Washington (UP) –
The War Production Board today prohibited all manufacture of safety razors for civilian use and cut output of blades to 80% of last year’s production.
The order, which is expected to save approximately 80 tons of steel, authorizes safety razor production only for the Armed Forces, Lend-Lease and for export.
London, England (UP) –
The Exchange Telegraph Agency reported today in a dispatch from Istanbul that American troops had arrived in Palestine and Syria to reinforce British garrisons.
It said the Americans were welcomed by the populace in both countries.
Cambridge, Massachusetts (UP) –
Students and residents of this university town gave Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt an enthusiastic welcome today when she arrived with Lady Reading to visit Queens College.
The streets were lined with cheering people, many of whom waved American flags. Mrs. Roosevelt later visited a service club operated by the Women’s Volunteer Service and met and chatted with American, Canadian and British troops.
Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
Massachusetts voters rejected a “birth control amendment” which would have permitted doctors to give contraceptive advice to married persons as a health measure. Mounting returns showed a “no” majority of 91,585.
Bitterly opposed by the Catholic Church, and personally assailed by 81-year-old William Cardinal O’Connell, the margin of defeat was expected to be increased by returns from several unreported cities with large Catholic populations. Early returns from rural regions had put the “yes” vote in the lead.
Hedwig Engemann, 34, described by the government as the girlfriend of Edward John Kerling, one of six executed Nazi saboteurs, pleaded guilty in Manhattan Federal Court today to charges of misprision of treason.
Judge Simon Rifkind set Nov. 18 for […] Miss Engemann, indicated a week ago for having knowledge that Helmuth Leiner, awaiting trial for treason, had aided and abetted Kerling’s efforts asd a saboteur. Kerlin was one of the eight saboteurs who landed on U.S. soil from German submarines but were apprehended before they could institute their ambitious sabotage plans.
Miss Engemann faces a maximum sentence of seven years imprisonment, a $1,000 fine, or both.
Cairo, Egypt (UP) –
U.S. pursuit planes yesterday shot down three Messerschmitt Me 109 fighters and probably destroyed or damaged many more, a communiqué from U.S. Army Air Force Headquarters in the Middle East announced today.
American fighter-bombers started several fires, while medium bombers scored at least 17 direct hits on motor vehicles and started more than 20 fires, the communiqué added.
Washington (UP) –
Attorney General Francis Biddle announced the U.S. Sugar Corporation and four of its employees were indicted today by a federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida, on charges of violating the federal civil rights and anti-slavery statutes.
The indictment, charging a conspiracy to hold Negro sugarcane workers in a condition of peonage, named as individual defendants:
Fliers smash at Timor and shipping in Buin-Faisi area
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Cambridge, Ohio (UP) –
A German Messerschmitt fighter flown by a U.S. Navy pilot crashed near here today – believed to be the first Axis warplane to come to grief in the continental United States.
A leaking oil line brought the plane down shortly after it left Wright Field at Dayton en route to a Navy base at Anacostia, Maryland. Lt. A. I. Boyd was at the controls. He was not seriously hurt although the plane was demolished.
Airmen seen playing major role in hunt for newly-landed foe
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The Pittsburgh Press (November 4, 1942)
By Florence Fisher Parry
I am home now, the errand over. I have seen him while the hours sped ‘round like a sweep-second hand on a jeweled watch.
And now I am comforted, you might say. Think how lucky you are, say the mothers bereft of a touch or sight of their boys.
Oh, yes, I am lucky. Oh, yes, I am comforted. The hunger and thirst are assuaged for a while – but after that, what comes?
I went to see him – all else was not to matter.
I was to spin across the continent, say goodbye, and spin back again – a blank at both ends of the meeting. I would spend idle hours on the train, sleeping, reading and looking out the window at all the old, wild, beautiful landmarks.
Then they were there, like a multiple image of him, like a chair of mirrors reaching down an endless corridor – khaki, olive drab, Navy blue – legions of them.
So, I thought, I will send back a report to the home front. It will be their report, the report of the fighting men I met. And for 10 days I was faithful to that self-assignment. I sent back fragments, vignettes, little pieces.
Cheering report
But all the time I was writing, the train would stop and the newspapers would fall into my hands… and the little radios on the train would squeal out the news… Guadalcanal… The Japs landed reinforcements… an aircraft carrier was sunk… Our boys were magnificent, the way they were holding out…
Holding out… Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, Bataan, Corregidor.
Then I read the letter from that dead hero:
…Tomorrow I will have the great honor to participate in Uncle Sam’s first move of retaliation against the Japs. And I can’t wait! O boy o boy, have they got a surprise coming to them! And the bets!.. I don’t believe in history a bunch of men have gone into any engagement as calm and magnificent as this group. There’s only one answer. It will be successful.
Just about that time, my portable broke down, as though in protest against what I had been writing, these daily capsules of good cheer.
And when I came home, friends said:
What a wonderful time you must have had! What cheering reports you sent back!
It’s not all so!
But it wasn’t altogether cheering.
Our boys are losing some of their confidence. They are getting a mite bewildered. They are saving to one another:
Who’s running this show? Why aren’t we getting somewhere? What’s happening?
They’re afraid they’ll be misunderstood and they don’t say it out loud. They know they are resolute and fearless and ready for anything. But when you corner them, they blurt it out: They want to know what’s the matter, what’s holding us back.
They’re being switched from camp to camp, and that puzzles them. Okay, okay, but what’s it all getting us as long as we stay at home?
There’s time, on these trains. To get talking to that guy off the Yorktown, that kid off the Quincy, that man’s who’s just back from Australia… and they hear how a few more planes, or reinforcements, would have changed the story.
And they begin to wonder what’s been holding us back, what’s still holding us back.
No griping mind. No lack of morale. Just a… a rising uneasiness. Why don’t we get a move on? What’s all this backing and filling for? (Much like many civilians are asking, civilians who are looking, for a franker and more realistic policy at the top).
They’re beginning to ask, puzzled, almost apologetic about it, but they’re asking. And when they start asking, look out, Washington; look out America. Men about to die expect answers.
Stroboscope slows down speediest motions to pace than can easily be studied by trainees
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Gandhi’s men see Willkie and Roosevelt pressure on British
By A. T. Steele
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