Background of news –
Liquor rationing, 1944
By Burt P. Garnett, editorial research reports
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Riot-swept internment camp returned to civilian rule
WRA to take over Tule Lake camp for second trial at ‘peaceful conditions within the center’
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‘Murder, Inc.’ pilot messages mother
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Ditch Sinatra for own folks, women urged
Defense conference hears Legion head urge service law
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American designers of ‘new’ fashions revive creations brought out in Paris
Ultra-low waistlines and shorter-short skirts are highlight of New York display of styles
By Lenore Brundige
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
‘Finest cartoonist of the war’
“Corp’l Ginnis and his Very pistol will now contribute Th’ Star o’ Bethlehem.”
“No complaints, Sir – Except Company K is puttin’ rocks in its snowballs again.”Ernie Pyle’s column today tells about Sgt. Bill Mauldin of Phoenix who draws cartoons for the Italian edition of the Stars and Stripes, serviceman’s newspaper. Ernie says it is agreed generally that the sergeant’s cartoons are the best of any produced by servicemen in this war. Here are two samples of Sgt. Mauldin’s work, reproduced in the United States for the first time.
In Italy – (by wireless)
Sgt. Bill Mauldin appears to us over here to be the finest cartoonist the war has produced. And that’s not merely because his cartoons are funny, but because they are also terribly grim and real.
Mauldin’s cartoons aren’t about training-camp life, which you at home are best acquainted with. They are about the men in the line – the tiny percentage of our vast Army which is actually up there in that other world doing the dying. His cartoons are about the war.
Mauldin’s central cartoon character is a soldier, unshaven, unwashed, unsmiling. He looks more like a hobo than like your son. He looks, in fact, exactly like a doughfoot who has been in the lines for two months. And that isn’t pretty.
Mauldin’s cartoons in a way are bitter. His work is so mature that I had pictured him as a man approaching middle age. Yet he is only 22, and he looks even younger. He himself could never have raised the heavy black beard of his cartoon dogface. His whiskers are soft and scant, his nose is upturned good-naturedly and his eyes have a twinkle.
His maturity comes simply from a native understanding of things, and from being a soldier himself for a long time. He has been in the Army three and a half years.
64 KP days in four months
Bill Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, New Mexico. He now calls Phoenix, Arizona, home base, but we of New Mexico could claim him without much resistance on his part.
Bill has drawn ever since he was a child. He always drew pictures of the things he wanted to grow up to be, such as cowboys and soldiers, not realizing that what he really wanted to become was a man who draws pictures.
He graduated from high school in Phoenix at 17, took a year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago, and at 18 was in the Army. He did 64 days of KP duty in his first four months. That fairly cured him of a lifelong worship of uniforms.
Mauldin belongs to the 45th Division. Their record has been a fine one, and their losses have been heavy. Mauldin’s typical grim cartoon soldier is really a 45th Division infantryman, and he is one who truly has been through the mill.
Mauldin was detached from straight soldier duty after a year in the infantry, and put to work on the division’s weekly paper. His true war cartoons started in Sicily and have continued on through Italy, gradually gaining recognition. Capt. Bob Neville, Stars and Stripes editor, shakes his head with a veteran’s admiration and says of Mauldin:
He’s got it. Already he’s the outstanding cartoonist of the war.
Mauldin works in a cold, dark little studio in the back of Stars and Stripes’ Naples office. He wears silver-rimmed glasses when he works. His eyes used to be good, but he damaged them in his early Army days by drawing for too many hours at night with poor light.
He averages about three days out of 10 at the front, then comes back and draws up a large batch of cartoons. If the weather is good, he sketches a few details at the front. But the weather is usually lousy.
Wears Purple Heart medal
He says:
You don’t need to sketch details anyhow. You come back with a picture of misery and cold and danger in your mind and you don’t need any more details than that.
His cartoon in Stars and Stripes is headed “Up Front… by Mauldin.” The other day some soldier wrote in a nasty letter asking what the hell did Mauldin know about the front.
Stars and Stripes printed the letter. Beneath it in italics, they printed a short editor’s note:
Sgt. Bill Mauldin received the Purple Heart for wounds received while serving in Italy with Pvt. Blank’s own regiment.
That’s known as telling ‘em.
Bill Mauldin is a rather quiet fellow, a little above medium size. He smokes and swears a little, and talks frankly and pleasantly. He is not eccentric in any way.
Even though he’s just a kid, he’s a husband and father. He married in 1942 while in camp in Texas, and his son was born last Aug. 20 while Bill was in Sicily. His wife and child are living in Phoenix now. Bill carries pictures of them in his pocketbook.
Unfortunately for you and Mauldin both, the American public has no opportunity to see his daily drawings. But that isn’t worrying him. He realizes this is his big chance.
After the war, he wants to settle again in the Southwest, which he and I love. He wants to go on doing cartoons of those same guys who are now fighting in the Italian hills, except that by then they’ll be in civilian clothes and living as they should be.
Taylor: Different post-war problems in store for various Allied exile governments
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Maj. de Seversky: Rapid fuel consumption of jet plane rules out long flights at this stage
By Maj. Alexander P. de Seversky
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War’s blight causes Italy many cultural tragedies
Irreparable damages done to churches and monuments by Naples bombings
By Tom Wolf
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Universal training advocated by Knox
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The Free Lance-Star (January 15, 1944)
Liberty ship to have name of Carole Lombard
Hollywood, California (AP) –
A Liberty vessel will be launched at Los Angeles Harbor today bearing the name of Carole Lombard and dedicated to the same cause which the blonde actress was prosecuting to the limit of her ability when her life was smashed out in a Nevada airliner crash almost exactly two years ago.
Miss Lombard was the wife of actor Clark Gable, now an Army Air Forces captain presently in Hollywood editing films of bombing raids over Europe in which he participated. She was killed with 21 others when an airliner crashed into a rugged Nevada peak Jan. 16, 1942, as she was returning here from a nationwide bond-selling campaign.
Völkischer Beobachter (January 16, 1944)
Ein Engländer über Englands soziale Lage –
‚Die Hälfte der Bevölkerung leidet an Unterernährung‘
Neue Varianten zum Thema ‚Freiheit von Not‘
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Ihr Leiter – ein Schüler der Gangster
Mörderschule für US-Heer
Eigener Bericht des „VB.“
rd. Lissabon, 15. Jänner –
Die nordamerikanische Presse hat in geradezu zynischer Offenheit in der letzten Zeit mehrfach Methoden der US-Kriegführung enthüllt, die nur mit tiefstem Abscheu zur Kenntnis genommen werden können. Nun bringt das erste Heft der für Ibero-Amerika bestimmten spanischen Ausgabe der US-Zeitschrift Reader’s Digest unter dem Titel „Mörder ist sein Beruf,“ einen aus der Neuyorker Tageszeitung Herald Tribune übernommenen Artikel Frederic Sonderns über einen ungenannten amerikanischen Major.
Dieser Major ist mit der Leitung einer besonderen USA-Truppenschule beauftragt, in der die Soldaten und vor allem jüngere Offiziere für spezielle Mordaufträge ausgebildet werden. Der amerikanische Major bezeichnet seine Schule, so hebt der USA-Journalist ausdrücklich hervor, selbst als eine „Mörderschule“ und den geplanten und organisierten Mord als „seine Spezialität.“ Die Teilnehmer dieser Schule werden für kaltblütige Mordanschläge gegen besonders gekennzeichnete Einzelpersonen vorbereitet. Der Major erklärte dem Journalisten:
Auf einen Deutschen zu schießen ist, als ob man eine Fliege totschlägt. Dieser Gedanke muß in die Männer hinein. Bringen Sie eine Reihe von Deutschen um, werden Sie nach dem blutigsten Gemetzel wie ein neugeborenes Kind schlafen.
Wenn die theoretische Ausbildung-vorüber ist, werden die Teilnehmer des Kurses, wie der Bericht schildert, in einem besonders für diesen Zweck eingerichteten Haus „geschult.“ Die „Killer“ müssen von Türen aus, unter den Tischen und Betten hervor auf Holzpuppen, die durch Drohte bewegbar sind, Zielübungen machen. Eine besondere Spezialität ist das Zielen auf Personen im Bett. Neben der Maschinenpistole spielt das Messer bei der Ausbildung eine große Rolle. Der US-Major erklärte auf Grund seiner Erfahrung bezeichnenderweise, die beste Eignung für diese Mörderausbildung zeigten die Amerikaner und Engländer, europäische Emigranten brächten für diese „Kampfesart“ nicht genug „Ruhe und Kaltblütigkeit“ auf. Sonderns so schreibt ausdrücklich:
Was man in dieser Mörderschule der Roosevelt-Armee braucht, sind Männer mit kalter Präzision wie die nordamerikanischen Gangster.
Hochinteressant ist das anscheinend sehr stolze Bekenntnis des US-Majors, er habe seine Methoden von den amerikanischen Bankräubern und Banditen gelernt und auf Grund des Studiums ihrer Verbrechen seine Taktik entwickelt. Besonders verherrlichter dabei die Maschinenpistole der Gangster, die im Unterricht der Mordschüler eine hervorragende Rolle spielt.
Wenn die Kriegsagitatoren des US-Präsidenten diese Enthüllungen auch noch als besondere Reklame für die Geisteshaltung und demokratische Einstellung der USA nach Ibero-Amerika verschicken, so zeigt das eine geradezu unvorstellbare moralische Entartung, die in Ibero-Amerika allerdings sehr viel anders wirken dürfte, als man es sich in Washington wünscht.
England und die USA müssen ihren Schützling selbst hinrichten –
Der letzte Akt der polnischen Komödie
Drahtmeldung unseres Berner Berichterstatters
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U.S. State Department (January 16, 1944)
Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt
London, 16 January, 1944
Secret
545
Prime Minister to President. Personal and most secret.
… My recollection is clear that nothing was said at Tehran about “one third” but that promise was made to meet the Russian claim put forward at Moscow to have transferred to them one battleship, one cruiser, eight destroyers, four submarines, and forty thousand tons of merchant shipping.
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The Pittsburgh Press (January 16, 1944)
NAZIS RETREAT BEFORE CASSINO
5th Army Yanks advance; French drive into flank
Tunisian veterans hurl back counterattacks and gain two miles, forcing German retreat in center of arc
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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WLB MOVES TO AVERT POWER STRIKE
Sit-down clerks told to work as shutdown nears
Fear of general walkout by utility union lessens; garbage collectors are idle for third day
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