War Comes to All-Benny

To many a somnolent Southern town, war has brought a new life. That life has come in the shape of trucks rumbling through the wide, shady streets, strangers in uniform lounging on the corners, coins clinking a silvery song in cash registers, an unwonted jangle of juke boxes combing the thick night air. Such a town is Albany (pop. 19,055) on the sandy plains of southern Georgia. . . .

The war crept up on Albany (pronounced All-Benny). One summer day in 1940 some aviation men appeared in town, leased the mile-square, $365,000 airport. Next came a detachment of ruddy young British cadets, to train for the R.A.F. Last April a group of Army men turned up to see about starting an advanced training school for the Air Corps. Albany, its eyes a-pop, scraped together $65,000, bought some 1,500 acres in the flat pecan groves east of the city, leased them to the War Department for $1 a year.

Albany's bright-eyed merchants rubbed their hands. Said one: "Business is so good I have to pinch myself." Customers were plentiful: some 300 R.A.F. cadets and their 65 officers, more than 2,300 Air Corps officers, cadets, enlisted men. Albany's retail trade, $10,000,000 in 1940, jumped about 30% last year.

The other side of Albany's new-found coin was not so shiny. The bars in Albany's two best hotels are crowded nightly with Albany girls, Air Corps officers and men. (British cadets get only $12.50 a week, train hard, go to bed early.)

The Club Room at the New Albany Hotel has been enlarged to thrice its prewar size, is soon to be enlarged again. Two new nighteries have sprung up on the city's outskirts, complete with music, liquor, slot machines, gambling. Syphilis in Albany has taken an upward turn. Albany's far-famed, carefully supervised red-light district, which used to advertise its wares in neon lights, is doing an embarrassingly brisk trade.

Country folks coming to town in their clean Sunday overalls and cotton dresses looked grimly at the new sights to be seen in Albany. They watched the young girls flitting in & out of the Club Room. In cars along the dark roads they heard high-school girls giggling unchildlike giggles. (Georgia's age of consent is 14.) Said a tight-lipped farmer: "If I had a daughter that age in Albany, I'd sit up every night with a shotgun."

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