UAW strikes Chrysler plant to enforce shortage rules
‘Don’t try to maintain production,’ says CIO group when men are absent from department
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2 inspectors suspended in glider crash inquiry
Washington (UP) –
The Army Air Forces materiel command will decide on the basis of a current investigation whether disciplinary action should be taken against two civilian inspectors at the Robertson Aircraft Corporation, St. Louis, manufacturers of the glider which crashed Aug. 1 killing 10 persons.
The War Department announced late yesterday that faulty manufacture by a subcontractor, faulty inspection by the prime manufacturer, and inadequate enforcement of inspection procedures, combined to produce a fatal hidden defect in a wing strut metal fitting.
While the materiel command’s investigation continues, Charles C. Latty, Army Air Forces inspector in charge, and William W. Williams, AAF receiving inspector, have been suspended temporarily.
Davis wants to free draft from the WMC
Calling of fathers tagged unjustified, grandiose; state aroused
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
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Willkie: GOP victory possible in 1944
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In monopoly scandal –
Congressman hits system of plane fueling
Says Air Forces ignored recommendation of Army engineers
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Normandie still rises
New York –
The hull of the former French liner Normandie, rising approximately 2.5 degrees a day, reached an angle of about 37 degrees today.
Ferguson: The vines still cling
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
The War Department is asking power from Congress to investigate unjust claims against the Army man’s paycheck. These claims come most often from women who have lived apart from their husbands but waste no time in demanding a dependent’s share of his allotment the minute he is drafted.
Decent feminists will blush for their sex as they study the records. The whole thing is tied up with the alimony question, which is also due for an overhauling.
How can we justify demands for alimony along with demands for full economic equality? In a world where the feminine half of the population does everything but tote a gun into battle, it is absurd to go on expecting clinging-vine privileges. Yet court records disclose this amazing inconsistency.
While half of us yell for bigger pay envelopes, the other half cry to the judge for a larger slice of ex-husbands’ pay.
The war offers new chances to prove woman’s ability and independence, but it will also take away cherished soft snaps.
It is possible that the sheltered woman will be regarded as a social outcast in the post-war world, for we are moving into a period when each individual will be judged by the contribution he makes or the service he renders to society. And if equal rights prevail, will it not be illogical for a woman to ask support from an ex-husband unless she actually tends his children with her own hands?
A fair division of property, yes – but the future will probably see both father and mother, after divorce, contributing to the upkeep of the offspring, and the childless wife having no claim on an ex-husband’s earnings.
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Food program runs to talk of new billions
Commodity Credit demands to be outlined to House leaders
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Millett: Put out the welcome sign for serviceman’s family
Navy wife complains she wouldn’t contaminate people of towns to which he is transferred
By Ruth Millett
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Ghost gunners left by enemy hit doughboys
U.S. soldiers bitter over anti-personnel mines strewn by mines
By Thomas R. Henry, North American Newspaper Alliance
With U.S. 7th Army, Sicily, Italy – (Aug. 6, delayed)
Like death-dealing ghosts, men lie dead for weeks after contacting mines which the evacuating Germans have strewn on roads, in cemeteries, on beaches and at all possible billeting areas along the Sicilian north coast road.
Anti-personnel mines which go off with a slight jar have caused considerable U.S. casualties and delay in the advance after the enemy leaves his position and retreats eight or 10 miles eastward.
The idea of fighting ghosts is very much in the minds of U.S. soldiers. Men who laid the mines are probably dead or many miles away and it seems as though they were operating machine guns from graves. Probably nothing has aroused U.S. soldiers’ hatred of the Germans more than the sight of comrades wounded and dying from these invisible foes.
Italian wounded
I saw a pathetic sight before the advanced field evacuation station today as a chaplain priest gave the last rites to an Italian prisoner whose leg was blown off. The Italian was alternately praying, kissing a picture of his mother and cursing Mussolini while Capt. Don Wilson of Tribune, Kansas, administered what first aid was possible.
Field ambulances arrived every few minutes with more mutilated prisoners. They had been put into what seemed an ideal billeting area on the Mediterranean beach and were building their own barbed-wire stockade in entire agreement with the international convention when they were caught in mines intended for billeting Americans.
Worse than Tunisia
Minefields are much worse here than in Tunisia and grow thicker as the Americans advance eastward. They may have been laid in expecting the invasion on the north coast or purely as delaying devices. It cannot be verified whether the bodies of enemy dead were used as boobytrap bait here.
The Italians are quite helpful because they point out where they saw Germans lay mines but they cannot be trusted entirely. They often get killed themselves. Our troops are usually too impatient after fighting days for an objective to delay hours while U.S. engineers lead the way with magnetic brooms locating mines.
‘With a prayer on its wing’ –
Famous Coughin’ Coffin crashes after 50th raid
Scottsdale flier tells how bomber brought crew home safely with 3 motors gone
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Sicily, Italy – (by wireless)
All my life I have enjoyed being in hospitals (as soon as the original moaning-and-groaning stage was past), and my recent time at a frontline Army clearing station was no exception.
On the third day I was scared to death that I was well enough to leave. But the doctor looked thoughtful and said he wanted me to stay another day. I would have kissed him if he had been a nurse instead of a man with a mustache and a stethoscope.
That was the only trouble with the hospital – it didn’t have any nurses. In fact, we lacked a number of the usual hospital touches. We were hidden, inevitably, in an olive grove, and our floors were merely the earth. The toilet was a ditch with canvas around it. And if you washed, you did so in your own steel helmet. There were no such things as hospital pajamas or bathrobes. I arrived in my Army coveralls and left in my coveralls, and I never once had them off all the time I was there.
During the day they kept the sides of our tent rolled up, and it was pleasant enough lying there with nothing to do. But at night the tent had to be tightly closed for the blackout, and it became deadly stuffy. And all night long the litter-bearers would be coming and going with new wounded. It made an eerie scene in the dim glow of our single lantern, and sleep was almost impossible.
Doctor humors Ernie
So the last couple of nights we moved our cots outdoors and slept again under the wide starry skies of Sicily, and attendants brought our medicine out there in the dark. German bombers came over but we just lay there. Every morning a chaplain would come around with a big boxful of cigarettes, tooth powder and stuff.
The doctor had me on a liquid diet at first, but I gradually talked him into advancing me to a soft diet and finally to a regular one. That progression from liquid to soft to regular diet was one of the great experiences of my life, for believe it or not, all three diets were exactly the same thing – soup and canned tomato juice.
When I accused the doctor of duping me, he grinned and said:
Well, it comes under the heading of keeping the patient happy by pretending to humor his whims.
Happy! I was hungry! But as you see, I survived, and actually I must say I have never been treated more grandly anywhere than by those doctors and men.
During the time I lay at the clearing station with my own slight aches and pains, hundreds of wounded soldiers passed through on their way back to hospitals in the rear. I was in one of five small tents in which they were deposited on litters while waiting for ambulances, so I lay right among them for four days and nights. It couldn’t help but be a moving and depressing experience, and yet there was something good about it too.
Ward-boys always attentive
The two main impressions I got out of it were (1) the thoughtful and attentive attitude of the doctors and ward-boys toward the wounded men, and (2) the grand spirit of the wounded men themselves. I’ll write tomorrow about the second of these two.
As pitiful as wounded men are, it is easy to become hardened and cross with so many passing through your hands. You could eventually get to look upon them all as just so many nuisances who came deliberately to cause you more work. Yet the ward-boys treated their wounded as though they were members of their own family.
I paid particular attention as I lay there, and no wounded man ever made a request that a ward-boy didn’t go jumping to fulfill.
This was especially true of the ward-masters, who are responsible for whole tents. There were three that impressed me greatly.
One was Cpl. Herman Whitt, of Enid, Oklahoma. Before the war he was a salesman for a biscuit company. He married a beautiful Indian girl back home. Cpl. Whitt is tall, nice-looking, and talked very slowly and softly. He says he feels better about the war, doing this job of caring for the wounded than if he were up there killing people himself.
Our night ward-master was Cpl. Woodrow Cox of Milo, Oklahoma. He too is tall than six feet, and he was a ranch hand back home, yet his voice is almost like a musical instrument, and he talks with that snaillike Oklahoma drawl that is so soothing in times of excitement.
The third was Cpl. Rodney Benton, of 8030 West 5th St., Oklahoma City. You could see the difference between city and country in these boys. Rodney was all git-up-and-git. He talked faster and moved faster than the others. But all three had the same deep conscientiousness in their work and their feeling for the wounded.
Rodney is one of twins, and his identical brother Robert is a corporal in this division’s other clearing station. They are 23. Both had two years of premedical work at the University of Oklahoma, and they intend to be doctors. So you see they were in their glory here. In fact, they almost drove the doctors nuts asking questions all the time.
Völkischer Beobachter (August 13, 1943)
Dritte Schlacht am Ladogasee siegreich beendet
dnb. Aus dem Führer-Hauptquartier, 12. August –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Am Kubanbrückenkopf, am Mius und am mittleren Donez verlief der Tag ohne wesentliche Kampfhandlungen. Im Raum von Bjelgorod dauert die große Abwehrschlacht an. Südwestlich Orel scheiterten Angriffe mehrerer Sowjetdivisionen. Auch im Kampfraum südlich und südwestlich Wjasma griff der Feind weiter an. Während im Südteil dieses Abschnitts die Kampfhandlungen noch nicht abgeschlossen sind, wurden die Sowjets an den übrigen Fronten unter hohen Verlusten abgewiesen. Die Sowjets verloren gestern 120 Panzer.
Die Luftwaffe griff wieder trotz ungünstiger Wetterlage an den Brennpunkten in die Erdkämpfe ein. Sie vernichtete in den letzten zwei Tagen 83 Sowjetflugzeuge.
In der dritten Schlacht südlich des Ladogasees haben die unter Führung des Generalfeldmarschalls von Küchler, des Generalobersten Lindemann und des Generals der Infanterie Wöhler stehenden deutschen Truppen, unterstützt von den durch General der Flieger Korten geführten Luftwaffenverbänden, in der Zeit vom 22. Juli bis 6. August den Ansturm der 8. und 67. sowjetischen Armee in heldenmütigen Kämpfen abgeschlagen und damit die Durchbruchsabsichten des Feindes vereitelt. Außer der im Wehrmachtbericht bereits genannten 1. Infanteriedivision zeichneten sich in dieser Schlacht die 5. Gebirgsjägerdivision und die ostpreußische 11. Infanteriedivision besonders aus.
Im hohen Norden wiederholten die Sowjets gegen die am Louhi-Abschnitt neu gewonnenen Stellungen ihre Gegenangriffe, die bereits vor der Hauptkampflinie zerschlagen wurden.
Leichte deutsche Seestreitkräfte versenkten in der Nacht zum 11. August vor der Kaukasusküste ein sowjetisches Kanonenboot und ein Schnellboot und beschädigten ein weiteres schwer. Andere deutsche Seestreitkräfte nahmen in der gleichen Nacht küstennahe Sowjetstellungen an der Miusfront erfolgreich unter Feuer.
Auf Sizilien verliefen die Absetzbewegungen auf eine verkürzte Brückenkopfstellung planmäßig. Dem im Nordabschnitt entlang der Küstenstraße nachdrängenden Gegner wurden in zähen Abwehrkämpfen erhebliche Verluste zugefügt. Ein stärkerer feindlicher Landungsversuch westlich Kap Orlando wurde im Zusammenwirken mit der Luftwaffe zum größten Teil bereits vor der Küste abgeschlagen, die an Land gekommenen Teile des Gegners vernichtet.
Im Küstenraum der besetzten Westgebiete und bei freier Jagd über dem Atlantik wurden fünf feindliche Flugzeuge und ein Großflugboot abgeschossen.
Ein Verband schwerer deutscher Kampfflugzeuge griff in der Nacht zum 12. August das Gebiet des Kriegshafens Plymouth sowie militärische Ziele in Bournemouth mit einer großen Zahl von Spreng- und Brandbomben an. Alle eingesetzten Flugzeuge kehrten zurück.
Störangriffe einzelner britischer Flugzeuge in der vergangenen Nacht in Westdeutschland verursachten nur geringen Gebäudeschaden.