Private "Cookie"

The New York Daily Mirror is a rowdy tabloid which flavors its journalism with-gossip, horse-race news, a backfence approach to divorce-case testimony. But last week, to the editorial column of the Daily Mirror, war brought the season's best homily:

"This is for that legion of downy-faced kids, embryo 'whitecollar' workers, who were sitting around every office in New York about a year ago. . . .

"They were the zoot-suit wearers, the jive bombers and the jitter-bugs. . . .

"And here's what we thought of them; don't try to deny it now:

". . . Here the world is burning up, and this country may fall into the fire at any time, and there--there!-- sits the younger generation! . .

"Well, as it turns out, we need not have wondered. . . . We were reminded of this yesterday when the Marine Corps in Washington released the story of how Private Thomas Cook 'got mad' one day on Guadalcanal.

"The case history of shy and mild-mannered Cook is that he was a Mirror copyboy, who lived at 26 Oliver St. with his mother, liked to dance and have fun, got excited about the motion picture Sergeant York, and came into the office on Dec. 8, 1941, and said:

' 'I'm going to enlist.'

" 'The marines'll make a man of you,' we kidded him. And somebody else added, 'But you'll never be a Sergeant York, Cookie.'

' 'The Marines it is,' this kid answered.

'And don't put any bets on that Sergeant York stuff.'

"We're glad we didn't, because yesterday's story tells how Private Cook, wounded, and another marine, wounded, and a third, unwounded, stood off a band of Japs for seven and one-half hours.

"Just before help came, Cook and the wounded buddy with him ran out of ammunition.

"A Jap willing to die for his emperor rushed them with a blazing gun. This made our former copy boy mad. He charged and split the Jap's skull with his rifle butt.

"Tommy Cook and his pals never were taught that if you run out and give your life in battle, you win a free ticket to a special warrior's heaven. They fought on the theory that the best soldier is the soldier who wants to live. And they fought with all the American ingenuity that is their heritage."

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