Young Frank

"I know that Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. is a hero," said War Correspondent Quentin Reynolds, returned from Italy a month ago. His statement was made last week after Georgia's Senator Richard B. Russell revealed the wounding of young Roosevelt off Palermo.

In Palermo harbor Reynolds found a destroyer (nickname: "The Mighty May") battered to a pulp, low in the water, listing badly. He boarded it and asked for the executive officer. A sailor said: "Who, Big Pancho? . . . That's him. The big guy in dungarees."

Big Pancho turned out to be Lieut. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., busily trying to salvage his ship.

"Pop." The Mighty May was launched about the time that Britain declared war on Germany. Young Roosevelt became an ensign in charge of a gun crew.

She convoyed North Atlantic freighters, made the "suicide run" to Murmansk and back, turned up smartly for the North African invasion and sank a bothersome Vichyfrench cruiser there. Junkers 88s caught her ten miles off Palermo after the Sicily invasion and almost pounded her to the bottom. She staggered into port and, unable to reply with anything but machine guns, took a stationary beating from German bombers.

On the bridge, Executive Officer Roosevelt saw a gunner whose pants were rolled up, told him to get them down to avoid flash burns from enemy fire. The gunner had a bead on a bomber and could not comply; so Roosevelt unrolled one pants leg for him. At that moment a bomb fragment removed the gunner's other leg; Roosevelt suffered a slight hand wound. Big Pancho gave the gunner morphine, applied a tourniquet, lugged him below to sick bay. Says Reynolds: His crew worship the guy. They say he's terrific in combat.

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