Forest A. Harness

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Forest A. Harness
An Indiana Congressman With An On-the-Scene Story of the War in Europe



ALLIED PRINTING TRADES UNION LABEL COUNCIL 



M. E. White—A-L Bldg., Kokomo, Ind.





REP. FOREST A. HARNESS A Congressman's First Hand Report on Our Battle Fronts



J
OREST A. HARNESS, representative in Congress from Indiana, member of the powerful House Military Affairs Committee, veteran of the first World War, formerly of the federal department of justice at Washington, and one-time Hoosier prosecutor, is especially well fitted to bring to his audience a personal picture of conditions on our battle fronts in Europe.  As a member of a congressional committee, Rep. Harness toured the European war zones in November and December, 
digging into
 the G. I.'s problems to determine how well he is led, fed and clothed, talking with the top American commanders in France and Italy, and looking for signs of competence or incompetence with the experienced eye of a combat veteran who knows how to appreciate what he finds.




He talked with Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, Devers, Clark and all the key men at Allied supreme headquarters.  He visited the generals commanding our First, Seventh, Third and Ninth armies in France, Belgium and Germany, as well as those leading our forces in Italy and the commanders of the Eighth, Ninth and 15th Air Forces in England, France and Italy.  His voluminous notebook of names of privates and non-coms would indicate that he didn't devote his time solely to the ranking officers—he got the G. I.'s slant on things as well.  From all this experience he has brought back a stirring, and reassuring, story of how Americans are making war.




Visiting Gen. Patton's sector near Metz, Rep. Harness found his old infantry company, the 319th, of the 80th division, with which he served in 1918.  The division added distinction to its record in January by an amazing dash of more than 100 miles against the southern flank of Von Rundstedt's offensive in Belgium.  Patton knew Harness had been with the 80th division and greeted the congressman with high praise for the outfit.  The congressional party flew from Washington to the British Isles, then to France and Belgium, via Paris, then rode to the front lines in France and Belgium.  Afterward the legislators went to Italy and the Fifth Army front.  They returned via Florence, Casablanca, the Azores and Bermuda, traveling in the C-54, the huge 4-motor Army transport plane.





BACKGROUND



Rep. Harness received his law degree at Georgetown University in 1917.  He enlisted at Ft. Myer, Va., and went to France in 1918, serving in the trenches with the British in the Picardy sector and later in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, where he was wounded by machine-gun fire and was awarded the Purple Heart.




Following the war, he practiced law in Kokomo and served two terms as Howard County prosecutor.  Prominent in American Legion affairs, he served a term as that organization's state commander.  At the time of the collapse of Samuel Insull's utility empire, after Insull had fled to Greece to escape prosecution by the American government, Harness, then an assistant in the Department of Justice, was sent to Athens to return the magnate to the United States.  He conducted the hearing before the Greek court on our government's demand that Insull be extradited.




Mr. Harness was first elected to congress in 1938, representing the Fifth Indiana district.  Since then he has been reelected three times, each time with an increased plurality.  He is an effective, forceful, dramatic speaker, a conscientious and indefatigable worker, and is generally regarded as one of the ablest members of the lower house of Congress.