Fleet's "Darling"

The most-shot-at U.S. foreign correspondent was last week put out of action after a hazardous year and a half on the most adventurous assignment of the war. A.P.'s 34-year-old Maryland-born Laurence ("Larry") Edmund Allen was hospitalized in Alexandria, Egypt, a survivor of a torpedoed British cruiser in the Mediterranean.

Since September 1940, tall, blond Larry Allen has reported firsthand almost every big British naval action in the,, Mediterranean. In March, when the British in one night in the Battle of Matapan knocked out an Italian battleship and sank a half-dozen cruisers and destroyers, Correspond ent Allen got a grandstand view from the bridge of Admiral Cunningham's flagship Warspite. He was with the British squad ron which blasted 5,000 Nazi troops at tempting a surprise landing at Crete.

From the bridge of the aircraft carrier Illustrious last January Larry Allen got one of the best action stories of the war, when he (and the Illustrious) miraculously survived a savage, seven-hour attack of 50 Stukas and torpedo planes. Singed and blown down a hatchway, he stuck to the ship as it was bombed again at Malta. After that nervy feat of reporting, Rear Admiral Lyster declared that Allen was the "darling" of the British Mediterranean fleet.

Meanwhile, last week A.P. did not lack for a Grade-A Allen story. With news of his hospitalization arrived his delayed story of a seven-hour battle "off Libya" between Nazi planes and a squadron of British destroyers and cruisers. Machine-gunned by a dive-bomber, his cruiser was repeatedly shaved by big bombs and torpedoes as it twisted in emergency turns and pumped a "hell of fire" at the enemy. The cruiser apparently was finally torpedoed, perhaps by an Axis submarine, and sank. Rescued after 45 minutes in the water, he came through luckily with only painful bruises and a heavy overdose of fuel oil and sea water.

Death, which thus narrowly missed Larry Allen, came on the same unidentified cruiser to his good friend Alexander Massy Anderson of Reuters, first British correspondent killed in the war.

Cabled Larry Allen from his hospital bed in Alexandria: "Jock Anderson was the bravest, most courageous newspaper correspondent I have ever known. ... I was with him when the Illustrious was attacked by German planes for seven hours. . . . Anderson emerged smiling. . . ."

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