too old, he should have been by the fire children,
over the U-boats.
The las part of the novel is therefore something of an anti- climax, or a relief, depending on how you look at H. But already The Cruel Sca" has made its effect. "Lest we forget!”
There is not much keithcod of forgetting those snapshots of horror-corpses in the water as if they are waiting for a bus— or the almost unbelievable for- tude of the men who saw the business through. Reading. Mon- sarrat, you share (comfortably, In imagination) the strain
of that co-long fight.
with his grand The Jealous
·
remembers that a novel is sup-
"Some men just died." having posed to have a "love interest" Monsartet approaches his task and introduces a Wren cfficer of no hang in particular to live for with the confidence of one who heartbreaking loveliness," his (like Lieutenant Morell, whose knows the business inside cu hear is clearly not in the busi wife was unfaithful to him in a
The sea-war and writing. His manner ness.
episode
has little is clipped, exact, capable of reality and less conviction; Mon- ing to poignancy by a steady ac- sarrat's siyle, adequate to des- cumulation of understatements, perate doings at sea, is not in A more rhetorical treatment famed to
this originality by might have been unbearable. glamorous irrelevancy ashore.
Che SNAPSHOT GUILD
Not all sporta plotures calf for extremely fast lenses or high shutter speeds. The plature at left was made with- a- shutter speed of 1/25 second; that on the right was . taken. with a simple box camera with a snutter speed of about *1/40 secondjgoreng
SPORTS SHOTS WITH SIMPLE CAMERA
high-class scrl of way).
A
few dia
not die, aniong
Lover
THE END OF THE `AFFAIR. - BY Graham Graana: Heinkmann.
10%, 64: 237 Roger GABALI
whom were Ericson, the captain, about human belogs, for one REENE has given up wring and Lockhart, his Number One, the two men who are the fixed novel, only, let us hope. The characters in The End of the centre of the glory. It seemed Affair" book aut talk almost as that after Compass Rose wem if they were alive; in fact they down, the captain had nothing are skilfully carved dolls in a
theclogical puppet show. eft to die with.
Let nobody suppose, however, Ferraby, a young cffleir who Joined the ship with Lockhart, that the word puppet" Implies was another Who did net die, anything light or frivolous. Far When les; we hear of him, he is from it. It means that Sarah, playing with a piece of string the wayward wife who·nds in a home for those whose nerves religion, Henry, her ineffective have brokea.
husband, and Bendrik, her lover, are manipulated in accordance The cruel sea exacts its due in with a set philosophical scheme. more than one currency.
They exist to prove a, cas?.
For a long time the ba tle had
And the case is what? Mar- resembled a game of hide-and- riage is miserable, The joys of As for seek played by a few children in alukery are joyless.
an enormous rambling garden physical love, could anything be "If some of the children were more ignominious and squalidi, vielous, and cruel, and pinched
you when you were discovered, In fact, mankind is hateful. Life tha was nothing unexpected in itself is an unlikeable aberta- a nursery world.
The children grow up. Night falls on the rambling garden. Horror haunts the nursery. There
comes an early morning when Rose, having at great Compass risk picked up survivors of ane
scho
tion.
Seek to love God by haling.
sunk merchantman, gets an aside yourself, if not your neighbour."
(indicating
the presence of That seems to be Greene's theme, U-boat) on the spot where for stated with ferocious dialectical ty survivors of another ship, are cunning
swimming. Ericsont is the captain;
he must make the decision; the The story through which bock says, "Attack at all costs." Greene conveys his doctrine is Compass Rose goes in at spred, simple and, divested of its dropping her depth
charges subtleties of atement im
among the swimmers.
plausible.
Years after his love-affair with Sarah k øver, Bendrix's 'jealousy
is roused by her husband, wh
"As the tormented water leap- thinks she has taken a new ed upwards in a solid grey cloud, lover, Bendrix seis a private de-- the single figure of a man was tɛctive (a ribbly comle, minin4= tossed high on the very plume ture) on to Sarah, of the fountain, a puppet: figure
of whirling arios and legs seem- Her diary,oleh by the des thefing to make, in death, wild ges teclive, moves that she has not lures of anger and reproach. found lover but by Zavlaus Afterwards, looking at the sea, routes, is seeking God. In the where only the seagulls stir, end and up a great, hurry “ché, Ericson wonders if perhaps the finds faith, dies of consumption echo has not come from the for- and performs what looks like pedoed ship sliding slowly to the two miracles (errors of judgment
by. Greene)
Unlikely, as Lemay seem, this vigour
Mos
[OST of us tend to think of sullon toward or away from
sports shots as the province camera may be stopped with of the professional, ignoring the nominal shutter speeds. Action fact that many excellent action which is "across" the camera axis pictures can be made by the requires faster shutters. camaal picture falcer armed with
The picture of the boat, made aa inexpensive camera.
with a box camera, is sharp des There are two simple rules pile the fact that the shutter bottom. which regardless of your coulp speed was only about 1/40 This incident opens the most men will help you in pfeluring
your second. This is because the boat terrible phase of the battle, and Know spris. The first sport. In almost all ports and was headed straight toward the the book, Monsarrat, in his com table is narrated with games x moment exists, some lens of the camera, and because patent way, Jote down the onera and craft that hold the atencion where in the sequence of action, the picture was snapped when fic fantasy of the Diad Helms of a reader who has no beller when all action
I halled: the stpt the boat was still some distance man and the horror of the Burnt in Greene's marioneller | 75 gale Asparkling geme putter polted before making his away Motion appears to be lest Man Dig says Lockhart, In fere with coldly heave the pitcher at the top of at a distance than at close fangely do all fivour of pessime de
while he "appkas his windub, the diver at the peak to you've probably noticed in
|his Rio tube labelles *"uso Cz
his chic, the
goller, at the aid watching cars while down read sparingly." OL.. his back-awing All of these moments: sugges detion yell Sonooutstate to try plous can be stopped with nominal of apopwardless of the Upt. This in the Umero Skeletons, found rop YESTERDAY'S CROSSWORD --Across 3 Stagnate 7aspivan ham hnice: spaus
shutter speeds LASE
ray of cammaa yarota, skada pictures
Band careful platring: Admit, 0 Boltories, 10 Ostler 18 Theprem, 15 Heal, 17 Foresta,
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22 Medium (8)
34 Raider (0)
45 Delicious beverage (6)
20 Eared (8)
10 The" that mentioned
10
of action (5)
14 Gora (5)
13 Cut
tapart: (7)
17 Motor spirit (0);
20 Data (0)
21 Joyous (0);
[22 Dumb (4)
''Valley (4.
10 Feasted, 2008, 21 Recoils 26 Rattle, prilby, 28 Animel, I own alave
29 Returned, "Down: 1. Babati 2' Bmiife, 3 Bleer, & Goth, 5 Armilts, Ensein 0 Pratar, 11 Bfiber, 12 Loose, 14 Mostra, #10 idol, 10 Atoll, 18 Fetter, 10 Ambit, 21 Cigel, 28 Mlent) 44/Becta" -15
Burning
To me the pikatur | la mver
3