 Proudly we hail. From New York home of the American stage, another dramatic documentary of our country and our people, featuring a cast of outstanding players. Public service time has been made available by this radio station so that your army and your air force can bring you now a tale of scientific precision as proudly we hail the Army Map Service. For those who think a map is something to crumple in the glove compartment of the car, for the soldiers who followed them all over the world and who figured they'd always been around. For those who would tab it in the business, here is a story we call Maps by the Minions. It started 105 years ago, yet it's as young as today. It stands unmatched for sheer courage and genius. The story in a moment. Right now, a message of interest. An important message for the young men of our country. If you think you can hold down a man's job, there's a man's job waiting for you in your country's rapidly expanding United States Army. Go to your nearest United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Station and get all the facts today. It's summer in Washington. The year is 1950. The hot stickiness of the night is only relieved by an occasional gust of human wind off the river. On the southern tip of land that juts into the Potomac is a military reservation. The lights that blaze, the staccato slapping of hurrying footsteps are in sharp contrast to the slumbering quietness of a surrounding city. Deep in the military reservation is a rambling building, parts of it windowless. It probes with the muffled pulsating of frantic machinery. A tall figure hurries down the path, inserts a key in the lock, opens the door and passes through the welcoming rectangle of yellow light. He identifies himself as Fred Cowan to armed guards, paces along subterranean corridors and enters a vast closed room, shaking with the gyrations of rows of giant printing presses. Lockers line one wall. The man hurries to his, unlocks it, shakes himself out of his light summer coat, hangs it on a hook and follows with other pieces of clothing. He pulls on a pair of ink smeared pressman's overalls and walks to number five litho press. Another man stands beside that press. As sheet after sheet is ejected, he scans the finished product, his right hand high on a series of control buttons, ready to halt the printing the instant any variation is noticed. His name is William Connors. Hi Bill, what's on? Oh, hi Freddy, your guess is as good as mine. I got the same phone call you did. Well, I live out further, you know that, don't you? Oh sure, sure, I didn't mean nothing. I wonder what they're all excited over, nothing like a system war. Oh, candle on the phone said it was top priority. I haven't seen him since I got in. The press was all set up and rolling. What's the map run? Louisiana maneuver area again? That's a large scale country in the Far East, which one? It's here on the identification box. Some place called Korea. If you fight a war these days, you've got to have maps and they've got to be good. They've got to be detailed and accurate. When aggression from the North forced United Nations troops into Korea in June of 1950, the maps they had of the area were the best in the world. The powerful presses of the Army map service in Washington started rolling that hot summer night to supply additional thousands that would be needed as the war surged up and down the Korean Peninsula. And as details filtered back, the maps were altered, a misplaced cove, a hill where none had been shown on the map, a new railroad spur, precise, up to the minute, flown by air to the men fighting their way up a foreign coastline, field units setting up presses in the Pacific, as they had during the war to make the myriad maps of fighting army requires. The quick sweep of speedy photo planes, the incredible calculations based on the aerial pictures, the detailed maps that so speedily result. But it wasn't always this way. Once when our nation was young, when the great distances of the West were all but unexplored, the Congress of the United States authorized an expedition to chart the unknown to mark the trails that only explorers and guides like Kit Carson knew. Two such an assignment was ordered John C. Freeman, Lieutenant, United States Army. We set out in the summer of 1842 from Choutou's Landing on the Missouri River. We traveled about a hundred miles along the Cor River and then struck out overland to Fort Laramie. On the way, a new mountain peak was discovered. The party insisted on naming it for me. We returned to St. Louis along the Platte and Missouri Rivers. We mapped as we went, as accurately as our instruments would permit. It was a quiet narrative of a hard laborious journey that was just preparation for the job to come. The surveying of the trails to the Pacific Coast, over the Rockies, across the salt desert to the Great Salt Lake, along the trail of Lewis and Clark on the Columbia River, and back southward through Nevada to the eastern base of the towering Sierra Nevada Mountains, where the party paused for a moment in January 1844. Venice Fremont's own diary reports it. February 2nd, 1844, traveled 16 miles, elevation of camp, 6,760 feet. February 9th, snow five feet deep, putting on snowshoes which we made ourselves. The glare of the snow has rendered many of our people almost blind. We're fortunate in having some black silk handkerchiefs which, worn as veils, very much relieved our eyes. February 20th, we encamped with all our animals on the summit of the pass in the dividing ridge, elevation 9,338 feet. February 22nd, tonight we killed another mule, now our only resource from starvation. February 23rd, going ahead with Kit Carson to reconnoiter the road, we reached in the afternoon a creek which made the outlet of a lake. What now, Kit? Cross it. That's our direction. All right, follow me. The short shot. Coming. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, this water's cold. All to their action. Are you hurt? Hold on now. No, no, no. Don't Kit. I'm all right. It's like ice. Colder than I thought. Hold on to me now. I'll Kit out. I'm all right, Kit. I just can't catch my breath. That's cold. Just as well I came in after you. I lost my musket. I gotta find it. No, you don't. Not back in that water. You can afford to lose the gun, but not you. The first thing is a build of fire. Swinging an axe to keep the blood running warm anyway. After we had partially dried ourselves, we went back to meet the camp. We afterwards found that the gun had been slung under the ice, which lined the banks of the creek. February 27th. We grew very anxious as the day advanced to no grasp here, for the lives of our horses and mules depended on finding it tonight. The day was nearly gone when towns, one of our men... I don't know why we keep going this way. I think I'll be going home now. I will go home now. It's back up in the mountains. Town? What do you think you are? Only a little way from home. But I'm hungry. I think I'll go home for supper now. Hey, town, stop it. Towns, don't you know who I am? Who am I? Well, you're... you're our baker. At least I think you are. But you don't have any bread out here. It's back in your shop. I'm going to your shop for bread, and I'm... I'm going home for supper. Towns, come back, you fool. You'll freeze up there. Towns! Y'all, I shouldn't take this pack. I'm going out to town. I'll bring him back somehow. Towns wandered off into the woods, not knowing where he was. I was able to bring him back, but he had to be restrained until he recovered sufficiently. March 6th, 1844. Reach Sutter's Fort today. Of the sixty-seven horses and mules with which we started across the Sierra, only thirty-five arrived at Sutter's Fort. But the maps were made. The trails were blazed. In spite of cold and even madness, a section of the earth was charted. John Fremont had done his job better than he knew. For as he drew his maps, he was also drawing the outlines of a rich tradition that would be followed through the years by the Army's topographical engineers, by the daring pilots whose flying cameras were to chart great portions of the world by the far-reaching organization of the Army Map Service. Although born of war, it would achieve greatness in peace. It is doubtful that there were many times in our history when our country's needs were as desperately urgent as in early 1942. In the east, over Europe, the engine noise of a few B-17s was a weak promise of what was to come. In the other direction, out over the limitless Pacific, the thunder of the first naval engagements were echoing to the shores of Japan, and then silence settled over the vast area. Where would the United States strike? The enemy wondered, and the answer was in the making, but veiled in silence and dark with the word secret. All right then, gentlemen. You have the target. We agreed on the D date. We all have a lot of work ahead of us. I want to see troop dispositions, available transport, air support plan, and full tactical maps of the area as soon as possible. That will be all, gentlemen. Oh, Matthews. Yes, General? About the maps. Will they be ready? I haven't said anything about it, but I'm afraid there's trouble. What sort of trouble? The target island has never been mapped. Much less the sea approaches. All there are some navigational charts and area maps, but the engineers say there are tremendous discrepancies between the different ones available. Some of them are 20 or 30 years old, and some have harbors where others show straight coastline. It's that bad. Can they get any kind of a map from what they've got? You know how short time is. Not the maps we need, with accurate enough details for amphibious beach operations. And for pre-assault air bombardment? No, sir. We'd find ourselves pumping high explosives into some uninhabited back jungle. Matthews, you've got something going, or you would have brought this up before. We're working on it, and it ought to wind up in time to give us a set of maps for this target that'll match the best. Aerial mapping operation? That's right, sir. Air transport command is flying in some of the Air Force staff that did the aerial mapping in Alaska on the Alkan Highway. Are you set up to run them in quantity once the area's been photographed and the maps plotted? A complete engineer topographic mapping battalion is ready. Draftsman, plate shop, presses, all works. Good. All right. Carry on with it, Matthews. But understand any hitch, and I'm to be immediately notified. Without maps, these troops, these ships, these guns, without maps, they're all useless. These were the blue chips. Boats, guns, trucks, tanks, and men. Not one of them could be tossed in the pot. A hand couldn't be raised to draw a card until they had their maps. But they did move, and as so often is true in war, a great moment of history depended on the courage of a single man. In this case, his name was Carl Polivka, Captain United States Air Force. In a moment more about maps and the men who make them, more about the unsung work of the Army Map Service. Now we pause in the proudly beheld production of maps by the Minions for this important message. You young men of American know that the United States Army has been expanding. However, that expansion must continue when your help is needed. It's needed right now. You yourself can get ahead in the Army because there are many opportunities for advancement if you have initiative, courage, and leadership ability. So visit your local United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Station and enlist in the United States Army today. You are listening to Proudly We Hail, a dramatic documentary saluting the Army Map Service, a story we've called Maps by the Minions. You sent for me, Major? Yes, Captain Polivka. Relax. Sit down. Well, spare me the treatment, sir. Just tell me the bad news. It's bad, all right. Maybe you can change it. I'm human. There's limits to what you can expect. You're my boy, Carl. Anybody can swing it you can. Let me know what it is. Am I supposed to fly a B-17 down somebody's chimney? In a sense. What I'm going to tell you is top secret. Okay. It's a task force assembling now for our first counterattack. Well, that's the best news since December. I feel the same way you do, Carl. There's a hitch. Yeah. There are no maps of Area X. We comb the islands. Stateside, they've turned the files upside down. Nothing? No. The missionaries, the RC planners. What have they been using to navigate steamships on those waters? Not accurate enough for an amphibious landing operation. A campaign to take an island. You know what these island sketch maps are. Location not accurate within several miles. They want the area mapped. That's the story. Specialist team was headed in from the States. Their planes down. Project was set for a flight of P-38s rigged for aerial mapping. F-4s they call them. Those planes were lost on a sub-picked off the freighter carrying. What do I use? A B-17? That's a bum joke because you're right. That island has to be mapped. 17 is the only thing I've got for you with range enough to get there and back. I'll try it. But listen, if the pictures aren't in focus, don't make me go back. Sergeant strip all armament, load extra fuel tanks in the bomb bay. We're flying light, but fast. Okay, Corporal, you're the photographer. Rig the cameras any way you want and tell me what you have to have. Pom Pom Tower. This is Army 8753. Airborne at 0614. Destination, Area X. Army 8753 flew almost a thousand miles to Area X. And over the island that was its target, the plane set a new course. Straight down the backbone of that brown and green oval on the blue Pacific. Fighters rose to protect the enemy base. Blackpups of anti-aircraft polka dotted the length of the island. The fortress banked, turned and made another run. Puzzled enemy pilots hesitated long enough for the big plane to find cloud cover and head for home. Army 8753 did come home. In time came this announcement. An Associated Press Bulletin. August 7th, 1942. Dateline somewhere in the Pacific. United States troops have successfully landed on a strongly fortified enemy base in the Solomon Islands Group. American troops have taken the first step back on the road to the Philippines. That map made history. You could say it made freedom. It was the map for the entire campaign in that area. It was the first reliable map ever made of the island. And the speed with which it was made proved once and for all that aerial mapping was a vital key to victory in a global war. Now, global. That's a good word. It means a lot when you start talking in terms of maps. I had a man ask me the other day. Maps? What about them? During war, any army just goes on through things or these days over them in the air. What's all this about maps? Well, will you admit it's a good idea to know where you're going? Well, sure, but there are always maps around. You heard what happened out in the Pacific at the start of the last war? Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true. Well, you need maps for uncivilized pastels out there, but... You mean Europe? Yeah. Oh, why didn't they use roadmaps from the gas station? They got them in Europe. Seems to me they do just as well. Perhaps. Except the tank isn't a private car. And you can't calculate the height of hills, the depth and width of rivers from a road map. And look, Mac, a clover leaf intersection near Durham, North Carolina doesn't look like much from an airplane 30,000 feet in the air. No, maybe you're right, but... I'm not convinced. Well, answer me this. Can you read a road map from a gas station in a blacked-out tank or plane? Can you figure how to coordinate artillery fire with infantry movements? How to figure in advance where the enemy would be likely to hide 60-millimeter mortars? All right, all right, don't get excited. And what's more, you don't plan a global war on a map from a geography book any more than you plan an invasion of France on a map made for Napoleon. You're kidding me. For Napoleon? No, that's the truth. When we began to prepare for D-Day, the only military map in existence of the French coastal areas was one that had been made for the Little Corporal. Huh. Well, uh, what did they use in, uh, well, the First World War, for example? Well, most military operations, even in the First World War, were localized in required little mapping. Oh, sure, the AEF had maps, but by today's requirements, they were pretty crude. Before the First World War, most military operations mapped as they went along, and most military decisions were made from information secured from advanced troops scouting ahead. Well, then, you mean that on December 7th, 1941, we almost had defied from a roadmap? Well, almost, but not quite. You see, the question you asked was answered by the creation of the Army Map Service. One week of December had barely passed before the call started to come into Washington. Vital, we have a map of Luzon, Philippine islands at once. Have to have a map of the South Pacific, scale 1 to 50,000. Send out by air at least a dozen copies of maps for the Dutch East Indies. Find a map of some place in the Pacific called Tarawa. The existing sources of maps, both military and civilian, couldn't handle a war of this size. The need was for some major agency to collect maps, to compile maps, to print maps, and to distribute them where they were needed. And so was born the Army Map Service. We understand, ma'am, you did some missionary work in the South Seas for some time. Yes, I did, for over nine years. Did you have any maps of your area? I don't think so. No, not that I remember. But my husband and I did draw a sketch of one of the trails in New Guinea with water courses and all. I may still have it in the attic somewhere. Young man, you wait right here, and I'll look. You could help us quite a bit, if you will, Captain. Sure I'll help you. Why, when I sail my ship through those islands... That's it, sir. That'll be the information we need. And if we can have your charts for that part of the Pacific. Sergeant Williams reporting, sir. We've located an entire series of Sumatra area maps at the offices of an oil company in California. Lieutenant Vought, sir, calling from Seattle. As an old trader up here used to sail into the harbor at truck. His charts are gonna be a gold mine. It's a real break. The information was coming in. Snapshots, postcards, diaries, letters. It was analyzed, checked and recorded. But map requirements continued to mount, and so a revolutionary concept in map making was suggested. Produce maps on an assembly line basis, despite history's contention that it was laborious, specialized handwork. The argument was advanced that there weren't even enough available personnel to staff a production line. The Army Map Service had the answer. They turned to the women of America, and they got the colleges of the country to give courses. Course 511, Mapping, Topography, Cartography. One semester, five points, Professor Malone. This course is indoctrination for cartography. It will include the latest methods from photographic mapping to high-speed lithography. Note, to those interested, government employment assured on completion of course. Twenty colleges and universities gave such a course to their women. 500 came to Washington and went to work in a secluded secret building where even the wastebaskets had locks. Here was a vital part of America. An enemy knowing what maps were being made would know where the United States was going to launch its offensives. Often the young women knew before the generals where amphibious landings were contemplated. They did a variety of jobs. My name is Dorothy Tiss. I have run a high-speed lithograph press. It can turn out 3,000 maps an hour, day in and day out, night in and night out. We had a swing ship before factories knew what the word meant. I take pictures with just about the biggest camera in the world. I'm Terry Hayward, and I come from Mobile, Alabama, and the cameras for making the plates that they print the maps from. Not all of the women came from the schools. Many had done civilian drafting, had worked in highly skilled positions in photography. All wanted to help. During World War II, the Army Map Service made 500 million maps. We figured it out. That's a pile higher than the Washington Monuments. 70 million maps, 3,000 kinds for France alone. 40,000 different maps during the war. 70,000 atlases, gazetteers, glossaries. Oh, that's a lot of maps. You can say that again. They'd weigh as much as 83 Pullman cars. If they were spread out, they'd cover New York from the battery to Central Park. Yeah, that's a lot of maps. It's figured that mapping began in prehistoric days when a hunter scratched out a crude diagram in the dust of his cave to show some neighbor where he had pounded that dinosaur into steak. In America, the great tradition of such men as map maker John Fremont reached a peak during the most terrible wars the world has ever seen. Certainly one climax was the morning patents racing army awoke to find that they had outrun the limits of their maps and sent up a howling that only ceased when 10 tons of maps were parachuted down to them. Very interesting, but where do they go from here? A good question. The answer is everywhere. The demands of peace are in many ways as pressing as those of war. The world has grown smaller. We have neighbors now where once we had only acquaintances. New developments. Scientific marvels to keep pace with the time. Fluorescent maps for use in the dark and under special lights. Emergency cloth maps for aviators forced down at sea. They'll withstand water and exposure. Then there's the use of radar as an aid in mapping with a promise that someday it may be one of the basic means for computing maps. New methods and equipment for aerial mapping. An amazing new camera with a piece of film nine and one half inches wide and 200 feet long built for 600 mile an hour jets and so accurate that the pictures show a golf ball on a tee photographed from 20,000 feet. This then has been the story. A brief introduction to maps. The men and women who made them during the war and who make them now. And the Army Map Service. It began in America with John Fremont and his men laboring through the mountains over a hundred years ago. It came down through work and legend to the lumbering B-17 carrying a crew and cameras away from an island in the enemy infested Pacific. The nimble fingers, keen eyes and minds and stout hearts of the men and women in the squat building near Washington. This has been the story, the tradition and the service to the nation of maps and the Army Map Service. They make them by the millions. Proudly we hail now brings you an important message. The United States Army, the senior service of our armed forces is expanding rapidly and needs your help. By enlisting in the United States Army you'll not only get the finest training in the world but you'll have the special pride that goes with wearing a United States Army uniform. If you have the qualifications the Army will train you in such interesting career fields as radio, radar, electronics, mechanics, meteorology and many others. Why not get full details by visiting your local United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Station today. This has been another program on Proudly We Hail presented transcribed in cooperation with this station by the United States Army and the United States Air Force Recruiting Service. This program featured Norman Rose as narrator. This is Kenneth Banghart speaking and inviting you to tune in this same station next week for another interesting story on Proudly We Hail.