The Pittsburgh Press (March 21, 1944)
Nazis reinforce Cassino through secret tunnel
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Packard: Vesuvius’ crater explodes, burying two villages
Flame-specked smoke whooshes 5,000 feet in air, covers area for 10 miles around
By Eleanor Packard, United Press staff writer
On the slope of Mount Vesuvius, Italy –
The volcanic crater of Mount Vesuvius exploded with a terrifying roar tonight, blanketing the countryside for 10 miles around under a pall of smoke and burying two mountain villages beneath tons of flowing lava.
At 5:30 p.m. (local time), I saw a huge column of flame-specked smoke whoosh up out of the crater and soar 5,000 feet into the air, where it billowed out, showering the mountainside with rocks and ashes.
The smoke spread as far north as Naples, 10 miles away, halting all traffic in the streets there, and blanketed the ruins of ancient Pompeii, buried in the volcano’s greatest eruption almost 1,900 years ago.
The unexpected flareup indicated that the eruption, which began Friday, was worsening, and Allied military authorities announced that more than 14,000 additional men, women and children were being evacuated hurriedly from the northwestern slopes.
The village of San Sebastian was buried under the 70-foot wall of lava flowing down the mountain, and the neighboring hamlet of Massa di Somma was virtually obliterated.
Italians fleeing rivers of lava
By Edward P. Morgan
Naples, Italy –
The village of San Sebastian on the northwestern slope of Mount Vesuvius was buried today under millions of tons of lava writhing slowly down like a gigantic gray and orange glowworm from the volcano which is in the midst of its most violent eruption in more than half a century.
Some 3,700 villagers in San Sebastian and neighboring Massa di Somma were evacuated before dawn by the Allied Military Government, under the direction of Lt. Col. Robert Kincaid of New York City, commissioner for Naples Province.
A later United Press dispatch said the great stream of lava moved down the northwest slope with inexorable force and by midafternoon had traveled 500 yards beyond San Sebastian to cover three-quarters of Massa di Somma. The force of the flow showed no signs of slackening, although it was cooling rapidly as it spread.
AMG is now evacuating 2,000 inhabitants from the town of Cercola, which is directly in the path of the flow farther down the mountainside and scarcely five miles from Naples itself. The city, however, does not appear to be threatened.
Field kitchens are feeding the refugees whose homes, fields and vineyards have been devoured by the monstrous molten river, now nearly five miles long, which started zigzagging on Saturday from fissures high on the side of the cone.
The Mayor of San Sebastian said the eruption surpassed anything in his memory since 1892. The lava is spilling not only in several forking streams down the side of Vesuvius facing the Bay of Naples, but also in the opposite direction toward Trecase in the general vicinity of Pompeii.
Officials of the Italian Royal Observatory told the United Press the flows of lava had reached the proportion of the 1872 eruption, the worst in modern times, and added that they saw no signs of an early slackening.
When it comes to fiendish force and breath-catching brilliance, nothing the great god Mars or any modern warriors could devise would match nature’s spectacle of Vesuvius at work.
Great folds of smoke
In the daytime the mountain is cloaked in great folds of black-gray smoke. At night, the fiery flow stains the sky the color of blood and paints a panorama directly out of the steaming Halls of Hades.
The peaceful people who live on these slopes grow grapes and make good wine called Lacrima Cristi – tears of Christ.
Faced first with the terrors of modern war, the Nazi “occupation” and then with the thunderous advance of Allied armies to drive the enemy out, these folk are entitled to shed especially bitter tears of sorrow for this visitation of misery and desolation beyond their due.
Reporter visits scene
Lt. John H. Senseney of St. Louis, Capt. Carleton Harkrader of Bristol, Virginia, a jeep named Doris and I watched the lava consume San Sebastian between midnight and sunrise this morning.
Man is a pigmy before such force and can only conceal his awe in hollow wisecracks or rich but reverent bursts of profanity.
Our first view of this particular stream was a lateral one, from the stone house of Signora Galla Giorgio which was bypassed a scant 10 feet. As the slag and glowing coals inched forward, the mass gave off an eerie tinkling sound like icicles breaking up in a spring thaw.
Houses wrecked
In the course of two hours, we watched the seething orange tongue of the river lick forward and demolish a three-story stone mansion along with a wheelless Italian limousine and an upright piano which only shortly before seemed so sturdy and durable.
High tension poles of steel melted like solder sticks and the bridge over San Sebastian’s Via Rome simply crumpled up and vanished before our eyes.
Ahead of this inferno ran the refugees in little individual rivulets. The women stretched their arms to heaven in the black night and called on God for help. Children sobbed in the streets and one old lady wailed that she would not leave her hovel of a home, but U.S. and British military police gently loaded her into a truck.
Pitiful people
An Italian couple named Mario and Rosa came trotting down a path carrying two washtubs full of crockery, a clucking hen and a prodigious mattress. They crossed the edge of a small bluff and started down a precarious flight of crumbling stone steps, picking their way into the blackness with a ruddy glow silhouetting their burdened backs.
Suddenly Mario pitched headlong down the steps, strewing broken plates everywhere.
Rosa moaned and said a prayer, but Mario picked himself up and, despite her protestations, marched back to their hut and retrieved another staggering load of hardware.
This time they descended safely and struggled off to a friend’s house.
Gen. Patton replaced
Guadalcanal veteran to head 7th Army
Allied HQ, Naples, Italy (UP) –
Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. has been replaced as commander of the U.S. 7th Army by Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Patch Jr., it was announced today.
Gen. Patton was revealed several months ago to have slapped two U.S. soldiers in hospitals following the invasion of Sicily.
Gen. Patch formerly commanded U.S. Army troops who moved into Guadalcanal to relieve the Marines and initiated the offensive that drove the Japanese from that island.
Stassen willing to be drafted
Cdr. Stassen
Washington (UP) –
LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, has notified Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox that while he will not seek the Republican presidential nomination, he will accept if nominated.
Mr. Knox said today that Cdr. Stassen made his position clear in a letter which came through official channels from the South Pacific where the former governor is now serving on the staff of Adm. William F. Halsey Jr., commander of the South Pacific area.
Cdr. Stassen’s letter to Mr. Knox follows:
In recent weeks, there have been numerous questions by representatives of the press in the South Pacific as to my attitude toward the current inclusion of my name in the presidential nomination discussions.
The same questions have been raised in the public press on the mainland, accompanied by an increasing amount of conjecture and speculation and attempts at interpretation and misinterpretation.
I have therefore concluded that it is desirable and in the best interests of my naval service that my position be clearly, concisely, promptly and publicly stated.
The following is the statement Cdr. Stassen wished to make publicly:
In reply to the questions that are being asked as to my attitude toward the current inclusion of my name in the presidential nomination discussions, I will frankly and directly state my position.
I do not seek and will do nothing personally to secure the nomination. If, notwithstanding this position, I were to be nominated, I would consider it to be my plain duty to accept and would do so, requesting inactive duty for a sufficient time to discuss with the people the issues and problems of the future.
I wish to make it equally clear that I will make no statement on political issues while on active duty, that I do not wish any publicity of my activities in the Navy to be used in a political manner, and that no one is authorized to make personal commitments on my behalf.
I will continue to carry out to the best of my ability those naval duties assigned to me.
Guffey urges only voters hold U.S. jobs
He says others ‘are not worthy’
Washington (UP) –
Senators Joseph C. Guffey (D-PA) and Bennett Champ Clark (D-MO) today sought support for a bill they introduced which would require that appointees to positions in the federal government be qualified voters.
Applicants would have to be a qualified and registered or enrolled vote in a state, territory or possession of the United States. persons already employed or who have not attained voting age would be permitted to work in a temporary capacity until they could qualify by residence or age to become a voter.
Senator Guffey told a press conference:
The more vote you get out, the stronger the government should be. A man who is not interested enough to vote is not worthy of holding a federal job.
He said the effect of the bill would be to bar aliens, Southern Negroes, and District of Columbia residents from federal employment, except in the case of the latter if they have lived in Washington five years.
Senator Guffey said the bill would make him “hated” by government employees. He told reporters he thought knowledge of history should be a prerequisite for voting as well, but that is a matter up to the states.
Negroes man warship
Boston, Massachusetts –
The destroyer-escort USS Mason, the first U.S. naval vessel with a predominantly Negro crew, was commissioned yesterday at the Boston Navy Yard. LtCdr. William M. Blackford of Seattle, Washington, assumed command of the crew of 160 Negroes and 44 whites. Later, the vessel will be manned entirely by Negroes.
In Washington –
Deal to call off TVA fight reported rejected by foe
Senator McKellar said to spurn offer from White House to drop Lilienthal
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President gets soldier vote bill
He has 10 days to sign or veto it
Washington (UP) –
The compromise soldier vote bill reached the White House at 2:45 p.m. ET yesterday – five days after Congress completed action on it.
President Roosevelt has 10 days – not counting next Sunday – to sign or veto the bill. If he has done neither by midnight of March 31, it automatically becomes law.
Six governors have not yet replied to his telegram asking whether their states allow the use of a federal ballot and, if not, whether validating action will be taken by July 15.
Nearly half of the governors replying revealed that their states would not, or probably would not, permit use of the federal ballot.
Showdown is due today on steel wage procedure
AFL and CIO battle to the bitter end for credit in breaking stabilization formula
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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