Thursday, June 6, 2019

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Thursday, June 6, 2019 | Indiana Daily Student | idsnews.com

Trustees vote on tuition increase By Claire Peters clapete@iu.edu | @claire_peterss

Ernie Pyle visits with a tank crew of the 91st Tank Battalion circa March 1944 in the Anzio Beachhead. Three months later, Pyle would be in Normandy, France.

In World War II, the Allied forces invaded Normandy Beach in France on June 6, 1944. Six days later, war correspondent, Indiana native and former editor of the Indiana Daily Student Ernie Pyle was in Normandy in the invasion’s aftermath. In recognition of D-Day, the IDS is reprinting the first of Pyle’s Normandy columns:

‘A PURE MIRACLE.’ NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 12, 1944 – Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore. By the time we got here the beaches had been taken and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland. All that remained on the beach was some sniping and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast of a mine geysering brown sand into the air. That plus a gigantic and pitiful litter of wreckage along miles of shoreline. Submerged tanks and overturned boats and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps and sad little personal belongings were strewn all over these bitter sands. That plus the bodies of soldiers lying in rows covered with blankets, the toes of their shoes sticking up in a line as though on drill. And other bodies, uncollected, still sprawling grotesquely in the sand or half hidden by the high grass beyond the beach. That plus an intense, grim determination of work-weary men to get this chaotic beach organized and get all the vital supplies and the reinforcements moving more rapidly over it from the stacked-up ships standing in droves out to sea. * * * Now that it is over it seems to

me a pure miracle that we ever took the beach at all. For some of our units it was easy, but in this special sector where I am Ernie Pyle now our troops faced such odds that our getting ashore was like my whipping Joe Louis down to a pulp. In this column I want to tell you what the opening of the second front in this one sector entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you. Ashore, facing us, were more enemy troops than we had in our assault waves. The advantages were all theirs, the disadvantages all ours. The Germans were dug into positions that they had been working on for months, although these were not yet all complete. A one-hundred-foot bluff a couple of hundred yards back from the beach had great concrete gun emplacements built right into the hilltop. These opened to the sides instead of to the front, thus making it very hard for naval fire from the sea to reach them. They could shoot parallel with the beach and cover every foot of it for miles with artillery fire. Then they had hidden machinegun nests on the forward slopes, with crossfire taking in every inch of the beach. These nests were connected by networks of trenches,

so that the German gunners could move about without exposing themselves. Throughout the length of the beach, running zigzag a couple of hundred yards back from the shoreline, was an immense V-shaped ditch fifteen feet deep. Nothing could cross it, not even men on foot, until fills had been made. And in other places at the far end of the beach, where the ground is flatter, they had great concrete walls. These were blasted by our naval gunfire or by explosives set by hand after we got ashore. Our only exits from the beach were several swales or valleys, each about one hundred yards wide. The Germans made the most of these funnel-like traps, sowing them with buried mines. They contained, also, barbed-wire entanglements with mines attached, hidden ditches, and machine guns firing from the slopes. This is what was on the shore. But our men had to go through a maze nearly as deadly as this before they even got ashore. Underwater obstacles were terrific. The Germans had whole fields of evil devices under the water to catch our boats. Even now, several days after the landing, we have cleared only channels through them and cannot yet approach the whole length of the beach with our ships. Even now some ship or boat hits one of these mines every day and is knocked out of commission.

The Germans had masses of those great six-pronged spiders, made of railroad iron and standing shoulder-high, just beneath the surface of the water for our landing craft to run into. They also had huge logs buried in the sand, pointing upward and outward, their tops just below the water. Attached to these logs were mines. In addition to these obstacles they had floating mines offshore, land mines buried in the sand of the beach, and more mines in checkerboard rows in the tall grass beyond the sand. And the enemy had four men on shore for every three men we had approaching the shore. And yet we got on. * * * Beach landings are planned to a schedule that is set far ahead of time. They all have to be timed, in order for everything to mesh and for the following waves of troops to be standing off the beach and ready to land at the right moment. As the landings are planned, some elements of the assault force are to break through quickly, push on inland, and attack the most obvious enemy strong points. It is usually the plan for units to be inland, attacking gun positions from behind, within a matter of minutes after the first men hit the beach. SEE D-DAY, PAGE 4

ERNIE PYLE MATERIALS ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH A PROJECT OF THE ERNIE PYLE WORLD WAR II MUSEUM IN DANA, INDIANA, THE SCRIPPS HOWARD FOUNDATION AND THE HOOSIER STATE PRESS ASSOCIATION

FIELD HOCKEY

Hailey Couch to play on national team By Dylan Wallace dswallac@iu.edu | @Dwall_1

USA Field Hockey announced Monday afternoon its selections for the 2019 Young Women’s National Championship, and IU field hockey sophomore Hailey Couch was on the list. The YWNC is an annual event featuring 144 athletes. Over the spring, select athletes tried out and trained at USA Field Hockey High-Performance Centers throughout the country for an opportunity to earn a spot in the tournament. Teams will compete for a national championship, as well as an opportunity to be selected to the 2020 U.S. U-21 Women's National Team and U.S. Women's National Development Team, or a trial for the U.S. Women's National Team. The event will take place in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is the home state of Couch, who lives in Easton, Pennsylvania. Before coming to college, Couch played for four years in the USA Field Hockey pipeline, com-

peting in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, as well as internationally in Canada and the Netherlands. She had success in high school and at the club level with X-Calibur, one of the most dominant club programs in the country, where she won four national club titles. After watching Couch at the high school and club levels, the director of the U.S. National Indoor Program, Jun Kentwell, gave Couch a call. Even after the first tryout, which Couch called the worst of her career, she would eventually get her shot. Couch was a part of the U-19 Squad that traveled to the Netherlands, falling short of a title to the host nation. “It was truly amazing, and I’m so thankful for the experience,” Couch said in an IDS article published Sept. 27, 2018. “Being exposed to college-level girls was truly phenomenal. They just push you to be better and taught you how to not just do things but mentally take things.”

IDS FILE PHOTO

Then-Freshman forward Hailey Couch keeps the ball away from senior back Baily Higgins. The game took place Oct. 5, 2018, at the field hockey complex.

In her freshman season at IU, Couch played in 17 games for the Hoosiers, starting 14. She also tallied one assist and had nine shots on goal. Now before her sopho-

more campaign begins, Couch will once again play in the USA Field Hockey pipeline. The YWNC will take place June 14-18 at Spooky Nook Sports in Lancaster.

As the average cost of college across the nation rises, the IU Board of Trustees met Wednesday at IUPurdue University Indianapolis to discuss a proposed tuition increase for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years. The board is recommending a proposed tuition and fee increase of 2.5% for Indiana-resident undergraduate students and a 3% increase for out-of-state students at all campuses, according to Michael Mirro, the chair of the Board of Trustees. In Bloomington, this could cause a $267 dollar increase in tuition for in-state students. “Indiana University has for 200 years been an integral partner with the state in ensuring that a first rate affordable and accessible education is available to Indiana’s best students,” IU President Michael McRobbie said. The net cost of attending IU has declined over the past three years, with around 75% of students receive some sort of financial aid, whether it be federal, state or private assistance, McRobbie said. “In 2017-18, IU dispersed more than $1.2 billion in total financial aid,” McRobbie said. “Since 2007, IU financial assistance for resident undergraduate students has increased by 227%.” He said even with this tuition increase, IU will remain below the national average for four year public institutions. According to the graphs provided during the presentation given by Vice President and Chief Financial Officer John Sejdinaj, IU is the eighth most expensive college out of all the Big Ten schools. Sejdinaj said the Higher Education Price Index is what drives the cost of college. This index tracks the fluctuation of costs within colleges every year and is run by asset management firm Commonfund. “It takes into account the costs that college university faces which is made up of salaries, benefits, supplies and services and utilities,” Sejdinaj said. More weight is put on salaries and benefits since those are costs directly applied to the people at the universiSEE TRUSTEES, PAGE 4

Cat video collection to screen at IU Cinema By Colin Dombrowski ctdombro@iu.edu | @Colin_Thaddeus

A screen usually reserved for the high points of cinema will instead be filled with cat videos at 4 p.m. this Saturday at IU Cinema for “CatVideoFest 2019.” “CatVideoFest 2019” is a compilation of cat videos ranging from music videos to classic Internet content, according to IU Cinema’s website. Tickets are available for $4 online and at the door before the show and a portion of the proceeds go to support “Lil BUB’s Big FUND for the ASPCA,” a fundraiser aimed at assisting pets with special needs nationwide. \A part of the “International Arthouse” series, this collection of videos is out of the ordinary for its lack of human characters. However, this isn’t the first time that IU Cinema has flaunted a feline feature. In March 2017, IU Cinema screened “KEDI,” a documentary about Turkish street cats. “KEDI remains one of the most well-attended set of screenings in our history,” said Brittany Friesner, IU cinema associate director and selfdescribed certifiable cat lady. “CatVideoFest 2019” will hopefully draw a large crowd as well. “We figured it was the perfect opportunity to have a fun, engaging event that would appeal to all ages across campus and the Bloomington community,” Friesner also said. This screening adds a philanthropic note to the cat movie premiere. This film acts as a promotional opportunity and fundraiser for “Lil BUB’s Big FUND for the ASCPA.” This charity is directed at providing financial assistance to dogs, cats and other pets needing expensive surgery or medical care that could otherwise be prohibitively expensive to their owners. Lil BUB, an internet-famous cat from Bloomington, is unable to attend the premiere. Nonetheless, she will be featured in a pre-screening introduction video.


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Thursday, June 6, 2019 by Indiana Daily Student - idsnews - Issuu