America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

8438

He would have died, but –
19 quarts of blood, plasma poured into wounded Yank

Liver ruptured, spleen shattered and stomach perforated, now he’s recovering
By Thomas R. Henry, North American Newspaper Alliance

With U.S. forces in France – (July 5, delayed)
The body of an American soldier was completely refilled with blood – five quarts – to save his life in the course of a two-hour operation.

His liver had been ruptured, his spleen shattered and his stomach perforated from a shell explosion, all of them probably fatal wounds. He is now recovering.

This operation was part of a 60-hour ordeal for Maj. Stewart Welsh, a surgeon from Albany Medical College, who operated on wounded soldiers for this entire period with only a three-hour fitful nap, on the Cherbourg front.

Gets 14 quarts of plasma

The soldiers arrived in a state of shock. Two quarts of fresh blood were given at once to revive him to stand the surgery. This blood is donated by English civilians, flown to France daily, and delivered to every U.S. hospital base here in a big refrigerator van, touring the front continuously. The same van delivers penicillin supplies so there is no shortage possible.

During the operation, the man was given a third quart and immediately afterward two more quarts. The normal human body – no matter what the weight – contains five quarts. In addition, during and after the operation, the soldier got 14 quarts of blood plasma to counteract the shock. When he reached the operating table, Maj. Welsh had little hope that he would survive. Great quantities of blood had been lost from the liver wound. But the soldier rallied rapidly at the evacuation hospital commanded by Col. Paul Hayes of Washington.

Handles 3,000 cases

In the last two days, 185 cases of major surgery have been performed by the 32 surgeons under Maj. Welsh. Minor surgery, such as setting scores of arms and legs, is not mentioned. The surgeons work in two-men teams in 12-hour shifts, never stopping. Then they spend four hours preparing for the next shift. Brain and jaw injuries are the most frequent because the lower part of the body is protected in the small-arms fighting which is taking place behind shoulder-high garden walls along the roads.

This single hospital has handled nearly 3,000 cases since the campaign started. It is now aided by American surgical teams of specialists, moving from hospital to hospital as the burden mounts.

Although the total replacement of blood in two hours is unique, the same surgeons have had other cases which have been refilled five times – five quarts each time – in a week. This blood is burned up by gas gangrene, but the men now being evacuated are recovering.

Important experiments are underway here with a combination of penicillin and sulfadiazine on gangrene, formerly one of war’s worst scourges, but now often successfully combatted by sulfa drugs. Every victim is given a full dose of both drugs. Preliminary indications show synergic action, that is, one increasing the effect of the other.

District still behind –
U.S. over the top in War Loan Drive

Fort Pitt area falls $27.5 million short

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8439

Oil City ace wanted to become a doctor but now he’s bad medicine for Germans

Col. Gabreski always worshipped planes; cadet program gave him chance to fly
By George Swetnam

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8440

Power chairman gets approval

Senators split along party lines

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Mass is planned for fire victims

Community memorial service also set

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8441

De Gaulle ends conferences with President

Officials amazed at prevailing harmony

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8442

Closer to Philippines –
Doughboys mop up on Noemfoor

One of the airfields already in use
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer

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Japan to face sea and air blitz

Superfortresses, Saipan to aid new attacks

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8443

Wants 100,000 ships –
Navy boosts amphibious craft goal

Losses, new needs bring action

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Quick medical attention saves many Yank lives

Ample supplies and early evacuation of wounded keep casualty lists down

Washington (UP) – (July 8)
Ample medical supplies and attention and quick evacuation saved the lives of many wounded American soldiers on the Normandy beachhead, the War Department disclosed tonight.

A report by Maj. Gen. Paul R. Hawley, chief surgeon of the European Theater of Operations, to Army Surgeon General Norman T. Kirk, told the story of rapid aid to the wounded.

Gen. Hawley said the 9th Air Force “got in there fast after D-Day” and was carrying out air evacuation of wounded to England three days after the invasion. Many wounded were flown back within an hour after reaching evacuation points behind the lines. Few waited at these points more than 12 hours.

Few arrive in shock

The flight to the United Kingdom was about an hour. Ambulances quickly transferred the patients to hospitals nearby. Air has now supplanted almost all other types of evacuation.

Field hospital platoons were used as holding hospitals at airstrips and beaches for those sent to the United Kingdom.

Gen. Hawley wrote:

The condition of the casualties on arrival in the United Kingdom has been surprisingly fine. Fractures have been well splinted. Shock has been treated on the LSTs (Landing Ship, Tanks) and hospital carriers, and it is a rare patient who arrives in shock.

Both whole blood and plasma have been plentiful in every medical installation from the clearing station to the hospital. There has been enough penicillin to treat all the cases that required it and the freedom of wounds from infection has been a source of surprise to all of our surgeons.

Supply called superb

Gen. Hawley described the medical supply as “superb.” He said he found no hospital or station in France without ample quantities.

Many American soldiers owe their lives to surgeons aboard LST boats on D-Day, Gen. Hawley wrote. The Army placed an experienced surgeon on each craft. In addition, there were two young naval medical officers and about 20 hospital corpsmen.

Reception of wounded in Britain went smoothly. Specially trained Negro litter bearers handled casualties gently.

8444

Pacific storm sinks former luxury liner

President Grant crew loses 100-day fight

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8445

Imagine! No steaks for weeks!
War fates dealt ‘cruelly’ with Rome’s idle rich

St. Louis gal who felt sorry for ‘nice Nazis’ said Fascists were ‘just having fun’
By Carleton Kent, North American Newspaper Alliance

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8446

4,000 planes batter Nazis around Caen

1,000 hit oil plants in Austria, Hungary
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer

SHAEF, London, England –
More than 4,000 Allied planes roared over the flaming Norman battlefields yesterday and laid a shattering barrage across the German frontlines around Caen, while a mighty sky fleet of well over 1,000 Italian-based raiders bombed Nazi oil refineries and airfields in Austria and Hungary.

Headquarters announced that the overall number of sorties would total more than 4,000, including 1,200 flown from Normandy airfields in close support of U.S. and British ground attacks.

Wireless station set afire

Headquarters announced that Normandy-based fighters shot down two German planes against a loss of one. Meanwhile, Spitfires of the air defenses of Great Britain set fire to a wireless station at Combourg, 20 miles southeast of Saint-Malo, and strafed various targets from Brittany to Laon.

Wave upon wave of U.S. Marauders thundered over the heads of the charging British troops throughout the morning, splattering their bombloads upon enemy gun batteries and strongpoints in the Caen sector, many of which were still smoldering from a savage, 2,500-ton night bombardment by the RAF’s heavyweights.

Thunderbolt fighters covered the Marauders and raked the enemy lines with machine-gun and cannon fire. Nearly 100 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers, attacking from treetop height walked their bombs across German defenses. Not a single German plane attempted to interfere with the raid, and the Nazis threw up only a feeble anti-aircraft barrage that caught one Marauder.

Smash rail bridge

Simultaneously, other Marauder formations reached inland to smash a railway bridge across the Eure River at Nogent-le-Roi, 70 miles southwest of Paris, and another across the Loire at Saumur.

At midafternoon, another force of thunderbolts and Lightnings bombed the network of railway lines feeding into the battle area, hitting 40 points between La Chapelle and Combourg, between Craon and Laval, and in the neighborhood of Rennes and Alençon.

The Nazi robot bomb bases along the Pas-de-Calais area were attacked by medium-sized forces of U.S. 8th Air Force Liberators and Flying Fortresses.

Swarms of U.S. fighters covered the four-engined giants and, meeting no enemy opposition in the air, they fanned out over northern France to bomb and strafe targets of opportunity on the ground.

Wreck 20 planes

One Mustang formation commanded by Col. William J. “Wild Bill” Cummings Jr. of Lawrence, Kansas, and led today by Maj. Henry B. Kucheman Jr. of Richmond, Virginia, flushed a secret German airdrome in a forest southeast of Paris. Twenty enemy planes were destroyed on the ground at Dreux Airfield, south of Paris. Another Lightning fighter group shot up 11 locomotives, 50 freight cars and a flak tower, all without meeting a single enemy fighter. German anti-aircraft gunners, however, shot down 10 heavy bombers and one fighter.

Between 500 and 750 Flying Fortresses and Liberators, accompanied by probably as many fighters, swarmed up from their Italian bases to join in the assault on Axis Europe, blasting three oil refineries and three airfields in the Vienna area and another airdrome at Veszprém, 65 miles southwest of Budapest.

Returning crewmen said only weak enemy fighter opposition was encountered over Vienna, where the bombers touched off huge fires and explosions in the Floridsdorf Creditul Minier and Fanto Vösendorf refineries. The Floridsdorf refinery, in the northern suburbs of Vienna, is Austria’s largest crude oil distillation plant.

Blast airfields

Widespread damage was also inflicted on the nearby Zwölfaxing Markersdorf and Münchendorf airfields, all fighter bases covering Vienna, and on the Hungarian field.

The RAF was out in force last night, hurling 450 four-engined Lancasters and Halifaxes into a 2,500-ton raid on the German battlelines at Caen, while other raiding formations hit enemy communications lines in northern France and a force of Mosquito borders stabbed at Berlin. Other warplanes ranged over in France, Belgium and Holland on intruder patrols, shooting down at least nine enemy planes.

Thirty-three British planes were lost in the night operations.

8447

Yank trapped four days by robot bomb explosion

Army cook loses all sense of time until rescued from building basement

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8448

americavotes1944

Barkley hinted as leading call for 4th term

May make speech nominating Roosevelt

Wallace to talk from Seattle tomorrow

Great Falls, Montana (UP) – (July 8)
Vice President Henry A. Wallace was here today en route from China to Washington, DC, where he will make a confidential report to President Roosevelt, Public Relations Officer Edward F. Carr of the Great Falls Army Air Base announced.

Mr. Wallace is en route to Seattle, where he plans to make a radio address, tomorrow afternoon at 6:30 p.m. ET, telling of his tour.

Washington (UP) – (July 8)
Democratic circles, in the throes of fresh speculation over vice-presidential prospects at the party’s national convention, circulated a report tonight that Senator Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) would make the speech nominating President Roosevelt for a fourth term.

There were some who believed that the President would insist on the renomination of Vice President Henry A. Wallace. But there were others who felt that Mr. Roosevelt would not remain adamant if opposition threatened to destroy convention unity. All, however, eagerly awaited Wallace’s radio address from Seattle tomorrow in the hope that he might drop some hint as to his own future plans.

Meanwhile, new names were listed as added starters in the vice-presidential speculative sweepstakes – a game that was being played by Democrats and Republicans alike. These were War Mobilization Director James F. Byrnes and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Others previously mentioned include House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-TX), Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO) and Barkley.

Mr. Barkley was at his home in Paducah, Kentucky, and was not available for comment on the report that he would take the convention lead in calling for a fourth term. DNC officials here professed to have no knowledge of Barkley’s plan, but at least one of them said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the report were true that the Kentuckian would place Mr. Roosevelt in nomination.

Such an act by Senator Barkley would be final proof of his full reconciliation with the President following the Majority Leader’s angry reaction to the tax bill veto.

Democratic National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan, who conferred for an hour with the President last night, leaves for Chicago with his staff tomorrow to open headquarters and complete final plans for the convention July 19.

At Democratic headquarters here, it was indicated that this committee plans to draft a short platform in which emphasis will be placed on a clear, forthright foreign policy plank and on the past record of the administration.

Byrd: Radicals threaten party

Roanoke, Virginia (UP) – (July 8)
Senator Harry F. Byrd (D-VA) today called upon the Democratic Party to return to “the greatest Democratic declaration in existence” – the party’s 1932 platform – and to reinstate the two-thirds vote in national conventions.

In a surprise address before the Virginia State Democratic Convention, Mr. Byrd said that disunity is threatening the Democratic Party as never before, and that a “return to sound principles of government” would do much to reassure the American people.

The delegates, later in the day, adopted a unanimous resolution to oppose a renomination of Henry A. Wallace as Vice President. The resolution asserted that Mr. Wallace “has become a convert to doctrines and ideologies foreign to the faith and traditions of Virginia.”

Mentioned by some Southern Democrats as a possible anti-Roosevelt presidential candidate, Mr. Byrd said the present cleavage in Democratic ranks was one “of basic principles.”

He said the Party could never be destroyed by a defeat from the Republican Party, but only by “the infiltration of alien philosophies” into its ranks. He said that repeal of the two-thirds rule had “stripped the South of its real power and voice in Democratic councils.”

Mr. Byrd said:

Communist-dominated radicals, who seek to infiltrate our party, were working for the abandonment of the American Constitution and the propagation of class and racial discrimination.

8449

americavotes1944

New Deal’s policy on food assailed

GOP group charges ‘chaos, confusion’

Washington (UP) – (July 8)
The Republican Congressional Food Study Committee charged tonight that the administration’s handling of the nation’s food problems has resulted in “chaos and confusion” and demanded that the now-widely dispersed control over food production be placed in the hands of a single administrator.

The committee carried out studies of various phases of the food situation and held public meetings to hear the views of producers, processors, distributors and consumers.

The committee’s report said:

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the New Deal is that it seeks to regiment under federal and bureaucratic control all of the industrial and human activities of the nation.

At least 10 separate government agencies assumed jurisdiction over some phases of the producing, processing and distribution of food. These various agencies, functioning under widely different and sometimes contradictory directives and executive orders, duplicated their efforts and thereby harassed the public in many ways. The result was confusion and chaos everywhere.

Other phases of the report charged:

  • That the hearings developed a sordid story of the black market in poultry, beef and pork, onions, fish and other commodities: “The insidious illegal black markets are the unmistakable result of inefficiency in administration.”

  • That through poor administration, the government is wasting huge qualities of food and feed.

  • That rationing and price-fixing policies as exercised by the administration have placed a penalty on quality and incentive to produce the best, and placed a premium upon the lowering of quality.

8450

Poll: Presidential drive to hinge on four issues

Experience, bungling will be stressed
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion

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8451

Joint Chiefs of Staff oppose Nelson’s plan for reconversion now

Warning sounded that such action might serve to prolong the war
By Fred W. Parker, United Press staff writer

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8452

Tribune head protests slur on Chicago

Col. McCormick cables Lord Beaverbrook

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Tule Lake rioters are transferred

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8453

Millett: Ring labels him ‘sold’

Military hubbies ‘marked men’
By Ruth Millett

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Last attempt made to reach entombed men

Shaft being cut into Ohio mine

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8454

$214 million cost to U.S. of day of war

Public debt rises $60 billion in year

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8455

Sky trails –
Nazis’ robot planes called ‘a weapon of desperation’

Chief of Air Forces Materiel Command says idea tested in U.S. as far back as 1918
By Henry Ward, Press aviation editor

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8456

americavotes1944

O’Daniel raps New Deal in paper inquiry

Senator is asked to explain reply

Washington (UP) – (July 8)
“The New Deal squad operates like skunks and dogs,” Senator W. Lee O’Daniel (D-TX) retorted today when informed that the War Production Board was asking how he got the newsprint to begin publication of an anti-New Deal newspaper July 4.

He asserted his paper, the W. Lee O’Daniel News, had been given a “clean bill of health” by the WPB Regional Board in Dallas, Texas, and added:

It clipped the New Deal’s ears back twice in Texas and it’s going to do it again. That’s what it’s for.

Letter awaited

Mr. O’Daniel said he had not yet received the letter which Arthur Treanor, director of WPB’s Printing and Publishing Division, addressed to him yesterday asking when and where O’Daniel bought a year’s supply of critically short newsprint to start publication of the News at 100,000 copies an issue.

He said:

It’s the New Deal fashion to turn news over to newspapers to start a smear campaign before an addressee receives his letter. The New Deal squad operates like skunks and dogs, you know that old game. The dog can run faster than the skunk but he can never catch up to it – and you know why.

Regional chief quoted

He said he had received a letter from George L. Noble Jr. of the WPB Regional Office in Dallas in which Mr. Noble, replying to a Fort Worth publisher, said inquiries by his office “failed to reveal any evidence of violation of the WPB limitation order” by Mr. O’Daniel’s newspaper.

The publisher, D. E. Weaver of the Fort Worth Press, had asked Mr. Noble to find out how Mr. O’Daniel obtained “several carloads” of newsprint and stored a year’s supply in a warehouse in Fort Worth.

Mr. O’Daniel quoted Mr. Noble’s reply to Mr. Weaver to the effect that “inquiries made failed to reveal any evidence of the violation of the WPB limitation order.”

8457

Allies to start new phase of air warfare

Battle for rule of skies almost over
By E. C. Shepherd, North American Newspaper Alliance

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