Fighting "Emily Post"

Washington newsmen figured last week that Pearl Harbor's ill bombing blew them some good. Captain Leland Pearson Lovette, whose destroyer was sunk at Pearl Harbor, was appointed assistant to Rear Admiral Hepburn, Chief of Navy Public Relations. He succeeds popular Commander Robert ("Bob") Berry, who will shortly return to active sea duty. "Leon" Lovette, a big, amiable Tennessean, headed Navy's Press Section from 1937 to 1940, has a lot of Washington newspaper friends to show for it.

At his first press conference Captain Lovette, his brown eyes snapping, dwelt chiefly on his intensely bad relations with the Japs. On his destroyer he lost the manuscript of a new book, two-thirds finished after years of work, on naval officers in U.S. diplomacy. All he saved was his sword, and even its leathery scabbard was burned off.

Bitterly he described the machine-gunning of sailors in open boats as they returned from church services. His Jap grudge was fed also by the heroism of his fellow seamen. Proudly he described the spirit and speed with which the men of the Navy went into action-"faster than in target practice"--and in spite of orders to leave burning decks stayed at their anti-aircraft guns. He recalled the magnificent calm of a small doctor who carried a 275-lb. medical chest down two deck ladders during the attack and set up his operating room by himself. Even mess boys were heroes under fire. A British officer, said Captain Lovette, told him that neither at Dunkirk nor Crete had brave men fought better than they fought at Pearl Harbor.

Behind his back, friends call Captain Lovette the Navy's "Emily Post." thanks to his book, Naval Customs, Traditions and Usage, which is unofficial reading for all young naval officers. But there is small chance that his nickname will gather prissy connotations. Besides Pearl Harbor, Lovette's record includes commendation for assisting in the capture of a German raider while commanding a submarine chaser in World War I, another commendation for command of a U.S. gunboat during the revolution in South China in 1923-24.

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