National Anthem

"I'm no radio engineer," Private Lloyd Shearer told Lieut. Tom Sawyer. But, like every private who ever argued with an officer, he lost. For H. V. Kaltenborn's broadcast from Fort Bragg, N.C., Private Shearer was an engineer. In the New York Times this week he told his story.

WPTF in Raleigh and several other stations wanted to carry Kaltenborn's pep talk to the soldiers. That required remote equipment (for hooking into telephone lines). So Private Shearer journeyed to Fayetteville, found a radio station, accosted the engineer, and said: "By the authority vested in me, I should like to borrow your remote equipment." Said the engineer: "Get the hell outa here."

Eventually Private Shearer got the equipment, persuaded ("for two cokes, a girl's phone number and my new black tie") three signal corps men to hook it up. The great hour and the great man arrived. Kaltenborn stalked to the microphone.

"I do not look at all like I sound," he began. "I sound short and I'm tall. I sound thin and I'm fat. I sound Dutch and I'm German."

To Private Shearer, frantically trying to modulate the pundit's inexplicable emphases, Kaltenborn sounded "like a conga drum; one, two, three . . . boom!" After 13 minutes the pundit was through and the private was exhausted. The announcer ushered Kaltenborn gracefully off the air, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, our national anthem."

But Private Shearer was no radio engineer. He thought he was off the air. Leaning back, he murmured into a live mike an anthem of his own: "Thank the Lord. H. V. Kaltenborn is off the air."

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