Yank Pranks

Yank will be edited "solely and exclusively for us in the ranks and for nobody else." So announced the staff of the Army's weekly tabloid 66 issues ago. But somebody had different ideas.

Keeping pictures and text breezy and informal entertainment was a running battle for Yank's editor, Major Hartzell Spence, onetime U.P. executive. The staff, all enlisted men, printed what they thought subscribers wanted, but Washington brass hats had their own ideas of what soldiers should read. When Yank's Australian edition criticized Hollywoody cigaret advertising (TIME, Aug. 30), Spence fought off complaints. Despite pressure from higher up, not once did Yank tell soldiers about buying war bonds.

But last fortnight's issue went too far for Pentagon Building kibitzers. One cartoon showed a two-star general, breakfasting in bed. Another, in which an emaciated corporal pointed at a well-fed Army cook, had the caption: "He still insists he doesn't use saltpeter." The editorial gently poked a particularly sensitive sacred cow, the American Legion (". . . Men . . . joined the Legion to apply pressure to get things done politically . . .").

Before the Legion could cry "unfair," Major Spence was out. The Army called his transfer "routine." Brigadier General Frederick Osborn, whose Special Services Branch is responsible for Yank, hinted at an overseas assignment for ex-Editor Spence: "We can't run a good Army newspaper with men who sit in an office and don't see the war."

This week's issue of Yank has no editorial. A column, signed "Yank's Washington Bureau," cheers soldiers who buy war bonds.

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