McNeil: Now it’s Earl’s personal war
By Marshall McNeil, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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‘Housed’ Bucs welcome Frick at cold camp
By Dick Fortune
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Braves jolted as Javery, Tobin, Andrews rate 1-A
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Poll: Dewey holds big lead in Indiana test
Willkie, MacArthur run second, third
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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U.S. ship torpedoed on Murmansk route
Washington (UP) –
Nazi U-boats are again stalking the Allied convoy route to Murmansk, it was indicated today, with the disclosure that the U.S. Liberty ship Penelope Baker was torpedoed and sunk a few weeks ago on her way to North Russia.
Five men were killed and five are missing, but the remainder of the ship’s complement were landed at a Russian port, the War Shipping Administration reported.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With Allied beachhead forces in Italy – (by wireless)
Anzio and Nettuno run together along the coast of our beachhead, forming practically one city. There is really only one main street, which runs along the low blocks just back of the first row of waterfront buildings.
The two cities stretch for about three miles, but extend only a few blocks back from the waterfront. A low hill covered thick with tall cedar trees rises just back of them, and along some of the streets there are palm trees.
I had supposed these two places were just ancient little fishing villages. Well, they are old, but not in their present form.
Anzio is where Nero is supposed to have fiddled while Rome burned, but in more recent years he would doubtless have been sprawling in a deck chair in the patio of his seaside villa, drinking cognac.
For these two towns are now (or rather, were until recently) high-class seaside resorts. They’ve been built up in the modern manner within the last 20 years.
When you look at them from a certain place, they extend 200 yards from the water’s edge, forming a solid flank of fine stone buildings four and five stories high. Most of these are apartment houses, business buildings and rich people’s villas.
Today there is no civilian life in Anzio-Nettuno. The Germans had evacuated everybody before we came, and we found the place deserted. A few Italians have straggled back in, but they are few indeed.
No ‘business as usual’
In the path of warfare over here, “business as usual” seems to have been the motto of the natives. Adult civilians have stayed in some places despite the fall of heaven and earth upon them. They’d stay and deal with the Germans while we were blasting their towns to bits, and those who survived would stay and deal with us when the town changed hands and the Germans began showering the same death and destruction back upon us. The ties of a man’s home are sinewy and strong, and something that even war can hardly break.
But in Anzio and Nettuno, the expensive villas are deserted – the swanky furniture wrapped in burlap and stored all little hovels are empty also, and so are the stores. Scarcely a door or a window with whole shutters remains. There is no such thing as a store or shop in business today in these two towns.
When our troops first came they found things intact and undamaged, but the Germans changed that. Little by little, day by day, these cities have become eroded and torn from the shells and bombs of the enemy.
It has happened slowly. The Germans shell spasmodically. Hours will go by without a single shell coming in, and then all of a sudden, a couple of shells will smack the water just offshore.
A few buildings will go down, or the corners fly off some of them. One day’s damage is almost negligible. But it is cumulative, and after a couple of weeks you realize that less of the city is left whole than two weeks previously.
Gone between meals
Today you can’t walk half a block without finding a building half crumpled to the ground. Between breakfast and lunch, the building next to the mess where we eat was demolished. One man was killed, and our cook got a broken arm.
The sidewalks have shell holes in them. Engineers repair new holes in the streets. Military police who direct auto traffic are occasionally killed at their posts.
Broken steel girders lie across the sidewalks. Marble statues fall in littered patios. Trees are uprooted, and the splattered mud upon them dries and turns to gray. Wreckage is washed up on shore. Everywhere there is rubble and mud and broken wire.
Yet this German shelling and bombing has had only the tiniest percentage of effect on our movement of supplies and troops into the beachhead. One day of bad weather actually harms us more than a month of German shelling.
It is a thrilling thing to see an LST pull anchor when its turn comes, and drive right into the harbor despite shells all around. And it is thrilling, too, to see the incessant hurry-hurry-hurry of the supply trucks through the streets all day and all night despite anything and everything.
From all indications we are supplying our troops even better by sea than the Germans are supplying theirs by land.
Völkischer Beobachter (March 30, 1944)
New York Times plaudert aus der Schule –
Zugeständnisse in Teheran
Von unserer Stockholmer Schriftleitung
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U.S. Navy Department (March 30, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 330
For Immediate Release
March 30, 1944
Liberator bombers of the 7th Army Air Force bombed Eten and Moen Islands in the Truk Atoll on the night of March 29 (West Longitude Date). Fires were started. Intense anti-aircraft fire was encountered.
Ponape Island was bombed by a search plane of Fleet Air Wing Two, starting fires in a hangar area, and gun positions and buildings on Ujelang Island were strafed by Dauntless dive bombers of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing.
Forty‑five tons of bombs were dropped on four enemy positions in the Marshalls by 7th Army Air Force Mitchell bombers, and Marine Dauntless bombers and Corsair fighters. Oil storage tanks were set afire on one objective, and runways damaged on another.
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 41
Strong fleet forces at dawn Wednesday, March 29 (West Longitude Date) initiated heavy attacks on the Japanese‑held Palau Islands. After discovery of approach of our forces by enemy planes searching from their bases in the Carolines and New Guinea their ships were observed fleeing the area before our units could reach attack positions. Our attacks continue. No further details are as yet available.
The Pittsburgh Press (March 30, 1944)
Germans bomb Anzio hospital; eight killed
American wounded, prisoners are victims
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Pincers air blow batters Europe
British blast France, hit Kiel naval base
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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She would have blushed –
The Yankees from Ward 4 says goodbye to Miss Mac
Bombs end story of a trim British nurse and her unruly American patients
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U.S. casualties total 173,239
Washington (UP) –
Announced casualties of the U.S. Armed Forces now total 173,239, an increase of 4,947 over a week ago, it was revealed today. The total included 40,657 killed, 64,098 wounded, 36,321 missing ands 32,163 prisoners of war.
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson said Army casualties through March 15 totaled 130,619, including 22,570 killed, 53,124 wounded, 27,183 missing and 27,742 prisoners of war.
A Navy casualty list today summarized its announced casualties as 42,620, of whom 18,087 were killed, 10,974 wounded, 9,138 missing and 4,421 prisoners of war.
Mr. Stimson said that of the Army wounded, 27,296 have been returned to duty. Of the prisoners of war, he said 1,675 have been reported by the enemy to have died of disease in prisoner camps, mostly in Japanese territory.