The 45th Division News Lands in Italy
In the Original Art section of this website, I mentioned acquiring three pieces of original Mauldin artwork that had belonged to Col. Lloyd Wayne Johnson, who served with the 45th Division and knew Mauldin during WWII. His granddaughter, Bobbi Williams, has kindly allowed me to be the caretaker of these pieces. Bobbi also had a number of WWII-era newspapers that her grandfather saved, including the Camp Barkeley News, the 45th Division News, and Mediterranean Theater issues of Stars and Stripes. I was able to acquire these 41 newspapers and plan on scanning them to make them available as PDFs, before donating the actual newspapers. As I was going through the newspapers, in chatting with my research partner, David D’Andrea, he mentioned that the July 13, 1942 issue of the 45th Division News was of great historical importance. Published in Vittoria, Sicily, it became the first American newspaper published in occupied Europe during WWII.
Sgt. Don Robinson was a reporter for the Oklahoma City Times before signing up for service. He became the editor of the 45th Division News in 1940 and worked closely with Mauldin as they put out the newspaper for the soldiers in the 45th. In 1944, Robinson wrote “News of the 45th”, a book which presented many stories about the hurdles they encountered as they published the newspaper during wartime. In chapter six, Robinson wrote specifically about the desire to put out the first American newspaper in occupied Europe. The meanings of terms in parentheses are mine:
“It was D plus one (D refers to their landing date) and time to think about getting out the 45th Division News. We wanted to print the first American newspaper on Axis home soil. Vittoria, we heard, had fallen, and we were about to start out for it when Clark Lee of International News Service came into the CP (Command Post).
“Like hell, it’s fallen,” said Lee. “I’ve just come from there.” Lee had driven into town with some soldiers and stopped somewhere in Vittoria. While he was there, enemy soldiers came upon the peep (slang for Jeep) and started hunting for the solders they reasoned must go with it. Lee escaped by a back door and across fields, but not with the loss of a sergeant.
Later in the day we got the go-ahead. Vittoria was ours; go in and get out a paper, but watch out for snipers. Leaving Tapscott (photographer George Tapscott) behind to act as a liaison man, Mauldin and I hitchhiked to Vittoria. A signal peep carried me to a town on top of a spare tire, and I got off when I met a British captain I knew. He was walking around the city with a bill poster, selecting sites and putting up proclamations telling the people to turn in their arms, how much American and British money was worth in lire, and other pertinent information. I followed him around, helping him respond to the cheers of the crowd, because he was going to a Civil Affairs headquarters, where Mauldin and I had agree to meet. Mauldin was already on the ball.
Lieutenant Colonel Blank was in charge. In addition to the hundreds of Sicilians who stormed the doors to have their problems of twenty-one years of fascist rule solved, the Colonel had Mauldin to contend with. An amiable character, the Colonel gave Bill an interpreter and the inside information that there were two print shops in town, both closed. We took the interpreter and went to see about opening them up again. Neighbors told us that one printer was in the country, so we went to the other shop. This man had reopened his shop, but his workmen were in the army. Too bad. Dead end. We went back to the first print shop and, through our Brooklyn Sicilian interpreter, told the neighbors to go to the country and fetch the owner of the shop quick. They got him there are 4 P.M., and we started work.
American script, which is different from Italian, couldn’t b read by the printers. We had to go over it all again, lettering it just like type. Our typewriters hadn’t caught up with us yet. When we saw the slow progress of the typesetters, we decided on a three-column, two-page paper — small but neat. Then our troubles began. The Italian alphabet contains no w‘s, k‘s, or y‘s. They had a few for spelling foreign names, but halfway through the paper they said they were running out. We began to change the copy to eliminate words with w‘s, k‘s, and y‘s.
D plus two, we decided we needed some international and war news. Mauldin set out after it on his bicycle while I went on with affairs in the print shop. We had a story set about the paratroopers who had preceded us into Sicily by several hours and met us as proudly as a little boy who has slipped through the pantry window and opened the front door for his mother. There was an item stating our claim to be the first American paper printed in Sicily. There were combat stories and general stories.
Meanwhile, I offered the printers a cigarette.
“He says when you offer a man a cigarette here, it is like giving away a treasure,” interpreted the Brooklynite. I was touched, but couldn’t guess how long it would take for the value of cigarettes to change. An egg is now worth two packs of treasure.
With the coming of evening, Mauldin returned. He had news from one of the ships which we quickly gave to the printers. We would be ready to print when this was set.
“How’d you get it?”, I asked. Then he told me what had happened between Vittoria and the beach.
The cartoonist had set out on his shiny Italian bicycle with an Italian carbine on his shoulder. He hit the coast in good time without incident. At the shore he met a coxswain. The navy man admired the carbine, which gave Mauldin a chance to make his proposition. A trip to the ship and return for the carbine. It was a deal. Mauldin went aboard and got the navy press report. The officer of the deck wouldn’t let the coxswain take the carbine aboard, but the saddened sailor stuck to his bargain. A Messerschmitt strafed them in the harbor. Bill recovered his bicycle and proudly pedaled toward Vittoria. Before he knew was had happened, a Stuka was over him, strafing the shining bicycle. Mauldin ditched the bike somewhere and hitched a ride into Vittoria.
D plus three, the printer pointed to the electric motor that powered the press and cried “No luce.” We got it. “No electricity.” We put the forms on the big press used for printing posters and powered by hand, and set to work. The first copy rolled off, was corrected, and the 45th Division News began Volume IV with Number 1.”
The scan towards the top of this post is of the actual two-sided newspaper that Col. Johnson brought home from Italy. The story of its printing is as fascinating as the news stories themselves. A larger size scan of the newspaper is available for free download here.