Boston, Massachusetts –
Only three days after being tendered a reception on his 70th birthday, former U.S. Rep. Joseph F. O’Connell (D-MA) collapsed and died of heart disease last night while visiting with friends in a Boston hotel.
Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
The Cocoanut Grove holocaust took 487 lives, according to revised official figures released today by the Boston Public Safety Committee
Duplications discovered during a week-long checkup by the committee reduced the death list to the new figure from the earlier “official” total of 495.
The committee’s final check showed that 171 persons were injured. Of this number, more than 100 are still hospitalized with some in critical condition.
By Lt. (jg.) Fred Mears, as told to Charles Arnot, United Press staff writer
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Smoke tell Tripoli story when U.S. Army bombers made their first raid on that important supply port for the Germans and Italians remaining in Libya. The objective was the Spanish mole of the upper left. The bombers were not interested in the ships in the harbor. The successful aim of the American bombardiers is attested by the clouds of smoke.
Japs are masters of camouflage and have ‘telegraphic’ fence that tips off machine-gunners
By George Weller
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By Ernie Pyle
WITH U.S. FORCES IN ALGERIA (by wireless) – At the end of the first day of the Battle of Oran, Sgt. Norman Harrington and Pvt. Ned Modica, Army photographers, sprawled on the floor of a country schoolhouse near the little Algerian town of Arzew. Other soldiers lay all around them.
Both were dead tired. Their clothes were still wet, and they were cold. They had come ashore without blankets or overcoats. Instead of one musette bag, they carried three over their shoulders. These weren’t filled with food or ammunition. They were filled with extra film for their cameras.
And of cameras they had aplenty. Of personal things they carried only toothbrushes.
Norman Harrington’s father is a preacher. He was gassed in the last war. Today he is living in retirement in Florida, a sick man from the holocaust of 25 years ago.
The other war was an old thing by the time Norman grew to adult consciousness.
Norman wasn’t much interested in wars anyway. He was a civic leader back home in Easton, Maryland – an odd thing for a boy of 16 just out of high school. He was chairman of the March of Dimes for the President’s birthday. He belonged to clubs. He had an uncanny head for business, and he was wedded to photography.
Filmed landing action
Norman and Ned, in their first 12 hectic hours on African soil, had filmed wounded Americans and wounded Frenchmen, filmed the actual capture of a seaplane base, and had a weird experience filming their first wartime corpse, the body of a sniper who had shot at them and missed.
The soldiers in the schoolroom were nervous all night. In the darkness, they could hear the click of cartridge clips in revolvers. Just before dawn, one touchy doughboy heaved a hand grenade out the window at an imagined shadow.
Ned Modica was used to nicer things in life. As a youth, he went to the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts. Then he had two years of study in Paris. His Long Island home is white brick, and his studio was in fashionable Madison Ave.
At dawn, the two photographers luckily found a jeep, and they drove forward to where the fighting for Saint-Cloud was going on. Eventually they left the jeep and worked their way up to the frontline. In the infantry, you learn to walk a little, then to lie down and wait for a mortar shell to burst. Your head jerks down involuntarily when you hear the zing of a passing bullet. These two boys learned all that.
Ned Modica found an American machine-gun crew, and ground away at them with his camera. It was good action stuff.
Yanks get dramatic welcome
Then they went on into Oran and filmed the dramatic welcome given the American troops by the French and Arab people. Finally, they boxed up their film, scouted around till they found an accommodating RAF pilot to fly it to London, and called it a day on their first venture into war.
Today, they are bivouacked a score of miles out in the country living in tiny shelter tents in an olive grove, waiting for the next campaign. That’s where I found them.
“Here in Africa is the first place I ever picked an orange off a tree,” says Modica. “After our film is edited and censored, it should still be enough for a 30-minute newsreel, most of it in Technicolor,” says Harrington. “It should be beautiful.”
“When we get to Italy, we can get us some wonderful things to eat,” says Modica. “At least we can ask for them, for I can speak Italian.”
“If we live that long,” says Harrington.
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
With the world as it is, a good book will make the best Christmas present this year, since it can be both a source of information and a means of escape. At the request of several readers, here is a list of the latest ones coming to my desk:
“Covering the Mexican Front” by Betty Kirk – a vivid recital of political happenings in Mexico from 1936 until now; powerful, penetrating and readable analysis of our next door neighbors.
“Young Man of the World” by T. R. Ybarra – gay, racy account of an international gadabout.
“Democratic Ideals and Reality” – Halford J. Mackinder’s republished geopolitical masterpiece.
“The Invasion of the German Mind” by Dorothy Thompson at her best.
“Call Her Rosie” by Eva Bruce – a heartwarming tale of another cockeyed family.
“Horseless Buggy” by Katrine MacGlashan – a few hours of good entertainment about people who lived before Mr. Ford performed his wonders.
“Frontier Passage” by Ann Bridge – adventure, love and excellent writing, with setting on Spanish frontier.
“Uncle William” – another of those mouthwatering books by Della Lutes, who always makes readers homesick for the good old days, when people were ignorant of vitamins but wise about cooking.
“See Here, Private Hargrove” by Marion Hargrove – a close-up, humorous account of training camp life.
“The Army Life” by Pvt. E. J. Kahn Jr. – ditto.
“Signed With Their Honor” by James Aldridge – a tale of Flying Patrol in Greece, done in Hemingway style.
“Mr. W. and I” – a delightful record of a genteel journey kept by Daniel Webster’s wife on a trip to England in 1839.
“Yankee Fighter” by Lt. John F. Hasey – a story of an American fighter in Free France.
By Editorial Research Reports
Some indication of what the administration faces in the new Congress came in the House on December 8. By unanimous vote that body sent to the Senate a bill to require that farm labor costs be included in the parity price formula for farm products. Last September the administration with the greatest difficulty staved off a similar move in Congress. The administration leaders in the Senate may manage to shelve the new House bill for the remainder of this Congress, but what happens in the new Congress probably will be something else again.
Slightly more than one-half of the House seats gained by the GOP in the November elections were in the Middle West. This is the section supposed to be particularly outraged by the President’s partially successful fight in September to keep farm labor costs out of the farm parity price formula. The history of that fight indicates that if the issue arises in the next Congress, the outcome may be different, even in case of a veto.
The Price Control Act of January 30, 1942, was adopted six months after the President had asked for such legislation. The act contained a provision forbidding ceilings on farm prices below 110 percent of the parity price (or higher under certain circumstances). In approving the act the President questioned the wisdom of certain provisions; his anti-inflation message of April 27 called, among other things, for lowering farm price ceilings to 100 percent of parity.
When Congress took no action, the President, on September 7, sent in his ultimatum to pass a bill by October 1; else he would act on his own initiative, presumably as commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy. Unfortunately for the administration’s side, the message contained this statement: “Calculations of parity must include all costs of production, including the cost of labor.”
The anti-inflation bill laid before the House Banking Committee by Chairman Steagall called for a new farm price parity formula to include costs of farm labor, including family labor. When the President objected, this provision was stricken from the bill by the committee, but it was restored by the full House by vote of 205-172. Estimates were that the new formula would make existing farm price ceilings 112 percent of the old. Of the members voting, 65 percent of the Republicans and 47 percent of the Democrats lined up for the new formula.
In the Senate, the new formula was approved by vote of 48-43, but with an understanding that later a compromise would be worked out acceptable to the administration. The compromise which remained in the bill as enacted into law sanctioned farm price ceilings at 100 percent of parity or the highest price from January 1 to September 15, 1942, whichever was higher. However, changes in price ceilings were to be made whenever necessary to reflect increased labor and other farm costs, or to stimulate production. Also, in fixing ceilings on products manufactured wholly or in large part from farm products, “adequate weighting” was to be given farm labor costs.
New maximum, effective Dec. 16, is $22 per 100 pounds here
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